Pascal's Penseés

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher who was born in 1623 in Clermont (now Clermont-Ferrand) and died in 1662 in Paris (at the age of 39, probably of tuberculosis and stomach cancer). His father Étienne (1588-1651) was a government official, and his mother Antoinette (1596-1626) was the daughter of a merchant in Clermont. She died when Blaise was three years old. He had two sisters, Gilberte (1620-1687) and Jacqueline (1625-1661). He was educated by his father, and at a young age he distinguished himself as a mathematician. In 1651, his father Étienne died, and his sister Jacqueline entered the Jansenist convent at Port-Royal. Jansenism was a theological movement named after the Dutch Catholic Bishop of Ypres in Flanders, Cornelis Jansen (in Latin, Cornelius Jansenius, 1585-1638), whose writings emphasized the importance of original sin, the necessity of divine grace, and the predestination of some, but not everyone, to be chosen for salvation. It was declared a heresy by Pope Innocent X in 1653. In 1654, Blaise had an intense religious experience that caused him to convert to Jansenism, and he joined his sister Jacqueline at Port-Royal. His subsequent writings included the Lettres Provinciales (Provincial Letters, 1656-57), which attacked the teachings of the Jesuits and defended Jansenism, and the Penseés (Thoughts, 1670), which were fragments of a projected defense of Christianity.

      The Penseés are a series of aphorisms or reflections, varying in length from a single sentence to more than twenty paragraphs, and numbering 923 in all. They are divided into thirteen sections, on such topics as "The Misery of Man without God," "Morality and Doctrine," and "The Fundamentals of the Christian Religion," with an appended fourteenth section of "Polemical Fragments," addressing the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists.

      Pascal attacks those philosophers who teach the goodness of human nature, and who see the highest good as the good to be found within ourselves, thereby placing us on an equal level with God. He argues that human nature has been corrupted by original sin. We're all born into sin, and we're obligated to resist or overcome it. He therefore condemns self-love (amour-propre), insofar as it reflects self-will rather than divine will, and insofar as it reflects love of self rather than love of God. He says that we can be blinded by self-love and by the instinct to place ourselves on an equal level with God (492). Indeed, we're so full of faults and imperfections that it's difficult to understand how we can feel such love for ourselves, given that we often don't feel the same kind of love for others (100).

      Since we're often blinded by self-love and self-will, the nature of God is largely hidden from us. Just as God may be infinitely knowing, God may be infinitely incomprehensible to us. The fact that there are many other religions besides Christianity is also a sign that God's nature may be hidden from us. If God's nature were apparent and manifest, then there might be only one religion that humanity would feel called to follow (585).

      However, Pascal also says that God is within us. The kingdom of God is within us, just as the universal good (le bien universel) is within us (485). But the universal good is to be found within us only insofar as God is to be found within us. Thus, "Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us" (465).¹ Jesus Christ the Redeemer can be found within us, and can be found within all persons (785).

      Pascal affirms the centrality of Christ to our knowledge of God. "Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ...Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves" (547).² "It is not only impossible but useless to know God without Jesus Christ" ("Il n'est seulement impossible, mais inutile de connaître Dieu sans Jesus-Christ," 548).³

      Reason (la raison) and feeling (le sentiment) may be seen as competing impulses in human nature. Reason may act methodically and deliberately, while feeling may act quickly and spontaneously (252). Faith is to be found in feeling, since reason ultimately can't prove the truths of faith and religion. "If we must not act except on certainty," says Pascal, then "we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But...there is more certainty in religion than there is as to whether we may see tomorrow" (234).⁴ We should therefore avoid both the extreme of depending on reason alone and the extreme of depending on intuition or feeling alone (253). 

      Faith is a gift from God, rather than a gift from reasoning (279). However, faith isn't contrary to reason, and it doesn't call us to disobey reason. Indeed, "Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master, for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, but in disobeying the other we are fools," (345).⁵ Having faith doesn't mean being blind to reason or to the evidence of sensory experience. Faith tells us what we can't confirm by sensory experience, but it doesn't contradict what we can confirm by sensory experience (265).

      Reason tells us when we should submit to feeling. Indeed, reason tells us that there are an infinity of things that surpass our understanding, and that there are matters that can only be resolved by faith or feeling. "Reason would never submit if it did not judge that there are occasions on which it ought to submit. It is then right for it to submit when it judges that it ought to submit" (270).⁶ Thus, "There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason" (272),⁷ and "All our reasoning [therefore] reduces itself to yielding to feeling" (274).⁸

      Pascal also argues that it is the heart and not the faculty of reasoning (raisonnement) that experiences God. "This, then, is faith, God felt by the heart, not by reason" (278).⁹ The heart has its own reasons for feeling, which can't be known solely by the intellect (277, 283). Thus, we can know truth not only by reason, but also by the heart (282). The heart can provide access to truth, just as reason can provide access to truth.

