There is a small group of significant philosophers who had extraordinary turnarounds. The most famous of these is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote about his magnum opus, ‘The author of the Tractatus was mistaken.’ So, too, A.J. Ayer who, in an interview with the BBC, said of his former philosophy, ‘At the end of it all it was false’. Yet perhaps the most extraordinary turnaround was the enormously popular C.E.M. Joad.Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad (1891-1953) was a university philosopher at Birkbeck College London, who wrote on a wide variety of philosophical subjects, both historical and contemporary. For most of his life he rejected religion—but in the 1940s and early 1950s he first abandoned atheism, then accepted a form of theism, and finally converted to Christianity.
Not until Recovery of Belief, in 1952, did he set out the Christian philosophy in which he had come to believe. This post explores just one aspect of that philosophy, namely his theory of personality and the soul—then briefly, what motivated him philosophically, to make such a radical about-turn. Here is Joad’s later view, in his own words:
‘Having considered and rejected a number of views as to the nature and interpretation of the cosmos, I shall state the one which seems to me to be open to the fewest objections. It is, briefly, what I take to be the traditional Christian view, namely, that the universe is to be conceived as two orders of reality, the natural order, consisting of people and things moving about in space and enduring in time, and a supernatural order neither in space nor in time, which consists of a Creative Person or Trinity of Persons from which the natural order derives its meaning, and in terms of which it receives its explanation.’In his ‘interpretation of the cosmos’, then, Joad proceeds by seeking to vindicate ‘the traditional division of the human being [as] not twofold into mind and body, but threefold into mind, body and soul.’ The reference seems to be to the view identifiable in late-Scholastic theology, that a human being has an immortal part which can sin, be forgiven, and rise at the Last Judgement (the soul); a thinking part which can understand, affirm, deny, desire, imagine (the mind); and a body which is the agent of the mind and soul.
In fairness, Joad does not claim to demonstrate the validity of the threefold analysis; he claims no more than that ‘if it were true it would cover a number of facts which seem to be inexplicable on any other’. He offers it as what we might term an inference to the best explanation. He found no better way to explain the cosmos as he found it.
The soul, Joad tells us, is ‘the essential self and is timeless’. It is incarnated in bodies but can exist without them, since after our bodily death, it remains an individual entity and ‘sustains immortality’. At this point, the influence of Plato’s theory of the soul in the Phaedo is clear. Unplatonic, however, is the notion that the soul is ‘normally inaccessible to us’, and that we at least approximate to an awareness of it in ‘mystical experience’—experience with which ‘most of us, at any rate, are acquainted [in] certain moments of transport of tranquillity that we enjoy in our intercourse with nature’.
Yet Joad’s theory does not rely solely on mystical experience. There are those, he writes, to whom mystical experience is denied. Thus he posits the soul as our ‘point of contact and communication’ with the divine ... God, to use the language of religion, influences man through his soul’.
Joad suggests that ‘The phenomena of spiritual healing and spiritual regeneration are ... most plausibly to be explained on the assumption that God, in response to prayer, acts upon us through the soul to heal the body and strengthen the mind. The soul is also the 'still small voice of God' of which we are conscious when the hubbub of ordinary life and consciousness dies down". This presupposes the existence of God, and of a God who acts in these ways.
Of the mind, Joad tells us that it ‘is brought into being in consequence of the contact of the soul with the natural, temporal order, which results from its incorporation in a physical body’. The mind cannot be identified with matter, as Locke’s ‘thinking substance’, for instance. Mind ‘cannot be adequately conceived in material terms ... Is the notion of conscious matter really thinkable?’ Joad asks rhetorically and in protest against Julian Huxley.
Yet Joad concedes that ‘The mind is, it is clear, constantly interacting with the body and the brain.’ Again, it is not Joad’s purpose to demonstrate the validity of his analysis. In fact, he states that this is a paradoxical occurrence which ‘is, by us, incomprehensible’. This incomprehensibility, further, he sees as being characteristic of what he calls ‘all the manifestations of the supernatural in the natural order’; the supernatural here being the soul—with the mind and the natural being the brain and the body.
There is, however, a crucial concept which subsumes the categories of body, mind, and soul. This is ‘personality’, which Joad describes as being ‘logically prior’ to the soul, mind, and body as the three elements of our being. He introduces us to this concept by considering the relation of a sonata to its notes, and of nation or society to its members (with a more thorough discussion of mereology).
