Jean-Luc Nancy's Being Singular Plural

Jean-Luc Nancy (1940-2021) was a French philosopher who was born in Caudéran (Gironde) and died in Strasbourg. As a boy, he attended the Lycée Charles de Gaulle in Baden-Baden, Germany, where his father, who was a military engineer, served as a member of the French occupying forces in post-war Germany. In 1951, the family returned to France, and Jean-Luc attended school in Bergerac and then in Toulouse and Paris. In 1973, he completed his doctoral dissertation on Kant under the supervision of Paul Ricoeur, and he earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Paris (Sorbonne). In 1987, he earned a docteur d'état (doctor of state) degree from the University of Toulouse. His doctoral thesis was on the concept of freedom in the work of Kant, Schelling, and Heidegger, and it was published as L'expérience de la liberté (The Experience of Freedom) in 1988. 

      Nancy taught at the Lycée Bartholdi in Colmar from 1964 to 1968, and he then became an assistant at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. From 1973 to 2002, he taught as professor of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg. He was also the Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Chair and professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School. He underwent a heart transplant in 1991 and later developed lymphoma as a result of immunosuppressive therapy. His essay L’intrus (2000, The Intruder, 2002) was a reflection on his experience as a heart transplant survivor, and it inspired a film of the same name, directed by Claire Denis in 2004.  

     Nancy had a very close longtime friendship with the philosopher and literary critic Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940-2007), whom he met in 1967, and with whom he co-authored several books and essays. 

      His many books included Le titre de la lettre: Une lecture de Lacan (co-authored with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, The Title of the Letter: A Reading of Lacan, 1972), L’absolu littéraire: Théorie de la littérature du romantisme allemand (co-authored with Lacoue-Labarthe, 1978, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, 1978), La communauté désoeuvrée (1983, The Inoperative Community, 1991), Le sens du monde (1993, The Sense of the World, 1998), Être singulier pluriel (1996, Being Singular Plural, 2000), Déclosion: Déconstruction du christianisme, Volume 1 (2005, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, 2008), L’Adoration: Déconstruction du christianisme, volume 2 (2010, Adoration: The Deconstruction of Christianity, 2012), La Communauté désavouée (2014, The Disavowed Community, 2016), and Sexistence (2017, Sexistence, 2021).

      Être singulier pluriel (Being Singular Plural) considers the question, "What is the meaning of Being?" by starting from Heidegger's claim that Being is constituted by being-with. Nancy looks at how being-with constitutes Being, and how the original singularity of Being is not "one," but rather a plurality of modes of being-with.

      Heidegger, in Sein und Zeit (1927, Being and Time, 1962), says that Being is always the being of a being, and that Dasein (being-there) is the kind of being that belongs to human beings. Dasein is essentially constituted by Mitsein (being-with). Mit-anderen-sein (being with others) and Mit-einander-sein (being-with-one-another) also belong to the being of Dasein. Alleinsein (being alone) is a deficient mode of Mitsein (being-with) and wouldn't be possible unless there were being-with.¹ Being-with is an essential constituent of being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein), and only through understanding our own being-with can we come to understand our own being-in-the-world.

      Nancy thus considers how the meaning of Being is put into play as being-with. All being is determined in its Being as being-with-one-another, he says.² If Being is being-with, then it is the "with" that constitutes Being.³ Being as being-with is Being whose essence is "with."⁴ The "with" of Being, of the singular and plural, is the essence (and also co-essence) of Being. 

      Nancy's project is therefore to extend the existential analytic of Mitsein (being-with) begun by Heidegger, by introducing a co-existential analytic, in order to show that the co-essentiality of being-with is also the co-originarity of meaning, which can only take place through a sharing of being-with.

