However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
Review of Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy (1990)
Glenn
Mason-Riseborough (22/11/2002)
(A friend lent me his copy of this volume by Francis Schaeffer (S), hoping it would help me in my studies. As I started reading it I found myself asking numerous questions, so as I read I briefly jotted down what I saw as S’s main points and their weaknesses. My list grew, and I thought it might be useful to turn it into something semi-coherent, to return with the book. This is the result. It is by no means intended to be thorough, polished or ideally structured.)
The volume contains three books divided into sections and chapters. I give a relatively detailed synopsis and commentary of Book 1 Section 1, to give an idea of S’s approach and style, before making a concluding summary.
S does not tell us where he is going in this book – he does not give a chapter structure, which makes it hard to follow his thesis. What are his aims? What are his assumptions? Where is his starting point? What will he be arguing and defending? He does not address any of these points, and forces us at times to read between the lines to follow his point. He starts out in his first chapter making a number of assertions, with very little or no evidence to back them up. He frequently claims that “people” thought this or that, without citing any individual sources to back up his claims. He does not tell us whether he will be defending all or some of these assertions in later parts of the book, or which points he will come back to, though a charitable reading will assume that he will come back to all these points, defend them, and cite his sources. Thus the reader is left somewhat confused and in the dark as to S’s purpose in this book. Extrapolating what I see as the main points from the first chapter, I take it that S intends to defend the following claims (though he does not explicitly identify them as such):
1. There has been a change in the way people think and approach truth and knowledge. S calls the point of change the “line of despair.”
Old way: there really are absolutes “in the areas of Being (or knowledge) and in the area of morals” (though the contents were often disagreed about). S calls this the “thesis of antithesis,” and equates it to the claim that if we have A we cannot also have non-A – in other words, the law of non-contradiction. I am a little puzzled why S equates Being and knowledge, since they are generally considered quite distinct. Nowhere does S explain what he means by these terms. S also does not consider or seem to allow for the possibility of there being a fact of the matter with respect to some things but not others (as most philosophers hold today). For example, it seems plausible that beauty is not an absolute – what is beautiful for one person is not beautiful for another.
New way: thesis of antithesis is false. S does not elaborate further.
S claims that the new way is “almost monolithic,” and as evidence (1) mentions, but does not cite examples from, a number of popular magazines, including Time, as exemplifying this trend, and (2) asks us to consider a “truly modern girl’s” puzzlement if we were to tell her to “be a good girl” – apparently S thinks that the girl would think such a command to be meaningless and a nonsense phrase.
2. People went under the line at different times. S says we cannot put an exact date on it, though he does give some approximations: (1) geographically – it spread from Germany to Continental Europe to Britain to the Americas (in Europe the change was around 1890; in the US it was around 1935, with the crucial years being 1913 - 1940); (2) socially – intellectuals to educated to workers to middle class; (3) in different academic areas –philosophy, then art, music, general culture, and finally theology. S gives no references or evidence for this.
3. There is a unity to non-Christian thinking. S calls this Rationalism or Humanism (S equates the two terms). By Humanism, S means the process of coming to know the world by starting only with the individual human and rationally building to find all knowledge, meaning and value (S contrasts this with the technical term used in Julian Huxley’s The Humanist Frame). There is no discussion of what it means to start only with the individual human. S does not consider sceptics or more modest non-Christians who do not assume that we can build to find all knowledge. Nor does he consider (for example) the huge philosophical tradition in Classical China that does not start with individual humans.
Above the line of despair non-Christians thought they could know all without departing from the thesis of antithesis. However, each disagreed with the others about the content. Early non-Christians had no basis and no right for continuing to assume the old way was true, though they did so for many years. Aside from calling such people “romantic,” S does not explain further or defend his claim. Eventually, says S, this “rationalistic optimism” ended, philosophers realised that they could not find a unified theory through the thesis of antithesis, and thus rejected said thesis.
4. The new way is wrong, this change is a bad thing, and it is the most crucial problem facing Christianity today. Below the line of despair “spirituality” becomes exactly opposite in meaning to Christian spirituality. Again no explanation as to what S means by spirituality. S laments that “Christian ‘thinkers’” did not see this problem coming and didn’t attack it earlier. Further, it is the task of Christians today to fight this new way.
In this chapter S develops his thesis by briefly looking at a number philosophers, remembering that he claims that philosophy was the first to go under the line of despair. S gives no introduction to this chapter to attach it to his previous chapter, but leaps straight in, looking at, in turn, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Existentialists (Jaspers, Sartre, Heidegger), Anglo-Saxon philosophers, and (with a puzzling link) the use of drugs. One recurring criticism of the positions he discusses is the evidentialist one that they make a number of assumptions with insufficient evidence.
