[PT 13.2 (2012) 167-182]
doi:10.1558/poth.v13i2.167
Political Theology (print) ISSN 1462-317X
Political Theology (online) ISSN 1473-1719
PhilosoPhy of Religion in an age of austeRity: towaRds a socially engaged PhilosoPhy foR the well-lived life
Beverley Clack1
Oxford Brookes University
Harcourt Hill Campus
Oxford OX2 9AT, UK
bclack@brookes.ac.uk
ABStrACt
This paper explores the shape that a socially-engaged philosophy of religion might take. Against the backdrop of the so-called “Age of Austerity,” questions are being asked about the relevance of academic subjects to the world outside the academy. A functionalist view of education may well be resisted, but pursuing the question of what makes philosophy of religion relevant enables an account of the discipline to emerge that is rather different from the model that dominates analytic forms of the subject. I suggest that returning to existential themes offers a way forward for the discipline that makes it not just relevant but particularly important for current public discussions of what makes for a well-lived life.
Keywords: feminism; loss; philosophy of religion; Viktor Frankl; wellbeing.
introduction
During her investigation of the relationship between sex and intellect, the French philosopher and feminist activist Michèle Le Doeuff poses the following question to her fellow philosophers:
We have to wonder what we are doing when we teach, and what the function of the university really is. Does our teaching have negative or supportive impact? Is it of any consequence for the future? For knowledge either breeds hope or crushes it when the past serves as a mirror of a desired future, or if one uses “facts” to deine and defend a norm for today and for the future (Le Doeuff 2003: 82–83).
1. Beverley Clack is a Professor in the Philosophy of religion, Department of History, Philosophy and religion, Oxford Brookes University.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Shefield, S3 8AF.
What follows is an attempt to suggest ways in which philosophy of religion might respond to Le Doeuff’s desire that philosophers take seriously the practical affect of their subject on the society that surrounds them. If we understand philosophy of religion principally as a form of practice with its roots in analytic philosophy, we may ind the very idea of a socially engaged and responsive philosophy of religion bizarre to say the least. Analytic philosophy of religion relies on abstract argument and critical analysis to establish the coherence or otherwise of religious belief. religion is construed broadly, and while some philosophers of religion have been explicit about the traditions with which they engage, there is a tendency to discuss religion as a phenomenon that can be detached from its speciic social and concrete practices.2 My intention is to challenge this view and to suggest ways in which a socially engaged philosophy of religion might contribute to some of the discussions being had in a culture going through a period of signiicant economic and social upheaval. In this way, I want to present an account of philosophy of religion which is able to address some of the concerns arising from, what is being called, “the Age of Austerity.”3
the contemporary context: why Philosophy of Religion?
In attempting to develop a socially-engaged philosophy of religion, it is useful to place that discussion against the wider debate concerning the role of the arts and humanities in British universities and in British society. As part of their agenda to cut public spending, thereby reducing the deicit that arose in the wake of the global inancial crisis of 2008, the UK’s Coalition government announced that it would cut the government contribution to the university teaching budget for arts, humanities and the social sciences by 80 per cent from 2012.4 The assumption behind this
2. For example, Tim Mawson argues that philosophy of religion as a discipline is rightly “loath to engage with…empirical facts” (2005: 176). Examples which challenge this model are those who, like Amy Hollywood, wish to address the practices of religion (Hollywood 2004), and those who with some of the contributors to Quinn and Taliaferro 1999 seek to relate the philosophy of religion to speciic religious traditions.
3. For use of the designation, see David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party Forum, April 26, 2009. I am grateful that I am not alone in identifying the need to reframe philosophy of religion for the current times and wish to thank Philip Goodchild for providing a model for how those who he calls “maverick philosophers of religion” might proceed.
4. See the Browne Review (the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance), October 12, 2010; also Comprehensive Spending Review, November 22, 2010.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
decision seems to be that cutting government funding for the arts and humanities is unlikely to have a negative affect on the country’s inancial situation. Given that the Arts Council of Great Britain claims that the creative economy grew faster than any other sector between 1997 and 2006, accounting for two million jobs and £16.6 billion of exports in 2007, this seems a rather strange and possibly counterproductive measure for a government intent on rebalancing the economy away from its dependence on the inancial services sector.