      Some key concepts in his analytic include

      Meaning (Le sens), which, according to Nancy, isn't something we can lose, because we ourselves are meaning--not in the sense that we're the content of meaning, but in the sense that we're the element in which meaning is produced and circulates.⁵ "Meaning is its own communication or its own circulation," he says.⁶ If we ask then, as Heidegger did, "What is the meaning of Being?", we must keep in mind that if Being is being-with, then the meaning of Being is to found in this "with," and our understanding of ourselves is to be found though our relations with others. Meaning is the sharing of Being with others.⁷ We can find "the meaning of Being not only as the meaning of "with,"" but also as "the "with" of meaning."⁸ 

      The creation of the world (La création du monde) is not the creation of something from nothing. It's the space where meaning begins, and where presence explodes in the original multiplicity of its division.⁹ It's the origin of each presence as originally shared. Thus, it signifies the death of God insofar as God is seen as the creator, first cause, or prime mover.¹⁰ The world comes into being wherever presence is shared in its multiplicity. Since presence can only exist as co-presence, creation also means existence and co-existence. Whatever exists co-exists, and "the co-implication of existing is the sharing of the world."¹¹ 

      The origin (L'origine) is not that from which the world comes, but rather the coming of each presence into the world, each time singular.¹² If the world is its own origin, then it occurs at each moment, each time we share the meaning of being-with. It forestalls direct access to itself by concealing itself in its multiplicity, but we have access to its truth as often as we are in one another's presence.¹³ It's also irreducibly plural, and it's "the indefinitely unfolding and variously multiplied intimacy of the world."¹⁴ Indeed, the world has no other origin than this singular multiplicity of origins.

      Intimacy (Intimité) is a relation in which Being coincides with Being. It's a relation to ourselves, rather than a relation to others. It's also a co-existence of origins in which our own being-with (étre-avec) is a being-many (être-à-plusieurs). It's a relation in which we see in our own existence the originary coexistence of others. 

      Being singular plural (Être singulier pluriel) is Being as being-with or being-with-one-another. It's therefore plurally singular and singularly plural.¹⁵ The terms "Being," "singular," and "plural" can be rearranged in any order, and none of them precedes or grounds the other. Each of them designates the co-essence of the others.¹⁶

      Community (Communauté) is constituted by the "with" of our being-with. It's our being-with (étre-avec) or being-together (être-ensemble). It's also our co-appearing (comparution) with one another. It's also our having-in-common something or being-in-common in some way. But it's not a matter of being "one," because our being-with is both singular and plural.

      In his essay, Eulogy for the Mêlée (2000), Nancy asks "What is a community?", and he answers, "What we have in common is also what distinguishes and differentiates us. What I have in common with another Frenchman is the fact of not being the same Frenchman as him, and the fact that our "Frenchness" is never, nowhere, in no essence, in no figure, brought to completion.".¹⁷ 

      In his book The Inoperative Community (2001), Nancy also says that when we think we have lost our sense of community, our community may not actually have taken place. We ourselves may be lost, rather than our community. "Community is always what takes place through others and for others."¹⁸

      Critique (La Critique) may be social, political, aesthetic, or philosophical. It may also be revolutionary or reformist, but it presupposes the possibility of unveiling the intelligibility of the real.¹⁹ It's an activity whose theory and practice, according to Nancy, must be supported not by an ontology of the Other and the Same, but by an ontology of being-with-one-another.²⁰ "The subject of ontology first of all entails the critical examination of the conditions of critique."²¹ 

Thus, the study of those conditions is what constitutes "first philosophy."

      First Philosophy (Philosophie Première) is a way of thinking about the meaning of Being without presupposing anything. "The most formal and fundamental requirement [of ontology]," says Nancy, "is that "Being" cannot be assumed to be the simple singular that the name seems to indicate. Its being singular is plural."²² Thus, the singular plural essence of Being is the foundation of first philosophy.

      Language (Le langage)  is the exposing of plural singularity. It's not inside the world, but is the outside of the world in the world.²³ In it, being is exposed as meaning, that is, as the originary sharing according to which beings relate to one another.²⁴

      Touch (Le Toucher) is the contact that human beings have with one another. But contact is beyond connection or separation. Contiguity or proximity may occur between a singular being and another, but not continuity, in the sense that contiguity or proximity reveal the separation that opens up. "All of being is in touch with all of being," says Nancy, "but the law of touching is separation.²⁵ A touch of meaning brings singularity into play, but it also brings into play the plurality of other touches of meaning. Touching is both singular and plural, and thus it takes place as being-with.

