Here's the problem when someone is locked in the "iron cage of secular rationalism"...

...they may discover that other people do not agree with their view of the secular good.

Nobel peace prize winner defends law criminalising homosexuality in Liberia.

The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are."

In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve."

Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences.

And:

Blair, on a visit to Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), a charity that aims to strengthen African governments, refused to comment on Sirleaf's remarks.

When asked whether good governance and human rights went hand in hand, the British former prime minister said: "I'm not giving you an answer on it."

"One of the advantages of doing what I do now is I can choose the issues I get into and the issues I don't. For us, the priorities are around power, roads, jobs delivery," he said.

Over his 10 years as prime minister, Blair became a champion for the legal equality of gay people, pushing through laws on civil partnerships, lifting a ban on gay people in the armed forces and lowering the age of consent for gay people to 16.

A Catholic convert, he called on the pope to rethink his "entrenched" views and offer equal rights to gay people. But gay rights, he said, were not something he was prepared to get involved in as an adviser to African leaders.

Wham! Multiculturalism runs head-on into political correctness!

Because obviously you can lecture the pope, but lecturing a Nobel peace prize winning president of a Third World Country would just be presumptious of Blair.

A more serious point is that this highlights the point made in Steven D. Smith's "The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse." Today, no one can seriously say that "accepting homosexuality" has no effect on anyone else. If there is one thing that recent history shows it is that the people who start out arguing for decriminalization pretty quickly start to criminalize the conduct of other people who are minding their own business, whether it is making cakes or officiating at marriages.

In the West, the position championed by Blair has been based on a "smuggling" of concepts which have never been seriously vetted. The reason is that these concepts are not self-evident and not something that can be discovered through pure secular reasoning.

Consequently, when faced with someone like Sirleaf, what can Blair say? All he's got is his muzzy intuition that everyone ought to agree with him because he has "reason" itself on his side. If someone doesn't agree with him, all he - and other people on his side - can do is yell louder or resort to some kind of force, such as linking foreign aid to the Western politically correct agenda.

Amazon Review - The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse by Steven D. Smith...

...Why are we just talking past each other?

Please go here and give me a "helpful vote."

Smith diagnoses the place where public discourse finds itself today, locked in an iron cage of secularist assumptions, hypocritically smuggling in non-secular first principles, and zealously policing the borders to prevent anything with the whiff of religion from entering into public discussion. According to Smith the result has been a break-down of the ability to engage in public discussions because of the loss of confidence in reason.

Smith's first chapter - "The Way We Talk Now" - surveys the current landscape. It seems that the consistent opinion of philosopher and public intellectuals is that modern secular discourse is particularly shallow and ineffective in its modern iteration. The ineffectiveness of modern discourse stems in part from a lack of confidence by many people that reason can actually work, i.e., do the things it is supposed to do, such as lead people to the truth. Significantly, this view is held by secularist intellectuals, who ought to be the people with the biggest incentive to see discourse as effective and rational.

The result is that many public discussions are not discussions. They are just people rehearsing their statements of their own commitments to something or other. As Smith says:

"There is indeed a good deal of contention, Dworkin might respond - a good deal of sound and fury, or noisy clash of opinion. Even so, there is precious little real argument, strictly speaking - little genuine debate. Because if you look closely at what people say, they do not really engage their opponents, or even reveal the real bases for their own positions; they merely dress up their pre-established conclusions in verbiage. People may look like they are engaged in debate. They may even think they are engaging in debate. But in reality, they aren't."

Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, p. 5.

Smith's explanation for the failure of discourse is that modernity truncated the scope of permissible discussion, locking discussion in what Max Weber described as the "disenchantment of the world." (p. 23.) Smith also uses the metaphor of an iron cage to describe modernity, deriving that image from Max Weber's idea that modernity is an iron cage in "which life is lived and discourse is conducted according to the stern constraints of secular rationalism." (p. 23.) Secularism taught that superstition - meaning anything that was not founded on reason - was bad and that nothing could be accepted which was not itself founded on reason. From that point on, secularist modern philosophy found nothing that could meet the requirements of secular modern philosophy and started "smuggling" in pre-modern assumptions about "equality" or "freedom" or "harm" as if those ideas met the prescription of modernity.