      Pascal argues that even if we can't prove that God exists, we can still choose whether to believe or disbelieve in God's existence by weighing the potential gains or losses to be obtained from making either of these two choices. This is known as Pascal's wager: the decision to affirm or deny the existence of God (233). Practically speaking, we can't merely sit on the fence and be skeptical or agnostic. We have to make a choice, and Pascal's argument for affirming the existence of God is that we have much more to gain by believing than by disbelieving in God's existence.

FOOTNOTES

¹Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Penseés, translated by W.F. Trotter (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1958), p. 111.

²Ibid., p. 126.

³Ibid., p. 126.

⁴Ibid., p. 59.

⁵Ibid., p. 82.

⁶Ibid., p. 67.

⁷Ibid., p. 67.

⁸Ibid., p. 67.

⁹Ibid., p. 68.

A Meditation on Life and Death

The following is a reflection I shared at the "Faith at Eight" service at our church on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

I'm troubled by the last paragraph of today's reading from the gospel (Luke 20:27-38), in which Jesus says that 

"Those who...are considered worthy of a place...in the resurrection of the dead...cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive."

      It's almost as if Jesus is saying that death isn't real, and that it doesn't exist. But I believe that death is real, and that it does exist. 

      Death is certain. Each one of us will die one day. Every living thing and every living being will die one day. There's no one who has ever permanently avoided death. Each day of our lives, we're drawing closer to death. And death is always on the horizon, drawing nearer to us, although we don't know precisely when it will arrive. The horizon of death may indeed be a background for whatever gives life its meaning.¹ Death is an inescapable reality. 

      So I'm wondering why we as Christians are so attached to the concept of the eternity of life, while other religious and philosophical traditions, such as Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism, and the ancient philosophy of Stoicism, teach the importance of non-attachment to the things of this life and to things that are temporary. I think Christianity shares with those traditions the teaching that we shouldn't be attached to temporary things like money, property and possessions, but I think that we as Christians are particularly attached to the concept that life is eternal.

      Now, I'm not a scholar of Buddhism, so I hope I get this right, but Tibetan Buddhism teaches that there are four kinds of attachment. The four attachments are attachment to the temporary, attachment to the cycle of life and death, attachment to solitary liberation, and attachment to misconceptions about reality. According to the bodhisattva Manjushri, "If you have attachment to this life, then you're not a Dharma practitioner. If you have attachment to the realm of samsara, then you don't have renunciation. If you have attachment to your own benefit, then you don't have the thought of enlightenment. And if clinging arises, then you don't possess the view."²

      Buddhism teaches that everything is impermanent. All things are temporary, and if we're attached to temporary things, then suffering arises when we lose them. The path to the cessation of suffering is the eightfold path of righteousness: right views, right intentions, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Although we may be attached to all sorts of things, such as wealth, property, belongings, social status, prestige, power, and so on, attachment to such things will cause us to feel frustrated and disappointed when we lose them.

      I think that in Hinduism the concept of moksha is analogous to the concept of nirvana in Buddhism. Moksha is release from samsara, from the endless cycle of life and death. Moksha is freedom from ignorance, and from misconceptions about reality. Moksha is freedom from illusion, and from mistaking the temporary for the eternal. Moksha is liberation from bondage to the cycle of life and death, a kind of release rather than a kind of attachment.

      The ancient philosophy of Stoicism, as taught by philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, also teaches the importance of non-attachment to things that are temporary. Epictetus teaches us that if we're attached to things that are beyond our power to control, then we won't be able to retain our equanimity. He says that wisdom involves knowing what is within our power to control and knowing what is not within our power to control. Wisdom also involves knowing what is within our power to change and knowing what is not within our power to change. Wisdom thus enables us to accept those things that are not within our power to control or to change, and it also enables us not to be attached to such things.

      Against this, I would argue that there are good kinds of attachment. I think that attachment to loved ones and to friends and family is good. I think that attachment to social ideals like peace and justice in society is good. Not all kinds of attachment are bad. But clearly there is a place for non-attachment or detachment as well.

      So I'm wondering why we as Christians are so attached to the concept that death has no power over us and that we can live in an eternal dominion or kingdom ruled by God. I'm not sure we fully acknowledge the reality of death or that we really acknowledge death as such--death as death. 

      Whenever someone dies or passes away, we say they're not really dead, and that they're still living in our hearts, and that they'll remain with us for all eternity. We see death as a transitional stage leading to another kind of life. 

      Last week, in a death notice for the Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, instead of saying that Pastor Butts died or passed away on the morning of October 28th, the notice said that Pastor Butts "peacefully transitioned" on the morning of October 28th.³

      In Christianity, there's this whole theological framework around the concept of the eternity of life. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus." John 11:25-26 says that before Jesus raised Martha's brother Lazarus from the dead, he told her, "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die." And Romans 6:8-10 tells us that if we've died with Christ, then we'll also live with him. Death will have no power over us, if we're dead to sin but alive to God.

      But I wonder whether we can ever be truly mindful and fully aware of the present moment if we believe that life simply goes on forever! How can we truly appreciate the preciousness of life, and how can we truly realize that life is a gift, unless we realize that life is temporary? And how can we find peace in death, unless we're ready to accept death when it arrives?

