Mirror of Justice

Atheist scholar is ally (with reservations) in Benedict’s fight against relativism

By John L Allen Jr Weekly

Ever since his famous warning about a “dictatorship of relativism” shortly before his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has been trying to kick-start a global conversation about truth. In particular, Benedict yearns for a new look at truth within the Western secular academy, that exotic region where Jacques Derrida’s relativist maxim “there is nothing outside the text” has, ironically, achieved the status of a near-absolute.

This weekend, in the enchanting Alpine setting of Lugano, Switzerland, a cross-section of prominent Western intellectuals is taking up the papal challenge. Organized by the Balzan Foundation, which each year awards the Swiss-Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, this unique gathering of scientists, philosophers, and eggheads of all stripes, most of them without any specific religious conviction, is titled, simply, “The Truth.”

I’m in Lugano covering the event. In effect, the two-day summit represents the most intriguing test to date of how Benedict’s effort to restore confidence in truth is playing among secular makers of opinion.

The guest list features a constellation of intellectual heavy-hitters: Simon Blackburn, an atheist philosopher from Cambridge, who literally wrote the book on truth -- 2005’s best-selling Truth: A Guide; Geza Vermes, a New Testament exegete born to Jewish parents in Hungary, sometimes called the greatest Jesus scholar of his day; Dominique Schnapper, a French sociologist and the daughter of famed French philosopher Raymond Aron; Bengt Gustafsson, a Swedish astronomer and a popular writer on matters of science and faith; and Emanuele Severino, Italy’s most famous living philosopher, described somewhat colorfully as a “neo-Parmenidian.” The Vatican is represented by Swiss Cardinal Georges Cottier, former theologian of the papal household, and Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, an Argentine who serves as chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Science and of Social Sciences.

Despite the presence of two prelates, this is definitely not an “orthodox” crowd. Severino, for example, was fired back in 1970 by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, following an investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of his belief in “the eternity of all being” -- which, among other consequences, renders the idea of a Creator God obsolete. Vermes is a former Catholic priest who left the church in 1957. His scholarship, while widely respected, wouldn’t pass Vatican muster either. In his latest book, Vermes speculates that Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead, but rather his followers had visions that account for the resurrection narratives in the New Testament.

As for Blackburn, he regards religion as a delusion. He actually wrote a paper three years ago defending his refusal to put on a yarmulke when invited by a Jewish friend to Friday dinner, on the grounds that it would express a respect for religion he doesn’t feel. (He complained about “respect creep,” saying that he’s willing to tolerate religious believers, but that doesn’t mean he’s obligated to treat their beliefs as anything other than nonsense.)

Yet philosophy, a bit like politics, tends to make strange bedfellows. At least on the subject of truth, Benedict and many of the luminaries in Lugano seem to have some common ground.

Blackburn offers an interesting case in point. In his book Truth, Blackburn acidly denounced “something diabolical in the region of relativism, multiculturalism or postmodernism, something which corrodes and corrupts the universities and the public culture, that sweeps away moral standards, lays waste young people’s minds, and rots our precious civilization from within.”

It’s language that, in another context, easily might have flowed from the papal pen.

In his keynote address this morning, Blackburn returned to the theme.

“Relativism attracts suspicion and hostility for a good reason,” he said. “Suppose I voice an honest and heartfelt opinion about anything, from mathematics to aesthetics. The conversation stopping remark ‘that’s just your opinion’ is not only beside the point, but more importantly dehumanising. It signals that your words do not deserve to be taken seriously, but only taken as symptoms, like signs of a disease.”

“It is not only the conservative half of each of us who cannot stand this patronage,” Balckburn said. “It is each of us in toto, agents attempting to reason our way through the practical problems with which life tries to trip us up.

On the other hand, Blackburn was not ready to sign up for Benedict XVI’s muscular sense of absolute truth, and certainly not truth rooted in a personal deity. Instead, he advocated a position known in the philosophical guild as “deflationism.”

In essence, deflationism declares the “truth wars” over on the grounds that there’s nothing to fight about in the first place. Both relativism and “realism,” the belief in absolute standards of truth, presume that truth is a substantial property that either exists or not. In reality, deflationists say, it’s no such thing.

Take any propositional statement, such as “water is formed by hydrogen and oxygen.” It contributes nothing to the content of that statement, deflationists say, to rephrase it as “it is true that water is formed by hydrogen and oxygen.” Truth is “invisible,” or “transparent” -- it is not a lofty Platonic form, but rather a simple generalization about individual statements that are supported by convincing evidence.

Deflationism thereby refutes relativism, because it holds that statements can be either right or wrong -- not “for you” or “for now,” but right or wrong, period. It breaks with more robust forms of realism, however, in rejecting the need for an abstract metaphysical theory to support that position. “Truth” is nothing more than a linguistic label given to accurate claims -- not a property or a “meta-reality.”

Thus Blackburn’s advice is to forget the debate between realism and relativism, and just get on with analysis of specific questions. He offers the example of capital punishment: “If we hammer this out, and decide that it should be [abolished], then we do not increase the theoretical temperature by adding ‘what’s more, that’s true.’ ”

Blackburn is aware that the deflationist position is likely to seem a bit, well, deflating for realists such as Benedict XVI -- a thin gruel, compared to the meaty stew of absolutes which the pope likes to dish up.

Yet Benedict may take comfort that even someone like Blackburn, obviously worlds away from Catholic thought on most matters, is nevertheless on his side in opposing a “dictatorship of relativism.” Many thinkers here seem to share a similar sense; after all, they have spent lifetimes arguing passionately for particular views of the world, and don’t appreciate the suggestion that their conclusions are the result of nothing more than chemical processes in the brain, or psychological and cultural forces. While many aren’t persuaded by the content of the Catholic catechism, they nevertheless grudgingly admire Benedict’s defense of truth. Indeed, it may be the first papal cause in a while some of them even noticed, let alone endorsed.

Improbably enough, therefore, the conversations unfolding this weekend in Lugano could betoken a new chapter in the oft-strained relationship between church and culture. Stimulating reflection on truth, in a way that softens the normal divide between theists and secularists, could turn out to be Benedict XVI’s most important legacy in the realm of Western intellectual life.

What’s more, that’s true!

* * *

I had the opportunity to sit down with Blackburn on the margins of the Lugano symposium this morning. The following are excerpts from our conversation.

[The interview is worth reading, here.]