The problem is that these concepts are meaningless in themselves. Freedom is an empty concept until it is filled. (p. 28.) Freedom can be good or it can be bad. Is a freedom that permits people to appropriate other people's property good or bad? Well, perhaps it depends on whether one person is starving and the other has more than enough to share. Similarly, equality is "entirely circular." Equality means treating equal things equally, but in order to know if things are equal we have to bring something other than equality to our discussion. (p. 30.)

In his second chapter, "Living and Dying in the `Course of Nature,'" Smith demonstrates how much of modern discussion in the death and dying area is premised on a kind of truncated view of natural law through an appeal to a kind of final end. Thus, courts have regular distinguished between letting someone die, which is permissible, but affirmative euthanasia, which is wrong. From a purely rationalist perspective, there is no difference. The result of taking someone off a breathing tube is the same as that of turning up the morphine: the patient dies. The intent is basically the same: the patient is expected to die. But there is a difference in the sense of the person's natural lifespan. "Letting someone die" implies a respect for the way that nature - or God? - intends to let a person have a certain lifespan; killing someone seems to disrespect this plan.

But judges can't explain this insight. They have to keep it wrapped up and hidden from sight. This kind of thinking is simply not something that secular modernists can openly accept. Whose plan? What does it mean that there is a plan? Where is this plan located in a world of material reality? Secular modernity has replaced a consideration of nature with a consideration of moral insights and intuitions. We - or some people - seem to "feel" that some things are right or wrong.

Moral reasoning, however, requires such an ordering of behavior to a "normative order." (p. 63.) As Smith points out who cares about intuitions unless they are real. (p. 66.) Morality implies an order that is in some sense "normal" or "natural." Smith makes the insightful point that in the context of morality, the appeal to nature is ruled out of order, but science is nothing but an appeal to nature. (p. 62.) Thus, if appeals to the natural world were deemed inadmissible, science would no longer be possible: whatever might on under the label of "science" would not in fact be science." (p. 62 - 63.)

In Chapter 3 - Trafficking in Harm - Smith disembowels the single biggest "smuggled concept" - the "do no harm" principle - as being entirely question begging and circular. Smith points out that many people - including some judges - seem to think that John Stuart Mill's edict that the only reason the state has for interfering with someone is to prevent that person from "harming" others is part of the Constitution. Smith effectively demonstrates that the "harm principle" was incoherent and question begging in Mill's original formulation, and that the idea of harm itself has to be question begging and circular because if it was taken seriously then there would be no end to the government's regulation of behavior since someone's interest somewhere is likely to be harmed - if only because their expectations or desires for living in a particular kind of society may be frustrated.

In Chapter 4 - Disoriented Discourse: The Secular Subversion of Religious Freedom - Smith takes apart the incoherent position that the idea of "religious freedom" has devolved. Smith points out that the original idea of "separation of church and state" involved a recognition that there was an area of jurisdiction that belonged solely to religion. Under the pressure of secularism, which refuses to recognize religion as having a value in itself different than any other human activity, the idea of "separation of church and state" has placed the state in the position of treating religion as any other institution. In the spring of 2012, this evolution can be seen in the contemporary attempt by the Obama administration to require Catholic institutions to pay for contraception - notwithstanding Catholicism's two-thousand year moral opposition to contraception - and in the Obama administration's recent assertions that it could enforce discrimination laws against Church's, such as the Catholic Church, that refused to allow women to become priests.

In Chapter 5 - The Heavenly City of the Secular Philosophers - Smith takes an extended look at Carl Becker's classic essay on the "Heavenly City of Eighteenth Century Philosophes." In that essay, Becker pointed out that notwithstanding the philosophes sneering attitude toward traditional Catholic philosophy, at the end of the day, the philosophes merely managed to recreate the same tropes and philosophical ideas that their religious predecessors had established. Smith points out the interesting fact that for all of his posing as a provocateur pulling the mask of the philosophe's failed project, Becker - a classic liberal secularist - never suggested anything better.

