Beyond Virtue: Kierkegaard’s Challenge
A paper for the DAN 2006 Conference
Auckland, April 19th.
[Please note that this is a transcript of Dr Vardy’s presentation, which was presented
via video and not in person.]
In Britain in the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a subject called the
Philosophy Of Education. Academics such as Peters, Hirst, and John
and Pat White, debated the purposes and basis of education.
Almost all philosophy of education departments are now closed. The
aims and purposes of education are barely addressed. Yet these are
central questions. WHAT IS EDUCATION FOR? WHAT IS THE MARK OF
SUCCESS IN EDUCATION?
Unless we are clear on these questions, we cannot judge or appraise
the success or failure of our efforts as teachers or the success or
failure of our schools
Our culture is becoming increasingly individualistic with the i-pod and
Walkman privatising experience and leading to a breakdown of
community. What is more, there is a relativistic tide sweeping our
culture which is imported under the banner of tolerance. Tolerance is
good and important – but it easily merges into relativism which denies
any idea of absolute value.
Post-modernism has been the dominant philosophy forming the culture
of the West in the last thirty years. Its influence grew after the French
riots of 1968 and its acceptance has become close to a dogma.
Post-modernism is not easy to define – it resists definition. However it
challenges our existing frameworks and calls us to see things anew,
with different eyes. It rejects the idea of any single, ‘right’ way of
understanding reality or of reading a text.
Post-modernism has real value – it calls us to look at alternative
perspectives, it rattles the cage of our certainties and causes us to
reappraise them. However post modernism has weaknesses and can
be destructive and damaging. It denies that there are any metanarratives, but creates one for itself, and then claims superiority. Its
overarching story is that we are on this planet by accident, and that
there is no ultimate reason to be here; there is no ultimate purpose in
living. The meta-narrative however then narrows its lens down and is
focussed directly on the individual, whose primary responsibility is to
be authentic to themselves. Words like Justice, Truth or Goodness
become relegated to a matter of perspective or to a particular
narrative.
What does this do to family life? To community? All received values
are treated with suspicion and deconstructed in a way that undermines
them. The corrosive effect of this is seen most clearly in religion where
increasing scepticism is rampant and talk of words like ‘good’ and ‘evil’
are out of place.
Eighteen months ago I was one of the speakers at a UNESCO
conference in Adelaide and afterwards I spoke to a number of state
school heads who were interested in values education – however they
were clear they wanted to avoid words like good and evil as these
were not acceptable and were insufficiently inclusive. This makes
entire sense from a post-modern perspective – but it also raises
serious questions.
Where there is no vision, the people perish: Proverbs 29:18
The influences of Post-modernism are largely unrecognised and
unchallenged in schools.
Post-modernism is rapidly becoming the dominant philosophy of our
generation.
But do we have to accept that there is no Truth? That words such as
Justice and Goodness have no reference except to be grounded within
a community?
If truths are ‘partial’, does that invalidate the search for Truth?
Post modernism is a huge hurdle for a school that would like to
promote any kind of unified vision of values.
I am sure that many of you are familiar with the art of Tracy Emin
Tracy Emin’s work in many ways stands as a symbol for modern
culture. Feelings reign supreme.
‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995’, is a tent embroidered
inside and out with the names of all her bed partners, which fetched
£40,000.
Sad shower in New York makes her third or fourth abortion.
There is an honesty in her work which mirrors the pain of being alive.
Once the search for truth is rejected, then emotion and feelings
become central – this is what Tracey Emin’s art is concerned with.
Once feelings, are primary, then this leads to the view that what is
central is what makes people feel good or feel happy. We are told to
accentuate the positives and minimise the negatives. ‘Feeling good’
has, for very many people, become the measure of a good ethical
decision.
UTILITARIANISM is the major assumption which lurks beneath postmodernism. Happiness becomes the new God and pain and
unhappiness the new evil to be exorcised by counsellors and
psychologists. This needs to be challenged – being happy is not
necessarily what we are here for!
Utilitarianism is not value free – when happiness becomes the aim,
ideas such as Justice and Goodness and Truth become irrelevant. So
this is one major influence that I want to challenge.
The second major influence is the rise of administrators within our
schools, hospitals, universities and institutions. Increasingly, the
administrators make the key decisions; the administrators are the
ones in control; the administrators hold the purse stings and measure
performance and the administrators earn the highest salaries. Well,
certainly in British education, the administrators earn the highest
salaries and exercise control. Similarly, in many British hospitals
administrators outnumber doctors and nurses.
To the administrator, measurement is vital and what cannot be
measured has dubious value. As an example in Britain, to save money
administrators have made the decision in one health region that
smokers and those who are overweight and over 70 will not be treated
for various medical conditions.