This policy decision might partly be understood as relecting deeprooted cultural attitudes. Emphasizing the role of science and the things that can be touched and felt has a long tradition in British thought and culture.5 It has, at times, born surprising fruit. For example, the language of psychoanalysis that we take for granted is to a large extent the result of James Strachey’s translation of Freud’s works into English. Strachey’s work went far beyond simple transcription of terms from one language into another. Freud described the three agencies of the mind using the rather homely, everyday language of the “es” (the “it”), the “ich” (the “I”) and the “über-ich” (the “over-I”).6 Strachey’s more technical sounding renditions for these agencies of the mind—the “id,” “ego” and “superego”—came out of the desire to make psychoanalysis more acceptable to the empirically-minded British by employing language that sounded more scientiic.7 As Strachey notes in the irst volume of the Standard Edition of Freud’s works, in making his translations, “the imaginary model which I have always kept before me is…some English man of science of wide education born in the middle of the nineteenth century” (Strachey 1966: xix). Freud, looking to establish the credibility of his nascent discipline, embraced this depiction and Strachey’s translation warmly.
British philosophy of religion8 has not been immune from a similar desire to make its method and approach scientiically respectable. The assault on the meaningfulness of religious belief in the work of A. J. Ayer has had a lasting impact. By applying the ideas of the logical positivists to the realm of religion and ethics, Ayer claimed that religious beliefs were not strictly speaking meaningful as they could not be supported by either analytical reasoning or empirical evidence (Ayer 2001 [1936]). In response
5. See Priest 1990 for discussion of the leading igures of the British empiricist movement.
6. See Bettelheim 1983, ch. 6, for details of this shift.
7. Steiner 1991 notes the role of Ernest Jones, Freud’s great English disciple, in accommodating this shift in language, and comments that “Freud’s work was going to have to be adapted to suit the tactics and prejudices of a very particular culture” (p. 388).
8. In making this designation I am following Grace Jantzen’s identiication of this term as shorthand for the Anglo-American analytic tradition in philosophy (Jantzen 1996).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
to the challenge of logical positivism, one philosophical solution was to restrict attention to the analysis of language and to possible synergies with the scientiic world.9 Philosophers of religion, placed on the edges of the discipline, have felt a similar pressure to show the discipline to be rigorous and exacting; even more so, given that its subject matter is religion. Emphasizing the critical practices of the subject through the analysis of religious belief enables its credibility to be asserted. Unlike theology it is not (supposedly) linked to any particular religious tradition and thus attains a kind of scientiic objectivity. Unlike the study of religion it is not content (merely) to describe the practices of the religious, offering always a critical perspective on religious belief.10
The affect of this framing has led to something of a disconnection between the subject and experiences which are central to religious expression and theorizing. Being human involves struggling with and attempting to make sense of our vulnerability and suffering; themes that run throughout religious traditions. By treating religion primarily as a matter of beliefs which can be analysed, what we might think of as the therapeutic function of religion has been largely ignored.11 Recent work by Anglo-American philosophers of religion, inluenced by Continental thought and feminist ideas, have sought to return our attention to such experiences, offering, as Carter and Whistler put it, “a rejuvenated conception of philosophy as engaged—that is, a philosophy concerned with traversing the complexities of living in the world” (Carlisle, Carter and Whistler 2011: xi).12 returning in this manner to existential concerns provides one way in which philosophers of religion might show their subject’s relevance for the world outside the university: something that the current political context seems to demand. There are, of course, dangers in framing the discussion in this way, not least because it seems to involve a tacit acceptance that academic subjects need to show their value; an approach which suggests a vision of human life and education which attributes meaning only
9. See for example recent work in the philosophy of mind which draws upon neuroscience. See for example Bennett, et al. 2007.
10. Although in practice it often acts as a form of Christian apologetic or it assumes a monotheistic account of what religion involves—see for example Swinburne 1994.
11. A recent edition of the leading journal in philosophy of religion suggests something of themes that interest philosophers but which are rather detached from the ordinary concerns of human life and the traditional religious attempts to respond to these: “Objections to Social Trinitarianism”; “Composition Models of the Incarnation”; “Sceptical Theism and Divine Lies”; “Moral Omnipotence and Moral Perfection” (Religious Studies 46, no. 4, December 2010).