Smith then considers Martha Nussbaum's attempt to define a theory of morality that is allegedly defensible from a secularist point of view. Nussbaum's theory is based on "capabilities," namely a moral system is one which permits, encourages and even subsidizes people to develop their uniquely human capabilities. But as Smith points out this quickly descends into question begging and circularity. Is torture a uniquely human capability? Obviously not, which Nussbaum would explain is because torture is not morally permissible. But wasn't moral permissibility the question that theory was supposed to address. And around and around it goes.

As Becker explained about the philosophes, all Nussbaum has managed to do it repackage non-secular conclusions under the rubric of a modernist, secular philosophy.

Smith's sixth chapter is "Science, Humanity and Atrocity." This chapter is an extended meditation on Joseph Vining's "The Song Sparrow and the Child." Vining's essay contemplates the role of science and humanity in horrible atrocities, such as that which induced Japanese scientists to experiment on a three day old child in order to learn about frostbite. Vining was not making an "anti-science" point, but was noting that people have a singular ability to act in horrible ways when in the grip of an idea that purports to explain everything. We can see such a phenomenon in the writings of some scientists and philosophers whose adherence to a "totalistic science rules" out anything that is not material and secular. (p. 193 - 195.)

Of course there is always something that falls outside the "total theory," and that thing may be the most important thing. Vining and Smith suggest that an antidote to total theory may be to take a lawyer's approach to claims by people that they believe something and subject them to cross-examination in light of their actual behavior to see if what they say they believe is what they actually believe. In the case of "totalistic science," one example might be to take a person who claims that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction, and ask them if that's what they really tell their beloved wife or child. (p. 206 - 207.) In the grip of a theory, we can pretend that love is nothing but a chemical reaction, but when we are "being reflective and candid" we really know that reducing everything down to one thing is not what we really believe.

Smith's final chapter - Opening the Cage - Smith's suggestion for reform is really quite modest. He suggests that we permit discussion to go where it wants to go. If people want to talk in religious terms, then let them. The cost of policing the boundary of public discourse has been shown to be too high for whatever benefits it creates. A benefit of permitting discussion that is religious - or is simply defined as being religious by the guardians of the boundary - might be a greater honesty on the part of everyone involved in the discussion. Smith makes a singularly powerful rejoinder to the argument that "religion shuts down discussion," namely "says who?" The irony of the "religion shuts down discussion" crowd is that they are doing nothing but shutting down discussion.

People can learn civility in public discussions. Based on the quality of public discussions we see today, it is not clear that much more civility could be lost by permitting religious themes, concerns or interests to be part of the agenda. Moreover, people are not likely to learn the habits of civility if they don't have the opportunity to practice those habits.

Smith's book is a powerfully insightful book for those who want to know where we are and how we got here.

Amazon Review - The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse by Steven D. Smith...

...Why are we just talking past each other?

Please go here and give me a "helpful vote."

Smith diagnoses the place where public discourse finds itself today, locked in an iron cage of secularist assumptions, hypocritically smuggling in non-secular first principles, and zealously policing the borders to prevent anything with the whiff of religion from entering into public discussion. According to Smith the result has been a break-down of the ability to engage in public discussions because of the loss of confidence in reason.

Smith's first chapter - "The Way We Talk Now" - surveys the current landscape. It seems that the consistent opinion of philosopher and public intellectuals is that modern secular discourse is particularly shallow and ineffective in its modern iteration. The ineffectiveness of modern discourse stems in part from a lack of confidence by many people that reason can actually work, i.e., do the things it is supposed to do, such as lead people to the truth. Significantly, this view is held by secularist intellectuals, who ought to be the people with the biggest incentive to see discourse as effective and rational.

The result is that many public discussions are not discussions. They are just people rehearsing their statements of their own commitments to something or other. As Smith says:

"There is indeed a good deal of contention, Dworkin might respond - a good deal of sound and fury, or noisy clash of opinion. Even so, there is precious little real argument, strictly speaking - little genuine debate. Because if you look closely at what people say, they do not really engage their opponents, or even reveal the real bases for their own positions; they merely dress up their pre-established conclusions in verbiage. People may look like they are engaged in debate. They may even think they are engaging in debate. But in reality, they aren't."

Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, p. 5.

