...of course not. But sometimes I scratch my head and wonder what he's thinking.
I hesitate to dive into blog politics like this, especially after Brad of Resident Theology was so recently kind enough to say that I'm a levelheaded guy. But taking a stab at this is, I think, worthwhile.
In his recent post "Why Novak is Completely Worthless in Every Way Imaginable", Halden follows Daniel Larison in criticizing a piece from First Things, where Michael Novak seeks to open up dialogue about sanctions and the possibility of eventual war against Iran. Novak appeals to Niebuhr and some vaguely Zionist ideas in making his point, and Halden is concerned about this as contrary to Christian teaching, to the Sermon on the Mount in particular, etc. etc.
I'm not interested in arguing with Halden on the merits of Novak's case. On the one hand, my initial sense from reading the First Things piece was that it was a bit overly paranoid and probably not adequate as a Christian ethical proposal, either concerning Israel or war with any other country. On the other hand, I haven't really read any of Novak's work, so any very substantial response to it should probably be left to someone else.
Setting that aside, then, let me explain my personal perspective on the man.
Michael Novak is now retired (or semi-retired) on the coast of Delaware just between the ocean and the bay, and next-door to my grandparents. I've never met him, but my grandparents will have dinner with him every once in a while. They've actually given copies of my articles to him, and Novak apparently thought well of my Augustine paper and sent it to some friends at Ave Maria University (after which I had quite a time explaining to my sweet yet oblivious grandmother why, "No, in fact I don't think the Ave Maria folks would be very interested in having me as a doctoral student."). Two years ago my grandparents gave me a signed copy of Novak's No One Sees God for Christmas. I think it's still sitting on a shelf in Virginia at this point, although it will probably get read sooner or later.
During a Thanksgiving visit this past autumn that included a stop in Delaware, Novak again came up in conversation. Apparently he had a lot to do these days, putting things in order. Was it for an upcoming neo-conservative conference? For a warmongering book? If he did have any such plans, he was now more busy attending to family affairs following the August death of Karen, his wife of 46 years. I knew that she had been struggling with cancer for a while, and from what I understand this wasn't a complete surprise. He still writes poems to her, and publishes them at First Things. Those don't usually make it to Inhabitatio Dei.
We can be thankful, I suppose, that on the day of her passing Halden happened to be criticizing Mark Driscoll and John Piper rather than Michael Novak. It would have been a little tacky in retrospect if the new widower had been the one to raise his ire on August 12th.
I don't say this as a cheap and sentimental shot against Halden's criticisms. Michael Novak (and Mark Driscoll, and John Piper, and everyone else who receives similar treatment from Halden) put themselves out there, and express quite bold views without so much as a blush. They're obviously thereby exposing themselves to criticism, and I'm happy for them to take it... and they can, just fine. John Milbank receives the same treatment from certain bloggers (and certain bloggers receive similar treatment from him in return). Amidst all of this is a good deal of worthwhile critique, and an even larger amount of stupidity. But the point is that it's public argument, and far be it from me to dismiss the value of such interaction.
What strikes me as unwise is to so readily talk about someone as a "sub-Christian joke". I take it that the intended genre of such accusations is somehow prophetic, and there are clearly reasons offered for coming to such a conclusion. But I simply don't understand what the rhetorical need is for going about things this way. Further (and more importantly), I can plausibly imagine some real harm that might be done by it.
I was within one hundred feet of the man this past autumn in Delaware. Should I have knocked on his door and offered a witness to him that he was worthless in every way imaginable (citing the Sermon on the Mount as my prooftext, of course)? Or should I have kept such truth-telling within the community of the non-worthless, and perhaps simply warned my grandparents that their neighbor was a sub-Christian joke? Or should I have followed Halden, concluding that the best course of action is to speak this way about people within one's role as a blogger, where subscribers to one's posted thoughts can discuss these important issues more comfortably from their desk or wherever they happen to be using their laptop?
As I said, I don't claim to know much about Michael Novak, and I'm not interested in arguing with Halden about the merits of his First Things piece. I hope that this string of anecdotes makes it clear exactly why I tend to be concerned by these sorts of blog posts (as opposed to critiques more generally), and why I don't usually think it's worth taking part in the comment section. My advice to folks who are interested in blogging about theology would be, frankly, to not blog like Halden often does. I think it's a mistake to do so, and that it can foster a stunted ability to interact with other people.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
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This is a good post. Theology blogosphere has way too much of that sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteI, a non-blogger theologian, concur. Well said on every level.
