Prelude to an Analysis of Kramer's Opinion

Obligations to family, employers, art, and the greater good have taken precedence over an analysis I am preparing for Judge Kramer's opinion, which struck down California's Family Code sections 300 and 308.5. That analysis is still incomplete, but it would make sense to offer a comment on instrumentalist rationality, or as it translates into ethical reasoning as consequentialist ethics, and as it is generally understood under the rubric of pragmatist philosophy.

For those of us who are not already self-consciously committed to pragmatism, the significant defeater concerns the horizon of utility. Pragmatism boasts a value system that stands apart from the traditional notions of truth, but it does so by relying on some intuition of utility. The final arbiter in judgment is "usefulness" rather than a correspondence between thought and reality or coherence of thought itself, even where the pragmatist might vigorously pursue the latter.

However, if you are self-consciously non-pragmatist, pragmatism appears to require an uncritical acceptance of some particular notion of utility. This suspicion is exacerbated in that pragmatists frequently seem to insist on a very narrow temporal horizon for utility. In extreme forms, pragmatism is used to justify any means to an end, whereas more mature forms acknowledge a broader temporal scope. But where does one draw the line? The day, the period, the epoch, the era, the age? To be thoroughly consistent as a pragmatist, you would have to include all of human history past and future to know just which thoughts and actions were useful toward ultimately desirable ends, but that is hardly practical since it's not possible.

Short of exhaustive, universal knowledge, the pragmatist must arbitrarily limit her temporal horizons. To the extent that this delimitation is not irrational, neither is it pragmatic. The pragmatist must begin her epistemological journey as something other than a pragmatist. If she begins as a materialist and empiricist, then perhaps the narrow temporal scope of her judgments is justified. However, there is no necessity in beginning as an empirical materialist. One could just as easily justify his beginning as an orthodox Calvinist, in which case the temporal horizon of judgment is much greater, including the Day of Final Judgment. In the latter case, the Calvinistic pragmatist would not make the judgment "It is useful to avoid Sunday worship services since I can get more of my work done" since the avoidance of Sunday worship is not practical given a day of Judgment against those who worship the creation rather than the Creator.

Pragmatism always takes up residence in some other philosophy of reality, even if the pragmatist is unconscious of it. When Judge Kramer says "there is no rational purpose" for the California laws designed to classify marriage as inherently heterosexual, it is not sufficient to rely on instrumental rationality even in what appears to be a strictly legal decision. A State must exist in reality. If reality is created by the God who revealed Himself to Moses and the Prophets, then it is subject to the will of that God.

The Limits of Diversity

The goal of producing a pluralist society can never be more than a heuristic and will inevitably turn into a covert means of excluding certain groups of people. You cannot include everyone in society. The secular understanding of diversity presupposes a certain metaphysical agnosticism: viz., either there is no ultimate truth, or if there is you can't know it, and if you did know it you couldn't communicate it to others. Unfortunately, this agnosticism must be taken dogmatically and becomes an axiom whereby some groups will not be included under the umbrella of tolerance. Wahhabism is only now beginning to expose the hypocrisy of the secular conception of diversity to the public consciousness.

Diversity is a religious concept. Secularity—conceived as that which is beyond religion—is incapable of producing any authentic form of diversity in society. The limit of diversity is always marked by reprobation. Diversity can be an attribute of the Elect, but always excludes the Reprobate. I'm using Christian terminology here, but this applies across the board. The terms may be different, as are the consequences of "reprobation", but the dynamic of inclusion/exclusion is universal.

Perhaps the most frightening thought is a secular reprobation. Nazi racial purification was a false temporalization of the Last Judgment. In it, Hitler assumed to possess the holiness of God. This assumption will always lead to one atrocity or another, but so will the assumption that God Himself does not possess this holiness.

Magoo

No Purpose is Rational

Judge Richard Kramer of San Francisco County's Superior Court said, "It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners." Can a truly pluralistic society tolerate a judgment based on an appeal to "rationality"?

Does judge Kramer mean the law of non-contradiction is undermined by the ban? Does he mean there is no Platonic Ideal of marriage? No practical consequence for excluding gays from the institution? That the ban doesn't approach the middle of two extremes? That it isn't instrumental in the affirmation of life? That there is no empirical evidence to support it? That it is only a partial truth in need of a compensating antithesis? That it lacks conceptual necessity? Or, that there is no divine revelation in favor of it?

Just what does Judge Kramer mean by "rationality"?! and if he has an answer, why should that standard of rationality determine the laws in a land that by no means assents to one standard of rationality? Isn't this just a playground taunt? "My adversaries are not rational; therefore, I may dismiss them altogether."

Please. Can we move on?

Update: With many thanks to jpe, I found the Judge Kramer's opinion here. More later...

Are We There Yet?

Why do we say that great thinkers like Nietsche were "ahead of their time"? Isn't it more accurate to say our interest in them is reactionary? Would we even bother with Fred if it hadn't been for two world wars? Or, even better, would we turn to him if we didn't first think we could still make a go of it without acknowledging how truly corrupt our natural condition is?

In American society—or maybe it's more generally western—we think we can fashion some kind of Eden. We think we can think without distortion. We think at base everything will be alright. Our optimism is founded on this falsehood of "the enduring human spirit". Of course, history constantly frustrates this delusion, so the "intellects" run to the great pessimists as a last ditch effort to steal meaning. We are not postmodern—if postmodern means beyond the modernist's mindset. We are in the last days of a Neo-Romantic revival and nobody knows where to go from here.

Help me out. How should we live now?

Revaluing Secularity

The so-called culture war in America is expressed as a conflict between a secular mindset and traditional religious values. What would this tension look like if secularity was seen as a particular religion, rather than a neutral space that permits all religion without being a religion? If the differences on issues like abortion, gay marriage, and public religious monuments were simply the differences of different particular religions, what would become of the arguments that appeal to the diversity of American society? Wouldn't they just beg the question? It seems that secularity must rely on the notion that it is indeed an all-embracing view of the world and its particularities without any commitment to an unchanging metaphysic or epistemic standard. How long can it sustain this unstable illusion?