12. For further examples of this approach, see Smith and Whistler 2010; Anderson 2011.
to things which have a monetary or economic value. As Philip Goodchild notes in his theological critique of the global inancial system, “we all learn to see the world from the perspective of money” (Goodchild forthcoming); a perspective that debases and distorts human relationships and attitudes to the world. Seeking to establish the “value” of philosophy of religion in this way might play into that attitude. Perhaps; but refusing to suggest ways in which philosophers of religion might contribute to the wider public sphere is to miss an opportunity, not just to challenge some of the cultural assumptions of our age, but also to offer a philosophy of religion of relevance to more than just its practitioners.
a critically and socially engaged Philosophy of Religion
In seeking to demonstrate the importance of philosophy, an obvious starting place is with the emphasis on critical thinking. Adopting a philosophical perspective enables us to think differently about the world; to problematize that which seems self-evident or which is taken to be “commonsense.” By extension, philosophers of religion, when they engage critically—and thoughtfully—with religious phenomena, challenge the dogmatic responses of both fundamentalists and secularists, thereby enabling the emergence of richer accounts of what religion involves.13 And, indeed, there are regular reports which suggest that it is in the promotion of critical thinking that the value of philosophy lies. In January 2009, it was reported that there were high levels of employability for philosophy graduates; a inding supported by the contention of the Higher Education Academy that philosophy candidates were likely to develop “a lexible mind adaptable to change” (Fearn 2009) that employers would ind useful. Similarly, a recent article in Bloomsberg Business Week argued that the habits of critical thought nurtured by the study of philosophy were particularly useful for the needs of the business world (Seidman 2010).
It is tempting, at this point, to slip into a satisied complacency, but it is worth considering whether this functionalist account of the value of critical thinking is enough to show the relevance of philosophy. After all, it is dificult to think of any discipline in the humanities that does not go some way to promote critical thinking. Is it possible to go further by considering not just the impact studying philosophy might have on the attitudes and skills set of individual graduates entering the workforce, but to consider the wider impact the subject might have on the society that surrounds the
13. For detailed discussion of what it means to live in a post-secular as well as a postpost-modern world, see Taylor 2007.
Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
university? The social world consists of more than just the workplace. It relects relationships and activities that shape the meaning of a life beyond the world of work. Given that its subject matter involves relection on the values that shape human life and relection, might philosophy of religion be that part of the discipline particularly well-placed to address the challenges facing a society experiencing signiicant social and economic change?
In order to think more deeply about the relationship between philosophy and that wider social realm, it is worth considering what, precisely, critical thought involves. The common philosophical assumption highlights the ability to stand back from one’s experiences and prejudices, adopting what Thomas Nagel describes as “the view from nowhere” (Nagel 1989). Feminists have resisted this account of philosophical method, arguing that such abstract critical thought is not as straightforwardly neutral a practice as might, at irst appearance, seem to be the case (Harding and Hintikka 1983). To support this view, attention has been drawn to the history of western philosophy and the way in which the construction of rationality mirrors male experience of self and world. Moreover, this construction relects the historical context against which philosophy developed; a context where women were subjugated and the values associated with them—or projected on to them—denigrated.14 The social impact of this construction is evidenced in the absence of women from the history of philosophy.15 This is hardly surprising: if reason is deined in contradistinction to qualities identiied with women, then women will be excluded from the life of the mind, for, by deinition, they cannot be philosophers (Lloyd 1984).
Feminist philosophers have responded in different ways to the identiication of this historical bias. For feminist philosophers of sexual difference, recognizing the gendering of reason necessitates rejecting ways of doing philosophy which promote male experience of the world to the detriment of women’s. rather than work with an alien (male) language, an appropriate response is to identify female ways of knowing in order to develop a language that is truly women’s own.16
The polarizing of male and female experience in this way can be challenged, and others, like Pamela Sue Anderson, have resisted the idea that it is necessary to detach oneself entirely from the western philosophical tradition in order to value the kinds of experiences that have traditionally shaped women’s lives. Instead, Anderson argues for a more rounded form
14. See Clack 1999 for examples drawn from the history of philosophy.
15. For attempts to draw attention to the place of women in philosophy, see Le Doeuff 2007 [1989], 2003; also Waithe 1995.