ReplyDeleteI still think you're levelheaded, Evan. Good post.
ReplyDeleteSo I agree - the economics blogosphere has its fair share of these sorts of homogenizing dismissals. And as you say - it does prevent good dialogue.
ReplyDeleteBut in Halden's defense, his post really didn't stray much from the substance of Novak's article - an article which you seem to suggest you'd probably agree with Halden on. The one place where he does depart from that substance of that article is the "sub-Christian joke" part, but since that's surrounded by a discussion of Novak's position on Iran it seems reasonable to conclude that that swipe was made in the context of Novak's warmongering.
I don't know - I get what you're saying. But it would be pretty sad if we can't reserve harsh rebukes for people who advocate unprovoked and by all indications, woefully ill-advised wars with the flimsiest of justifications. Particularly when that justification drags Halden's faith through the mud.
Maybe Halden does this a lot and needs to cool off. This is kind of a special case where we (really you - I don't know him as well) have a unique connection with the subject of Halden's wrath. I have the sense that that's the source of this as much as anything. That's legitimate, I suppose. But if you're not going to denounce someone for using God's name to ignite a war that in all likelihood would envelope the entire Muslim world against much of the West, involve billions of people, and probably result in the use of nuclear weapons (Israeli, American, Pakistani - somebody's is bound to be used) - if you're not going to denounce someone as a joke for that, what would you denounce them for? This sort of thing isn't a game - some people need rebuking.
So is Novak now igniting a war? Or is he simply writing a blog post that has by now attracted a noteworthy, but by no means newsworthy, 42 responses in the comment section? I take your point, and as I said, I'm happy to have folks rebuked or argued against as strenuously as you please. But let's be serious about the stakes here.
ReplyDeleteAs I told you in our private conversation, what strikes me more than anything about all of this is Novak's lack of clarity. The piece seems hastily put together and not really well thought-out, not even for someone who might agree with his political stances. He makes vague references to "Christian Renewal of Orthodoxy, Neo-Orthodoxy, Christian realism" and rallies around a rather ill-defined goal of which Israel seems to be something of a center. If the piece suffers from anything, it's an odd failure to really flesh out any sort of stance.
I think that Daniel Larison offers an appropriate response to Novak (although as I've just said, I think they're making an awful lot of a proposal that, in the end, is rather hazy and doesn't really say all that much). In contrast, I can't see what Halden adds of substance to Larison's response except for ornamenting it with a few unnecessary strikes at Novak's person.
OK - and Halden has rebuked a blog post with a blog post. That seems proportional to me (unlike, say, Novak's foreign policy recommendations). It's hard for me to be too impressed with your "it's only a blog" point when so far the counter-points have also been restricted to the same medium (and tone, for that matter).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEvan,
ReplyDeleteI think this whole thing suffers from a very upper class approach to what thinking is and how it is done. It reminds me of the Iraq War inquiry that recently happened in the UK where they questioned Tony Blair "harshly" and then all went to their private club and probably made stupid jokes with the word "bully" in it. Risking a reductio ad hilteram, bad people, that are the frontline in a machine that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, also know people's grandparents and were kind to their grandchildren. They too love their wives and are heartbroken. So what?
You often say you "don't know much about X" whenever wading into these subjects. Maybe instead of passive-aggressively rebuking them, you should look into the subject a bit more. Novak isn't some kindly old gentlemen, he's had a say, and given support, to a lot of very bad things in this world. Sometimes work in the humanities, especially philosophy and theology, isn't just about the historical study of what some dead guys thought.
The bit about the 'new widower' was indeed sentimental. Sickly sentimental. Cheap as fuck.
ReplyDeleteOf course Novak and his fellow travellers at First Things and the AEI (and Opus Dei too) were and are very supportive of the applied politics of suffering described in these two related references.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/htmlpage7
http://www.logosjournal.com/hammer_kellner.htm
This now disputed rant by Novak is just more of the same.
And yes the blogs at First Things have become uniformly disgustingly nauseating.
Novak and his fellow travelers at the AEI are also highly supportive of the dreadful outfit which is the feature of this website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.soaw.org
"I think this whole thing suffers from a very upper class approach to what thinking is and how it is done."