Smith's explanation for the failure of discourse is that modernity truncated the scope of permissible discussion, locking discussion in what Max Weber described as the "disenchantment of the world." (p. 23.) Smith also uses the metaphor of an iron cage to describe modernity, deriving that image from Max Weber's idea that modernity is an iron cage in "which life is lived and discourse is conducted according to the stern constraints of secular rationalism." (p. 23.) Secularism taught that superstition - meaning anything that was not founded on reason - was bad and that nothing could be accepted which was not itself founded on reason. From that point on, secularist modern philosophy found nothing that could meet the requirements of secular modern philosophy and started "smuggling" in pre-modern assumptions about "equality" or "freedom" or "harm" as if those ideas met the prescription of modernity.

The problem is that these concepts are meaningless in themselves. Freedom is an empty concept until it is filled. (p. 28.) Freedom can be good or it can be bad. Is a freedom that permits people to appropriate other people's property good or bad? Well, perhaps it depends on whether one person is starving and the other has more than enough to share. Similarly, equality is "entirely circular." Equality means treating equal things equally, but in order to know if things are equal we have to bring something other than equality to our discussion. (p. 30.)

In his second chapter, "Living and Dying in the `Course of Nature,'" Smith demonstrates how much of modern discussion in the death and dying area is premised on a kind of truncated view of natural law through an appeal to a kind of final end. Thus, courts have regular distinguished between letting someone die, which is permissible, but affirmative euthanasia, which is wrong. From a purely rationalist perspective, there is no difference. The result of taking someone off a breathing tube is the same as that of turning up the morphine: the patient dies. The intent is basically the same: the patient is expected to die. But there is a difference in the sense of the person's natural lifespan. "Letting someone die" implies a respect for the way that nature - or God? - intends to let a person have a certain lifespan; killing someone seems to disrespect this plan.

But judges can't explain this insight. They have to keep it wrapped up and hidden from sight. This kind of thinking is simply not something that secular modernists can openly accept. Whose plan? What does it mean that there is a plan? Where is this plan located in a world of material reality? Secular modernity has replaced a consideration of nature with a consideration of moral insights and intuitions. We - or some people - seem to "feel" that some things are right or wrong.

Moral reasoning, however, requires such an ordering of behavior to a "normative order." (p. 63.) As Smith points out who cares about intuitions unless they are real. (p. 66.) Morality implies an order that is in some sense "normal" or "natural." Smith makes the insightful point that in the context of morality, the appeal to nature is ruled out of order, but science is nothing but an appeal to nature. (p. 62.) Thus, if appeals to the natural world were deemed inadmissible, science would no longer be possible: whatever might on under the label of "science" would not in fact be science." (p. 62 - 63.)

In Chapter 3 - Trafficking in Harm - Smith disembowels the single biggest "smuggled concept" - the "do no harm" principle - as being entirely question begging and circular. Smith points out that many people - including some judges - seem to think that John Stuart Mill's edict that the only reason the state has for interfering with someone is to prevent that person from "harming" others is part of the Constitution. Smith effectively demonstrates that the "harm principle" was incoherent and question begging in Mill's original formulation, and that the idea of harm itself has to be question begging and circular because if it was taken seriously then there would be no end to the government's regulation of behavior since someone's interest somewhere is likely to be harmed - if only because their expectations or desires for living in a particular kind of society may be frustrated.

In Chapter 4 - Disoriented Discourse: The Secular Subversion of Religious Freedom - Smith takes apart the incoherent position that the idea of "religious freedom" has devolved. Smith points out that the original idea of "separation of church and state" involved a recognition that there was an area of jurisdiction that belonged solely to religion. Under the pressure of secularism, which refuses to recognize religion as having a value in itself different than any other human activity, the idea of "separation of church and state" has placed the state in the position of treating religion as any other institution. In the spring of 2012, this evolution can be seen in the contemporary attempt by the Obama administration to require Catholic institutions to pay for contraception - notwithstanding Catholicism's two-thousand year moral opposition to contraception - and in the Obama administration's recent assertions that it could enforce discrimination laws against Church's, such as the Catholic Church, that refused to allow women to become priests.