      Life and death are inseparable. They're everywhere and all around us.

      But maybe this isn't at all what Jesus is talking about. Maybe he's talking about something totally different, because he's not talking about an earthly life, he's talking about a resurrection life! And maybe a resurrection life is totally different from life as we know it! And maybe it's even beyond our knowing or understanding! What then is a resurrection life?

FOOTNOTES

¹Lama Jampa Thaye, "The Stages of the Path: Parting from the Four Attachments - Part 1," online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80xvCcq0pMI.

²Lama Jampa Thaye, "Parting from the Four Attachments: Attachment to the Temporary," Tricycle, March 2014, online at https://tricycle.org/dharmatalks/parting-four-attachments-0/attachment-to-the-temporary/.

³Adelle Banks, "Calvin Butts, Leader of Harlem's Historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, Dies at 73," The Roys Report, October 31, 2022, online at https://julieroys.com/calvin-butts-leader-harlem-historic-abyssinian-baptist-church-has-died/.

      

Inclusion and Belonging

The following is a reflection I shared with my fellow parishioners at the "Faith at Eight" service at our church on Sunday, August 7, 2022. Bill Roberts' response is included with his permission.

I'd like to share with you an email I sent this past week to Bill Roberts, our Senior Warden, about the lectionary reading today from the Gospel According to Luke, and I'd also like to share with you his very kind and thoughtful response.

      Hi Bill,

      I noticed in the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday that the Gospel According to Luke (12:32-40) contains the following paragraph:

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves."

      The gospel reading says that some people are blessed to be slaves. To whom is this reading addressed? Is it addressed to Black Episcopalians? If it is, is it telling us, as so many White racists have, that slave masters were good to us, and that we were better off as slaves? If it's not addressed to us, then why is it going to be read to us? Are we supposed to accept it passively as members of the congregation? If the reading is only addressed to the congregation as a whole, and not specifically to its Black members, then why are we being ignored or unrecognized?

      I don't have any problem with the reading if it's going to be put in context by the reader or preacher on Sunday. But I think it's a mistake to present readings like this without appropriate context.

      For the last two years, I've been concerned with the question of addressivity. When I listen to the lectionary readings on Sunday, I wonder: To whom are these readings addressed? Are they addressed to us? How are they addressed to us? If they're not addressed to us and are merely addressed to the Romans or Galatians or Colossians, then why are we reading them? Are we reading them merely out of historical interest? Are they only indirectly addressed to us or are they in fact directly addressed to us?

      My concern with the question of addressivity began about two years ago, when for four or five Sundays in a row, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and the wave of protests that swept across the country, we had a series of lectionary readings from Peter and Paul saying that we're blessed when we suffer, and that we should feel blessed in our suffering. Below is a link to a blog article I wrote about this concept of suffering, which I discussed in a reflection at the Faith at Eight service. It's a rather long reflection, so I don't actually expect you to read through it, but it expresses my concern about what the Church is telling its Black parishioners and parishioners of color.

https://philosophyreaders.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-christian-concept-of-suffering.html

      This problem of lectionary readings being presented without appropriate context isn't a problem specific to Memorial Episcopal Church, it's a problem of the whole Episcopal Church--unrecognized and waiting to be addressed--just as Black Episcopalians are waiting to be addressed and waiting to be spoken to directly as Black Episcopalians.

      How does the Episcopal Church expect to attract Blacks to its membership if it doesn't speak directly to them? When do members of the church hierarchy ever speak directly to Black Episcopalians, except perhaps at an annual convention of the UBE (Union of Black Episcopalians)? Why are we only recognized as members of larger (usually largely white) congregations or as members of a beloved (i.e. mostly white or integrated) community, rather than as having interests and concerns of our own?

      I don't expect you, Bill, to have an immediate solution for this problem, but thanks for giving me a chance to blow off a little steam, and maybe this problem is one the Worship Committee can address (I can't get away from that word) in the future.

      Your brother in Christ,

      Alex

      This was Bill's very perceptive and insightful response:

      Alex, I understand your concern, and I share it. There are many references in scripture that are troublesome to me: uncritical characterizations of slaves and slavery, such as you mention here, references to the deity in feudal--and always masculine--terms (princes, kings, etc.), and many others, that I find unhelpful at best, and directly counter to the message of the gospel at worst. I have sometimes heard these things addressed from the pulpit, but as sermons are time-limited, many times preachers just don't ever get around to addressing these jarring terms, or putting them in context.

      I think your indictment of the Episcopal Church as being friendly to Black people only when it suits them has strong evidence to support it. I believe that there has been a shift in this during Michael Curry's episcopate, but the church has a long way to go, as he often says.