While Joad does not define logical priority, the basic idea is that the soul (to borrow a phrase from C.D. Broad) is ‘an existent substantive’ which temporarily ‘owns’ or is characterised by the mind, the brain, and the body. Hence any idea that the person is a composite, ‘resulting from the concurrence of a number of parts’ has things the wrong way round. The person, essentially identified with the soul as ‘the seat of personality’, is prior to the ‘parts’—the mind, brain, and body.
It came down to this. C.E.M Joad considered the creeds of a single, materialist, physical order of reality ‘palpably inadequate’, almost meaningless, in explaining the universe and our place within it. ‘Personality’ seemed the only explanation left.
Fifteen years after Joad’s death, the philosophical theologian Francis Schaeffer’s major work, The God Who is There, was published in the USA. Interestingly, Schaeffer there presents ‘personality’ as his core idea. He writes that we have either ‘personality or a devilish din’. Schaeffer had an enormous influence on American society and religion. Among other things. President Ronald Reagan, thirteen years later, ascribed his election victory to Francis Schaeffer.
Joad’s final, almost forgotten book may have been more important than we suppose—but not only for society and religion. The idea of ‘personality’ as being logically prior to all else might become a critical pre-condition for humanity’s survival in the 21st century.
28 comments:
We have interesting comment from an English academic.
'This is a clear statement of Joad’s later position. It would be interesting to see how his thought harmonizes with Basil Mitchell’s “cumulative case” for religious belief, and how, among his contemporaries, he relates to the Neo-Thomism of Maritain and the dismissal of mind-body dualism of John Macmurray.'
'Reverend M' has responded and writes thus:
"Interesting, but I think it's muddled. Surely the "supernatural realm" is not part of the "cosmos" which is the created order? I follow Collingwood: we should not describe body, mind and soul as three parts of the human being: rather, they are three different ways in which the one human being can be described. The mind or soul cannot be "in" the body - for the very good reason that the only thing which can inhabit a material thing is another material thing eg my dreams are not in my head; they are in my mind.
Joad would have profited from reading Collingwood's "Essay on Metaphysics" and the early chapters of his "The New Leviathan."
"Generally, I cannot go along with Joad's stated method of considering many different perspectives and coming to the conclusion that traditional Christianity is the "correct" one. For that is to evaluate the faith by secular criteria. The New Testament says we must have faith. Faith is not just sort of hoping for the metaphysical best: it is an irreducible absolute presupposition. You can't prove it because it isn't a proposition. But once you make the presupposition, the reality of the faith manifests itself.
Analogy: you can only know your wife if you're married! Or you can only play cricket if you use bat, ball and stumps..."
“Joad does not claim to demonstrate the validity of the threefold analysis [mind, body, soul]; he claims no more than that ‘if it were true it would cover a number of facts which seem to be inexplicable on any other’. . . . He found no better way to explain the cosmos as he found it.”
Isn’t that a classic instance of the ‘god of the gaps’ fallacy? That is, to insert a god to fill the gaps in what we currently know and understand about the cosmos by scientific and other rational means? Isn’t that a weak explanatory hypothesis to fall back on for purporting the existence of a ‘supernatural order’, encompassing a god and a soul?
"Weak explanatory hypothesis" it may be Keith, but for Joad it was the strongest of all the weak explanatory hypotheses - using his reason/intellect only.
He writes in Chapter 1 of "Recovery of Belief - A Restatement of Christian Philosophy" - 'The Plight of the Intellectual - Reason and Faith':
"The following book is an account of some of the reasons which have converted me to the religious view of the universe in its Christian version. They are predominantly arguments designed to appeal to the intellect...There are many to whom faith comes easily. These feel no impulse to justify their beliefs since, for them, justification is unnecessary...While I admit intellect cannot go all the way, there can, for me, be no believing which the intellect cannot, so far as its writ runs, defend and justify. I must, as a matter of psychological compulsion, adopt the most rational hypothesis, the most rational being that which seems to cover most of the facts and to offer the most plausible explanation of our experience as a whole. The hypothesis in question is that which is known as the religious view of the world, and the following pages are designed to explain why I find it so"
However, let's analyse this, Keith.
