Introduction
This is a
guest blog by an acquaintance of mine, Thomas K. Johnson, a philosopher and
theologian. It’s a piece of rather serious philosophical writing addressing
some of what lies beneath the class between Islamic terrorists and the West. If
you don’t read this sort of essay regularly, you may need to pause and work
through the piece slowly, but the effort is worth your while.
Tom argues
that both sides in the conflict have a mistaken notion of where we find a basis
for morality. Western secularists find morality in the social contract a
society develops to bring order to life; Muslims find morality in the
revelation found in the Qu’ran; and Christians find morality in the revelation
of God’s law found in the Bible. Sounds reasonable enough, but if we think
about it, each system of morality is authoritative only for the members of that
particular tribe. The members of the other tribes reject the alterative system
and its basis, and fear that if it is followed a form of nihilism will result
overthrowing the very nature of the civilization we wish to defend. Tom argues,
further, that this Christian thinking about morality is a deviation of the
historic, orthodox position on the topic, a position that allows Christians to
have a basis on which to discuss right and wrong with both secularists and
Muslims. Thinking clearly is necessary if we want to understand the deep
divisions fragmenting our world and the deadly violence that is being used by
committed people to try to stop the wave of nihilism that they see threatening
all they hold dear.
Lessons from Paris
2015: Clash of Civilizations or Battling Nihilisms?
For about twenty years,
because of important publications with similar titles from the pen of Samuel
Huntington, it has been common to interpret international and cross cultural
events in light of The Clash of
Civilizations theory. It was claimed that global and regional conflict
would no longer be along ideological or economic lines, but rather between opposing
civilizations. The several civilizations are distinguished from each other by
language, history, culture, tradition, and, especially by different religions,
with the role of religions in civilizations and inter-civilizational conflicts
becoming increasingly large as a result of globalization.
Some Christians liked the Huntington
thesis because it recognized an important role of religions in society. But in
recent times this theory has, in my opinion, been partly disproved because of
the role that religious freedom can play in societies Nevertheless, the clash
of civilizations continues to have plausibility sufficient to influence both
the interpretation of current events and the decisions of governments. I think
this theory played a tragic role in shaping the American “War on Terror.” And I
heard this theory being used by some to interpret the tragic events in Paris
over the last two weeks. As an alternative to the clash theory of
civilizations, I would offer a different interpretation of what we saw in
Paris. We should ask if we are seeing a cultural battle between different
perceptions of nihilism, especially as different groups of people defend
against the perceived nihilism of the other.
The word “nihilism” comes from the
Latin word nihil, which means
“nothing.” One of the ways the word came into our modern languages was through
the Judeo-Christian claim that creation is or was ex nihilo, meaning “from nothing.” Those of us who studied western
civilization in American universities commonly associate nihilism with the name
of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and his various intellectual heirs.
Nietzsche and followers, or so we heard, believed in no objective truth, no
objective right and wrong, no God’s eye view of the universe. All we have, they
claim, are competing examples of the will to power, with the important proviso
that the elegant way to exercise the will to power is not by means of brutality
but by means of telling a controlling narrative. By means of telling a
compelling story, we create new values, even though no values exist outside the
stories we tell.
Partly informed by such Nietzschean
considerations, during the many years I taught university classes on the
history of western ethics, I often suggested that the era we call “modernity”
was characterized by a significant shift in the way people in the West
considered right and wrong.
Prior to modernity, our western
cultural ancestors (at least those who were not nihilists) thought that right and wrong were somehow rooted in
the nature of being or the nature of the universe. This was true whether we
studied Plato, the Stoics, the ancient Jewish philosophers like Philo, or
Christian thought from Augustine and Aquinas through Martin Luther and John
Calvin. (It was even true of Aristotle and Old Testament books such as Genesis,
Amos, and Proverbs.) A key phrase running through much of this moral/cultural
heritage, especially during the fully developed stage of the biblical/classical
synthesis, was “the natural law,” meaning a moral law that was somehow related
to that which truly is, to being itself. “Ought” was always based on “is;”
“should” arose from the nature of being.