      I am not a theologian, or anything remotely close to it, and I don't articulate on this issue very effectively. But I have often wished for a revised lectionary that would present scripture in enlightened terms, helping us to get to the message that Jesus wants us to understand, rather than just putting it out there unvarnished (translated by whom and with what motives?), leaving us to suppose what we will about who it is addressing and what it is trying to say. Sermons are supposed to help us with that, and--at least at Memorial--they very often do. For me, at least. The other thing that has helped me with this is Bible study, which, pre-COVID, I used to enjoy at Memorial. I know I wouldn't feel the same way about Bible study on Zoom, as I never feel truly connected to a group that way, so I continue to hope the day will come when we will be able to gather in indoor groups for discussion the way we used to, unmasked.

      I have no real answer for you about what to do about it. But I do want you to know that I hear you, and validate your concerns. And in our little corner of the Episcopal Church that is Memorial, I think we have a lot of company.

      Bill

      So I'm very grateful to Bill for his being so kind and supportive, and for making me feel validated.

      This past week, I was reading a new book by the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart entitled Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion (2022), in which she describes a "plantation theology," a "plantation eschatology that told the enslaved that if they were good slaves and obeyed their masters, one day they would get to heaven."¹ 

      Although I see the problem of being Black and Episcopalian as more a matter of the addressivity (or lack of it) of the Church's teachings for Black Episcopalians than a matter of the struggle of Black Episcopalians to be included in the Church, I think Rev. Fisher-Stewart's description of plantation theology might well be applied to our gospel reading today.

      A few weeks ago, Father Grey asked us what we thought about the importance of hospitality and welcome, and I think I said something to the effect that we must also acknowledge the importance of making people feel like they belong. During my recent fiftieth high school reunion, when the board of trustees was talking about its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the school, one of the members of the board of trustees said that it's not enough for a school to be welcoming and inclusive, it also has to offer its students a sense of belonging. I think the same is true of a church. A church has to offer its members a sense of belonging.

      As I was reading more this past week about this concept of belonging, I learned that in human resource management, the trend has been shifting over the last few years from an emphasis on diversity and inclusion to an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and most recently to an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (thus, the acronym DEIB).² Although these human resource principles have focused on the workplace, I think they may also be applied to the Church. It's not enough for a church to promote diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. It must also promote a sense of belonging, if it's to fulfill its mission to its members.

      An inclusive church, and a church where people feel a sense of belonging, is a place where people feel safe and where they don't have to be afraid to reveal their talents, abilities, and aspirations, as well as their doubts, insecurities, and uncertainties.³ It's a place where people can fully express themselves and can reveal who they truly are, without having to worry about being judged or criticized, and where they can contribute to the church's mission by utilizing their own particular talents and abilities.

      A church where people feel a sense of belonging is also a space where everyone can bring their whole self to worship and can express themselves freely, a place where everyone belongs, and where everyone feels a shared sense of purpose.⁴ It' s place where people feel valued for who they are, and where it's recognized that each of us is different in some way from others. It's also a place where people are celebrated for the unique contributions they make to the church and to the community.

      At the same time, it should be recognized that principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion are not just about race and gender, they're also about ethnicity, sexual orientation, spirituality, religious beliefs, political opinions, and so on.

      Being a church where people feel a sense of belonging is more than just being a church where inclusiveness is encouraged. Just because someone is included in a church doesn't necessarily mean they feel like they belong.⁵ Belonging reflects a sense of connection, an appreciation for being recognized as an individual, as well as a sense of shared purpose and commitment.

      In a video entitled "Why Should I Be an Episcopalian?" former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is asked the question, "If I were a person without a church or a denomination, and I came to you and asked you about becoming an Episcopalian, what would you say to me to convince me to become an Episcopalian?" and Bishop Schori responds very honestly and eloquently by saying, "The Episcopal Church is a tradition that thinks that your gifts are important, that thinks that you have a ministry by virtue of being baptized, and that the job of this group of people called the Church is to support each other in living that out in the world. We are a diverse body of people, we don't all think the same thing. Sometimes that's challenging, but it's also exciting...You will find in this body people to love, and people who will love you, and people who will challenge you, and they may be the same ones. This body will challenge you to grow, to develop in your relationship with God, to develop in your ability to serve your neighbor, and to love your neighbor and serve God in the process."⁶

      When I heard Bishop Schori say the Episcopal Church is a church where every member has a ministry by virtue of being baptized, her words really resonated for me. A church where people feel a sense of belonging is a church where every member is encouraged to fulfill their own sense of ministry.

