Guy Davenport was very wise
Posted by LaudateAgno on 2025-July-3 20:25:23, ThursdayIn reply to The place of spirit in materialist philosophy posted by diogenes on 2025-July-3 06:20:44, Thursday
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Thank you for these fascinating quotes from Davenport. They are richer than I remember, and they point toward a philosophical pole of orthodox Christianity I don't think he was aware of. It's as if Hugo and Tremunding are aware of the problem, but keep cycling within it... Energies! that doesn't get you out of the problem! Had Davenport's friendship with Thomas Merton but gone on a bit longer. Merton was lost too early. (I went to Davenport, learned much, and forever return, but had to move on.) "If," you say, "our mental capacities did not have their basis in the human brain then it is hard to see how brain damage could affect those capacities, or how Alzheimer's could lead to the disintegration of the human personality, which it undoubtedly does." No, it's easy to see. I'm not claiming that the mind is not shaped by the brain. Come on, man! We've been through this before. It is a question of reducibility. What thought, meaning, intention, and experience, essentially, are cannot be reduced to brain function. The brain is the place, or one place, one extent, to which thought, meaning, intention, and experience find finite expression. But it defines no more meaning to the thought "1+1=2" than do beads on an abacus or marks on a page or whispers in the breeze. It is therefore quite easy, in fact trivial, to see "to see how brain damage could affect [those] capacities, or how Alzheimer's could lead to the disintegration of the human personality, which it undoubtedly does." *** You correctly adduce the phrase "worth his salt:" Well, W. J. Craig is not worth his salt. He has made compelling public arguments that the more bone-headed atheists out there (how many of them remain fixtures in that starry sky!) need to hear and be found to fail to refute. I greatly respect him and thank him for that. But no, he still doesn't quite get the classic theism shared in the traditional theologies of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and certain branches of Buddhism. Craig is not a classical theist; he's a modernist who happens to be good at putting bone-headed atheists back a step or two, but he misrepresents classical theism, and I resent that. As for Thomas: you confuse an "explanation for the universe" with an "explanation for everything." Thomas shows how the existence of the natural world is not so much "inexplicable" as senseless without some idea of a first cause, a cause not only "being" outside that world, but being the being of all being. Thomas does not suggest that "everything in particular" is explained by simply saying "God," as if any old mystery of the natural world -- Why does the rose bloom? Why do children die of cancer? Why are boys hot? -- was somehow "explained" by simply saying "God." These are two different things. Really it's exactly the other way around: For Thomas, what is meant by "God" is explained by asking questions like, Why does the rose bloom? Why do children die of cancer? Why are boys hot?" |
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