Excerpts From Essays I Will Probably Never Finish

1. Because of course the epistemological problem with Absurdism (and with a little finagling, Emotivism) is that it separates the Good from the true. Many atheists would be surprised at their own, latent Christianity (not to mention Platonism) at assuming the necessary relationship between true utterances and their value as truth. There is no such necessity. If I may borrow and abuse Kripke, the relationship of a truth to its value as truth is contingent a priori. Only given state of affairs “x” where objective value exists can we say that true utterance ‘U’ is objectively valuable. In state of affairs “y” where there is no objective value, and only true utterance ‘U’ obtains, a theory of the relationship between the value and true utterance is necessarily subjective: that is, arbitrary, sentimentally inclined, or more to the point, not actually valuable.

Thus for the Absurdist who says, “the world is ultimately reducible to axiological meaninglessness,” the value of that utterance as true only obtains insofar as it rises in conjunction with a preset theory of quasi-value. In comes Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus and the like: sentimentalists. To even be consistent with themselves these thinkers can only call a true utterance quasi-valuable when that utterance supports the overarching, preset quasi-value conditions each thinker supplies. This proves a difficult task for one very simple reason. These thinkers operate from the Western, nay, human belief that the true and the Good ‘line up.’ They think that the truth is objectively valuable.

2. The pride of Raskolnikov, of the underground man, of Kierkegaard, of Camus, of Kafka, all consists in one very true truth: they have guts and most people do not. But one mistake I’ve noted of which all these existential thinkers are guilty is the conflation of intellectual naivety and intellectual weakness. They are not the same. Some people are simply incapable of complex self-reflection or reflection on abstract qualia. I do not think these thinkers nor we are disgusted with this phenomenon. We are disgusted with something else.  (Granted this unintelligent class is smaller than people think: one symptom of the problem is that too many people think that too many people are incapable of complex thought.) What we despise is cowardice not weakness. We despise banal distractions and a mechanical existence. We despise the psychological road blocks by which people barricade themselves; we despise the safety net and the self-delusions. Really, the existentialists are probably the most honest people in all the world, and they can’t stand liars. Existentialists have stared at the absurd face to face, and find it difficult to tolerate those who have not.

3. I want to talk about a class of phrases. They go something like, “only God knows” or “God obviously doesn’t want us to know” or “it’s one of God’s mysteries.” Theologically I have no problem whatsoever with these phrases when they are used rightly. They act as logical placeholders which function within a theological framework meant to distinguish the greatness of God from the weakness of man. I get that. That’s obvious. But I have a very simple observation: most of the time that people use these phrases, they are not distinguishing between God’s greatness and man’s weakness, they are pussyfooting around intellectual issues. In other words either laziness or cowardice  results in intellectual cop-outs. This occurs 9 times out of 10, and it s stupid and sinful.

4.The word cautious is used when the word terrified is meant.  That’s half the trouble now. Caution probably should never have implied something negative. It should have meant something like, “look what happens when you abuse out this or that good,” not, “avoid that good because it’ll cost you if you abuse it.” This is one fundamental problem with Christian fundamentalism. It avoids goods like a Buddhist monk and calls it Christian. There is a difference between setting oneself up for failure and over-generalizing the dangers of, say, alcohol. It is the difference between struggling with alcoholism and the potential to struggle with alcoholism. Everyone has the potential to struggle with alcoholism. Likewise everyone has the potential to murder.  But we don’t advocate avoiding human contact because we might kill a few of people. Why do we avoid alcohol if we only might become alcoholics?

Fundamentalists might answer that the proclivity for alcoholism is greater than murder. In the first place this is simply false. Many have murdered and turned to alcohol for consolation, not the other way around. Proclivities are particular to persons. This brings me to my second point: to talk of universal proclivities is an example of the ridiculous fundamental generalization. Fundamentalists generalize because fundamentalists are lazy thinkers and psychological weaklings. They want their rule fixed so they can follow it without having to think about particulars. They do not want to see Bob the man, how on Saturday he can have this proclivity and Tuesday not, how Bob might intentionally change his proclivities for the sake of God and the church, how Bob might transform altogether simply as a matter of course and never desire a drink, or how Bob might continue to struggle with alcoholism. They want a formula; they want to reduce Bob to sentence, as if a man were merely ‘an alcoholic’ or ‘a recovered alcoholic’ or ‘a recovering alcoholic.’ They want to say, “Well, since alcohol destroyed Bob’s life, we should all avoid it too.” But the trouble is that this is logically equivalent to saying, “Well, since Mary’s marriage destroyed her life, we should avoid it too.” The evil is not the thing, but the abuse of the thing. The thing itself is good. Because obviously there are goods which, unlike food and water, are not necessary to living—alcohol and marriage—which are disastrous when abused but good when not. That’s what the fundamentalist will never understand. Proper drinking is a beautiful thing, a laudable practice, a Christian virtue. And when he does not participate in it in the right way, he intentionally ignores a part of God’s creation. It would be like waking up at dawn and refusing to look at the sunrise for fear that one might commit idolatry. The beauty of nature can make us idolatrous, but does it follow that we should walk around blindfolded?