ReplyDeleteOf course it does. That's the whole point. Only I think it's naive to imagine that Halden's initial critique escapes from this mindset (or that AUFS does in its odd Milbank commentary yesterday, which made for a weirdly interesting comparison to this post in thinking about what the point of blogging is). And Daniel, your point about the proportionality of a blog response applies here as well. I'm not overly concerned with what people make of my sentimentality or odd zeroing in on Halden here... I'm going back to posting on journal articles and libraries soon enough. The point isn't to champion some oblivious moralism here that ignores people who "are the frontline of a machine". That's why I'm happy for folks to criticize Michael Novak harshly (and I'm not sure why Ry thinks otherwise).
Look, whether or not one agrees with me or is so very bothered as I am by some of Halden's comments, the point still remains (and we should be focused on this point, if the issue is taking matters like impending war seriously) that Daniel Larison has already offered a perfectly good response to Michael Novak. I'm still not clear on what exactly Halden contributed to that critique... outside of passing it on to others, my sense is that he diminished it by what he added.
It's not a huge concern to me whether folks preserve their upper class dignity enough that comments like "sub-Christian joke" and "completely worthless in every way imaginable" remain offensive. What concerns me more is that folks seem to think that this sort of lazy rhetoric constitutes a prophetic word, or radical politics, or... more basically... a compelling argument of some sort.
Finally, yes, I do often say that I "don't know much about X" and I'm sure it can get old after a while. I find it better to err on the side of this kind of disclosure, and I take it to be more preferable than erring in the opposite direction. Folks who think that this introduces passive aggressive rebuke are free to read other blogs, or call me "cheap as fuck" from the safety of anonymity.
I find this whole discussion quite odd. I mean, I find what Halden said to be in the whole vein of the new way to do theology after Hauerwas and Milbank - use acerbic rhetoric to be dismissive of people. The problem, which has been quite well pointed out in this discussion, is that Novak has been influential and, for the most part, when you look at Christianity in the US, his view is the one generally held to. To pretend that this is not the reality on the ground by dismissing him as some "sub-Christian" who doesn't live up to the ideal of the Sermon on the Mount is to dismiss the very ideas of the American populace. Rather, maybe, it takes a substantive reaction, like the one Halden quotes, to actually do a bit of change, but done in a way that actually practices the kind of ethic that we find to be "Christian" whatever that means. Again, though, as someone who has read some Novak, I'm not defending him or his ideas, but I will engage him substantively because he represents the very set of ideas that I think need to be changed in the broader American context.
ReplyDeleteRE: "What concerns me more is that folks seem to think that this sort of lazy rhetoric constitutes a prophetic word, or radical politics, or... more basically... a compelling argument of some sort."
ReplyDeleteAha, but you see - you're shifting the terms of the debate. Nobody claimed it was prophetic or radical. And the "sub-Christian joke" is what YOU chose to highlight in Halden, not what the rest of us chose. No, Halden didn't prophesy or radicalize. But he did point out a glaringly obvious internal contradiction in Novak's argument. And yes, he adorned his review of that contradiction with a few barbs. So?
RE: "pretend that this is not the reality on the ground by dismissing him as some "sub-Christian" who doesn't live up to the ideal of the Sermon on the Mount is to dismiss the very ideas of the American populace."
ReplyDeleteDismissing the "very ideas of the American populace" is something that could be fruitfully engaged in considerably more often. I don't think coddling or infantilizing necessarily helps. People don't like being corrected forcefully - but I think they're smart enough to know the difference between being corrected forcefully and being condescended to.
Level-headed, yes. Until certain publishers don't bring the right books to conferences, that is . . . ! I kid, of course.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, I stopped reading Halden about a year ago. Haven't looked back since.
Yes Robert... unfortunately, turning over card tables at Coray Gym just doesn't seem to exude the edginess of doing the same to moneychangers in the temple! I suppose I need to figure out a flashier way to express my inner rebel.
ReplyDeleteEvan,
ReplyDeleteI'm tempted, for the sake of my own weaknesses, to take this discussion off the comments. You happy for me to email you my response instead?
No problem, Anthony... although others can tell you that I'm not always great at responding to emails in an orderly fashion, so it may be that a full-fledged discussion doesn't come of this (which may not be your intention, in any case).
ReplyDeleteEvan - good post. I disagree that the ad hominum attacks charecteristic of some blogs is indicative of theology after Milbank and Hauerwas. Both usually have very coherent critiques of positions they attack although I do accept that in addition they can go overboard. Despite this, often ad hominum attacks on the blogosphere are in place of, not additional to, coherent critique and refutation. I see Milbank attacked all the time, I have never heard a very damaging critique of him.
ReplyDeleteSo, well done Evan for saying - folks, let's just hang on a bit. This is a journal, but neither is it schoolyard banter either.
woops, that should have been "this isn't a journal" in the last line of my 2 cents above.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of post is an example of a tic you regularly indulge in. I assume you'll eventually get over it.