Hegel: S states that before Hegel “truth, in the sense of antithesis, is related to the idea of cause and effect”. This issue of truth would seem to be pivotal to S's central thesis, but it is at this point that he is especially unclear. I have no idea what S thinks this supposed relation is, and it seems an especially bizarre claim to make. Whatever it is, he states that with Hegel this changed, and dialectical reasoning was introduced: “… instead of thinking of cause and effect, what we really have is a thesis, and opposite it an antithesis, with the answer to their relationship not a horizontal movement of cause and effect, but a synthesis. … the conclusion is that all possible positions are relativized, and leads to the concept that truth is to be sought in synthesis rather than antithesis.” The idea that cause and effect might move horizontally is also puzzling. S does not attempt to explain Hegel’s thinking further, does not reference any of Hegel’s work, and does not attempt any critique of this confused and skeletal exposition of Hegel’s thinking (contra S, Hegel does not fall for the obviously incoherent and self-defeating claim that all positions are relative). He ends this section with the claim that “Hegel and synthesis have won” in the sense that this is the way that everyone now thinks. Again, S gives no evidence to support this radical and clearly false claim (there are very few Hegalians in academia).
Kierkegaard: S focuses on Kierkegaard’s expression of the leap of faith in the context of the Abraham and Isaac story. S explains that Kierkegaard thought that Abraham’s action was an expression of a leap of faith, and that Abraham had no rational base to act from. S critiques Kierkegaard by replying “in this thinking concerning Abraham, Kierkegaard had not read the Bible carefully enough. Before Abraham was asked to move towards the sacrifice of Isaac (which, of course, God did not allow to be consummated), he had much propositional revelation from God, had seen God, God had fulfilled promises to him. In short, God’s words at this time were in the context of Abraham’s strong reason for knowing that God both existed and was totally trustworthy.” In saying this, S completely misses Kierkegaard’s points. Essentially, Kierkegaard is critiquing the view that it is possible to get knowledge of certain matters through dispassionate, objective reasoning (using logical inferences and/or empirical evidences). In these situations we have to believe something (one way or the other) with insufficient evidence, and must make a leap of faith. Two thoughts. Firstly, we must distinguish between real revelation and apparent revelation. Many people claim with complete conviction to have heard God, yet we all readily accept that at least some are deluded (i.e. schizophrenic). From one’s own perspective no amount of evidence is sufficient to give absolute certainty that one is not deluded, and thus making a decision whether or not we really heard God can never be completely rational. Secondly, at no point does S claim that God’s command to Abraham was moral (and this is Kierkegaard’s big thing). The main thrust of Kierkegaard’s assertion is that Abraham did not have any conclusive evidence on this moral issue. For Kierkegaard the leap of faith is a choice between the “ethical” and “religious” ways of life (these are Kierkegaard’s technical terms). The wrongness of killing one’s own son is deeply engrained in people (by social norms, biological processes, filial concerns, etc), so to kill one’s son is to go against the ethical way of life. Following the religious life sometimes means going against the ethical life, and Kierkegaard’s point is that one can choose to either follow the ethical life and be offended at God’s order to kill one’s own son (and reject God as immoral) or have faith that God’s command is right, at some higher unknown level, despite contrary evidence given by one’s upbringing and moral beliefs. The evidence either way is inconclusive, and this is why Kierkegaard maintains that it is a leap. S then suggests that Kierkegaard’s position has led to the view that faith and the rational are mutually exclusive, but once again provides no examples to show what or who he might be talking about. In fact there are numerous views concerning the relationship between faith and reason, many of which show that the two are compatible, in different ways. He then makes the sweeping over-generalisation that “from that time on, if rationalistic man wants to deal with the really important things of human life (such as purpose, significance, the validity of love), he must discard rational thought about them and make a gigantic nonrational leap of faith.” This is clearly false and absurd. S then states, without examples or evidence, that all academic philosophy today denies the possibility of “drawing a circle which will encompass all,” and hence calls all philosophies today antiphilosophies. It is unclear exactly what S is trying to say here, since he does not elaborate on what this circle analogy is supposed to represent. I have a number of possibilities in mind as to what is meant, but I shan’t pursue it here.