      At the same time, I'm not downplaying the importance of welcome and hospitality. The Rev. Stephanie Spellers, in her book Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation (2006), defines radical welcome as "the spiritual practice of embracing and being changed by the gifts, presence, voices, and power of the Other: the people systematically cast out of or marginalized within a church, a denomination, and/or society."⁷ She distinguishes between what radical welcome is and what it is not. She says that radical welcome is hospitable, it's connected, it's centered, it's open to conversion, it's intentional, it's comprehensive, it's becoming, it's beyond diversity, it's faithful, it's compassionate, and it's real. On the other hand, radical welcome is not an invitation to assimilation, it's not a feel-good ministry, it's not reverse discrimination, it's not a conventional church growth strategy, and it's not political correctness or "a haphazard, reactionary throwing out of the baby with the bathwater."⁸ But the radically welcoming congregation is not merely an inviting or inclusive congregation. Radical welcome goes beyond inviting, beyond encouraging diversity, and beyond inclusion. Rev. Spellers says "the movement from inviting to inclusion to radical welcome is the move toward cultivating mutually transforming relationship." That is, when we as a church radically welcome those who have been marginalized or not welcomed in the past, we ourselves are changed and transformed by the process of developing relationships with them.⁹

      So I'd like to thank all of you for helping me to grow, to feel connected, to feel refreshed, to feel encouraged, to recognize the importance of love in the ministry of our rector, our deacon, our vestry, and so many other members of our church, and to feel a sense of belonging to this community.

FOOTNOTES

¹Gayle Fisher-Stewart, Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion (New York: Church Publishing, 2022), p. 9.

²Neelie Verlinden, "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB): A 2022 Overview," AIHR (Academy to Innovate HR), online at https://www.aihr.com/blog/diversity-equity-inclusion-belonging-deib/#:~:text=sense%20of%20belonging.-,What's%20the%20difference%20between%20inclusion%20and%20belonging%3F,results%20from%20your%20inclusion%20efforts

³Ibid.

⁴Ibid.

⁵Anita Sands, "Diversity and Inclusion aren't what matter. Belonging is what counts," March 26, 2019, online at https://anitasands.medium.com/diversity-and-inclusion-arent-what-matter-belonging-is-what-counts-4a75bf6565b5

⁶Jim DeLa, "Why should I be an Episcopalian?", online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQSWporCpfY&t=9s

⁷Stephanie Spellers, Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), p. 6.

⁸Ibid., pp. 15-18.

⁹Ibid., p. 72.

Modes of Address

Addressivity is a concept developed by the Russian literary critic and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), denoting the quality of being addressed to someone or something. According to Bakhtin, every utterance, text, or discourse has both an author (or addresser) and someone to whom it's addressed (an addressee).¹ Every speaker or writer is addressing someone and thus is engaged in dialogue with them. Only in this way can our lives have meaning, argues Bakhtin, when we're in dialogue with the world.² Every utterance, text, or discourse, however monological it may be, presupposes other utterances, texts, and discourses, and is therefore in some way a response to them. Every text is in dialogue with other texts, and is characterized by its relations with them (its intertextuality).

      Examining the addressivity of a text (along with its rhetoric, stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, discursive strategies, and other linguistic and literary aspects) may be a way of analyzing our responses to that text. We may ask such questions as: To whom is this text addressed? Is it addressed to us? Why is or isn't it addressed to us? How is it addressed to us? In what way does or doesn't it address other relevant texts?

      To address may be to deal with, confront, or direct one's attention to such things as problems, needs, interests, or concerns. It may also be to greet someone, speak directly to someone, call someone by name, or mark directions for delivery on something (such as a postcard, letter, or package).

      Various kinds of speech acts (such as greetings, thanks, promises, demands, requests, warnings, apologies, and congratulations) may be addressed to someone (although we may not always be sure who we're addressing). It may be difficult to say anything without addressing someone directly or indirectly. (Thus, as you read this, I'm addressing you as a reader, even though I may not know or have met you, and may not be able to address you personally.) However, expletives such as "Crap!" or "Damn!" may be an exception to the rule that speech acts must be addressed to someone (even if they're only addressed to oneself). Expletives may in fact not be addressed to anyone, and may often function merely to vent anger, annoyance, or frustration.

      We constantly engage in modes of address in our social interactions, e.g. when we say Hello, Good Morning, Good Night, or Goodbye to someone, when we have a conversation with someone, when we make or answer a call on our cellphones, when we send a text or email, when we begin a letter with Hi, Hello, Dear, or To Whom It May Concern, and when we end an email with Sincerely, Love, Yours Truly, or Best Wishes.

      We may also be (very much, only moderately, or not at all) aware of various norms of address, e.g. when we call someone Mr., Mrs., Ms., Dr., Rev., Rabbi, Sir, Ma'am, Your Honor, Your Highness, Your Grace, Your Holiness, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, Madam Speaker, Mrs. Ambassador, Governor, Senator, Representative, Professor, Daddy, Mommy, Grandpa, Grandma, and so on.

      Norms of address may also determine the correct pronouns with which to address someone in accordance with their gender identity (he/him, she/her, they/their, etc.). The refusal to address someone by their preferred pronouns ("misgendering") may in some cases be primarily motivated by the addresser's refusal to conform to beliefs about gender identity that they don't accept, but in other cases it may also be motivated by their antagonism, hostility, or bigotry toward gender nonconforming people (although it may be a legally protected form of free speech³).