16. See Irigaray 1985a, 1985b.
of philosophical reasoning that involves “thinking through the lives of others” (Anderson 1998: 18). This method avoids assuming that only one perspective on the world is suficient to understand it. A richer account of the philosophical attempt to think “objectively” about experience and reality emerges which recognizes the different perspectives that make up the human world. We are not thinkers in the abstract, but are embodied thinkers; sex, race and class affecting the ways in which we think about and construct our world. In order to think critically, we must resist the temptation to assume that our place in the world relects all human experience, and as a result we must recognize experiences other than our own. In this way, philosophical practice cannot avoid engaging with others, and it is through such social engagement, particularly with those placed at the margins, that it takes on political form, becoming “a prescription for change” (Anderson 1998: 119).17
Michèle Le Doeuff takes further the idea that critical thought has political potential. This potential can only be unlocked, however, if philosophy becomes more self-critical, “oust[ing] and unmask[ing] the alienating schemas that philosophy has produced” (1989: 101). For Le Doeuff, philosophy is primarily the practice of critical thought; a deinition that has the happy consequence of resisting the temptation to view philosophy through the ideas and systems of those who have practised it. We are not to be disciples who replicate the answers of the past, but rather practitioners who are able to shape new ways of thinking about the issues of the day (Le Doeuff 2007 [1989]). Despite recognizing the dificulties of the historical past that have shaped philosophical categories she remains hopeful of the political potential in philosophy. Philosophy is not by deinition “male.” All are capable of it. Learning to think clearly enables one to challenge one’s situation; in this act, it is possible to change the shape of one’s world. To deny the power of critical thought to women is to deny them its liberatory potential.
Practising critical thought makes possible the identiication of “cognitive blockages” that can hold the individual prisoner. Le Doeuff uses an example to illustrate what she means:
17. Goodchild suggests that this is far from a new development for the subject. Born from the political struggles of the Enlightenment period, Enlightenment philosophers saw reason as something which challenged and destabilized the attitudes and social structures of the day: “It is important to recognise that such a conluence of theologico-politico concerns—the overcoming of dissension, the fostering of true piety, the liberation of religion from political interference, and the exposure of the undermining of ecclesiastical authority by avarice and ambition—contributed to the rational exploration of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and not an abstract love of a disembodied reason for the sake of its own purity” (2002b: 6, my emphasis).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
A woman phones a domestic violence hotline: “I’m calling because…my husband, no, no, he isn’t violent, but I’m worried… I’m wondering whether he might become violent. Last night I didn’t feel like having sex, and I said so. Then he got a knife from the kitchen, held it to my throat, and forced me to have sex like that. I think he might become violent.” It is quite usual for feminist centres to receive calls like this one, which both attest to the outrages inlicted on women and signal a kind of cognitive blockage. This woman was incapable of recognising violence for what it was, even when she was experiencing it (Le Doeuff 2003: xv).
Critical thought enables us to see things differently, more accurately, more truthfully. recognizing that no one exists outside a given context does not mean that it is impossible to stand back from a situation and appraise it. This analytic mode of thought—paralleled in the psychoanalytic practice of considering one’s affect as if it were an object—can change one’s life. Le Doeuff employs a biblical analogy to drive this point home:
When, beginning with Adam and Eve, God granted the human mind suficient powers for each single person to ind knowledge on his or her own by thinking a little, our irst ancestors cheated like lazy schoolchildren taking a peek at the teacher’s book instead of putting their brains to work as God had commanded… The act of insubordination amounted to having eaten the apple instead of struggling to understand good and evil by thinking them through (Le Doeuff 2003: 34).
The act of thought involves struggle. It is hard, not least because it involves challenging entrenched views of self, world and others. Seen as a form of critical pedagogy, philosophical practice cannot be divorced from the social world of the subject.18 As such, it is applicable not only to the individual’s life and context, but to addressing the values and attitudes of the society that surrounds them. This grounded rather than detached form of philosophy which engages with a concrete time and place offers a model for how philosophy of religion might proceed in an Age of Austerity.
changing the subject
At the outset, the philosopher of religion might employ this engaged criticality to assess the very designation of this age as one of “austerity.” To adapt a phrase of Alasdair MacIntyre’s, “whose” austerity are we talking about (MacIntyre 1988)? Taken at face value, this label suggests that all will experience diminishing levels of afluence; but if we look deeper, this iscal “adjustment” will not affect all in the same way.