ReplyDeleteAdam's last comment is an example of a tic he regularly indulges in, but is unlikely to ever get over.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't going to say it, but I'm glad someone did. Lord knows we were all thinking it.
ReplyDeleteToo easy, guys. I expected more.
ReplyDeleteEasy is all I'm good for, I'm afraid. I have to swoop in for that low-hanging fruit whenever I can get it.
ReplyDeleteI think Evan has a good point - theology blogs are frequently short on argument and long on invective. And it doesn't make it OK for bloggers to be this way just because there are a lot of 2-bit academics who operate this way too. Particulars of the case be damned, Evan is brave to stand up to one of the most popular theology bloggers and call BS.
ReplyDeleteBrave?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, does anyone remember that post about how Halden was going to stop doing theology and shift more toward sociology of religion? What ever happened to that? It was like a month ago maybe.
I think that was an April fools joke
ReplyDeleteYeah Evan, why do you have to admit of honest intellectual ignorance? Can't you pretend to know everything like the rest of us? Our image of knowing everything is greatly enhanced by the addition of "bull shit" and "fuck" and ad hominem in general. I know my public intellectual clout is greatly increased every time I bitch about John Milbank. Obviously you still have a lot to learn about theological blogging.
ReplyDeleteJeremyR, Oh, duh. I repent in dust and ashes.
ReplyDeleteDo you guys know what ad hominem is? You know it's different than being harsh, right?
ReplyDeleteAnthony, I don't see where Tony or Anonymous associate ad hominem simply with harshness (or with anything that Halden has said). I realize the term is rather over-applied, though, so I can understand why you might be trigger happy in jumping on its mention.
ReplyDeleteAs to harshness itself, I'm not too worried about how "harsh" Halden is. My comments on Ry's blog are worth reading with regard to this.
My Latin studies simply haven't prepared me to know what ad hominem means.
ReplyDeleteI was referring to AD Hunt's comments, not your own, who strikes me as someone who, despite knowing Latin, confuse being rude/harsh/dickish/swearing with ad hominem.
ReplyDeleteNow, Evan, disagree with your approach, I don't really know if it's worth talking about though as I feel we are friendly enough, but not to the point where we understand each other. I kind of think, perhaps wrongly, you would have a different view of Novak if you were able to read his stuff or if you realized how influential/complementary it was/is to destructive policies you would perhaps take a different approach. I agree that an academic isn't necessarily an activist, so I'm not holding you to some kind of vision of the left-wing activist-intellectual, but if you hold to any kind of vaguely progressive values, and tie them to your religious beliefs, he really is someone you have to stand against. It could be you're a conservative though and in which case he isn't. After reading everything you've written on this I'm not really seeing a fully developed perspective on this, as there are a lot of contradictions or blind alleys. That's fair and shouldn't be held against you. I, though, would gladly tell Novak to his face that he is personal culpable, more so than millions of other human beings, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Perhaps that's something to be held against me, but, yeah, I'm willing to be a dick to people to their face if I think they have used theory and their intellectual powers to propagate and spread an ideology of death that has real, bodily consequences. Is that effective? Probably a bit more than not saying anything.
Well I can of course give it a shot. If I were perhaps to say, "I don't feel the need to take anything Anthony Paul Smith says about Radical Orthodoxy seriously because he is a super big asshole," then that would be ad hominem.
ReplyDeleteAnd if I were to say to Evan: "I think this whole thing suffers from a very upper class approach to what thinking is and how it is done." ...then that would be ad hominem. It would probably also be a bit disingenuous coming as it does from a white male westerner doing doctoral studies in continental philosophy at a prestigious school.
But then again I don't really know what ad hominem means.
I, though, would gladly tell Novak to his face that he is personal culpable, more so than millions of other human beings, for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
ReplyDeleteAnd part of my question was... what would I do? Should I knock on his door and tell him this? I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend that you do it either. But I can acknowledge that there's a place for something like this, and if you or Halden or anyone else is serious about that, then I won't deny some bare coherence to your sincerity.
My hesitancy here comes less from any political conservatism and more from a dialogical conservatism... which, again, is why I would make a distinction between Daniel Larison and Halden even though the substance of their critique of Novak is virtually the same. I also rather doubt that it comes from my lack of reading Novak, as I've certainly read enough to provide an awareness of what his project is. My sense is that you're pretty tightly tying my "approach" on this to the data of either Novak's political positions or my own, and that's why you seem to think that 1) if I only read more, or 2) if I were vaguely progressive, things might be different. "Standing against" strikes me as a concept that you take to be rather straightforward, though I think our differences lie primarily in how you and I negotiate the rather complex question of how to "stand"... for or against.