      Attorney and legal scholar Chan Tov McNamarah (2021) says that

"misgendering is simply the latest link in a concatenation of disparaging modes of reference and address. From addressing Black persons by only their first names, to the intentional omission of women's professional titles, and to the deliberate butchering of the ethnically-marked names of minorities, these verbal slights have long been used to symbolize the subordination of societally disfavored groups."⁴

      McNamarah also says that regulations prohibiting misgendering don't unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech, because they narrowly target harassment in the workplace, and because the government has a compelling interest in protecting minorities from discrimination. Nor do they compel speech, because they don't force a speaker to express any particular message regarding gender identity.⁵

      Perhaps even more significantly, McNamarah shows how dishonorifics (expressions of social inferiority) have been used to deprive addressees of social standing. Dishonorifics have included renaming or un-naming of enslaved persons, legal restrictions on titles and naming practices for women, anglicization or westernization of ethnic names, replacement of ethnically marked names with names such as "Samurai Jack," "Bruce Lee," or "Jackie Chan," misgendering, mispronouning, and ungendering of people's names, as well as "deadnaming" (using the birth name of a person who has chosen another name to reflect their actual identity).

      Norms of formality and politeness in addressing people may vary according to the language in which discourse is conducted, the cultural setting, and the situational context. We may sometimes find it difficult to find the appropriate level of formality, as when we're sincerely unsure of whether to address someone by their first name or formal title. Addressing someone by their first name may be a sign of friendliness or unfriendliness, cordiality or antipathy, congeniality or condescension, affection or disrespect, depending on the social context.

      We may often address people we feel personally close to with various terms of endearment, such as Honey, Darling, Dear, Baby, or Sweetheart. (However, these terms may also be used disparagingly by strangers or social adversaries.)

      When someone speaks directly to us, we know that they recognize us as active or passive listeners, and that they may or may not expect us to respond or engage in dialogue with them. We also know when they aren't speaking to or addressing us at all, and when we're unseen, unrecognized, or ignored members of their audience.

      The philosopher Monique Roelofs (2020) explains,

"Address and nonaddress, then, go together. The one often stands out against the backdrop of the other. The thin character of an orator's comments becomes apparent in light of our awareness of an ambit of understandings to which he might have attested but that go unnoted--those riveting themes we had hoped to learn about but that were never so much as broached in his speech. Nonaddress, in this case, informs us of an aspect of address."⁶

      We also know when a text, word of admonition or advice, letter, or email has been sent to the wrong address. We know how reluctant we may be to reveal our own address to a stranger or to someone we don't have any reason to trust.

      When we click on the link to a tweet, news story, or article on the internet, we often do so because we feel it's in some way addressed to us. It's been sent or directed to us, even if only by cookies or search algorithms. It recognizes us as members of its intended audience, and as actual or potential recipients of its content.

      Roelofs (2020) also explains,

"In considering the scope of address, it is worth noting that objects can address us in ways that they were not necessarily designed to do. Just as my friend's yawn may address me in a way that she did not intend, the stool that was once meant for toddlers to sit on might now address older children and adults as a platform for reaching the cookies on the upper shelf or for making proclamations."⁷

      Some modes of address may express respect or disrespect for the addressee. Respect may be expressed by the use of honorifics, while disrespect may be expressed by their omission. Disrespect may also be expressed by the use of slurs, racist or sexist epithets, and other speech acts that express disdain, ridicule, contempt, or hatred.

      According to the linguist Roman Jakobson (1960), the six constitutive factors of any speech act or act of verbal communication are (1) the addresser, (2) the addressee, (3) the message, (4) the context, (5) the contact (or channel) between the addresser and addressee, and (6) the code (which must be at least partially shared by the addresser and addressee, and which allows the message to be encoded by the addresser and decoded by the addressee). Each constitutive factor determines a different function of language. The addresser determines the emotive (or expressive) function. The addressee determines the conative function (whose role is to produce action). The message determines the poetic function (whose role is focused on the message for its own sake). The context determines the referential (denotative or cognitive) function. The contact determines the phatic function (whose role is to start and maintain communication), and the code determines the metalingual function (whose role is to enable the addresser and addressee to share the same understanding of the meaning of words and messages). Each act of verbal communication may fulfill more than one of these functions, but its structure is determined by whichever function predominates.⁸

      Modes of address may be direct, indirect, personal, impersonal, proximate, remote, formal, or informal.

      Levels of address (psychological, moral, aesthetic, religious, social, or cultural) may correspond to levels of meaning. For example, if a text addresses its readers at a psychological level, then it may also have meaning for them at that level. A text that has multiple levels of addressivity (addressing its readers at multiple levels) may also have multiple levels of meaning.

      We may also interrogate our own modes of address for what they reveal about our own conscious or unconscious attitudes about the given addressees. We may discover that we have previously unrecognized biases, presuppositions, or prejudgments about our addressees that change, hinder, or distort our relations with them.

FOOTNOTES

¹Mikhail Bakhtin, The Bakhtin Reader, edited by Pam Morris (London: Arnold, 1994), p. 4.

²Ibid., p. 245.