18. The feminist activist bel hooks is particularly good at detailing what this kind of socially engaged pedagogy means: see hooks (1994: 13–22).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
Consider the cuts that have been announced by the UK government to public spending. According to research carried out by the Fawcett Society, women will be disproportionately affected by cuts to public services and the resulting job losses, not just because they rely on them most but also because 65 per cent of workers in the public sector are women.19 When these indings are taken alongside the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ claim that the poorest members of society are most likely to be worst hit by the retraction in public spending,20 we should be careful of assuming that this label means precisely what it says.
We might, at this point, adopt the hermeneutic of suspicion, and wonder who beneits from cultivating the assumption that all will be equally affected by the inancial tightening of the day. This is an important question. However, I want to take a different path. recognizing the limitations of this description is not to ignore the challenge of the current economic situation. It is a challenge, I want to suggest, that allows us to think again about the values by which we have lived and the things that currently give life meaning. For Goodchild, this reassessment must confront the ecological crisis, arising as it does from an unsustainable model of global capitalism (2002a). For me, it involves a complementary consideration of the importance that loss plays in understanding what it is to be human. In both cases, philosophy of religion is linked to moral philosophy and the theological concern to develop richer ways of living.
Introducing the theme of loss takes place against the backdrop of the political concern with wellbeing. Towards the end of the twentieth century, governments became increasingly concerned that increased afluence in Western economies had not been matched by a similar increase in individual levels of wellbeing.21 In light of this surprising fact, there was an attempt in the UK by the then Labour government to develop policies that promoted a greater sense of wellbeing. Particular attention was paid to education. Practices were developed in order to ensure that children acquired the mental and emotional skills deemed necessary to cultivate their sense of wellbeing.22 While it is not clear how this agenda will be advanced by the new UK government, there is no doubt that it remains a governmental concern, David Cameron instructing the Ofice of National Statistics to include a “general wellbeing” calculation along-
19. See Fawcett Society (2010); also Fawcett Society and Institute for Fiscal Studies (2011) for supporting statistical analysis.
20. See http://www.ifs.org.uk/ for analysis of affects of Comprehensive Spending review 2010 and Budget 2011.
21. For an overview of the economic arguments, see John Atherton’s Introductory Essay in Atherton, Graham and Steedman (2011: 1–19).
22. For a critical account of such practices, see Ecclestone and Hayes 2009.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
side more traditional economic indicators of the UK’s performance (The Guardian, November 15, 2010).
When considering what wellbeing involves and what as a result is to be measured, one inluential approach has been to associate it with emotional wellbeing. Thus wellbeing is equated with the feeling of happiness. For Richard Layard, a key advisor to the last government, happiness was deined in the following way: “by happiness I mean feeling good—enjoying life and wanting the feeling to be maintained. By unhappiness I mean feeling bad and wishing things were different” (Layard 2006: 13). As Carl-Henric Grenholm notes, this approach offers a hedonistic model of wellbeing where it is understood in terms of pleasure (Grenholm 2011: 46).
While Layard does not connect feelings of happiness with the ability to consume (2006: 133, 147; also Grenholm 2011: 47), the wider cultural context suggests that one powerful way of attaining pleasure is through the ability to purchase. As the cultural commentator Zygmunt Bauman has argued, shopping in western societies has become something which is done mainly for the pleasure of the activity itself (Bauman 1992: vii). When rioting broke out in several major English cities in August 2011, Bauman claimed that the riots relected the values of a society that deined meaning according to what you buy, writing that “these are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualiied consumers.”23 Similarly, the cultural historian Clive Bloom called the phenomenon “aspirational looting” (Radio 4, Today, August 10, 2011), alluding to the sense that one’s status is largely dependent upon what one owns. These analyses might be dismissed as simplistic accounts of a complex phenomenon, but what Bauman and Bloom hint at is the shadow side of an account of the meaningful life when it is based upon the maximization of pleasurable feelings.
There is a long philosophical tradition which resists grounding wellbeing in the emotions.24 For Aristotle and the schools that followed him, wellbeing was to be established through pursuing activities that made for the meaningful or fulilling life. No one thing was suficient for such a life. Wealth, pleasure, status, virtue—all needed to be held in balance through the exercise of reason.25 Under such an account, the well-lived life emerges from the development of character and the striving for integrity, conirming bell hooks’ designation of the intellectual “as someone
23. Social Europe Journal, August 9, 2011, http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/
24. See riordan 2011 for discussion of the different ways of constructing happiness.
25. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, Chapter 5.
who sought to be whole” (1994: 22). Connecting wellbeing with the maximization of pleasure is not, under this model, adequate for developing the kind of attitudes that can cope with the range of experiences that make up a human life. Understanding wellbeing through the emotions leads to a meaningful life being equated with success and happiness; it does not allow space for making sense of—or living with—loss and failure.