In Chapter 5 - The Heavenly City of the Secular Philosophers - Smith takes an extended look at Carl Becker's classic essay on the "Heavenly City of Eighteenth Century Philosophes." In that essay, Becker pointed out that notwithstanding the philosophes sneering attitude toward traditional Catholic philosophy, at the end of the day, the philosophes merely managed to recreate the same tropes and philosophical ideas that their religious predecessors had established. Smith points out the interesting fact that for all of his posing as a provocateur pulling the mask of the philosophe's failed project, Becker - a classic liberal secularist - never suggested anything better.

Smith then considers Martha Nussbaum's attempt to define a theory of morality that is allegedly defensible from a secularist point of view. Nussbaum's theory is based on "capabilities," namely a moral system is one which permits, encourages and even subsidizes people to develop their uniquely human capabilities. But as Smith points out this quickly descends into question begging and circularity. Is torture a uniquely human capability? Obviously not, which Nussbaum would explain is because torture is not morally permissible. But wasn't moral permissibility the question that theory was supposed to address. And around and around it goes.

As Becker explained about the philosophes, all Nussbaum has managed to do it repackage non-secular conclusions under the rubric of a modernist, secular philosophy.

Smith's sixth chapter is "Science, Humanity and Atrocity." This chapter is an extended meditation on Joseph Vining's "The Song Sparrow and the Child." Vining's essay contemplates the role of science and humanity in horrible atrocities, such as that which induced Japanese scientists to experiment on a three day old child in order to learn about frostbite. Vining was not making an "anti-science" point, but was noting that people have a singular ability to act in horrible ways when in the grip of an idea that purports to explain everything. We can see such a phenomenon in the writings of some scientists and philosophers whose adherence to a "totalistic science rules" out anything that is not material and secular. (p. 193 - 195.)

Of course there is always something that falls outside the "total theory," and that thing may be the most important thing. Vining and Smith suggest that an antidote to total theory may be to take a lawyer's approach to claims by people that they believe something and subject them to cross-examination in light of their actual behavior to see if what they say they believe is what they actually believe. In the case of "totalistic science," one example might be to take a person who claims that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction, and ask them if that's what they really tell their beloved wife or child. (p. 206 - 207.) In the grip of a theory, we can pretend that love is nothing but a chemical reaction, but when we are "being reflective and candid" we really know that reducing everything down to one thing is not what we really believe.

Smith's final chapter - Opening the Cage - Smith's suggestion for reform is really quite modest. He suggests that we permit discussion to go where it wants to go. If people want to talk in religious terms, then let them. The cost of policing the boundary of public discourse has been shown to be too high for whatever benefits it creates. A benefit of permitting discussion that is religious - or is simply defined as being religious by the guardians of the boundary - might be a greater honesty on the part of everyone involved in the discussion. Smith makes a singularly powerful rejoinder to the argument that "religion shuts down discussion," namely "says who?" The irony of the "religion shuts down discussion" crowd is that they are doing nothing but shutting down discussion.

People can learn civility in public discussions. Based on the quality of public discussions we see today, it is not clear that much more civility could be lost by permitting religious themes, concerns or interests to be part of the agenda. Moreover, people are not likely to learn the habits of civility if they don't have the opportunity to practice those habits.

Smith's book is a powerfully insightful book for those who want to know where we are and how we got here.

Amazon Review - The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse by Steven D. Smith...

...Why are we just talking past each other?

Please go here and give me a "helpful vote."

Smith diagnoses the place where public discourse finds itself today, locked in an iron cage of secularist assumptions, hypocritically smuggling in non-secular first principles, and zealously policing the borders to prevent anything with the whiff of religion from entering into public discussion. According to Smith the result has been a break-down of the ability to engage in public discussions because of the loss of confidence in reason.

Smith's first chapter - "The Way We Talk Now" - surveys the current landscape. It seems that the consistent opinion of philosopher and public intellectuals is that modern secular discourse is particularly shallow and ineffective in its modern iteration. The ineffectiveness of modern discourse stems in part from a lack of confidence by many people that reason can actually work, i.e., do the things it is supposed to do, such as lead people to the truth. Significantly, this view is held by secularist intellectuals, who ought to be the people with the biggest incentive to see discourse as effective and rational.