³In July 2021, the Third District Court of Appeals of California ruled that regulations against intentional misgendering of transgender nursing home residents unconstitutionally restrict free speech. See https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/22/us/transgender-seniors-misgender-california-trnd/index.html.

⁴Chan Tov McNamarah, "Misgendering," in California Law Review, Vol. 109, No. 6, Dec 2021, online at https://www.californialawreview.org/print/misgendering/#clr-toc-heading-4.

⁵Ibid.

⁶Monique Roelofs, Arts of Address: Being Alive to Language and the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), p. 10).

⁷Ibid., p. 23.

⁸Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in Language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Presss, 1960), pp. 353-357.

How To Pray

The following is a brief reflection I shared with my fellow parishioners at the 8 a.m. service of our church on Sunday, July 24, 2022.

In today's reading from the gospel (Luke 11:1-13), the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and he tells them, "When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread," and so on. So a question I've been asking myself is: Is Jesus teaching his disciples what to pray or is he teaching them how to pray? Is he saying, "Pray this," or is he saying, "Pray like this"? Is Jesus telling his disciples to repeat what he says, word for word, or is he saying, "Pray like I'm praying" or "This is the way you can pray"? In Luke's Gospel, Jesus seems to be saying, "Pray this," but in Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus delivers his prayer to the assembled crowd at The Sermon on the Mount, he seems to be saying, "Pray like this," and depending on which version of the Bible you read, this phrase may be translated as "Pray then like this" or "Pray in this manner" or "This, then, is how you should pray."

      So I think Jesus is teaching us how to pray, rather than what to pray. I don't think he wants us to mechanically repeat some words we've memorized. I think he wants us to pray from our hearts, and to say what's in our hearts. This is in keeping with the other instructions about how to pray that he gives in The Sermon on the Mount:

"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this..." (Matthew 6:5-15)

      Of course, there are many kinds of prayer: prayers of adoration, prayers of praise, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of penitence, prayers of oblation, prayers of petition, and prayers for intercession. But when Jesus gives the disciples his own prayer, "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come...", I think he's saying, "When you pray, you should honor God, you should pray for the coming of God's kingdom, you should ask for God's forgiveness, and you should pray for God's grace."

      The Book of Common Prayer says, in response to the question "What is prayer?" that "Prayer is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words."¹ Thus, prayer involves speaking and listening to God. it's a dialogue with God. It can be done silently or aloud. When we pray, we can discern what God's purpose is for us, and we can ask for grace to do God's will, and we can feel the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. True prayer isn't merely a mechanical repetition of memorized phrases, although this kind of practice may be useful in preparing us to speak directly to God and in teaching us how to pray. Rather, true prayer involves praying with all our hearts and souls, as well as minds.

FOOTNOTES 

¹The Book of Common Prayer, According to the use of The Episcopal Church (Kingsport: Kingsport Press, 1977), p. 856.

Culpable Ignorance: A Consequentialist Perspective

What is culpable ignorance? What kind of responsibility do we have to avoid being culpably ignorant?

      Let's consider some possible definitions of culpable ignorance.

      (1) It's ignorance that's within our power to avoid, and that results from a failure to comply with our epistemic duty to become informed about something (when we have such a duty). Because we have some control over whether or not we're culpably ignorant, we can be held morally responsible for being so. A distinction can thus be made between ignorance for which we're responsible (culpable ignorance) and ignorance for which we're not responsible (non-culpable ignorance).

      (2) Culpable ignorance is ignorance for which there's no excuse, and for which there are harmful or undesirable consequences that could have been avoided or anticipated. It can be argued that simply being culpably ignorant is harmless if no negative consequences result from that ignorance. (It can also be argued that ignorance of any kind is intrinsically harmful, but this seems somewhat implausible.) From a consequentialist perspective, simply not knowing something we should have known may not make us culpably ignorant unless some harmful or undesirable consequences result from that ignorance. The extent of our culpability for our ignorance may depend on the wrongness or inappropriateness of the actions that result from that ignorance, as well as the gravity and extent of their negative consequences.

      (3) Culpable ignorance is ignorance in cases where we "should have known better" or "should have realized" that relevant facts or conditions needed to be considered.

      (4) It's also ignorance where we failed to take due regard of, or pay sufficient attention to, relevant facts or conditions.

      (5) It's also the spreading or promulgation of falsehoods and misinformation, without any regard for the veracity of that information or the consequences of spreading such falsehoods and misinformation.

      Ignorance alone isn't culpable, if there's some excuse for it. The ignorance must be inexcusable rather than excusable, deliberate rather than inadvertent, or intentional rather than unintentional, if it's rightly to be held as culpable. However, if an individual refuses to reexamine or reevaluate their beliefs despite evidence that those beliefs may be mistaken or in need of better justification, then they may be held blameworthy for their refusal to reexamine or reevaluate their beliefs. Similarly, if an individual takes an action for which some knowledge of relevant facts is necessary in order to determine the action's rightness or appropriateness, and they willfully refuse to inform themselves of those relevant facts, then they may rightly be held responsible for any negative consequences of that action.