When philosophers of religion have contemplated loss, the focus has been upon the more extreme forms of this phenomenon. Loss is addressed through discussion of death, pain and suffering. In practice, these discussions are located alongside metaphysical claims about what such “evils” mean for understanding reality. The focus has been less on addressing the experience of the individual, and more on the problems such experiences create for belief in God.
A different approach is to stay with the individual’s experience. James Carter suggests that engaging with the vulnerability of being human necessitates addressing ways in which philosophy might provide “a therapeutic and social function” (Carter 2011: 123). That philosophy is well-placed to soothe the soul of the one suffering has a long history: Epicurus went so far as to suggest that without this therapeutic function it was useless,26 and more recently Martha Nussbaum (1996) and Pierre Hadot (1995) have drawn upon the resources of Hellenistic ethics to develop accounts of philosophy as a way of life. But in order to understand how philosophy might function as a form of therapy, we must irst address the social conditions and dominant narratives that exacerbate the experience of suffering.
Feminists have long argued that in order to engage fully with evil and suffering, attention must be paid to the role of social structures.27 The experience of suffering is personal, but it also relects and emerges from particular social structures and contexts.
A detailed examination of what this means is presented by Dorothee Soelle. Like Le Doeuff, she describes a situation of domestic violence. Again, a woman is being abused by her husband. Soelle argues that her suffering is multilayered: it is in the bruises she bears on her body, but it is more than that. Isolated and inancially dependent on her abuser, she does not have the means to leave. She feels ashamed that her marriage is a failure, but knows that to leave her husband would bring much criticism in a small community that views divorce with disapproval. Were she to divorce she would have to move away, thereby losing her roots (Soelle
26. “For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sicknesses of bodies, so too there is no use in philosophy, if it does not throw out suffering from the soul” (Epicurus in Nussbaum 1996: 102).
27. See Welch 1989; Jantzen 1998; and Joy 2010.
1975: 10–16). Her suffering is physical, but it is also psychological, as well as something shaped by the values of her community.
Soelle suggests that no experience of suffering can be isolated from its social context. Taking this approach, let us explore a rather mundane form of loss but one that is peculiarly relevant for the age of austerity. Unemployment is expected to rise in the UK as a result of the cuts in the public sector and the wider iscal contraction of the economy. The loss of one’s job might not seem as extreme as other examples that could be considered, but addressing it illustrates something of the way in which the work of the philosopher of religion might be particularly relevant to the issues of our day. The lived experience of unemployment has psychological and social dimensions. The person who is unemployed can be confronted with a host of questions that go beyond the issues arising from loss of income. Who am I if I do not do this work? Who am I if I cannot provide for my family?28 Such questions can be exacerbated by the values which pervade the surrounding society. What meaning is ascribed to paid work in society? If I am what I do, what am I if I no longer do this work? If I can no longer establish the worth of my life through that which I buy, how am I to understand its meaning? Can my life be deemed “successful” if I am no longer able to show the material trappings of that success?
Starting from the experience of unemployment, there would seem to be limitations in modelling wellbeing too much on the cultivation of feeling well (and of course other experiences of loss are just as pertinent here). What happens when one’s experience does not lend itself to making one feel happy? If anything, the pressure to feel happy when one is not may exacerbate one’s feelings of isolation and failure.29 As Edith Weisskopf-Joelson notes: “unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy” (in Frankl 2004: 118).
rather than dismiss experiences of loss when considering the notion of wellbeing, it might be better to allow them to challenge dominant narratives of what makes for a successful or happy life. Aspects of Richard Swinburne’s theodicy prove helpful here. When Swinburne considers suffering, he emphasizes its role in character formation. In a world without pain, there would be no opportunity for “the higher virtues” to develop (Swinburne 2000). The problem with such an account is that it does not deal suficiently with the fact that suffering can break as well as make the individual. The tone of such theodicies can also be inappropriate: in
28. I am fortunate in (to date) never having experienced periods of unemployment, but am drawing upon my father’s experience of being unemployed in the 1970s and 1980s.