Existentialism: S starts with Jaspers. S says that Jaspers claimed that a non-communicable “final experience” is of the utmost importance for understanding meaning in life. S’s critique of Jaspers consists of (1) him telling some of Jaspers’ students (who apparently believed that S had had such an experience) what his experience was, which by their definition was supposedly impossible, and (2) feeling sorry for Jaspers’ followers in both their inability to express themselves and their obsessively hanging onto their experience. Both these criticisms are beside the point. Secondly, S discusses Sartre and Camus, claiming that Sartre is the more consistent of the two, but gives no evidence for this claim or where the inconsistencies might lie. S claims (without evidence) that Sartre accepts that it is just as good to help an old lady across the road as it is to beat her over the head and snatch her handbag (in fact, things are not so straightforward for Sartre, and this requires a lot of qualification). S then critiques this by (1) claiming, without biographical evidence, that neither Sartre not Camus lived their theories in practice, and (2) calling their positions “strange and desperate.” Neither point has any philosophical weight. At best, (1) shows personal failings, not failings in the theories, and (2) is empty name-calling. Thirdly, S discusses Heidegger (in fact, Heidegger is not an existentialist if one thinks the central doctrine of existentialism is that of human choice, since he thinks that the only choice one has is between one’s heritage and the crowd - it is Sartre's misreading of a passage in Heidegger that has resulted in this almost universal misunderstanding). S notes (inaccurately and without evidence) that there are two phases of Heidegger’s thinking – the change apparently taking place around 1959 (in fact Heidegger discusses two turning points in his life – a u-turn and a bend, both of which took place well before 1959). S then critiques Heidegger by saying that S’s students make fun of Heidegger through derogatory songs that point out Heidegger’s change in thinking. Again, this critique by S is weak, gossipy and disappointing. But consider similarly, an important component of many Christian denominations is of people having a complete and radical shift in thought and attitude, which they call “being born again” (think, paradigmatically, of Saul/Paul). To be consistent, S would have to also reject much of Christianity.
Anglo-Saxon views: S claims that there are two main types of Anglo-Saxon philosophy – logical positivism and defining philosophy. He says both are antiphilosophies. S rightly points out that logical positivism is largely seen today as untenable (it had died out by the 1960s). S’s critique is that the logical positivists had no basis for claiming that empirical evidence “has objective validity” (again, S gives a gossipy story about how he criticised a student when the student gave a talk on logical positivism). In this way he claims that this is equally a leap of faith on the part of the logical positivists – a problem, but not fatal. More telling problems with logical positivism, which S does not discuss, include the issue of verifiability and the worry that logical positivism relies on a narrow view of language that ignores many meaningful utterances. S then turns to defining philosophy. He observes that it is prologomena – “they start off by defining terms in the hope that one day some of the random pieces may be fitted together.” I am not sure why S thinks the pieces are random, and he does not elaborate. I take S to be wrong on this point. S praises defining philosophy by saying that some problems are solved in this way. He gives no examples of such successes, and this seems at odds with the earlier claim about randomness. But S also criticises it by firstly saying that philosophy should be more substantive than this – it does not deal with meaning and purpose, which historically philosophy did. In fact, many “defining philosophers” of today do discuss meaning and purpose, and divide it into many, more detailed questions and topics within philosophical branches such as philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and aesthetics. Secondly, S criticises defining philosophy as also having a leap of faith. This, again, contrary to S, is not fatal or even bad, and most philosophers today readily accept that they are making a number of assumptions (which they try to identify). The common thought today is that if one tries to start with no assumptions, one will be left going around in solipsistic circles. To get to the substantive issues, it is helpful to make some assumptions (and those picked are ones that we mostly all plausibly accept in real life). If it leads to contradictions, then one starts with different assumptions, if not, then one continues to search for answers. A lot of progress has been made in this way, and as S acknowledges, some longstanding problems have been solved through it.
The use of drugs: S next investigates the idea that drugs provide a means of gaining greater understanding, inaccessible by logical and/or scientific investigations. He observes that Leary connected drug use with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and thus proceeds to the huge overgeneralization that mysticism is the same in both the West and the East. Leary is not the extent of mysticism in the West and the Tibetan Book of the Dead is not the extent of mysticism in the East. S then critiques drug use to find understanding with the claim that since it is non-rational it must be bad. This criticism has not yet said anything, since supporters of drug use equally accept its non-rationality. S needs to say why it is bad, by showing (for example) that drug use fails to provide a means of gaining greater understanding. S ends the chapter by asking why Christians should not use drugs, and answers with the unsatisfying because “playing with drugs is foolish, as well as wrong.” S may be correct, but surely he needs to tell us why it is foolish and wrong.
In a final summation section, S criticises “existential” explanations (he gives two possible explanations of seeing “redness”), both via drugs and not, as not being open to communication. As above, this is not a criticism as it stands, since supporters of these views would say this is precisely the point. S then proceeds to give an alternative explanation. This is the view that the world is real, and is God’s creation. We see “redness” because it is really there, as God’s creation. If we were to apply S’s own criteria, at this point we would have to say that believing this is equally a leap of faith, since he has not provided any reasons for this interpretation of seeing “redness.”
