291. How to Combat Hedonism ｜ Dr. Peter Kreeft
Summary
Dr. Peter J. Kreeft is the author of over 80 books on Christian philosophy, theology, and apologetics. In this episode, we discuss the relationship between the Abrahamic faiths, particularly Islam, and the Christian faith, and their relationship with the common sense tradition and common sense. He also discusses the role that common sense plays in the development of Christian philosophy and theology, including his work on Jacob's Ladder and his new book, "The Common Sense Ladder: A Handbook for the Practical and the Imagined". Dr. Krieft is a professor of philosophy at the Boston College and the King's College, and an M.A. in philosophy at Fordham University, where he completed his post-grad studies in 1965. He subsequently completed his Ph.D at Yale University and joined the philosophy faculty of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Boston College in 1965 a convert to Roman Catholicism. In 1965, he became a Professor of Philosophy and a Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Divination. Today, he is an Unapologetic advocate of traditional beliefs and practices in a world that seems increasingly distant from them, and skeptical of them. I m very interested in the web of beliefs through which we view the world, and I m interested in ideas and practices that sit at the base of our understanding of the world. This is a very concrete answer to Chesterton s "St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox." the main point of his book is that the philosopher is the champion of common sense, and that we can be found in common sense through common sense which is not only by common sense . . He s a champion of the common-sense by virtue of common-mindedness and common-ness . His work can be seen as a link between the practical and the mundane, which are the most mundane of tasks which aren t mundane at all, which take on a great order but also take on an eternal significance in order to build on the order of the great to build a cathedral of which is a task which is harmoniously arrayed in a symphony And that s a harmonious array of tasks that can be harmoniously arranged in some manner that s a harmoniously harmoniously ... and that s not mundane at all . And if that s done properly,
Transcript
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Hello everyone. I have the great pleasure today to be talking to Dr. Peter Kreeft.
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He's a professor of philosophy at Boston College and the King's College.
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He took his A.B. at Calvin College in 1959 and an M.A. at Fordham University in 1961,
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where he also undertook his doctoral studies in 1965.
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He subsequently completed his post-grad at Yale University.
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Dr. Kreeft joined the philosophy faculty of the Department of Philosophy of Boston College in 1965.
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A convert to Roman Catholicism, Dr. Kreeft is the author of over 80 books on Christian philosophy, theology, and apologetics.
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We're going to discuss religious issues in the modern world today with some foray into the relationship between the Abrahamic faiths,
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Dr. Kreeft, welcome. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.
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I have the same to say to you. Thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.
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So some of the things we're doing seem to be somewhat similar.
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I'm very interested in religious ideas and practices.
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I'm very interested in the idea that such beliefs and practices sit at the foundation of the web of beliefs
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through which we view the world, and you're an unapologetic advocate of traditional beliefs
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in a world that seems increasingly distant from them and skeptical of them.
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I guess what I'd like to know, first of all, is your books follow a thread.
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What do you think the thread is that unites your work,
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and what is it that you're trying to accomplish, and why?
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One of my favorite books is Chesterton's book on Thomas Aquinas called St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox.
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And the main point of that book is that this brilliant theologian and philosopher is the champion of common sense,
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that the rising of the intellect to the contemplation of eternal truth on the one hand
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and practical living out common sense tradition on the other hand are not only not opposites,
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So I think our common respect for tradition is also a respect for common sense,
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So you wrote a book on Jacob's Ladder, and I recently went to New York and saw,
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these ideas don't seem related, but they are, I saw Wagner's Die Meistersinger.
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And in that opera, which is about cobblers, interestingly enough, shoemakers, so very, very practical people,
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the great cobblers are part of a guild, and the greatest of the cobblers become singers,
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and the master singers from all the guilds get together and elect a new master singer,
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and that master singer that is elected in this particular story is an analog of Christ.
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And what I really liked about the opera was this idea, it's like the brick layer who's building a cathedral brick by brick.
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Each brick is just a brick, and you could be cynical about the smallness of the task in some sense,
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but when the brick is conceptualized in relationship to the entire cathedral,
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then it becomes a task where the lowest is united with the highest.
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And I think that's what Jacob's Ladder signifies conceptually,
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that there has to be a sequence of action all the way from the most concrete tasks to the highest level of theological abstraction,
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and that has to be harmoniously arrayed in some manner that's approximately akin to a symphony.
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And if that's done properly, then even the most mundane of tasks, which aren't mundane at all,
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take on a, well, I would say, in the optimal sense, they take on a kind of eternal significance,
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and it's in that union there of the practical and the highest that that strikes me as germane
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to what you're describing about the link between the practical and the philosophical and the abstract.