29. As Edith Weisskopf-Joelson puts it, “unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy” (quoted in Frankl 2004: 118).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
analysing suffering, the theodicist can sound at best detached, at worst callous.30 Yet, by raising the question of how pain and loss relate to the meaningful life, Swinburne helps us to move beyond the idea that a meaningful life can only be founded on the sense that it is happy or pleasurable.
The “logotherapy” of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl suggests a practical way in which considering loss can lead to new ways of thinking about what makes for a meaningful life. Frankl claimed that meaning was possible in the most apparently meaningless of situations. Given his personal experience—he lost his wife to the gas chambers—this is quite a claim to make. Frankl’s focus is on meaningful activity rather than the pursuit of happiness. “Happiness cannot be pursued: it must ensue” (2004 [1962]: 140) for it is a bi-product of the activities that make for a meaningful life.31 In practice, Frankl was hesitant about that phrase “the meaning of life,” preferring to think of those key moments when we ind ourselves “questioned by life” (2004: 85). Loss in its many forms is an inevitable part of mutable human existence; when it comes our way, as it will, we have to decide how to respond. The work of therapy is to aid the practice of weaving together all the experiences of life—the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful—into the integrated life.
At one point, Frankl draws attention to the experience of unemployment, and he writes powerfully of what that experience meant for those who sought his help: “Being jobless was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life” (2004 [1962]: 142). In order to escape such feelings, a different lens was needed through which to view their experience: and Frankl suggests that the only way to do this was to look beyond the self. Adopting a way of living “sub specie aeternitatis” enabled a different perception to be brought to bear on the loss of an image of self shaped by the workplace. Far from being a mindset divorced from reality, this perspective involved inding an active role in the world, and Frankl lists volunteering, youth work and involvement in adult education as different ways of establishing this transcendent perspective (Frankl 2004 [1964]: 142). Frankl comments that: “The true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche” (Frankl 2004 [1964]: 115).
It is at this point that such an approach suggests ways forward for the socially engaged philosopher of religion. Frankl’s philosophy has ramiications for more than just the person experiencing unemployment. It
30. See Hick (1985: 294) on the need for a life after death to address extreme forms of suffering. See also Surin 1986 and Clack 2007 for critiques of theoretical theodicy.
31. In this way Frankl relects J. S. Mill’s view of happiness as a bi-product of creativity, virtue, relection or work (Mill 1987 [1871]: 278–81).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
suggests the importance of understanding the individual as part of something bigger than themselves. Attention shifts from emphasizing the self and its feelings to locating that self in a broader context. For life to be meaningful there has to be something that commands attention outside of the self. Cultivating this self-transcendent perspective resonates with religious ideas of where meaning is to be found. An obvious focus for one’s attention might be God, but such a perspective might also be found in the ethical demand that Levinas recognizes in the face of the other (1969), or with the commitment to a transcendent set of values that Stewart Sutherland identiies with the religious life (1984). For a model which suggests the importance of self-transcendence, it is not so much wellbeing that is sought as the well-lived life.
conclusion
A time of austerity is not necessarily to be welcomed; but it does provide an opportunity to develop the kind of responsible and responsive philosophical practice that Le Doeuff advocates. Entering a period of economic and social upheaval is deeply unsettling; but it also has the potential to be creative. When Nietzsche proclaimed “the death of God,” he drew attention to the end of an era and the necessity of creating new ways of living. He recognized that this task would be disorientating and would be accompanied by anxiety, but, if seized, it could also be invigorating 32 If philosophers of religion are willing to bring their subject into the broader contemporary debate about how best to live, they can show philosophy and theology to be far from self-indulgent practices, relevant only to the lives of the academic few. These subjects can be modelled as transformative practices, which, through their engagement with the struggles and anxieties that attend to life, are capable of illuminating the creative possibilities open to us all in a changing and unpredictable world.
BIBLIOGrAPHY
Anderson, Pamela. 1998. A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. ——, ed. 2011. New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion. London: Springer. Atherton, John, Elaine Graham and Ian Steedman, eds. 2011. The Practices of Happiness London: routledge. Ayer, A. J. 2001 [1936]. Language, Truth and Logic. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1992. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: routledge.
32. For the disorientating experience of the end of an era, see Nietzsche (2001), section 125. But by removing the old values, “the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an ‘open sea’” (section 343).
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
Bennett, Maxwell, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, John Searle and Daniel Robertson. 2007. Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language. New York: Columbia.
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1983. Freud and Man’s Soul. London: Hogarth Press.