You're right not to see a fully developed perspective from me on this, although I'd resist the idea that blind alleys or contradictions have anything to do with it. I am quite consciously refraining from the sort of full development that you seem to think is necessary. My concern is that such things are precisely what break down one's ability to speak to others from a posture properly oriented towards the truth. To a certain extent, I think that under-development of perspective is what leaves room for both charity and truth that one might have missed or previously deemed unimportant. I've tried to amplify certain "unimportant" things from Novak's biography and my own in order to draw some attention to the facts that will always impede (and thankfully so) "a fully developed perspective". But yes, leaving that sort of space open can seem to be a rejection of certain moral urgencies.
I am quite consciously refraining from the sort of full development that you seem to think is necessary. My concern is that such things are precisely what break down one's ability to speak to others from a posture properly oriented towards the truth. To a certain extent, I think that under-development of perspective is what leaves room for both charity and truth that one might have missed or previously deemed unimportant.
ReplyDeleteI think that this may be the best articulation of the reasons for your post. This helps clarify a lot, thanks.
Evan, I think your concept of underdeveloped perspective is potentially very fruitful, especially as it relates to hermeneutical charity and empathy (and "dialogical conservatism"). I'd love to hear this... ehem... developed sometime if you felt like writing that sort of a post.
ReplyDeleteAD Hunt,
ReplyDeleteNo, see, you would get a poor mark for that explanation. Saying that something "suffers" from a certain perspective is not ad hominem. I wasn't dismissing Evan, who I like (I do hope that's clear), based on the perspective that I see as problematic. Perhaps "upper class" means something different to you or perhaps it's a poor terminological choice on my part. I'm trying to say that I think there is an unhelpful politesse in Evan's underlying problem here. The sense that charity and not being rude go hand and hand and that academic discourse should follow a certain set of gentlemanly norms. There are some straightforward errors in your comment too that would contribute to your poor mark, like the idea that I'm at a prestigious university or that I'm upper class. I doubt anyone here is upper class, most of us are part of a kind of para-middle class that will likely be saddled with permanent debt (so, yes, probably a poor terminological choice on my part if the implication seemed to be that Evan was upper class, I think you'd have to read that in though as it wasn't my intention).
Evan,
I'm not saying the blind alleys are bad, but I see you're saying it's an intentional kind of openness. We very much do disagree here, as you are kind of assuming that some positive good (charity) can arise from a certain kind of openness, or what I would call a politesse. I disagree with that. Politics is a site where decisions have to be made, the idea that there is a some kind of openness that isn't in itself a kind of decision is, to my mind, an illusion. You have, it seems, made a decision not to take a stand, in either an intellectual or personal way against the ideology Novak perpetuates and the real world result of that. Please note, I'm not somehow saying that such an intellectual act is particularly powerful act or that it is the highest political act, but it remains an act nonetheless. Novak is a thinker whose thought is part of the political machine and so, unlike many of the debates we all have and find interesting, must be confronted on political grounds. Does that make what I'm saying clearer?
Now, you have moved the discussion to a pretty familiar terrain for people of a liberal persuasion (again, I don't mean this as a pejorative as such, I mean it as an index of identity that doesn't capture you as such, but captures certain tendencies in your approach to thinking, I hope that is ok). That is, the site of the incomplete. Again, inaccurate terminology on my part. I should not have said "fully developed perspective" or, rather, this is not a very rigorous analysis of what I mean. I would say, following many non-liberal thinkers, that one has to take a political position that does not make a claim to any kind of sufficiency or final consistency. It is always open to the fact that it could have failed, that the truth could be otherwise, and that the decision was wrong. It seems that there is rather a lot of comfort in the kind of humility you propose, this sense that "I have left things open, that is enough", rather than "I have acted, but I don't know if it is enough".
To my mind the politesse perspective paralyzes you when you need to act. It's like when faced with two Muslim students arrested unjustly on your campus and you have to decide if you're going to take action, in anger even, and call for the Vice-Chancellor to be held accountable, to say loudly that he mishandled his, that two young mens' lives were turned upside down because of his stupid act. At that moment, I would hope, this incidental life experiences of the VC would not stop you, me, or anyone here from deciding, even with the knowledge it could fail, it could be wrong.