The result is that many public discussions are not discussions. They are just people rehearsing their statements of their own commitments to something or other. As Smith says:

"There is indeed a good deal of contention, Dworkin might respond - a good deal of sound and fury, or noisy clash of opinion. Even so, there is precious little real argument, strictly speaking - little genuine debate. Because if you look closely at what people say, they do not really engage their opponents, or even reveal the real bases for their own positions; they merely dress up their pre-established conclusions in verbiage. People may look like they are engaged in debate. They may even think they are engaging in debate. But in reality, they aren't."

Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, p. 5.

Smith's explanation for the failure of discourse is that modernity truncated the scope of permissible discussion, locking discussion in what Max Weber described as the "disenchantment of the world." (p. 23.) Smith also uses the metaphor of an iron cage to describe modernity, deriving that image from Max Weber's idea that modernity is an iron cage in "which life is lived and discourse is conducted according to the stern constraints of secular rationalism." (p. 23.) Secularism taught that superstition - meaning anything that was not founded on reason - was bad and that nothing could be accepted which was not itself founded on reason. From that point on, secularist modern philosophy found nothing that could meet the requirements of secular modern philosophy and started "smuggling" in pre-modern assumptions about "equality" or "freedom" or "harm" as if those ideas met the prescription of modernity.

The problem is that these concepts are meaningless in themselves. Freedom is an empty concept until it is filled. (p. 28.) Freedom can be good or it can be bad. Is a freedom that permits people to appropriate other people's property good or bad? Well, perhaps it depends on whether one person is starving and the other has more than enough to share. Similarly, equality is "entirely circular." Equality means treating equal things equally, but in order to know if things are equal we have to bring something other than equality to our discussion. (p. 30.)

In his second chapter, "Living and Dying in the `Course of Nature,'" Smith demonstrates how much of modern discussion in the death and dying area is premised on a kind of truncated view of natural law through an appeal to a kind of final end. Thus, courts have regular distinguished between letting someone die, which is permissible, but affirmative euthanasia, which is wrong. From a purely rationalist perspective, there is no difference. The result of taking someone off a breathing tube is the same as that of turning up the morphine: the patient dies. The intent is basically the same: the patient is expected to die. But there is a difference in the sense of the person's natural lifespan. "Letting someone die" implies a respect for the way that nature - or God? - intends to let a person have a certain lifespan; killing someone seems to disrespect this plan.

But judges can't explain this insight. They have to keep it wrapped up and hidden from sight. This kind of thinking is simply not something that secular modernists can openly accept. Whose plan? What does it mean that there is a plan? Where is this plan located in a world of material reality? Secular modernity has replaced a consideration of nature with a consideration of moral insights and intuitions. We - or some people - seem to "feel" that some things are right or wrong.

Moral reasoning, however, requires such an ordering of behavior to a "normative order." (p. 63.) As Smith points out who cares about intuitions unless they are real. (p. 66.) Morality implies an order that is in some sense "normal" or "natural." Smith makes the insightful point that in the context of morality, the appeal to nature is ruled out of order, but science is nothing but an appeal to nature. (p. 62.) Thus, if appeals to the natural world were deemed inadmissible, science would no longer be possible: whatever might on under the label of "science" would not in fact be science." (p. 62 - 63.)

In Chapter 3 - Trafficking in Harm - Smith disembowels the single biggest "smuggled concept" - the "do no harm" principle - as being entirely question begging and circular. Smith points out that many people - including some judges - seem to think that John Stuart Mill's edict that the only reason the state has for interfering with someone is to prevent that person from "harming" others is part of the Constitution. Smith effectively demonstrates that the "harm principle" was incoherent and question begging in Mill's original formulation, and that the idea of harm itself has to be question begging and circular because if it was taken seriously then there would be no end to the government's regulation of behavior since someone's interest somewhere is likely to be harmed - if only because their expectations or desires for living in a particular kind of society may be frustrated.