Carlisle, Joseph, James C. Carter and Daniel Whistler, eds. 2011. Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs London: Continuum.
Carter, James. 2011. “The Passionate Life: On Grief and Human Experience.” In Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs, ed. Joseph Carlisle, James C. Carter and Daniel Whistler, 109–130.
Clack, Beverley. 1999. Misogyny in the Western Philosophical Tradition. London: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230212800
——2007. “Distortion, Dishonesty and the Problem of Evil.” In Wrestling with God and with Evil, ed. Henrik Vroom, 197–215. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press.
Ecclestone, Kathryn, and Dennis Hayes. 2009. The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education. London: routledge.
Fawcett Society. 2010. UK Women’s Budget Group report “The Impact on Women of the Coalition Spending Review 2010.” November.
Fawcett Society and Institute for Fiscal Studies. 2011. “Single Mothers, Singled Out: The Impact of 2010–15 Tax and Beneit Changes on Women and Men.” June.
Fearn, Hannah. 2009. “More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.” Times Higher Education Supplement, January 1.
Frankl, Viktor. 2004 [1962]. Man’s Search for Meaning. London: rider.
Goodchild, Philip. 2002a. Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety. London: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203398418
——2002b. “Continental Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy, 1–39. New York: Fordham University Press.
——(forthcoming) “What is Wrong with the Global Financial System?” Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics
Grenholm, Carl-Henric. 2011. “Happiness, Welfare and Capabilities.” In The Practises of Happiness, ed. John Atherton, Elaine Graham and Ian Steedman, 42–53. London: routledge.
Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harding, Sandra, and Merrill Hintikka, eds. 1983. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: reidel. Hick, John. 1985. Death and Eternal Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hollywood, Amy. 2004. “Practice, Belief and Feminist Philosophy of Religion.” In Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Critical Readings, ed. Pamela Sue Anderson and Beverley Clack, 225–40. London: routledge.
hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. London: routledge. Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
——1985b. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Jantzen, Grace. 1996. “What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in (Post)Modern Philosophy of Religion.” Religious Studies 32, no. 4: 431–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S0034412500001621
——1998. Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Joy, Morny. 2010. “Rethinking the ‘Problem of Evil’ with Hannah Arendt and Grace Jantzen.” In New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion, ed. Pamela Anderson, 17–32. London: Springer.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
Layard, richard. 2006. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin. Le Doeuff, Michèle. 1989. The Philosophical Imaginary. London: Athlone Press.
——2003. The Sex of Knowing. London: routledge.
——2007 [1989]. Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc. New York: Columbia University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Ininity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. London: Methuen.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
Mawson, Tim. 2005. Belief in God. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mill, J. S. 1987 [1871]. “Utilitarianism.” In J. S. Mill and J. Bentham, Utilitarianism and Other Essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Nietzsche, F. The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Nagel, Thomas. 1989. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Priest, Stephen. 1990. The British Empiricists. Harmondsworth: Penguin. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4324/9780203003107
Quinn, Philip, and Charles Taliaferro. 1999. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/b.9780631213284.1999.x
Riordan, Patrick. 2011. “Human Happiness as a Common Good: Clarifying the Issues.” In The Practises of Happiness, ed. John Atherton, Elaine Graham and Ian Steedman, 207–15. London: routledge.
Seidman, Dov. 2010. “Philosophy is Back in Business.” Bloomberg Business Week, January. Smith, Anthony Paul, and Daniel Whistler. 2011. After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.
Soelle, Dorothee. 1975. Suffering. London: Darton, Longman & Todd.
Steiner, Riccardo. 1991. “To Explain Our Point of View to English Readers in English Words.” International Review of Psychoanalysis 18: 351–92.
Strachey, James. 1966. “General Preface.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 1, ed. James Strachey, xiii–xxii. London: Hogarth Press.
Surin, Kenneth. 1986. Theology and the Problem of Evil. Oxford: Blackwell. Sutherland, Stewart. 1984. God, Jesus and Belief. Oxford: Blackwell. Swinburne, richard. 1994. The Christian God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx. doi.org/10.1093/0198235127.001.0001
—2000. “Evil Does Not Show That There Is No God.” In Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology, ed. Brian Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waithe, M. E. 1995. A History of Women Philosophers, vols 1–4. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press.
Welch, Sharon. 1989. A Feminist Ethic of Risk. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.