To the Editor:
Leon R. Kass’s “Seeing the Nakedness of His Father” [June] is a lively, insightful, and . . . brilliant analysis of the story of Noah. Needless to say, his article is most powerful and provocative as a reflection on the human condition in these modern times. While I will leave it to someone much bolder than myself to come to the defense of the modern “paganism” which Mr. Kass sees all around us, I feel that an attempt must be made to come to the defense of ancient Athens.
Mr. Kass offers an instructive and partially fair assessment of the philosopher when he implies that the latter is the kind of person “utterly without aidos” (awe and reverence). Socrates, in the same conversation in which, as Mr. Kass says, he “playfully proposed common gymnasia for men and women,” eventually proposed a city . . . which would allow for incestuous relationships among its citizens. While no less playful, it is particularly revealing. Philosophy ceases to take for granted the criminality of something like sleeping with one’s relatives. To be sure, and in defense of Mr. Kass, Socrates reveals such things somewhat esoterically; the Ancients (at least) did not lack moderation when it came to the problem of the city and man. Still, while he amends his description of the philosopher, Mr. Kass seems to suggest that the philosopher lacks enough “awe, fear, reverence, shame, and modesty” to spark the scorn of the biblical “point of view,” even in light of such a sympathetic qualification. In the context of lawabidingness and righteousness such a conclusion is justifiable, but when Jerusalem and Athens are placed in the same ring, one must allow for some stepping outside of the boundaries.
This being said, one wonders whether philosophical inquiry would be possible at all without an almost immoderate reverence for authority. In the face of a philosophy teacher or a philosophic text, the possibility of genuine learning requires a strongly lingering level of shamefulness and respectfulness, without which one finds little motivation for demystifying or uncovering the “unvarnished truth.” Mr. Kass surely sees this. And his reverence for the authority of his text allows us to see, if we have not seen already, that there is more to the book of Genesis than meets the eye. One must take for granted—take on authority—that the book of Genesis is awesome enough and profound enough to teach us something before we can actually learn something of what it has to teach us. It is the kind of text which fills us with wonder, or even “shameless curiosity” only when we first suspect that it somehow all fits together (why else pay such attention to the ordering of the names of Noah’s sons?). The same holds true for something like a Platonic dialogue. And, I might add, the same holds true, or should hold true, for one’s teachers.
Ancient philosophy, on this level at least, cannot be depicted as “utterly without aidos.” Socrates, as Plato presents him, was all too aware of the necessity that teachers, in order to be effective as teachers, must remain authorities. While these authorities are to be wrestled with, they must nevertheless remain authorities and not become, as Mr. Kass puts it, “just one of the boys.” Our college teachers today walk into their classrooms stripped, as it were, of their clothing—all distinctions are odious. If this is not a state of affairs brought about willingly, there are enough pressures in our academic institutions to ensure that wearing clothing becomes politically uncomfortable. Socrates may be “chuckling in Hades,” but as far as I can tell, he is chuckling nervously.
Michael Satanoff
SUNY
Stony Brook, New York
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To the Editor:
It is surprising that Leon R. Kass, in discussing the problems created by rebellious and disrespectful sons, does not mention the Bible’s explicit command: they are to be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). This fate is also decreed (Deuteronomy 22:13-23) for adulterers and for brides who are found not to be virgins. Having perused some of Mr. Kass’s writings, I have no doubt that he is troubled by the contrast between these precepts and the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Others, however, will remember Deuteronomy 12:32: “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.”
Also to be remembered are the threats contained in passages where God describes the vengeance He will wreak for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:15-68; also, Leviticus 26:14-33).
I am unable to detect in the Bible anything describable as natural moral law, i.e., law derived through reasoning based upon human observation and experience. The essence of biblical morality is supernatural: commands are issued directly by God or by His chosen representatives on earth. The story of Abraham and Isaac will serve as a paradigm. Abraham gains favor with God through his willingness to kill his son for no reason other than God’s command; obedience is all-important, and nothing else counts. A similar point is underlined by God’s response to the lamentations of Job. It is an assertion of raw power rather than a justification. Job, after his lapse into self-assertiveness, is restored to favor when he displays the required servility.
David A. Shotwell
Alpine, Texas
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Leon R. Kass writes:
My hat is off to Michael Satanoff. His letter would fulfill any author’s dream: to receive a reply from a serious, generous, and thoughtful reader, who has tried to understand and has succeeded, and who in response presses a profound question from which the author may himself learn.