Starting with modernity, a huge
change occurred across western civilization, including both secularism and the
Christian tradition, so that right and wrong were seen as based in history, not
in being. We can take Thomas Hobbes’s important book, Leviathan (1651), as a signal of the transition to modernity. At
least as popularly understood, Hobbes taught that right and wrong are entirely
rooted in the social contract by which society is formed. Outside the social
contract, in the state of nature, there is only the war of all against all;
within the social contract imposed by a sovereign on the people, there is the
rule of law on the basis of which we know the difference between right and
wrong.
To note with especial clarity:
within the modern Hobbesian worldview, it is not only our knowledge of right
and wrong that is dependent on history; the very existence of right and wrong
is dependent on historical facts, particularly whether or not a particular
social contract exists. “Ought” was no longer based on “is;” ought was now seen
as historically dependent or historically accidental. And after a study of
Hobbes ethics, my university students often seemed to feel threatened by
nihilism, and during the classroom discussion they would begin grasping for
some basis for morality or some explanation of right and wrong that was not
entirely dependent on a particular political history that our neighbors might
not share or accept.
It still surprises me (though I have
known it for many years) that many religiously conservative Christians, many
calling themselves pietistic, confessional, or evangelical, have been
simultaneously partly modernist in their philosophy regarding the foundations
of ethics. Even among Christians since Hobbes we find the new modernist idea
that the existence of right and wrong, or our knowledge of right and wrong, is
based entirely on particular historical facts.
Specifically, many have thought, we
would not know right and wrong if God had not given us the Bible or the Ten
Commandments. Please do not misunderstand me: I believe God gave us the Bible
and that God placed the Ten Commandments with a special status within the Bible
as written in stone. (I also read from both the Old and New Testaments in my
quiet time this morning.) But prior to modernity, both Protestant and Catholic
Christians generally said that God wrote his moral law on the human mind,
heart, and conscience, as the image of his eternal moral character, as part of
creation, which was repeated in the Ten Commandments.
The pre-modern Christian view,
taught by both Catholics and Protestants, was that both the existence of right
and wrong and our knowledge of right and wrong were largely based on creation,
not entirely on salvation history. But after Hobbes, many Christians started to
sound a lot like Hobbes, saying right and wrong are dependent on history and
our knowledge of history, whether the history of a social contract (Hobbes) or
the history of redemption recorded in the Bible (some Christians).
Christians and secularists were too
often united in separating ethics from being. This left western culture
sometimes fluctuating between feeling threatened by moral nihilism and
accepting a historical moral authority that others perceived to be arbitrary.
I have been harsh in my description
of my Christian community, so bear with my brief critique of Islam. It seems
clear to me that Islam already had a weakness in the direction of the moral
reasoning of modernity already before the onset of modernity. Based merely on
reading a few textbooks on Islamic history, theology, and ethics, it seems to
me that Muslim ethics usually has seen our knowledge of right and wrong as
based entirely, or almost entirely, on history and our knowledge of that
history. That is why the Koran plays a different role in the life of the Muslim
than I think the Bible should play in the life of a Christian. Well before the
onset of modernity, Muslim theologians generally thought the proper knowledge
of right and wrong was based on the Koran, the tradition, and the multiple
schools of Islamic law, all of which are historically contingent. So far there
has been very little place for Muslim theologians to say that Allah wrote the
demands of the Sharia onto the human heart, mind, and conscience in creation
prior to giving the Koran, such that knowledge of the Sharia (and the
difference between right and wrong) becomes partly independent from a particular
historical community. Muslims may feel that any question about their prophet is
blasphemous because it raises the specter of nihilism, the loss of all meaning
and morals. At the same time, those of us who pointedly do not find our
identity within Muslim history perceive the desired imposition of the Sharia on
our societies as either a power grab or an assault on all our meanings and
morals, another specter of nihilism.
Seeing right and wrong, or our
knowledge of right and wrong, as being entirely historically contingent truly
does, I believe, leave us philosophically vulnerable to become nihilists. It is
only a small step within the human mind from following modernity and saying my
(or our) knowledge of right and wrong is entirely dependent on my history
(whether as a Muslim, as a Christian, or as a follower of Hobbes) to feeling
like a nihilist, that there are no universal moral rules that apply to all
people everywhere. In my own study and university teaching, I always felt a
steadily unfolding progression of ideas from Hobbes to Nietzsche. I am sure
that basing ethics entirely on history (Hobbes) leads slowly but surely to
nihilism, the loss of morals and meaning on the everyday level, as well as to
the loss of ultimate truth claims. And we perceive this threatening nihilism
more quickly among the people who do not share our own cultural or religious
story. Muslims easily perceive both Christians and secularists as endangered by
nihilism, and vice versa.
