Abstract
Because I am tracking some of Robert C. Solomon’s most provocative claims about the importance of cultivating our ability to give thanks, the focus of my discussion is on the philosophically complex relation among comportments of gratitude over against certain gestures of fanaticism. On Solomon’s view, the phenomenon of fanaticism emerges as socially and culturally more pervasive than is commonly assumed. To see why this is the case, I offer a detailed critical exposition of Solomon’s analysis of death fetishism, which is featured as the main impulse behind fanatical tendencies and the spiritual destruction they can wreak on any community’s esprit de corps. At the same time, this exposition goes to show why harnessing the “emotional intelligence” of gratitude is our best bet for obviating fanaticism both in its covert forms and in its most spectacular and lethal manifestations. Finally, this line of inquiry will illuminate why Solomon went so far as to extol gratitude as “the best approach to life itself.”
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Notes
- 1.
I assume that the phrase “thinking thin” is intended as a technical term in Solomon’s dictionary. In speaking of “thinking thin” as a habitus, I am borrowing an expression from the sociologist and philosopher of culture, Pierre Bourdieu. Generally, the habitus refers to a system of organized movements, in which individual agency unfolds in a way that is neither mechanistically determined nor simply a matter of self-transparent deliberation or personal intention. Rather, as a socially ingrained sense for what counts as significant and practically required, Bourdieu sometimes likens the habitus to a conductorless orchestra, which allows room for some improvisation within certain collective and material constraints. For details, see especially Bourdieu (1990). Cf. also Chap. 3 in Hoy (2005) and Chap. 3 in Holsinger (2005).
- 2.
I use this term in a way similar to C.S. Peirce when he insists that esprit de corps is a concrete phenomenon like national sentiment or sympathy, none of which ought to be dismissed as mere metaphors. Instead, Peirce recognizes them as manifestations of corporate minds (or “minds of corporations”) whose “personalities” can exert a very real influence on individuals. (See Peirce 1998: 236).
- 3.
What I have stated here in terms of habitus and the social embodiment of thinking is, basically, a restatement of Solomon’s long-standing commitment to Hegel’s tenet of the inseparability of “our collective conscious” and “its collective body,” leading up to the central claim that spirit, our collective self, includes the world as well. For the full quotation of these pivotal remarks, see Solomon (1983: 203). This Hegelian trope of an embodied group mind recurs in the Spirituality-volume, when Solomon stresses that contrary to “our libertarian and existentialist pretenses” our lives are largely a product of the culture and times we find ourselves in (Solomon 2002: 93).
- 4.
For an earlier, though slightly different formulation of this passage, see Solomon (1999: 142).
- 5.
I use this expression in the sense elaborated in Wolterstorff (1995).
- 6.
Solomon is well aware of this, and he cautions that any reference to the whole of somebody’s life should not be taken uncritically. Notably in love and grief, it is an “edited life” that people encounter. This observation, Solomon adds, does not gainsay a holistic view of the person’s life, but it should make us refrain from any claims toward an all-inclusive perspective. (See the chapter “On Grief and Gratitude” in Solomon 2004: 91.)
- 7.
Solomon quotes from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, book I, Chap. 10. For a fuller treatment of the same passage and Aristotle’s pivotal claim that one cannot estimate people’s happiness until after their death, see Solomon (1976).
- 8.
For Solomon’s understanding of “nonsectarian,” see Solomon (2002:26).
- 9.
The present equation of “religious” and “creedal” (and correlatively of “irreligious” and “non-creedal”) may be questioned. Thus one may endorse a notion of religion which is not fettered to any particular, explicit creed. In fact, Solomon remarks that the majority of people’s religious beliefs are not rooted in thorough theological study yielding explicit propositions. Rather, these beliefs function “more like club passwords or code words,” which does not necessarily constitute a spiritual drawback (Solomon 2002: 13). Still, in light of spirituality’s built-in sociality, any religious community has to cultivate some creedal reference point for the members to share. This holds true even if such reference point consists, for example, only of faith-inspiring paradoxes of the sort Kierkegaard boldly placed at the heart of being a committed Christian. Cf. Solomon (2002: 9, 12, 16).
- 10.
Habermas may well reject this criticism as unfair or better placed at the door of John Rawls’s conception of political liberalism which, according to Habermas, grants the predicate “reasonable” (“vernünftig”) only to those religious communities that are willing to subordinate their religious convictions to the premises of the state and its constitution, which in turn is grounded in a “profane morality” (“profane[n] Moral”). (See Habermas 2001: 13–14.) Alternatively, Habermas opts for the “civilizing role of democratically enlightened common sense, which seeks a way of its own as a third party between science and religion” (13). Similarly, he elaborates in one of his subsequent writings on philosophy’s need to present itself in the service of enlightenment and “not as the know-it-all competitor within the legitimate manifold of substantial life projects [Lebensentwürfe] by believers, adherents to different creeds, and nonbelievers” (Habermas 2005: 249). All translations of phrases quoted from the German originals are my own [MW].