1. You say that there are 'gaps in what we currently know'.
2. It is 'scientific and other rational means' which have left us with these gaps.
3. To fill these gaps as Joad does is 'a weak explanatory hypothesis'.
4. Yet you seem to hold out for scientific and other rational answers which we don't 'currently know'.
If I am correct in assuming that no. 4 is your position, then on what basis do you claim that scientific and 'other rational'(?) means will fill the gaps? Do you not have a science of the gaps? Science will fill the gaps, you say, while this is something you don't 'currently know'. That would seem little better than the claim that a god will fill them.
Reverend M says something interesting, which relates to this. As I understand it, one cannot expect to fill scientific gaps with something of a 'supernatural realm'. Rather one begins with the axiom of faith. Yet here I find sketchy what is meant by faith ...
“Now, faith, as I suggested in the first chapter, must for a modern justify itself at the bar of reason. From this point of view there are three reasons which, as I think, make faith not unreasonable; at least, there are three which have had weight with me, and I should like to conclude this book by saying what they are...
The above quote is from Joad in the last chapter of his last book ‘Recovery of Belief’
“Having finished this book, I am conscious of a sense of insufficiency. I should have liked...to have made this book an apologia for, a defence of, Christianity. Judged from this standpoint the book fails. It puts forward, as I hope and believe, a strong plea for the theistic view of the universe, but for the particular version of it which is maintained by the Christian Chirches, though it holds a brief, it makes no case.
“Wishing that this were not so, I have been led to consider why it is so. The reason is, I think, that the main doctrines of Christianity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection and the Ascension are strictly unbelievable on grounds of reason alone, unbelievable at any rate by a modern. They must be accepted, if accepted at all, on faith - credenda, in fact, quia impossibilia”
C.E.M. Joad
Thank you, Thomas, for sharing your take. Much to think about.
As for 1 through 4 and the follow-on comments, we have ample, confirmable evidence that humankind does indeed acquire knowledge and understanding of the cosmos through the sciences. We have seen over the millennia how original thinkers, including scientists, have continued to fill holes in their knowledge; progress is tangible and determinable. I don’t agree with the suggestion that humankind's acquisition of a building, increasingly sophisticated and robust body of scientific knowledge about the cosmos is at all equivalent to resorting, in ‘god of the gaps’ fashion, to some spiritual explanation of the cosmos. Science — as well as philosophy, for that matter — is doing well without that intellectual bungee jump.
I wish I could say otherwise, but it seems to me that we know nothing about a god other than through fabled storytelling, the entirety of which unfortunately is unconfirmed and likely unconfirmable. We don’t have any cause to believe that a god exists, I believe, other than an unsubstantiated leap of faith. The latter being an inner sense, if you will — perhaps to substantiate meaning to one’s life. (All attempts at formulating ‘proofs’ of a god have failed over the many centuries.) Moreover, even if a god does exist, we surely have no knowledge — and, I suspect, never will have knowledge — of the attributes of that god. Other than what our free-running imaginations — frequently shaped by our propensity toward anthropomorphising and other biasing tendencies — have conjured over the millennia. The notion that ‘one begins with the axiom of faith’, as you mention, strikes me as lacking underpinning.
As a rough point of equivalence, what if someone believed that the explanation of the cosmos lay within itself — but, key to this thought experiment, not described or describable in spiritual, transcendental terms? That model of an explanation of the cosmos — or, alternatively, let’s say a model of an eternally existing cosmos or multiverse — is likewise at this point unconfirmed, and may similarly turn out unconfirmable. We don’t yet know. Such a model, I propose, would therefore remain only a hypothesis. For the same reasons, even after millennia of head scratching, the existence of a divine creator likewise arguably remains a hypothesis. Joad’s arguments, as explained here anyway, seem not at all to change that reality.
Fascinating. I confess a lack of familiarity with Joad's thinking, but this seems a classic instance of Anselm's 'faith seeking understanding' and I always admire the courage that can change position in the light of growing awareness.
Lots of thoughtful comments - but it seems rather disjointed. Meaning lots of assertion and no shared insights… I rather think that's the problem with Joad too. For example, "personality". Nowadays we take a more naunced view of this in the 'scientific' sense anyway. Personality is not fixed, let alone created at birth as Joad's theory would imply. You would hunt for what it is tht makes someone a particular person - rather it would seem to be an assemblage of characteristics.