AD Hunt,
ReplyDeleteIt has become apparent you have some kind of problem with me. It isn't clear to me what I have done to offend you, but I'm willing to listen. I'll bracket the snark and ask that you do too. If you want to talk drop me an email at anthonypaul[dot]smith[at]gmail[dot]com.
APS You have, it seems, made a decision not to take a stand, in either an intellectual or personal way against the ideology Novak perpetuates and the real world result of that.
ReplyDeleteThis, I think, is rather wide of the mark of what I'm trying to do... which is odd, because I do feel like we were heading towards further understanding of where the disagreement is. Let me try to explain where I think I'm saying something different than the above... My whole intention in this post was to draw a rather clear line between "the ideology Novak perpetuates" and "Novak". The first (the ideology) should be opposed with argument and action (assuming one is opposed to it). The second (Novak) is someone who is always underdetermined by the first. I took Halden's comments to unhelpfully act as if action against the first and against the second aren't separated by any sort of distinction. I think that because you, like Halden, wouldn't make a distinction, you are assuming that I'm opposed to taking an intellectual or personal stand against Novak's ideology. I'm not opposed to that. What I'm opposed to is acting as if one's response to the first can fully determine one's response to the second. The example you give about the unjust arrest seems to reconfirm this misunderstanding... if I'm objecting to Halden's determination of Novak on the basis of Novak's political ideology but supportive of Larison's objection to Novak's ideology, why do you think I wouldn't be supportive of an objection to the Vice Chancellor's action? Wouldn't I simply object to an undue determination of the Vice Chancellor on the basis of his action (or ideology, etc.)?
So I don't think I'm opposed to the point of your middle paragraph, "one has to take a political position that does not make a claim to any kind of sufficiency or final consistency." Larison seems to do this just fine, and I'm fine with his response. If anything, I'm saying that Halden actually acts on the presumption that his political position and subsequent action against Novak offers more final consistency than it really does. How else would he be comfortable attributing certain things determined merely by Novak's political ideology to Novak himself? I refuse to take such steps towards Novak's person not because I'm holding off and leaving things open, but rather because his ideology cannot determine himself. When I spoke above of a conscious under-development of perspective in order to leave things open, I was specifically speaking of that which still remains open... Novak himself, that is, rather than political words and actions that are already on the table and in the open. His political words and actions are laid bare for us. He himself isn't, but Halden speaks of Novak as if he's speaking of something on the table and determinable for a developed judgment of some sort.
This has all gotten a lot more reflective than merely "it can foster a stunted ability to interact with other people." That's good insofar as I'm better articulating what I'm thinking here, but I wouldn't want such abstracted reflection to pull us away from the original, more practical tone that I was going for. In the end, the reason for all of this is to preserve the actual interaction with Novak (rather than certain things of Novak, such as his ideological stances) in a way that can be properly oriented towards truth and charity. This isn't mere politesse (which is why I've been rejecting the idea that my problem is Halden's "harshness" and why I've never had a problem with taking action/argument against Novak), and it isn't indeterminacy in the sense of any sort of inaction.
I'll try briefly to at least explain how I took my examples to demonstrate ad hominem argumentation. But after I'm done with a paper I'll probably also email you.
ReplyDeleteIn the first, had I ever said something like that, it would have been ad hominem in that I drew attention to perceived character flaws in order to delegitimize arguments that you might have had with RO rather than focusing on substantive arguments you have put forward. I would have in effect been saying that I need not accept argument X or Y that you put forward, because, according to my argument, your character is such that I have no need to. I'm reasonably certain this constitutes a generally accepted "ad hominem" argument.
Similarly, in your reaction to Evan's post, the initial line that I drew attention to seems to function as the statement attempting to delegitimize Evan's post which is mostly elaborated in the example afterward. It implicitly stated that "This point of yours is wrong because it appears to suffer from a certain way of thinking resulting from a position of privilege." This seems to me at least to run rather close to a definition of ad hominem argumentation.
Though I will freely admit that I am weak in philosophy.
Evan,
ReplyDeleteI am having a real problem understanding how you separate Novak-as-name-for-Novak-qua-Novak's-work and Novak-foreclosed-to-judgment. I think I've lost your point. And I'm also having trouble seeing what action you're ok with between this split. Do you have any kind of account for how, when a moment of political decision presents itself, you are free to decide? I guess the problem I'm having, and to bring it to a practical level, is that any action against Novak-as-name-for-his-political-work is still action against Novak-foreclosed-to-judgment. The goal is to make him irrelevant, which, if it succeeded, would have real world impact on his monetary, social, psychological, etc., situation.