      In his book Noli me tangere: On the raising of the Body (2008), Nancy refers to what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene after he had risen from the dead, "Touch me not." But Nancy says that in a certain sense, nothing and no one is untouchable in Christianity. Even the body and blood of Christ are given to be eaten and drunk. In a certain sense, then, Christianity is a "religion of touch, of the sensible, of presence that is immediate to the body and heart."²⁶

      The deconstruction of Christianity (La déconstruction du Christianisme) reveals that the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" privileges love for oneself as a model for loving others. We're told to love others by imitating the love we have for ourselves. But this kind of love is not some possible kind of relation, says Nancy, because it designates the relation of one to another as the infinite relation of the same to the same as originarily other than itself.

      Nancy also says that the "Self" is not a relation of a "me" to itself (""Soi" n'est pas in rapport d'un "moi" à soi-meme"²⁷). The Self is more originary than "me" and "you."²⁸ It's primarily the "as such" of Being in general. "Prior to "me" and "you," "the "Self" is like a "we" that is neither a collective subject nor "intersubjectivity," but rather...the plural fold of the origin."²⁹

      He also explains that "we" always expresses a plurality. But even if it's not articulated as such, "we" is the condition for the possibility of every "I." Thus, "From the very start, the structure of the "Self," even considered as a kind of unique and solitary "self," is the structure of the "with.""³⁰  

FOOTNOTES

¹Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 113.

²Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, translated by Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O'Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 32.

³Ibid., p. 30.

⁴Ibid., p. 33.

⁵Ibid., pp. 1-2.

⁶Ibid., p. 2.

⁷Ibid., p. 2.

⁸Ibid., p. 37

⁹Ibid., p. 3.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 15.

¹¹Ibid., p. 29.

¹²Ibid., p. 12.

¹³Ibid., p. 13

¹⁴Ibid., p. 12.

¹⁵Ibid., p. 28.

¹⁶Ibid., p. 37.

¹⁷Jean-Luc Nancy, "Eulogy for the Mêlée," in Being Singular Plural, p. 154.

¹⁸Nancy, The Inoperative Community, translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. 15.

¹⁹Being Singular Plural, p. 54.

²⁰Ibid., p. 53

²¹Ibid., p. 57.

²²Ibid., p. 56.

²³Ibid., p. 108.

²⁴Ibid., p. 84.

²⁵Ibid., p. 5.

²⁶Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere: On the raising of the Body, translated by Sarah Clift, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 14.

²⁷Nancy, Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Éditions Galilée, 1996), p. 118.

²⁸Nancy, Being SIngular Plural, p. 94.

²⁹Ibid., p. 94

³⁰Ibid, p. 96.

Shouldn't Professional Sports Teams Employ Sports Ethicists?

During the AFC divisional playoff game on January 21, 2023 between the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars, quarterback Patrick Mahomes sprained his right ankle in the first quarter and was sidelined for the rest of the first half. When he returned to the game in the second half, he was still limping, and was obviously limited by his injury, but he eventually led Kansas City to a 27-20 victory. Should coach Andy Reid have allowed Mahomes to stay in the game? Was Reid more concerned with winning the game than with protecting his quarterback from further injury? Should Mahomes have insisted on staying in the game, when his backup, Chad Henne, had been effective in leading the team on a 98-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter? Was it inspiring and admirable for Mahomes to insist on staying in the game or was it merely a foolish gamble that risked worsening his injury and keeping him out of the AFC championship game? (It was later revealed that he had a high ankle sprain and would be able to play against the Cincinnati Bengals for the AFC championship the following week)

      Such questions, many of them ethical in one way or another, are encountered every day in professional sports. Shouldn't professional sports teams employ professional ethicists to advise them how to respond to such questions?

      There are so many examples of bad behavior by professional athletes--taunting, bullying, trash talking, showboating, excessive celebrating, etc.--why wouldn't the employment of professional ethicists by sports teams be helpful in promoting better sportsmanship? Why hasn't the employment of philosophical ethicists been more seriously considered by professional sports leagues in order to improve responses to the many ethical issues in sports? Why wouldn't consultation with sports ethicists be helpful in promoting more ethical conduct by league management, team management, players, and fans?