And that aside about consciousness doesn't seem so obviously right to me: I consider a thermostat to be conscious, albeit only of one thing, the temperature. But it is enough.
This is very interesting. Events in London have made me think a great deal about science, nature and faith. Many have turned to science as previous generations turned to faith, from much of the population to our leaders (the latter as a form of protection). We might say that science in the form of medication is the modern form of belief for those who have a natural rather than supernatural take on life. Having recently conducted many funerals Joads words above resonate. There are still many who seek a Christian service because as I often articulate when the body returns to the ground (the natural ) we sense that something does not. This is why we commend the soul and commit the body. Love does not end with death and faith matters (as the assurance of things hoped for as St Paul says). So many of our questions about the future are not new and Tennyson's In Memoriam fascinates me. He saw that with the growth of science (especially related to cosmology) natural consolation helps heal loss but it can only ever give imperfect hope and meaning. I think we are living in an age that is proving Tennyson right and Joad prophetic.
Martin, you say: "Personality is not fixed, let alone created at birth as Joad's theory would imply. You would hunt for what it is that makes someone a particular person - rather it would seem to be an assemblage of characteristics"
Joad would strongly disagree with you that we are just "an assemblage of characteristics", and takes a radically-different approach to that commonly-held secular view:
“True knowledge is, or at least includes, knowledge of the man as a whole. To know a man as a whole is to know him as a personality, for a personality is the whole which, while it integrates all the parts and so includes them within itself, is, nevertheless, something over and above their sum. Now to know a man as a personality is to know him in a manner of which science takes no cognisance. It is to know him as a friend.
“The whole personality is, then, more than the sum of the parts upon whose combination, according to the account given by the sciences, it supervenes.
“But suppose that to think of the personality as resulting from the concurrence of a number of parts was misleading from the first. Suppose that the personality is logically prior and that the parts derive from it, in the sense that it is in the parts that it expresses itself and finds its embodiment.
“At first, in the bodily part. A man’s nature…is thought to be expressed in his smile. Or a man’s nature is expressed in, and is deductible from, a grooved forehead and lines about the eyes; the eyes, we say, are the windows of the soul.
“It is expressed, secondly, in his psychological life. His moods, tempers, hopes and fears are all, psychology teaches, expressions of a certain type of nature. The do not constitute the nature, they are the ways in which it shows itself.
“All these are ways of expressing the truth that the personality is immanent within the ‘parts’, immanent in the bodily behaviour, immanent in the psychological moods. The ‘parts’, as in the case of the other illustrations, are what they are because of their relation to one another and to the immanent whole which expresses itself in them...
“Christianity regards the whole, which I have been calling the personality, as an immortal soul which will survive the break-up of the body, even if it did not precede its formation.
“If this is true, there is a sense in which the personality is more than its expressions both in the body and in the psyche, so that besides being immanent, it is also transcendent.
Hello, Unknown: ‘I often articulate when the body returns to the ground . . . we sense that something does not’. Might that ‘something’ that’s not interred be more of a secular-humanistic nature than, say, a soul that may be subscribed to by people of faith? Might what’s left above ground be solely what one has contributed to the welfare of family, friends, and community during life, and be derived from having simply lived justly and ethically? Without regard, one might suggest, to anything spiritual or of an eternal afterlife? Perhaps that life’s legacy is enough — including, and maybe especially, in giving people the very ‘meaning’ you refer to. A ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ or ‘significance’ that is humbly earthbound rather than spiritual or ethereal or transcendent.
I am responding to the incomparable Keith. Something I failed to touch on in my previous reply Keith, was what are the gaps? You refer to 'gaps in what we currently know and understand'. Does this include constructs such as meaning or purpose?
You write, 'we know nothing about a god other than through fabled storytelling'. I myself see a number of ways that we may admit God into the world, and further how something about him (the traditional pronoun) may be known. 1. Start with the word 'God'. The word exists, and cannot be said to be less real than, say, the buffalo you wrestled last year -- in the sense that both exist in the vast neural network which is or contains the mind. 2. Then, the status of cause and effect. God cannot of course exist if everything can be explained by a natural cause. Yet cause and effect is no longer accepted as it was. There is the possibility that we have a cause-less universe, or some kind of cause which lies behind that which we know. 3. Joad recognised a great need. He found life meaningless with the limited answers he found in materialism or physicalism. Like him, many great minds have asked, Why should we carry on? As Richard says in the post, 'the creeds of a single, materialist, physical order of reality' were palpably inadequate for him -- presumably as a reason to live. If that is true, we may need to introduce God as a necessity.