• Out goes medical judgement,
• Out goes the discretion of the doctors,
• Out goes the value of each individual
Instead we have an effective cost management strategy which has the
advantage of not attracting bad publicity.
Administrators make decisions in order to meet targets. The end
desired justifies whatever the means used. Targets are set centrally.
Targets must be made based on that which can be measured.
Achievement of targets is linked to funding and status. Doctors,
nurses, support staff and patients are pieces in a complex game of
chess whose work-loads and output are measured and managed by
administrators.
My concern is that education is on the same path. Certainly the
environment of education has changed. In Britain, the 1988 Education
Reform Act thrust schools into a competitive market place. This was a
paradigmic leap. The vocabulary of targets and performance data
entered our world. Measurement became vital and what cannot be
measured runs the risk of being considered peripheral and
unimportant. With this came an excessively focussed curriculum.
These changes radically limit the ability of a school to seek breadth
and balance. Further, this is not value free. It is a politically driven,
prescriptive, outcome dominated, Utilitarian system, pre-occupied with
certified academic success.
This puts managers under enormous pressure. Just as in hospitals
where there is a tendency for administrators to forget that the hospital
is there primarily for the patients rather than to serve the targets,
there is a risk that schools begin to focus on:
• What the inspectors want
• What the regulations dictate
• What the funding mechanisms depend on.
• What parents and students want.
• and not what the school is for…
The founders of our great schools had a vision which did not depend
on conformity to culture. It can be worth asking how far the senior
management team of your school is seen in the role of ‘administrators’
and whether the human face of the Principal and senior managers is
seen by the teachers and pupils. Schools need to be communities and
not institutions, they need to be inspired and not simply managed. The
larger the school and the more remote the Principal, the more difficult
this becomes.
Here, J.K. Rowling is brilliant! In ‘The Order of the Phoenix’ Hogwarts
was threatened by the Utilitarian inspector, Umbridge, appointed by
the Ministry. Teachers regarded as useless were suspended - Hagrid’s
job was threatened; Dumbledore was forced out of his office. Certainly
in Britain children recognise that the same is happening in their
schools.
We must ask ‘What is a school for?’
Are results and league tables what a school is for?
DonJuan:
‘Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as
you think necessary. Then ask yourself and yourself alone one
question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My
benefactor told me about it once when I was young and my blood was
too vigorous to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you
what it is: Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good. If
it doesn’t, the path is of no use.’
Do your schools have a heart, do they have a vision which the
communities understand and share?
Does the current path of education have a heart? Education is partly
about something that cannot be measured. It may be difficult to
identify precisely what this is but we know when it is missing. So I
want today, to look at an alternative aspect of education which is often
overlooked and to do so by approaching the issue through the
philosophy of a Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard has had more impact on my thinking than any other
philosopher – and after thirty years of reading him I still return to him
and find myself challenged and enlightened. Wittgenstein described
Soren Kierkegaard as the greatest philosopher of the C19th
Kierkegaard wished to do philosophy in a different way – by stripping
us naked at 2.0a.m. in the morning and getting us to look hard at
ourselves, at our lives and at what we value. He wished to free us
from the masks we wear to hide us from ourselves. Kierkegaard did
not think most of us were selves. Indeed, he thought we had forgotten
what it means to be a self; what it means to exist. We distract
ourselves with hobbies and activities – sometimes with our jobs and
our families and we cease to be aware of ourself as a person at all.
“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the
world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm,
a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.“
Kierkegaard considers that most lives are lived in a form of quiet
despair – yet most people never recognise this. They fill their lives
with activity and busyness and never slow down enough to look at
themselves as they find this threatening.
We find this with young people who need the noise of the TV, the CD
player, the walkman or the ipod and, for many of whom, stillness and
silence is uncomfortable and challenging. If we are not a self, if we do
not know who we are, then this can undermine meaning and purpose
in life. Suicide rates in Australasia are at a high level and self-harm
and the need for drugs of different sorts are common.
Perhaps Kierkegaard could be introduced by going back to Harry Potter
and the Mirror of Erised. Harry Potter finds this mirror in the
basement of Hogwarts – he stares into it and sees his parents. Harry
is excited by the mirror and rushes up to his friend, Ron, who is
asleep. Harry drags Ron down to look into the mirror, where Ron sees
himself as captain of the Quiddich team, for the Mirror of Erised shows
those who look into it what it is that they most desire.
If you were to stare into the mirror, what would you see?
More importantly, what would our young people see and where do we
even address this question? - New car, new computer, sporting
success, new girl/boy friend? What do we really desire??? Maybe just
activity for the sake of activity – busyness to stop us thinking…
What we desire can tell us something about ourselves.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant asked three questions:
• What can I know?