      Why should we as sports fans have to accept bad behavior by professional athletes as an inevitable aspect of athletic competition? It's not! 

      Is bad behavior among professional athletes a racial or cultural issue? It shouldn't be, but black NFL players are more likely to be suspended than white players,¹ and Latino MLB players are more likely to be suspended for using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) than white or African-American players (this may partly be due to the fact that PEDs are much more available to baseball players in some countries in Latin America²). There may be other factors, but racial profiling and implicit bias also need to be considered as factors in what gets labeled as "bad behavior" and what disciplinary punishment is administered. An example is that NFL referees are far more likely to penalize black players for excessively celebrating than they are to penalize white players.³

      Is bad behavior a matter of educational disparities among professional athletes? It shouldn't be. Most professional athletes have a college education or college degree. (Black athletes may, however, be more commonly subjected to bad behavior by fans, such as racist taunts and verbal abuse).

      Why aren't academic philosophy programs more interested in training philosophers as sports ethicists? Although many university programs offer (or have offered) undergraduate courses in the ethics of sport, including (to name just a few) UNC, Duke, George Mason, Georgia, Penn State, Arizona State, Ohio University, Colorado, Texas, Texas State, Rice, Santa Clara, SUNY, Alabama, and Kansas, how many of their graduate students actually go on to specialize in sports ethics? Why haven't more philosophers written about issues in sports ethics? Why hasn't philosophy become more engaged with professional sports, and why hasn't it been more interested in having some impact on professional sports, given that sports constitute one of the most important spheres of American society and culture?

      On the other hand, there are a significant number of philosophers who do specialize in the philosophy of sport, including (to name just a few) Heather Reid (Exedra Mediterranean Center), Emily Ryall (University of Gloucestershire), Jan Boxill (UNC), Shawn Klein (Arizona State), John William Devine (Swansea University), Francisco Javier Lopez Frias (Penn State), Michael McNamee (Swansea), William J. Morgan (University of British Columbia), Cesar Torres (SUNY Brockport), Jeffrey Fry (Ball State), Douglas Hochstettler (James Madison), Leon Culbertson (Edge Hill), Tim Elcombe (Wilfrid Laurier University), Dale Murray (Wisconsin-Platteville), Grant Farred (Cornell), Erin Tarver (Emory), Jason Holt (Acadia), R. Scott Kretchmar (Penn State), Drew Hyland (Trinity College), David Papineau (Kings College London), David Cruise Malloy (University of Regina), Angela Schneider (Western), Pam Sailors (Missouri State), Sarah Teetzel (Manitoba), Mizuho Takemura (Nihon Fukushi), Irena Martinkova (Charles University in Prague), Leslie Howe (Saskatchewan), and Robert Simon (1941-2018, Hamilton College).

      Academic journals concerned with sports ethics include Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, and Journal of the Philosophy of Sport.

      Professional societies concerned with the philosophy of sport include the British Philosophy of Sport Association, the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport, and the European Association for the Philosophy of Sport.

      Some examples of cases in which the advice of trained ethicists might be useful for professional sports teams include:

• responding to patterns of unsportsmanlike conduct by athletes (In the NFL, some examples of unsportsmanlike conduct include unnecessary roughness, making a horse-collar tackle, grabbing an opponent's face mask, making an illegal crackback block, tackling an opponent who has signaled a fair catch, lowering one's head to make helmet contact with an opponent, roughing the passer, roughing the kicker, taunting, throwing a punch at an opponent, kicking an opponent, and shoving, pushing, or hitting a referee.)
• responding to cheating, substance abuse, and use of PEDs
• responding to off-the-court or off-the-field issues of personal misconduct (such as DUI, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault)
• responding to issues involving gamesmanship (such as trash talking, intentionally annoying or distracting an opponent, faking being fouled in order to draw a penalty on the other team, and intentionally slowing down or disrupting the flow of a game)
• responding to racial, gender, or sexual discrimination (e.g. in the hiring and promotion of players, coaches, league officials, and team management personnel)
• responding to issues involving the inclusion of transgender athletes in women's sports
• responding to issues involving the safety of athletes and fans (such as the use of protective equipment, concussion protocols, protection of injured athletes from further injury, protection of athletes from sexual abuse or harassment by coaches or trainers, providing security for locker room and training facilities, providing protective barriers for fans, etc.)
• responding to intentional "tanking" by teams involving the removal or trading away of key players from team lineups in order to lose more games and obtain higher draft picks
• responding to misconduct by fans (such as disorderly conduct, intoxication, fighting, throwing objects at players or onto the field, taunting players, taunting other fans, and using profane or abusive language)