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Yes, I love the old story about some peasants hauling stones on logs through the mud in a storm
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in order to build one of the great medieval cathedrals.
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And a visitor from another country asked one of the peasants,
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I'm trying to get this damn stone through this damn mud.
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And then he asked another of the peasants who were doing exactly the same thing,
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that the emotional functions that fill us with enthusiasm and hope,
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and also the emotional functions that quell anxiety and despair
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are related to our apprehension of sequential goals.
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and so might be getting the mud through or getting the rocks through a swamp
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and then getting the rocks to the building site
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But then it's building the foundation and having a family
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Well, we can leave it at that, of the most glorious.
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if and only if you start at the end of the chain.
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there's no ultimate purpose for doing anything.
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So I've been walking through the Bible recently
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And so it looks to me that if we build a hierarchy of value,
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that there's only two options to how that might be constructed.
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isn't associated with something that's at the highest point.
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But probably more relevant to today's anxious secularism
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is that if there's no unifying superordinate goal,
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then the state of psychological affairs that obtains
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is one of confusion, anxiety, and social disunity.
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So something is either put in the highest place
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or confusion and anxiety and hopelessness reigns.
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Right, well, because it does produce this conflict.
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And then, you know, you mentioned the notion of a person.
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That's something you might do if you're a scientist,
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but that doesn't provide a guide to perception and action.
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is something to emulate and act out and see through
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And so the phenomenon that has to be at the highest place
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for all intents and purposes of a spirit or of a being
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It's the difference between Socrates and Plato.
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Socrates was moved and motivated by his fidelity
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And most people identify with Socrates rather than Plato,
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He's a concrete entity rather than an abstraction.
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Yeah, well, the problem with the abstraction orientation
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So all I do is I give them the stuff that's on the
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Confessions, my class asked me, can we do journals
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And there were about a dozen people in the class.
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And every single one of them was longer than the
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And one common note to all of them is I never knew
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Well, that's a cardinal observation there, too.
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One of the things I experimented with, I started
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practicing this in 1983, I started to notice, probably
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from reading, I was reading a lot of psychoanalytic
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literature, a lot of clinical literature at that time, I
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started to notice that some of the things I said made me
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And other things made me feel like I was stepping on solid
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And I thought, okay, well, what would happen if I stopped
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saying all the things that made me feel weak and only said the
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things that made me feel like I was a house unified within
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And so I've been practicing that for a very long time.
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And the issue with these great thinkers that you're describing is
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that they help people find those solid stepping stones.
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I mean, you're an admirer of non-Christian philosophers.
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And so, and you just said that, well, you used St. Augustine as an example, but you've also made
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Why do you find the non-Christian philosophers useful?
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And how do you view that utility in light of your explicit Christianity?
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Christ has a human nature as well as a divine nature.
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So in understanding human nature, you understand one of the natures of Christ.
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And if Socrates or Plato or Buddha or Lao Tzu can give you profound insights into universal
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human nature, then as a Christian, I say that is a very Christian mission that he has accomplished.
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Yes, I don't understand the concept of retirement.
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And you mentioned in our discussion before we started taping that you're working on a new
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I think two things that will not exist in heaven are computers and mirrors.
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I think we'll look at each other instead of ourselves.
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And I think we will integrate the two hemispheres of our mind better than we do here.
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Well, that looking at other people instead of ourselves, I think that's one of the tickets
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So this book you're writing now on the Lord's Prayer, why did you decide to focus a whole
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And can you tell me a little bit about what you're investigating?
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Thomas Aquinas says, well, let's start with Kant.
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Aquinas says there's only three things you need to know.
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What truth to believe in, and that's summarized in the Creed.
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And what choices to make, and that's summarized in the commandments.
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And what to desire, and that's summarized in the Lord's Prayer.
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So I went through every single word in the Lord's Prayer to try to find hidden depths.
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And I found that in those few words, there are dimensions that are infinite.
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Well, you know, I saw a great graphic representation of the Bible that I popularized to some degree.
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It showed every verse and its relationship to every other verse.
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And then a little graph at the bottom showing how many times that verse was cross-referenced with other verses in the Bible.
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And so it's literally the case, apart from the technology, that the Bible was among the first hyperlinked text.
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Because it densely interpenetrates itself, and it's symphonic in that manner.
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You know, in a great piece of music, each note and each phrase exists in relationship to the whole and is informed by the whole.