In this chapter S discusses how art dropped below the line of despair. S firstly discusses Van Gogh and Gauguin, and concludes, based on the claim that they both died “in despair,” that their attempt “to find a humanistic universal” failed dismally. S secondly discusses Cezanne and Picasso. S concludes that since Cezanne never came to tragedy, he died “without ever coming to the conclusion of despair.” S’s position thus seems irrefutable – either these people below the line died in despair, or died in despair but didn’t realise that they were really in despair. S’s criticism of Picasso is that Picasso failed to communicate his ideas because they moved too much away from the particular to the universal, and the viewer cannot tell what he is looking at when he looks at Picasso’s paintings (I am in no position to comment authoritatively, but this may indicate nothing more than a lack of artistic knowledge on S’s part). Thirdly, S discusses Mondrian, criticising him on the basis that Mondrian’s rooms of his paintings are “not for man” but for abstract balance, and he had thus got to the point where there is no room in the universe for man. Finally, S discusses dada and Duchamp. S criticises this movement based on (1) its focus on chance – that “everything is chance” and that “you are chance, in the nothingness. You are destroyed;” and (2) it is pornographic – one picture “causes the viewer to make himself dirty” by forcing him to look for a virgin becoming a married woman that isn’t there, while another artwork requires the viewer to look through a peephole, while a third supposedly would have made a girl “more ready to say ‘yes’ when she came out.”
In this chapter S looks at music and general culture. He tells us that Debussy was the “doorway into the field of modern music,” but does not elaborate. First S looks at Pierre Schaeffer, and states that by lifting out pieces of music, splitting, reversing, and changing its speed, Schaeffer causes us to distrust our senses and thus his message is relativism and flux. Henry did the same thing to recordings of Greek language. S claims that we must reject this trend towards relativism. Turning to general culture, S first criticises the author Miller for his pornography and antilaw sentiments. Second, S criticises homosexuality because it denies male-female distinctions, and thus denies the thesis of antithesis. Third, S criticises the dramatist Osborne, because he is an idealist without an ideal. Fourth, S criticises the poet Thomas because of his despair. Fifth, S reverses the good-bad distinctions with respect to film and television, claiming that in fact the “good” art films are the worst, because they exemplify the modern view that there is no truth, and no distinction between right and wrong. Sixth, S criticises the Beatles because their later psychedelic music was presented in a religious way of “vague pantheism.”
S firstly summarises what he has said above. He then reviews Senghor’s book, On African Socialism, reiterating the thesis of the line of despair and applying it to Marxist theories and Communism. Senghor supports the dialectical approach, not in its Marxist form (which is explicitly atheistic), but as articulated by Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit priest). S thus criticises Senghor via the observation that the enemy is the underlying dialectical methodology, not the outward form, which may be expressed either atheistically or theistically. S then concludes this section with the claims that Christianity is falsifiable (it requires the thesis of antithesis), it is realistic in the sense that it accepts that “the world is marked with evil and man is guilty,” and it has a solution to the problem. No discussion of the solution to this problem.
End of Book 1, Section 1.
Having skimmed through the rest of the trilogy I give up on giving a thorough critique of S. To be thorough, one would have to write a book longer than the original book. S continues in much the same style as I have indicated above, making vague, superficial, unsubstantiated, sometimes factually erroneous, claims. The style is difficult to follow, with almost no explanations of where he is heading and why (although the advantage of this is that one may start reading at any place in the book with no reduction in readability), frequent repetitions (I found almost identical paraphrases of these chapters in the second book), and almost no sources and referencing (which perhaps explains why he frequently gets the exposition of positions wrong). The main thesis (which I could only draw out implicitly) is weak, implausible, simplistic and unsubstantiated. The criticisms of opponents frequently amount to no more than personal, mean, petty, gossipy attacks on the person presenting the view, and not the view itself (e.g. Jaspers, Heidegger). Where views are addressed, it is frequently via criticisms of straw-man versions of the actual positions, and not the positions themselves (e.g. Hegel, Kierkegaard). And when the views are addressed and not represented unfairly, the critiques frequently amount to no more than that of labelling them with a pejorative term (e.g. Sartre/Camus, drugs, Beatles). And when the critiques are more than name-calling, they are frequently bizarrely implausible or irrelevant (e.g. new way of approaching truth, Duchamp). Once we have dismissed all this, there is almost nothing of substance left of the book. And so, on the whole, a disappointing book. It is not worth the money and time invested in purchasing and reading it. Beginners will come away with a false and mistaken view of the history of these ideas. Those who come in with more than an inkling of these ideas will come away unsatisfied.
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