AD Hunt,
Yes, to the first, and no, to the second. Yes, it would be an ad hominem argument to suggest that someone's argument is not worth listening to because of their character. It isn't ad hominem to suggest that the character and the argument are somehow tied up together. In the second you are still dealing with the argument, in the first you aren't. People in conversation tend to think that an ad homniem is a fallacy, when it is not actually always a fallacy. So, the first would be (and you can express this through formal logic, but it's boring), but the second would not. Still, I accept that my terminology was poor.
The goal is to make him irrelevant, which, if it succeeded, would have real world impact on his monetary, social, psychological, etc., situation.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that they guy whose wife just died and who has dinner with my grandparents periodically already is "irrelevant". The guy who writes The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism is still relevant and therefore (according to those who disagree with him) dangerous. And yet there aren't really two "guys" here, there's Michael Novak, and two (much more than two, of course) underdetermining aspects of who he is. The goal isn't to make him irrelevant, but rather his political work. Right? Or perhaps to make him irrelevant, but irrelevant to... specifically, to the political situation.
And yes, any sort of political-argumentative response to Novak is going to be directed towards Novak-foreclosed-to-judgment. It's not as if we can dissect his person and only act on those organs with which we're interested. But saying "your ideology is wrong and dangerous" acts upon Novak in reference to Novak's politics in a way that saying "you are completely worthless in every way imaginable" simply doesn't.
It's a judgment call. And argument will always get at a problem by means of rhetoric, so that "you are completely worthless in every way imaginable" may be spoken with the intended meaning "Your words and actions make you utterly culpable for atrocities." But the inevitable imprecision of such rhetoric is precisely what makes attention to the distinction (not a separation, but a distinction) between Novak and his politics so important. What's more difficult is that we all stand in different relations to Novak. For Halden he may be just so many dangerous political statements. For me, however, I face two underdetermining instances: his political statements, and his biographical anecdotes. It's not a question of separating them out, but of making a decision about how to approach a man who is in once sense neither of these two instances, and in another sense both of them at once.
This all sounds something like "Attack the problem, not the person". And it's sort of that... of course we should generally try not to go around trashing folks just because we disagree with them about this or that. But it's a bit different insofar as I'm trying to emphasize that we're not simply preserving a person from undue attack... it's not simply a refraining from action against. What we're also doing is seeking proper action towards the person rather than the person as some sort of proxy for the person's work.
By the way, HIll and Ry, I've shifted from speaking of an "underdeveloped perspective" to speaking of "underdetermination (of certain things about Novak)". I'm glad that you and Ry found the above post more helpful, but it was one of those odd situations where a person reformulates their thought in numerous ways and the listener finds one reformulation especially useful that the speaker wouldn't have expected to be singled out as the most useful one. So I'm trying to work out the sorts of ideas that seemed most clear to you two, but I've shifted a bit in how I'm talking about it. In doing so I hope I haven't simply reverted back into a less clear mode of explanation. Maybe it would be worth revisiting in a later post as well.
ReplyDeleteOK, I think I understand your point now. Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't seem possible to me that Halden was referring to anything other than Novak qua public figure. Halden believes that this public figure is sub-Christian based on evidence in the public record (i.e., the only basis on which we can really judge a public figure qua public figure), including the recent blog post to which he is responding.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, Halden is a much smaller public figure, whom you judge based on his public behavior -- if I were to say, "Well, come on, we need to cut Halden some slack because his dog was just diagnosed with diabetes" (trying really hard to come up with a situation that won't accidentally turn out to be true!), I don't think people would or should find that to be relevant. In the same way, George W. Bush and Barack Obama both have rich and caring family lives and complex personal histories -- but in the public square, we judge both of them based on their actions in office and their public statements.
Pointing out that someone can't be reduced to their public persona is just a tautology. The way I present myself on the blog, in my writing, in the classroom -- none of that exhausts who I am... but that's the stuff that's relevant to public debate. The charitable thing when someone (Halden) is engaged in a public critique of a public figure (Novak) is to assume that the person is solely critiquing the person qua public figure.
Yes, I did just do that -- reversing things so that you're actually being uncharitable rather than Halden. It's a tic, but I think it gets at the truth here.