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And the Bible, not least because of its assiduous and continual editing and selection, has this hyperlinked depth.
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And so it means that there's an incredible number of pathways through the book.
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As you know, each verse can be amplified by relationship to the other verses that pertain to it.
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I found that a lot in this Exodus seminar that I just ran in Miami.
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Some of the people there had exhaustive knowledge of the cross-references of each verse.
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Wherever the interstices of the chords meet, there's a diamond.
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And it's something like that great quote from Schindler's List.
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Well, and Dostoevsky said something like that too, which was, we are not only responsible,
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each of us, for everything we do, but responsible for everything that everyone else does.
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Which is, that's really, that's a bit much, that whole idea.
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Whenever you touch humanity at one point, everything trembles.
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Well, and then Solzhenitsyn made much of that in the Gulag Archipelago because he talked about
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the fact that each person within a totalitarian system that was willing to lie to get along
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Is that without that willingness of everyone to lie at their own individual level of being,
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And he also said further, and I think influenced by Dostoevsky, that one man who stopped lying
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And you might think, well, that's the only way a tyranny has ever been brought down, actually,
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is that someone in the tyranny decides not to lie anymore.
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I read this beautiful description once of God, which I thought was absolutely remarkable
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conceptually, which was that God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center
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God is more present to me, says Augustine, than I am to myself.
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And that's why that individual contact with God is why a number of Russian Orthodox mystics
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If you go home this afternoon and do one deed of genuine sacrificial charity to your neighbor,
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the result will be that hundreds of years from now, someone on the other side of the world
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that you never dreamed of will have enough grace to overcome his trials.
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And if you do one deed of harm to an innocent human being, then somebody on the other side
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of the world hundreds of years from now will fall because of your fall.
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I mean, one of the things that my clinical practice taught me first was no one ever gets
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Like that book in the sky upon which everything is written.
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It's like, that's a good enough description of reality.
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It means that free will is one of the links in the chain.
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But you throw a ball at a wall straight, it'll come back to you straight.
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You throw it crooked, it'll come back to you crooked.
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In what manner has teaching all these young people made you optimistic?
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And in what manner has it made you pessimistic in our society today?
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So let's start with pessimistic and then end with optimism.
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It's made me pessimistic about the system because increasingly individuals are stupid and
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But when you teach them, they gradually come to realize it.
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And I think this may sound naive, but since light is stronger than darkness and since good
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is stronger than evil, even in the most desperate human being, there is always the
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Somehow, whatever is going to happen in the future, they can overcome it.
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There's nothing this side of death that's not overcomable.
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I've seen students who are deeply, deeply confused and sometimes deeply pessimistic.
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Well, you can see people who are not only conceptually confused, but have been hurt tremendously badly
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and by malevolent actors and who've been fractured and shattered by that and whose pessimism and
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cynicism seems entirely justifiable given their experience, yet rise up and overcome even that
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to become positive players, often under the pressure of artistic endeavor.
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I've seen that happen many times, but often also spiritual endeavor that they can rise above the
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catastrophe of their situation and defy the deterministic mantra that, you know, garbage in
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and garbage out and transform their catastrophe into something that's unbelievably deep and heartening.
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So I love teaching, you know, at the university because I have the same experiences that students
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come in with a veneer of cynicism, but it's a self-protective veneer and it's not very deep.
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And if you offer them genuine ideas and let's say time-tested ideas steeped in the humanistic
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and theological tradition, the philosophical tradition, the scientific tradition for that matter,
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that they're like, well, they're like people thirsting in the desert.
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They take to the water very, very rapidly and can make unbelievable progress.
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And that was always a great source of inspiration and hope to see that that was continually and
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But the system makes it increasingly rare and difficult.
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The humanities are in steep decline and the average reason for anyone going to college is
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Yes, which the colleges also tend to be failing at providing.
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So, oh, well, these conversations are an attempt to rectify that to some degree.
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And we do it hoping that things will be better rather than worse.
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And so there's reason to be optimistic on that front.
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And thank you for shedding the light that you've shed in millions of lives.
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So to close, I just want to remind everybody who's watching and listening that Dr.
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Kreeft has published some 80 books ranging across an incredibly wide array of deep topics.
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And so I would recommend to all of you to check out his, well, Wikipedia page is a good start
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I would also like to remind people that I'm going to talk to Dr. Kreeft for another half
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And I'm going to do what I have been doing on that site, which is to delve a little bit
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into his autobiographical background and flesh out the contours of his career.
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I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.