      Professional ethicists could be useful advisers or co-workers in the management of many of these problems, and could help to promote social responsibility and ethical integrity in professional sports.

FOOTNOTES

¹Benjamin D. Rosenberg, "The NFL Has a Race-Related Suspension Problem," in Psychology Today, July 14, 2020, online at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-games/202007/the-nfl-has-race-related-suspension-problem

²James Wagner, "The Dominican Republic Loves Baseball, but Steroid Problems Run Deep," in The New York Times, Nov. 4, 2022, online at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/04/sports/baseball/jenrry-mejia-dominican-republic-steroids.html

³Dwayne Bray, "NFL referees penalize Black players for celebrating far more than White players," in Andscape, November 17, 2022, online at https://andscape.com/features/nfl-referees-penalize-black-players-for-celebrating-far-more-than-white-players/

Apophatic Eternalism in Theology

Eternalism in theology may explore the eternal nature of God or ultimate reality, and it may hold that there are eternal truths or realities in God and/or eternal essences or principles in the universe. It may be distinguished from eternalism in the philosophy of time (which is opposed to presentism, and which holds that not only present objects, but also past and future objects exist).

      Apophatic or negative eternalism in theology may be a branch of apophatic or negative theology that attempts to better understand the eternal nature of God's existence by understanding what it is not (just as apophatic or negative theology attempts to better understand God by understanding what God is not).

      Negative theology may attempt to formulate true propositions about who or what God is by formulating propositions about who or what God is not. On the other hand, negative theology may also hold that since God transcends our understanding, we can never fully establish the truth of any propositions about God. Thus, any real knowledge or adequate understanding of who or what God is may be impossible.

      Negative theology may also hold that since we can't fully understand who or what God is, we can't predicate any positive attributes or properties of God. We can only predicate negative attributes or properties (or say what God is not).

      Similarly, one kind of apophatic eternalism in theology may attempt to better understand the concept of eternal life by understanding what it is not. By making negative statements about eternal life and what it is not, apophatic eternalism may attempt to arrive at a cataphatic or positive understanding of what eternal life is and what it consists of.

      In the Christian faith, this may mean that one way of understanding the meaning of a "resurrected life" or "resurrection life" may be to try to understand what it is not (an earthly life as lived before, a life without redemption from sin, a life without hope or understanding, a life without spiritual transformation).

      Another kind of apophatic eternalism in theology may attempt to to clarify the sense in which God's existence is eternal, by clarifying the sense in which it is not (eternally changing or unchanging, eternally present in all things or in only some things, for example).

      Apophatic eternalism may be motivated by uncertainty, doubt, or skepticism about the existence of God, by perplexity, puzzlement, or suspension of judgment about the concept of eternal life, or by the perception that we need to reexamine the meaning of statements about attaining eternal life and becoming one with God in eternity. It may therefore also be motivated by the perception that we need to clarify the meaning, use, and purpose of religious language about such concepts. The meaning of the term "eternal life" may be ineffable and indefinable (because the nature of that life may not be totally clear to us during our present lives), and just as we may differ in our understanding of what we mean by the word "God," so we may also differ in our understanding of what we mean by terms such as "eternal life," "the afterlife," "life after death," and "life beyond death."

Some Defects of Moral Particularism

Moral particularism may be described as the position that our moral thinking should be guided by the morally relevant features of particular cases or situations, rather than by general principles of conduct. The particularist can always find exceptions to moral principles or can find cases in which those principles may be inapplicable, misleading, or insufficient. The particularist therefore contends that our moral judgments are always context-dependent, and that the rightness or wrongness of our moral judgments depends on the relevant features of each particular case or situation, rather than the application of moral principles to that particular case or situation.  