What we have seen recently on the
streets of Paris is, I believe, the result of two battling nihilisms, more
precisely, two groups of people striving to defend themselves against the
threat of nihilism they perceive in the historical relativism of their
neighbors. They do not feel like they can trust their neighbors to act on the
basis of a standard of behavior that is suitable for all of humanity. By this I
do not in any way imply a moral equivalency between the good work of the French
police, defending their city and their citizens, and the truly evil work of
terrorists murdering ordinary people. Nor do I imply that a handful of
terrorists really represent many millions of Muslims. But I would call our
attention to a philosophical similarity between radical Islam, admittedly more
extreme than older Islam because of doctrinal changes, and western democracy.
Both separate knowledge of right and wrong from being; both say right and wrong
are based on the way we tell the history of our community; both are left using
force (one illegitimate, one legitimate) to enforce the values of their
community without a satisfactory appeal to a non-historical basis for universal
values or moral ideals; both feel like the other represents the threat of
nihilism. The gun battles in the Paris streets portray the conflict of
competing nihilisms, Mohammed (as interpreted by extremists) versus Thomas
Hobbes (as followed across modernity), unified in separating morality from the
nature of being, but in such a way that most people perceive the implied
nihilism in the worldview of the other before they perceive the threat of
nihilism in their own worldviews. And we Christians often do not know what to
say because we have neglected important themes in the classical Christian
tradition of moral thought that connected ethics with being.
Obviously I would like to see a
renewed discussion of the relation between being and ethics, the natural moral
law, in the spirit of the biblical/classical synthesis. This is essential to
address the moral nihilism against which both radical Islam and the western
democracies are fighting. As a small step in this direction, but with less
metaphysics involved, I am sure there would be tremendous benefit in renewed
global public discussion of the relation between universal human duties (with
its own body of literature) and universal human rights (with a rich body of
literature). Both of these discussions embody valuable ongoing echoes of the
older tradition of discussing God’s natural moral law. Both of these ongoing
discussions represent models of the relation between particular religions and
public life that avoid or reduce the threat of nihilism.
Both of these discussions can be
open to people of a variety of religions or of no defined religion in a manner
that may help us to trust others to follow some defined standard of behavior.
In my own writing I have attempted to contribute to both of these global
discussions in a manner that is clearly rooted in my evangelical Christian
convictions but also open to discussion with people of other convictions.
The nihilism, more precisely
the perceived threat of nihilism, embodied in the gunfire on the streets of
Paris is, I think, more of a feeling than a reasoned package of convictions.
Obviously it has to be addressed by preachers and philosophers of religion as a
fundamental human need to be addressed by faith. But nihilism is not only a
faith problem; good moral reason also has a role to play. We can have more
public considerations of universal human rights and universal human duties,
along with the religious and philosophical discussion of what those
duties/rights are and where they originate, so the relation between ethics and
being as least gets back on the table. The problem in Paris goes beyond
gathering intelligence about future terrorists or better efforts to integrate
religious minorities and immigrants into the western democracies, though those
steps are essential. The problems illustrated on the streets of Paris are also
problems of fundamental moral philosophy. Are there reasons not to be nihilists
that are not only based in my telling of my community’s story, reasons that I
can explain to people who follow another story or religion?
That is part of the challenge for Christian moral
philosophers today.
Thomas K. Johnson, Ph.D. is Professor of Ethics, Global
Scholars; Vice President for Research, Martin Bucer European School of
Theology; Senior Advisor to the Theological Commission, World Evangelical
Alliance; and an ordained minister, Presbyterian Church in America. Many of the
books and essays he has written or edited on ethics, human rights, and the role
of religion in society are available as free downloads at
http://www.bucer.org/resources.html. With his wife, Leslie P. Johnson, he has
lived in post-communist Europe for more than twenty years.