• What should I do?
• What should I hope for?
These were part of a search for wisdom, for meaning and for
understanding and it was this that preoccupied the ancient Greek
philosophers. These questions could be expressed in another
question: “WHAT IS AT THE CENTRE OF MY LIFE?”
Where, today, do we help our young people to seek wisdom and
meaning? What sort of questions might they ask themselves?
Kierkegaard had a passionate commitment to truth – he was a
philosophic realist in the long tradition of philosophy stretching back to
Aristotle. The fact that we cannot prove something, does not mean
that it is not true. Kierkegaard maintains that:
• Either God exists or God does not
• Either Jesus was God or Jesus was not.
Philosophy and reason cannot prove these to be true – but either they
are or they are not, and each of us has to make a decision about
where we stand.
These are important questions. Nietzsche said that ‘God is dead’ – and
if we accept this then we have to dare to be our own gods, to live in a
world beyond good and evil. Nietzsche’s madman asks whether this
thought is not too much for us.
Kierkegaard asks us to consider what is at the centre of our lives. He
was a psychologist long before Freud and Jung and he argues that the
human capacity for self-deceit is very great indeed. Being honest with
ourselves about who we are and what our priorities are is very hard.
Most of us have no centre to our lives – we are like the drunken
peasant - pulled here and there by needs created by the media and by
desires that are imposed on us from outside, and on which we have
not reflected.
In Selfridges pre Christmas, enormous banners declaring “WANT IT,
BUY IT, FORGET IT” adorned department stores.
Our wants are transitory and, when achieved, often disappoint.
But lets ask ‘What if we DO have a centre, what might that centre be?’
Kierkegaard analyses three alternatives:
THE AESTHETIC STAGE
For those in the aesthetic stage, SELF is at the centre. Everything
such an individual does is dominated by self…
• Don Giovanni
• Faust.
• Sophisticated
• Not easy to spot…
• WE WANT, therefore we can have (and this will
make us happy – but it doesn’t).
• WE DON’T WANT what is uncomfortable and
hard – but this may lead to fulfilment.
THE ETHICAL STAGE
For those in the ethical stage, reason and morality is the highest. This
is Kant’s position - living life by the rules. Kant insists that reason
must always reign supreme and any religious commands that go
against reason must be rejected.
Ethics is central – human beings must act rationally and suppress
instinct and emotion. Thus, for those in the ethical stage, Morality
rules. Many people will endorse this - but if ethics and morality are
the highest, then God or any transcendent absolute has no relevance.
Obedience to God and obedience to ethics are one and the same.
The alternatives, then, are obedience to ethics or putting self first.
Kierkegaard asks whether there is any other alternative and he
sketches one other possibility – obedience to an absolute that some
call God. Kierkegaard contends that it is possible to talk of a life lived
accountable to a transcendent absolute.
Can a life lived accountable to God make any sense at all?
• Luther and living CORAM DEO…
• The consequences of adopting this view are profound.
• If one accepts that the idea of a life accountable to God is
possible, then this obedience could, at least in principle, call a
person beyond ethics.
• ABRAHAM… Extraordinary story.
• Abraham pivotal to three great religious traditions.
Pupils at St. Hilda’s school in Perth wrote to me several weeks ago
asking me to define evil and to give details of the last evil act I
committed. It’s an interesting question – I wonder how you would
answer it? My reply might surprise some, but it stems from what I
have been arguing here today.
Traditionally evil has been seen in personal terms when someone
commits individual acts which are wrong (adultery, theft, lying,
etc.) but, whilst these are important, I would see as being even
more significant when we are silent and fail to act in the presence
of injustice. It was the failure of 'good' German people to stand up
to the evil of Nazi Germany that led to the holocaust; it was the
failure of 'good' Hutus to stand up and be counted that led to the
death of 800000 Tutsis in Rwanda; it was the failure of 'good' South
Africans to challenge the apartheid system that led of the evils of
apartheid.
I still blame myself for not making a stand against the Iraq war
which I considered to be unjust and almost certainly illegal. I kept
silent and blame myself for not speaking out. Maybe it would have
had no impact but, by being silent, I am complicit in the horrendous
suffering that still occurs in Iraq.
For me, therefore, institutional evil, which is built into the
structures of society, is the worst form of evil.
How is this relevant? Most of us go along with the societies in which
we live. If we lived in Nazi Germany, most of us would have
supported the Nazi party. If we lived in apartheid South Africa,
most of us would have accepted the status quo.
In the absence of something ultimate to which we are accountable
– which many call God – then the highest to which we can aspire is
Kierkegaard’s Ethical stage. Only if we are accountable to
something ultimate can we challenge and question the values of
society and only if our young people recognise this possibility can
they start to think seriously about standing up for Justice, Truth
and Goodness in a world which scarcely recognises these words.