      Pekka Vӓyrynen (2011) describes three kinds of particularism: (1) the position that there are no true or valid moral principles, (2) the position that there's no good evidence for their existence, and (3) the position that our moral thinking in no way depends on their existence.¹ He explains that a prominent argument for particularism is the argument from "holism," that a moral reason to perform an action in a particular context may not be a reason to perform that action in another context, while the argument from "atomism" may say to the contrary that a moral reason to perform an action in a particular context may also be a reason to perform that action in another context.²

      Jonathan Dancy (2004) distinguishes between holism and atomism by saying that holism is the claim that a moral reason in one case may be no reason at all (or even a contrary reason) in another case, while "full atomism" is the claim that a moral reason in one case must remain a reason, and must retain the same reason-giving polarity, in every other case. He distinguishes between "full atomism" and "cluster atomism" (the claim that features occur in clusters, and that if all the features in one case are relevantly similar to the features in another case, then any feature that is a reason in one will be a reason in the other.) However, he notes that an argument against cluster atomism is that the polarity of features in a cluster could be affected by changes in the polarity of features in a relevantly similar cluster. A weaker form of atomism would merely claim that if two cases are relevantly similar, then whatever features are reasons in one case will also be reasons in the other.³

      Dancy also distinguishes between theoretical reasons and practical reasons, and between reasons for belief and reasons for action. He explains that the kind of holism he advocates is intended to hold for both sides of each distinction.⁴  

      Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever (2016) explain that the particularist argument from holism has been rejected by generalists who question the sustainability of the distinction between the particular features of a situation that count as reasons and the contextual factors (defeaters, enablers, etc.) that impact whether they do indeed count as reasons. The context-sensitivity of reasons depends on this distinction in order to explain why some particular feature of a situation that counts as a reason in one context may not count as a reason in another context.⁵

      Ridge and McKeever also explain that generalists have rejected the argument from holism on the grounds that it may not be able to explain how reasons, enablers, defeaters, intensifiers/attenuators, etc. actually combine or interact with one another.⁶

      Even if we grant that moral principles may not always be generalizable, there are other arguments to be made against particularism, however.

      In Act 1, Scene 3 of Hamlet, Polonius gives his son Laertes the following advice, as Laertes prepares to leave for France:

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

      While we might question the generalizability of any or all of these principles, the possibility that they might convey some moral wisdom would seem to be denied by particularism. Indeed, particularism doesn't seem to allow for moral instruction from any general principles of fairness, honesty, loyalty, prudence, humility, and so on. However, further examination of the extent to which such principles actually promote virtuous conduct might provide some evidence for their validity.

      On the other hand, a particularist virtue ethics (virtue ethical particularism) may seek to understand the way in which moral virtues may be expressed by judgments that depend on the relevant features of each particular case or situation. In such an ethics, the rightness or wrongness of actions may depend on the degree to which those actions express moral virtues rather than the degree to which they conform to general principles of conduct.

      Another defect of particularism, however, is that it doesn't seem to allow for the fact that some principles may accommodate contextual variability and may not necessarily be rigid and inflexible. Some principles may appropriately yield or defer to other principles of wider application or higher priority.

      Another defect of particularism is that it doesn't seem to allow for the possibility of moral learning and experience, and for the generalizability of what has been learned from previous relevant cases. Vӓyrynen (2011) explains that particularists may reply that discovering the morally relevant features of a particular case may enable us to learn what kinds of features may be relevant in subsequent cases. However, it's still difficult to see how this can happen without grasping some generally applicable principles.⁷

      

FOOTNOTES

¹Pekka Vӓyrynen, "Moral Particularism," in The Continuum Companion to Ethics, edited by Christian Miller (New York: Continuum, 2011), p. 251.

²Ibid., p. 253.

³Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 94.

⁴Ibid., p. 74.

⁵Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever, "Moral Particularism and Moral Generalism," in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016), online at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-particularism-generalism/.

⁶Ibid.

⁷Vӓyrynen, p. 258.

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 don't often 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.