- 11.
The locus classicus for this account in Nietzsche’s writings is: Genealogy of Morals, Essay I, section 10, which Solomon quotes in the context of “Emotional Poisons: Paranoia, Envy, and Resentment.” See Solomon (2002: 53).
- 12.
Cf. also Solomon’s remark that “distrust breeds disharmony and alienation, and extreme distrust – paranoia – makes life unbearable” (Solomon 2002: 45).
- 13.
For the Hegelian character of Solomon’s way of locating the individual’s significance within a concrete communal context, see note 3, above. Cf. also the pertinent remarks on Hegel’s thought in Geuss (2005: 49).
- 14.
For the most crucial aspects of Solomon’s conception of naturalized spirituality, consider in particular Solomon (2002: 5, 7, 41, 42, 52, 87, 99, 137).
- 15.
Cf. Solomon (2002: 90–91).
- 16.
Cf. Solomon’s charitable criticism of Epicure’s dictum that “death is nothing” in Solomon (2002: 117–119).
- 17.
For a succinct statement of this criticism concerning Camus’s different figures of the absurd hero, see Young (2003: 171–172).
- 18.
As Solomon observes elsewhere, “the world of Camus’s hero Sisyphus is populated with gods and goddesses who rather maliciously relish his fate, and whom he can defy. Yet through this “literary ploy” Camus indirectly acknowledges that the universe cannot be merely “indifferent,” as he is generally fond of claiming. In fact, Solomon notes, Camus gets closest to admitting just that when he lets Meursault (the protagonist of The Stranger) “open his heart to the benign indifference of the universe.” See Solomon (2004: 105).
- 19.
Cf. the commentary in Pattison (2005: 61–66).
- 20.
I am now omitting the scare quotes around the phrase “honest Nazi,” but they should always be imagined to be there.
- 21.
Here and in the following, the phrase “Nazi gods” is meant to flexibly designate Nazism as someone’s highest cause, i.e. as the ideological matrix that bestows value and meaning onto his or her life. In this sense, adopting Nazism as one’s creed may or may not involve explicit reference to personal divine agents. In this regard it is helpful to recall how Žižek spells out the complex meaning of such ideological matrix under the rubric of “the big Other,” which is a technical term he imports from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. (See Žižek 2006: 10. Cf. also Adam Kotsko’s concise and accessible comments in Chap. 1 and Chap. 2 of Kotsko 2008.)
- 22.
In its present use, the term eschaton refers to the last order of things or to the “last kind of beings in the order of reality,” to borrow J.O. Urmson’s phrase. See the entry for eskhatos in Urmson (1990: 62).
- 23.
Many important aspects of this now-or-never attitude are scrutinized in Julian Young’s exposition of what he dubs “Nikeism,” whose mantra (“Just do it!”) becomes ominous when viewed in the context of fanaticism and unique historical opportunities, which the fanatic feels called upon to seize, at any cost. (See Young 2001: 111–114.)
- 24.
As the founder of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian (9–79; emperor 69–79) commissioned the construction of this monumental amphitheater (a.k.a. the “Colosseum”), but only after his death did one of his sons, Titus, manage to have it more or less finished (aside from ongoing decorative work) and opened to the public. One might perceive some historical irony, or at least ambivalence, in the fact that the construction of the Colosseum is associated with a period of Rome’s political stabilization and conditions of (relative) peace, while this enormous venue itself became the focal point of an expanding gladiator culture, poised to turn violence into entertainment, in ever more spectacular ways. Be that as it may, Vespasian’s persona is generally remembered as marking a politico-historical watershed, and many of the reforms he initiated came to fruition only after his passing.
- 25.
Here I am using the expression “existential disappointment” in the sense elaborated in Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith (Tillich 2001: 13).
- 26.
For a nuanced exposition of such ambivalent protest, see Eagleton (2005: 90).
- 27.
Cf. Nietzsche’s similar remark on “perspectival valuations” in Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche 2002: 35).
- 28.
For Solomon’s elaboration on “emotional poisons,” see Solomon (2002: 53–55).
- 29.
Cf. note 8, above.
- 30.
For example, a “good sense of humor” (Solomon 2002: 87).
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Weidler, M. (2012). Daring to Be Grateful: Robert C. Solomon on Gratitude in the Face of Fanaticism. In: Higgins, K., Sherman, D. (eds) Passion, Death, and Spirituality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4650-3_17
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