Societal philosophy: Everyday life: Can formal philosophy illuminate everyday life, your situation&position in society, options

Gideon Strauss, the premiere blogger in the stretch of Christian socially-concerned folk in North American that sometimes calls itself "Neo-Calvinist," also teaches a course on Social Philosophy. Recently, he disseminated a blog entry titled, "Questions while preparing to teach social philosophy."

I am teaching social philosophy again next term, and since I am completely redesigning the course, I have been asking myself many questions, starting out with two: (1) What are the social philosophical questions that a Christian perspective peculiarly brings to the fore? and (2) How should we go about considering the relationship between (a) questions proper to the philosophy of the social sciences (such as "What is 'social'?") and (b) questions proper to social ethics (such as "How can we live together without killing each other, given how deeply we differ?").

These are great questions to be asking, for young people to be asking in their college studies, and for all of us.

I think another good question is What is a society? In an admittedly "impressionistic" book some decades back Dr Martin Vrieze asked in his Unionville Lectures of the time, a number of questions related to the one I just cited. What is a nation, for instance, as against what is a contry perhaps. Now these questions are getting into some (quite useful) distinctions to be pursued after one has tentatively at least begun to provide oneself with a working defintion of what is 'social'? and what 'social ethical'?

For my part, in recent controversies I have been asking and proposing answers to the embattled issues of What is a marriage? What is an intimate union? and how many kinds of them exist, once we determine criteria (such as my candidates: intention of permanence, and exclusion of all other. From there we can go on to ask the further question whether state recognition of different kinds of intimate unions, sharpens the need to explain why the state may, or should or should not prioritize its recognition of one kind of intimate union in relation to the others, recognised (or not - an awkward situation for a state to know of different kinds but not even recognize their plurality with the slightest bit of formal write-up). All that aside, I am asking about the state's own interest in the recognition of 1woman1man intimate unions (whether formalized and legalized or not). Then the state's interestest in recognition, legalization, and prioritization.

For many, the prioritization of 1woman1man kind of intimate union has to do with the role of traditional marriage and the parallel "common law" status in regard to the healthy formation as much as possible of another societal sphere - family. Where a marriage involves a couple of adults, a family involves one or two parents, their child or children (whether consanguinously begot, or adopted, or blended from two sets of consanginuous from one or both of the adults before they united, formed their intimate union, and hopefully married. Yes, my prime selection of societal spheres to theorize upon these days has to do with public controversy that impinges upon me personally. But for sake of completeness, one must add to marriage (and all and any forms of intimate unions, with status of norms of intended permanence and exclusion), and to one's theoretically-enriched conceptualization of family (distinct from but interrelated to marriage / other intiamte union), also the societal sphere of friendship. This has been little explored by a social philosophy such as Gideon Strauss is pursuing, while mainstream sociology has given us quite a mixed bag of theories and analyses. Personally, I think there are numerous kinds of friendships, a good many of them distinguishable from one another as types. A field of sociological study worthy of a full-fledged typology - learning of which while in college can help a person understand what kind of relation one is forming, and what the relation of friendship might mean in the perception of the other person. This can be very helpful in wise friendship-formation.

But again, I am working with a pet set of examples. It just so happens I'm doing so because these three kinds of societal spheres (marriage / other intimate unions; family; and friendship) are all qualified-ethically (a statement that turns out to be a big claim, and a very important one for acquiring social wisdom). Social philosophy and social ethics must study these three kinds of societal spheres to deepen its grasp on the ethical aspect of all other kinds of societal spheres. So says André Troost the father of reformational Christian pursuit of the science of ethics, and his student James Olthuis.

Having said all the foregoing and having alluded already to the state, and adding in passing the whole question of world trade, industrial activity and organization, and labour unions, we come back to Gideon's question about "social ethics." I myself would prefer to ask about "societal ethics," since "social ethics" seems to designate a much more atomic set of relations that relate to the decorum to be observed in other spheres, the protocols, the forms of address and attire and all the niceties of functioning in each sphere appropriately. Good manners.

Before closing, we should note that the sphere-specificity (or, if you prefer, the older terminology "sphere sovereignty?) approach to ethics, because it is multi-modal, is quite different from the biotistic ethics upon which is built the Roman Catholic "consistent ethics of life" and its Magisterium-compliant societal doctrine of subsidiarity. PoliSci prof David Koyzis recently as re-stated his
problem with the Pro-Life position insofar as it is tied into the mentioned the "Consistent Ethic of Life" as an umbrella ethics for a very mixed bag of issues:

To be sure, I do not accept the reasoning of those who, following the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, claim to adhere to a "seamless garment” approach linking together abortion, capital punishment, warfare and poverty as pro-life issues. Good people can disagree on the best way to address poverty, on whether to wage war in contingent circumstances, and on whether the death penalty is proper retribution for those who have taken innocent life. However, the abortion issue is qualitatively different. Here disagreement revolves around, not how best to protect the unborn child, but whether to do so at all. For this reason those attempting to tie such different issues together sow confusion.

I close with a quote and a Hat Tip to Steve Bishop, and to his source Paul Robinson for this blog entry:

Ethics: Person, Practices and Society

The Association for Reformational Philosophy in the Netherlands organised a conference on ethics during the summer of 2005. Some of the papers from the conference are now available for download (HT Paul Robinson).

These include papers from the panels: ethically relevant connections and practices and the workshops. There are papers by Andrew Basden, Doug Blomberg, Rudi Hayward (it's about time he started to blog - how about it Rudi?), Danie Strauss, Henk Stoker, Harry Cook, John Van Dyk, Uko Zylstra and many others.

A lot to chew over, especially now if you have a bit of extra time before you make any New Year's Resolutions. Just as we need to fite for public open celebration of Christmas in our pluralistic setting, we need to work for a Christian, Jewish, and Muslim tranformation of New Year's to a time for renewing our thawt on our ethical stance in all spheres of life, and perhaps making a manageable list of a few new moral projects for personal well-being and our societal functioning in 2006. - )wlb