In Chapter 4 - Disoriented Discourse: The Secular Subversion of Religious Freedom - Smith takes apart the incoherent position that the idea of "religious freedom" has devolved. Smith points out that the original idea of "separation of church and state" involved a recognition that there was an area of jurisdiction that belonged solely to religion. Under the pressure of secularism, which refuses to recognize religion as having a value in itself different than any other human activity, the idea of "separation of church and state" has placed the state in the position of treating religion as any other institution. In the spring of 2012, this evolution can be seen in the contemporary attempt by the Obama administration to require Catholic institutions to pay for contraception - notwithstanding Catholicism's two-thousand year moral opposition to contraception - and in the Obama administration's recent assertions that it could enforce discrimination laws against Church's, such as the Catholic Church, that refused to allow women to become priests.

In Chapter 5 - The Heavenly City of the Secular Philosophers - Smith takes an extended look at Carl Becker's classic essay on the "Heavenly City of Eighteenth Century Philosophes." In that essay, Becker pointed out that notwithstanding the philosophes sneering attitude toward traditional Catholic philosophy, at the end of the day, the philosophes merely managed to recreate the same tropes and philosophical ideas that their religious predecessors had established. Smith points out the interesting fact that for all of his posing as a provocateur pulling the mask of the philosophe's failed project, Becker - a classic liberal secularist - never suggested anything better.

Smith then considers Martha Nussbaum's attempt to define a theory of morality that is allegedly defensible from a secularist point of view. Nussbaum's theory is based on "capabilities," namely a moral system is one which permits, encourages and even subsidizes people to develop their uniquely human capabilities. But as Smith points out this quickly descends into question begging and circularity. Is torture a uniquely human capability? Obviously not, which Nussbaum would explain is because torture is not morally permissible. But wasn't moral permissibility the question that theory was supposed to address. And around and around it goes.

As Becker explained about the philosophes, all Nussbaum has managed to do it repackage non-secular conclusions under the rubric of a modernist, secular philosophy.

Smith's sixth chapter is "Science, Humanity and Atrocity." This chapter is an extended meditation on Joseph Vining's "The Song Sparrow and the Child." Vining's essay contemplates the role of science and humanity in horrible atrocities, such as that which induced Japanese scientists to experiment on a three day old child in order to learn about frostbite. Vining was not making an "anti-science" point, but was noting that people have a singular ability to act in horrible ways when in the grip of an idea that purports to explain everything. We can see such a phenomenon in the writings of some scientists and philosophers whose adherence to a "totalistic science rules" out anything that is not material and secular. (p. 193 - 195.)

Of course there is always something that falls outside the "total theory," and that thing may be the most important thing. Vining and Smith suggest that an antidote to total theory may be to take a lawyer's approach to claims by people that they believe something and subject them to cross-examination in light of their actual behavior to see if what they say they believe is what they actually believe. In the case of "totalistic science," one example might be to take a person who claims that love is nothing more than a chemical reaction, and ask them if that's what they really tell their beloved wife or child. (p. 206 - 207.) In the grip of a theory, we can pretend that love is nothing but a chemical reaction, but when we are "being reflective and candid" we really know that reducing everything down to one thing is not what we really believe.

Smith's final chapter - Opening the Cage - Smith's suggestion for reform is really quite modest. He suggests that we permit discussion to go where it wants to go. If people want to talk in religious terms, then let them. The cost of policing the boundary of public discourse has been shown to be too high for whatever benefits it creates. A benefit of permitting discussion that is religious - or is simply defined as being religious by the guardians of the boundary - might be a greater honesty on the part of everyone involved in the discussion. Smith makes a singularly powerful rejoinder to the argument that "religion shuts down discussion," namely "says who?" The irony of the "religion shuts down discussion" crowd is that they are doing nothing but shutting down discussion.

People can learn civility in public discussions. Based on the quality of public discussions we see today, it is not clear that much more civility could be lost by permitting religious themes, concerns or interests to be part of the agenda. Moreover, people are not likely to learn the habits of civility if they don't have the opportunity to practice those habits.

Smith's book is a powerfully insightful book for those who want to know where we are and how we got here.

Public Discourse - Barnes & Nobles Coffee Shop Division.

Rarely do you see the confirmation of the thesis arrive so closely at the heels of the stating of a thesis.