Mr. Satanoff’s question about shame and learning cuts well in two directions. First, though he concedes that philosophical inquiry is in principle at odds with pious law-abidingness, he rightly observes that this condemns philosophy only in the court which flies the banner of law-abidingness. On its own (philosophical) turf, the pursuit of the unvarnished truth makes shame-filled obedience to convention look like spiritual bondage. Mr. Satanoff could be pointing, for example, to Plato’s cave. Or perhaps he is thinking too of Aristotle, likewise taking philosophy’s side against tradition, who denies that awe or shame is even a virtue, but is merely a useful passion in the young. I have no quarrel with this beginning assessment. Indeed, though praising the pious covering of Noah by Shem and Japheth, I noted, starkly, that “their piety is a kind of (willing) blindness. They knowingly choose to live leaving some things in the dark, without pressing back to the naked truth about temporal beginnings or ultimate origins. They embrace authority and, implicitly, life under law.”
But whether this apparent tension between piety and philosophy, or between shame-filled lawabidingness and shameless inquiry, is finally genuine and permanent depends on what is finally true about the world and its highest principle. Would not even the truth-seeking Socrates be filled with awe and fear were he to be addressed out of the burning bush, or were he to hear the revelation at Sinai? And what if philosophy, quite on its own, were to conclude on philosophical grounds that, not speculation but righteousness is man’s highest (realizable) possibility, and therefore undertook (following Kant) to prosecute the work not of metaphysics but of morality? Might not then the truth itself insist that aidos is a virtue?
Mr. Satanoff tries himself to bring reverence and philosophy together in his second sailing, even more intriguing than the first, in which he maintains that aidos before books and teachers is indispensable for learning. He is, of course, dead right that one must respect a book before one is willing to read it with the care necessary to learn from it; and I do indeed submit gladly (but not thereby thoughtlessly) to the master teachers which are the great books. But I do not regard these books as authorities or authoritative. Rather, they are guides or friends who help one in the quest for truth. A great book is to be greatly respected because it is written with the author’s own at least tacit reverence for reason and truth. Truth and being alone are authoritative for philosophy.
One can respect a book but one is more likely to feel awe and shame before revered persons, including teachers. Even great men are not immune. The brilliant Alcibiades felt shame only before Socrates, in whose presence he had to confront his own abandonment of (what he knew to be) the more worthy pursuit of wisdom for the less worthy pursuit of fame through rule. And although aidos before teachers seems different from filial piety, it is indubitably true that students who do not respect their teachers cannot learn from them.
Why do we respect our teachers? Why do we submit to the assignments they make or take seriously the questions they raise or the opinions they offer? Not because they are necessarily natively smarter or humanly better. Nor because we think that they are simply wise. We respect, and even revere, them for two related reasons. First, the teacher (like the book) has authority because of what he looks up to as authoritative: to what is simply so. So-called teachers who teach only themselves or their ideologies may be admired for their power or envied for their virtuosity; but only a genuine teacher, one who himself submits to the argument and to reasonable speech, is worthy of respect. Second, the teacher commands respect not only because of “his office” as guide-toward-truth, but because of the benefits obtained from time already spent in that office. His greater experience of books, questions, and the world make it more likely that he will indeed be able to help us learn for ourselves. Thus, the teacher has a paradoxical authority. Respect for the teacher, as a “non-authoritative authority,” is necessary if the teacher is to lead the student toward intellectual liberation.
Curiously, much the same can be said for the reverence owed to parents, the subject of my article. Honor is of course due them because we owe them for our very existence. But the office of parenthood is also an office of teaching and initiation, not into the liberal arts but into the ways of upright adulthood. Here, too, reverence for parents is an indispensable means for helping us grow up to take their place—God willing, as beings worthy of similar reverence. Students who lack respect are unlikely to learn, children who are impious are unlikely to be well-reared. And teachers and parents with no reverence for their callings can only visit their own sins on the young. Not by accident will Canaan be cursed if he happens to be the son of Ham.
David A. Shotwell has aimed wide and shot badly. He rants against my other writings and even more against the Bible, but he addresses my interpretation of the sons of Noah not at all. But his letter is instructive for one reason, as a symptom of what one might call the rationalist disease. Like so many others of his ilk, Mr. Shotwell is so convinced that the Bible contains teachings sustainable only by belief in an arbitrary, hence irrational, deity that he refuses to enter into reading it with any hope of learning something. Lacking any respect for a text like Genesis, whose stories are, to say the very least, humanly revealing, he cheats himself of an opportunity to learn. Because he cannot conceive that even an inspired text might still be accessible to reason, or teach things that make sense to reason, he insists that those who claim to learn from the text must be irrationalists. I feel sorry for him. Were he to reread my essay, he might find that the story of Noah’s sons holds a key to his self-understanding—in the attitude and deeds of Ham, his spiritual forebear. Better yet, he should try to take instruction from Mr. Satanoff’s letter, not only from its example of genuinely rational thoughtfulness but also for its suggestion that respect for truth wherever it may be found is indispensable for learning.