      We may be culpably ignorant for not knowing something (such as the rightness or wrongness of a particular action) if (1) we should have known about that thing (or should have known that we didn't know about that thing), and (2) as a consequence of that ignorance, we (a) do what we shouldn't have done or cause others to do what they shouldn't have done, or (b) don't do what we should have done or cause others not to do what they should have done. If our actions or non-actions in such cases cause negative consequences for ourselves or others, then we may rightly be held blameworthy for those actions or non-actions.

      Holly Smith (1983) argues that the concept of culpable ignorance must be restricted to (1) cases in which an individual believed they were acting justifiably, and (2) cases in which they were not acting precipitously. Thus, culpable ignorance involves an initial "benighting act" for which the individual is culpable and in which the individual fails to improve (or positively impairs) their initial cognitive position, followed by an "unwitting wrongful act."¹

      Niels de Haan (2020) argues that culpable ignorance may in some cases be irreducibly collective (not attributable to a single individual). While it might not be fair in some cases to expect an individual to have avoided their ignorance of a particular fact, it might be fair to expect the group to which they belong to have collectively avoided its ignorance of that particular fact.² In such cases, the group, rather than the individual, is culpable (or at least the individual is culpable only insofar as they are a member of that group). de Haan notes that an individual's (or group's) culpability for not knowing something may also imply they could reasonably have been expected to take measures to remedy or avoid that ignorance.³

      Alexander F. Sarch (2014) explains that when someone is willfully ignorant of some fact (when they deliberately avoided learning whether the fact in question obtained), they may be held culpable for that ignorance. For example, in cases where a defendant is charged with a crime, and the defendant was willfully ignorant of some fact, they may, according to the "willful ignorance doctrine," be found to be culpable on the ground they were willfully ignorant of the relevant fact.⁴

       Culpable ignorance may include willful ignorance (the deliberate rejection of knowledge or the deliberate avoidance of measures to become informed about something), but not all culpable ignorance is willful, insofar as it may in some cases be due simply to a lack of diligence with regard to measures to become informed about something (in cases where there is a duty to become informed about that thing), rather than deliberate avoidance of those measures.

      Jason B. Freeman (2022) defines willful blindness as "an attempt to avoid liability for a wrongful act by intentionally failing to make reasonable inquiry when faced with the suspicion or awareness of the high likelihood of wrongdoing." He also says, "It is a deliberate attempt to keep one's "head in the sand" when faced with information or facts that create a suspicion or awareness that there is a likelihood of wrongdoing."⁵

      The Law Library of American Law and Legal Information at law.jrank.org defines culpable ignorance as "the lack of knowledge or understanding that results from the omission of ordinary care to acquire such knowledge or understanding."⁶

      What's the relation between willful ignorance and denialism? They may be closely related to or associated with each other, but they aren't the same. Willful ignorance may involve a failure to be acquainted with relevant facts, while denialism may involve an acquaintance with relevant facts, but a failure to recognize those facts as facts.  For example, denialism may involve denial of such facts as the link between HIV and AIDS, the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and the efficacy of vaccines in preventing transmissible diseases such as polio, measles, and COVID-19.

      Charles W. Mills (2007) describes "white ignorance" as a group-based cognitive phenomenon that has epistemic, moral, social, and political implications. It's based on a system of white privilege in which white racism plays a significant causal role. It's also based on white normativity, i.e. on the centering of whiteness as a constitutive norm, while the experience of blacks and other people of color is marginalized. One of its functions has been to protect those who for racial reasons have needed not to see or know about the black or brown people in their midst.⁷

      Annette Martin (2021) presents three alternative accounts of "white ignorance," as (1) a willful ignorance about racial injustice (the "willful ignorance view"), (2) an ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources, e.g. by accepting faulty norms of reasoning about race (the "cognitivist view"), and (3) an ignorance resulting from a social process that systemically gives rise to racial injustice (the "structuralist view").⁸

      Examples of white ignorance (sometimes guised as "color blindness") include blindness to acts of racial injustice, blindness to racially discriminatory laws or policies, and blindness to structures of racial inequality.

FOOTNOTES

¹Holly Smith, "Culpable Ignorance," in The Philosopher's Annual, Vol. VI, 1983, 243-271.

²Niels de Haan, "Collective Culpable Ignorance," in Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 2021, p. 99.

³Ibid., p. 100.

⁴Alexander F. Sarch, "Willful ignorance, Culpability, and the Criminal Law," in St. John's Law Review, No. 4, Vol. 88, 2014, 1022-1101.

⁵Jason B. Freeman, "Willful Blindness and Corporate Liability," 2022, online at Freeman Law, https://freemanlaw.com/willful-blindness-and-corporate-liability/.

⁶Law Library of American Law and Legal Information, "Culpable," 2022, online at https://law.jrank.org/pages/5914/Culpable.html

⁷Charles W. Mills, "White Ignorance," in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007, pp. 13-28.

⁸Annette Martin, "What is White Ignorance?" in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 71, Issue 4, October 2021, 864-885.