I was at Barnes & Nobles on Saturday with the Wadget as part of our Saturday ritual. I was beginning to read Steven D. Smith's "The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse." Smith's book is premised on the claim that there is a wide-spread consensus on the part of "public intellectuals" on the Left and the Right that public discourse is particularly shallow - to the extent of being non-existent insofar as public discourse involves an actual engagement with arguments in a search for truth. Smith's thesis appears to be that the fault lies in the formula that Western culture has reached in sweeping out of "public discussion" any consideration of the things that people actually find most important and a general lessening of confidence in the ability of reason to reach the truth. "Reasonableness," according to Smith, has replaced "reason."

I started an interesting conversation with an interesting young man next to where the Wadget and I were sitting, and the discussion turned into a variety of issues, including the value of knowing the classics, the value of a common culture, the apparent loss of that culture, etc. I made the point that I felt that Obama's slogan in the last campaign was an example of that trend - "Hope and Change," yes, but "Hope for what?" and "Change to what?"

This caught the ear of someone sitting nearby who asked me - told me, actually - that ceratainly I didn't think that McCain was any better. My point, I explained, was not a comparison between Obama and McCain, but that the slogan was vacuous.

This individual - clearly emotionally committed to the Left - told me that I couldn't know that. My response was that the announced policies differences between McCain and Obama was identical in some areas - gay marriage, for example - but in areas where there were differences - rolling back the Patriot Act, closing down Guantanamo Bay, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan - Obama had clearly failed on his stated policy commitments. But there had been no outcry from his supporters, from which I concluded that his supporters were not supporters based on policy considerations but on amorphous slogans.

This individual - the "Dude" - said that this was my "opinion."

My response was that it was my opinion and that my opinion was based on an inference from observable, empirical facts.

The Dude said I couldn't possibly know what people were thinking. I agreed and explained that while I couldn't read minds, I could look at objective behavior and make reasonable inferences about states of mind from objective behaviors.

The Dude said that I offered no facts.

I pointed out that, yes, I had - namely Obama made specific policy commitments, he hadn't carried out those policies and his supporters had made no outcry.

The Dude said something to the effect of "Jeepers, a politician broke a promise."

I said the issue wasn't the politician breaking the promise, but the lack of any response by supporters.

The Dude said, several times, that I had offered no facts.

I explained to him, several times, that the facts I offered were (a) Obama made policy commitments, (b) Obama didn't carry out those policy commitments, and (c) there was no outcry by his supporters.

The Dude said that was my opinion.

I said the facts were fact and that the conclusions were my opinion based on a reasonable inference from the facts.

I told him that if he wanted to dispute my analysis he had to do more than gainsay what I said. He had to offer counter-facts or a more persuasive counter-argument. Simply telling me that he disagreed with me told me nothing informative; we knew from the beginning that he disagreed with me.

The Dude ended by muttering something about "opinion" and desisted from further conversation.

I turned back to my book and read the following:

"There is indeed a good deal of contention, Dworkin might respond - a good deal of sound and fury, or noisy clash of opinion. Even so, there is precious little real argument, strictly speaking - little genuine debate. Because if you look closely at what people say, they do not really engage their opponents, or even reveal the real bases for their own positions; they merely dress up their preestablished conclusions in verbiage. People may look like they are engaged in debate. They may even think they are engaging in debate. But in reality, they aren't."

Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, p. 5.

That in a nutshell described my interaction with the Dude.

It's not that my argument should have been convincing. I could tell you what counter-moves you could make to my argument and what evidence you could marshall. I can also tell you what counters to those arguments, I would have mustered at that time.

In the course of that discussion, my arguments would have become stronger, or, potentially, more limited to a specific example.

The point is that this discussion never developed, and it never developed because the Dude - who injected himself into my private discussion with the fervency of a True Believer who was going to show the "stupid conservative" the errors of his ways - didn't have the habits of mind that would have enabled him to carry on the discussion.

This, sadly, is what I see more often than not, and particularly on the left, because my debates occur with the left. Nonetheless, given that the Left claims its position as intellectuals and rationalists, the failure of actual Leftists to actually live up to the standards they claim for themselves - and uniquely for themselves - is a telling commentary on the poverty of our public discourse.