Many schools here today are independent and many have a
Christian foundation. Independence schools do have an
independence that State schools can sometimes lack, yet perhaps it
is sometimes too easy to go along with the prevailing values of
society and to seek to compete on the same grounds.
If success is measured by examination results, league tables and
sporting success then these are real achievement – but perhaps
these miss out the real reason we came into education in the first
place.
Cardinal Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict.
• "Since Newman and Kierkegaard, conscience has occupied with
new urgency the centre of Christian anthropology. The work of
both also represented, in an unprecedented way, the discovery
of the individual who is called directly by God and who, in a
world which scarcely makes God known any more, is able to
become directly certain of God through the voice of
conscience.... Over the Pope as the expression of the binding
claim of ecclesiastical authority, there still stands one’s own
conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary,
even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This
emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with
a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort
is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official
Church.... also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing
totalitarianism. Genuine ecclesiastical obedience is distinguished
from any totalitarian claim which cannot accept any ultimate
obligation of this kind beyond the reach of its dominating
will."[1] [1] Cardinal Ratzinger quoted in Herbert Vorgrimmler’s
‘Commentary on the Documents of Vatican ll, p. 134
Teaching used to be regarded as a calling, a vocation. This term is
hardly used today. People came into teaching because they were
good human beings, they loved young people and wanted to help
them to flourish. John Inverarity was the head of Hale School in
Perth and one of the finest heads I have met and he recruited
teachers on exactly this basis. To John, the exact job they would do
was less important than the sort of person they were and the
commitment they had to young people. The new generation of
administrators would not recognise this approach – these are not
things that can be measured and tested.
If teachers are to help young people to lead accountable lives, to
take seriously a search for wisdom, to stand up for Justice then
they need to show these values in their own lives. Schools need to
be places where justice is seen to be done and which stand up for
values which are deeply counter-cultural and which parents may
not understand. AHISA heads in Victoria commissioned a survey
three years ago as to why parents sent their children to
independent schools – and values topped the list of reasons. But we
are no longer clear what these mean.
My argument today is that it is partly about living an accountable life,
where accountability is to some transcendent absolute rather than to
self, to feelings or to happiness.
In J.K. Rowling’s ‘Goblet of Fire’, Cedric Diggory, an honourable and
good young man, is killed by Lord Voldermort who is the incarnation of
evil. Almost no-one in the school will recognise that Voldermort has
returned and the powers that be that have put Hogwarts under the
control of the administrator, Umbridge, are interested only in what will
not cause a fuss and what is expedient. Professor Dumbeldore pays
tribute to Cedric Diggory at the dinner on the last day of term, but it is
interesting that the speech as recorded by Rowling in the book is
radically changed in the film.
Dumbledore and Cedric Diggory
• In the book, Dumbledore says:
– Cedric was a good and loyal friend, a hard worker, He
valued fair play His death has affected you whether you
knew him or not…
– Remember Cedric
– Remember if the time should come when you have to
make a choice between what is right is easy. Remember
what happened to a boy who was Good and Kind and
Brave because he strayed across the path of Lord
Voldermort. Remember Cedric Digory…
In the film Dumbledore says only that Diggory was “fiercely loyal to his
friends” – a value which everyone can accept. All reference to
Goodness and Bravery have been removed.
A world in which Goodness, Truth, Justice and Bravery is sought is
different from one in which they are not. A world in which we are
responsible to some transcendent absolute is different from one where
there are no absolutes except the culture in which we live. The one
element that the film does leave unchanged is Dumbledore holding up
Diggory as an example for those what are faced with
“The choice between what is right and what is easy”.
Where do we help our young people with this choice?
Where do we help our young people to stand for what is Just, what is
True and what is Good and then to live for that?
Where do we help our young people to live accountable lives?
My worry is that we are increasingly interested in what will make
people happy rather than what will make them good – and we are not
even aware that our priorities have shifted. We increasingly conform to
the culture in which we live instead of seeking to subvert it. Schools
should be subversive places – indeed school teachers should seek to
‘corrupt the young’. Before anyone thinks that I am advocating child
abuse, I am using this expression in the way it was used to apply to
Socrates. Socrates was sentenced to death because he was found
guilty on two charges: Atheism and corrupting the young
DAN is about helping young people to think for themselves – to
providing the tools through which they can challenge contemporary
culture.
A hundred years ago young people could be inculturated into a world
where the ideal of absolute value was accepted – today, in a
postmodern world, this is not possible. We have the harder task of
helping our young people to engage with complex issues which go to
the heart of what it means to live a fulfilled human life.