Introducing... "Theories of Everything"!
Welcome to Theories of Everything, a newsletter devoted to the philosophy of culture!
“What does that mean?” you ask. That’s a good question: the phrase “philosophy of X” is vague, and “culture” is a much-abused word. That’s why I’ve decided to dedicate this inaugural newsletter to clarifying those terms — but don’t expect full definitions, since that’s what the whole project is about!
“Philosophy of…”
When we talk about the philosophy of X, we’re looking for an explanation of 1) what X is in itself and 2) how it relates to other things, but which also 3) passes the tests of logical consistency and comparison to experience.
Satisfying these conditions is harder than you might think. All our ideas originate in the confused world of shared experience, and most of our conversations remain there even when they touch on big ideas. Offhand conversation is an indispensable beginning for philosophy, but by definition it doesn’t satisfy the third condition, which is where the rubber meets the road.
At the most fundamental level, philosophy is simply formal conversation — whether in-person or through scholarly writing — about these big ideas. (If you don’t believe me, go read Plato’s Socratic dialogues.) But you can’t acquire philosophical formality just by adopting self-important airs or casually dropping big words, though you’ll certainly acquire a reputation as a blowhard. Philosophical competence is a virtue that has to be acquired with practice. It’s a balance of deductive rigor and mental flexibility, which are the roots of both intellectual confidence and humility.
What you should expect from philosophy is analysis of experience, careful articulation of concepts in light of that analysis, and deduction of those concepts’ implications. That done, philosophy should always, always, always revisit experience to see if your conclusions fit the data. If they do, you’ve expanded your appreciation of the world; if they don’t, you can at least examine the specific defects and begin the process again, further refining your ideas.
Philosophical traditions, it seems to me, are little more than competing toolsets for analyzing experience, articulating concepts, and deducing implications — and like actual toolsets, they are not created equal. I believe that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, while far from perfect, is the best toolset currently on the market, and it’s the one I’ll use to build my philosophy of…
“…culture”
This word is the Switzerland of semantic neutrality: on the one hand, you have conservative defenders of “Christian culture”, and on the other you have progressive champions of “cultural relativism”. Opinion-peddlers from both sides of the ideological spectrum can be tense around each other, and sometimes their tension flares into, lo! “culture wars”. If any idea is ripe for philosophical examination, it’s culture!
But what is it? That, as the saying goes, is the question. I’ll work with a definition put forward by the mid-20th century Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, whom I’ve chosen because he was well-versed in both the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical tradition and the modern fields of sociology and anthropology. Culture, says Dawson, is “an organized way of life which is based on a common tradition and conditioned by a common environment.” (Religion and Culture, 47)
In pursuing a philosophy of culture, therefore, I want to understand these organized ways of life, their bases in tradition, and their environmental conditioning. Further, I want to situate this understanding within the broader philosophy of human nature developed by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. I don’t just want to see the phenomenon of culture as a corollary to the philosophy of human nature; I want to enrich my experience of the world’s extant cultures and reinvest those riches to yield a deeper return: a fuller perspective on human existence as a whole.
(Doesn’t hurt to aim high, does it?)
The Project
“Okay,” you ask, “but how do you actually going to do it?” I publish once a week (ideally on Saturday), alternating between two newsletter “tracks” which reflect the two weights in the philosophical balance I mentioned above: deductive rigor and mental flexibility.
One series (the A-track) aims for a more rigorous philosophical consideration of culture. The A-track newsletters will build on each other and can be read sequentially, like chapters in a “treatise” (though that word gives me hives). But sometimes I’ll interrupt the regular A-track programming with reviews of books that touch on the philosophy of culture. (To give you a a sense of what to expect, here are a few titles I hope to review: Christopher Dawson’s Religion and Culture, Ernst Cassirer’s An Essay on Man, and Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution.)
The B-track, on the other hand, will be more playful, meant to keep me mentally flexible about the ideas I’m developing in the A-track. These newsletters will be belles-lettres reflections on my encounters with books, movies, music, and other “instances” of culture. The goal here is to remain rooted in the concrete experience of cultures of all kinds, scrupulously sensitive to the complexities of the phenomenon.
So, if the prospect of deciphering the pages of the great palimpsest of human culture delights, intrigues, or perplexes you, I invite you to tag along by subscribing for free: let’s be delighted, intrigued, and perplexed together! As Socrates says, “friends have everything in common.” (Phaedrus, 279c)