Your point about it being understood that Halden is simply speaking of Novak as a public figure is well-taken (that's to say that it's a good point, not that it necessarily justifies what he said). But this is why I said above,
ReplyDeleteIt's a judgment call. And argument will always get at a problem by means of rhetoric, so that "you are completely worthless in every way imaginable" may be spoken with the intended meaning "Your words and actions make you utterly culpable for atrocities." But the inevitable imprecision of such rhetoric is precisely what makes attention to the distinction (not a separation, but a distinction) between Novak and his politics so important.
...that is, it may be that when Halden said "in every way imaginable", he really only meant "every public way that's relevant to imagine". And I could even grant that it's good to work off of a default assumption like that in public argument. But at what point would the rhetoric tip us off that in fact he's either speaking in a more complete way, or laying on the hyperbole so damn heavily that he's doing comparable damage as he would be were he speaking in a more complete way? It hardly seems uncharitable for readers of Halden to draw the line somewhere, much less unreasonable (as a side note, it's also worth asking whether Halden would make the sort of public figure/private figure distinction that you're making here, because if he wouldn't, then there's less reason for us to read him as doing so).
On the other hand, the whole "reversal" that you seem to think you've accomplished strikes me as just confused, and it's difficult for me to buy the idea that you really think you've made a good point here. It would have been a good point if I had said that Halden was a "sub-Christian joke" or "completely worthless in every way imaginable." But what did I say?
Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder what he's thinking.
It would have been a little tacky in retrospect if the new widower had been the one to raise his ire.
My advice to folks who are interested in blogging about theology would be, frankly, to not blog like Halden often does.
How on earth could I be read to have judged Halden in the way that I thought he judged Novak (that is, in some personal and complete fashion)? The only thing that I ever lay a finger on with regard to Halden are the very public actions that you say should be assumed as the focus. And not only that, but I make it explicit! Reading me doesn't even require some sort of charity of interpretation, there just isn't any conceivable personal attack on Halden to work with! As to the precious inner person that you think I've judged, I simply say "I wonder what he's thinking".
Would you deny me my wonderment, Adam? Is that where I've gone too far?
I would deny you your wonderment here, yes. He'd have to say "oh, and by the way, Novak has always been a shitty husband and father" or something along those lines for you to be able to assume that he was trying to refer to that kind of thing with his (incredibly obvious!) hyperbole. And I do maintain that niceness police stuff like this is almost always worse than the original "offence."
ReplyDeleteIf my repeated claims that I'm not worried about "harshness" haven't already been enough, then I don't know what more I can say. Not every disagreement over appropriate dialogue is reducible to niceness policing.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'd rather be guilty of such policing than of the sort of gymnastics you're doing here to make a distinction between "shitty father" and "completely worthless". I'm sure there's some sort of category difference that you could tease out if you really wanted to, but I doubt it would be all that compelling as a basis for standards of critique, even for the most careful and charitable reader.
The category difference is that Halden is clearly using hyperbole!
ReplyDeleteWell, right, I think that was obvious enough.
ReplyDeleteSo is that really the extent of your point? Just that you think hyperbole doesn't cross a line but literal accusations do?
That was... anti-climactic.
I suppose in response I'd just say that I think devices such as hyperbole are not immune to unhelpful and even harmful usage, or that there is anything about hyperbole which establishes some sort of interpretative default assumption concerning what exactly the intended object of description is.
I'm not sure whether it's constructive for us to go back and forth simply to reestablish the fact that we disagree on some stuff. Is there a genuine argument and/or clarification going on here? Or are we just registering all of this in a public manner for the heck of it?
The appropriate rejoinder to Adam would be something about being clever, but I'm having trouble remembering it.
ReplyDeleteI think Halden's dog just died...
ReplyDeleteI used to read Halden's blog because he does tackle some interesting issues and I find his commentary insightful at times. I stopped for the sake of my own sanity because I found myself turned off by the shrillness of his rhetoric and the back-slapping mood of the discussions. Halden is right, we are all right, aren't those other people stupid. A very Manichean feel.
ReplyDeleteI saw some people invoking hyperbole as a justification. Sure hyperbole may be a legitimate tool in the rhetoricians handbag but it must be used with care and restraint if it is to have its effect. Using hyperbole all the time doesn't make one clever, just careless.
On the whole Hauerwasian-style polemics, I find great irony that Hauerwas, who counsels so frequently on the importance of truthful speech, uses a style of communication which belies his own convictions. The medium is the message, to quote Mcluhan's overstated dictum.
Stanley H. has to be the most over-rated theologian on the planet. But that's partly due to the fact that he's the only theologian on the planet rated at all in the first place.
ReplyDelete