Australia's Greg Devine has sent me this short comment [as he was unable to access the PI site] :
"Cyril Joad was a distinctive "personality" during the 1940-1950's in Great Britain. Raised as a Christian, he became an Atheist at University, and proceeded to identify with Socialism and Pacifism before - towards the end of his life - reverting to Theism and mainline Christianity. From the position of a public cult personality as a "radio philosopher", Joad had the intellectual honesty to eat a sizeable slab of 'humble pie'. I was intrigued by Joad as soon as I had read his wartime work "Teach Yourself Philosophy". Scriptwriters should consider Joad's life as a potentially fascinating biographical period piece which has deep links with contemporary issues"
As to your question, Thomas, where are the ‘gaps in what we currently know and understand’. I assume you’re referring to gaps in our scientific knowledge. Let me, then, give you just one example. It has been confirmed, originally through Hubble imaging (red-shifting of distant supernovas), that the universe is not only expanding, but is accelerating in its expansion. The gap is in astrophysicists’ understanding of the exact cause of the accelerating cosmic expansion.
It has been hypothesised that something called ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’, together estimated to make up some 95 percent! of the universe, results in ‘repulsive gravity’ (vice what we normally think of as attractive gravity) — pushing stuff away from each other, faster and faster. But science hasn’t yet confirmed the presence of dark energy and dark matter, or what precisely they comprise. They’re working on it. Hence why it’s a hypothesis — or, if you’d prefer the parlance we’re using here, a gap.
But it will be astrophysicists, using the scientific method, who eventually figure out what’s causing the universe’s accelerating expansion. That is, astrophysicists will either confirm the hypothesis, or reject it and decide to develop another, until finally science has confirmably filled the gap. I submit what I’ve just described, related to science’s searches for knowledge and understanding, is very different than the ‘god of the gaps’ method.
You asked me, Thomas, do the ‘gaps in what we currently know and understand . . . include constructs such as meaning or purpose?’ Indeed. And I would humbly go a step further by proposing that life’s meaning and purpose are not just unknown, but arguably unknowable. At least, not in any confirmable, universal sense. As a result, each individual is free to fill those gaps to his or her liking — with the rare, feel-good luxury of knowing that no one can either prove or disprove what one’s imagination might conjure regarding life’s meaning or purpose. In that vein, I suggest that religion and science might have each other as companions, neither able to provide proof or disproof of life’s meaning.
I might extend this thought experiment one additional step: that even if one presumes the existence of a god, humankind might still not have purpose or meaning. My concern, in this regard, is that we (instinctively) lean toward self-exceptionalism and hubris and conceit when we assume that a god might have created/designed us with purpose or meaning. After all, conceivably perhaps not. It’s not a given. Perhaps we’re incidental. Perhaps we just ‘are’ — learning about ourselves and the cosmos in the journey. Perhaps the exciting ride on one of the universe’s planets, as the universe hurtles faster and faster outwards toward the eventual terminal point of ‘entropic equilibrium’, is enough. We’ll never know. So perhaps, in the meantime, we simply owe humanity the best we can offer, modestly to improve the lot of family, friends, and community — in the now, and of future generations.
Joad has a show-stopping one-liner to people with ideas like Keith - to be found in the penultimate page of his book under discussion:
"Such a view is, I dare say, quite easy to believe but...it is, for me, put out of court by one overwhelming deficiency - I do not see how it can possibly affect one's life"
I greatly appreciate, Richard, your willingness to continue the discussion. However, the risk in pulling quote extracts from context, as you have above, is the resultant, inadvertent loss of clarity and meaning. The intent becomes opaque, let’s say. Here, in the pulled quotes that you cite, it’s unclear what the words ‘such a view’ refer to. And, it’s equally unclear what the words ‘I do not see how it can possibly affect one’s life’ refer to — the missing antecedent for the word ‘it’ in the quote being especially problematic. If you’d kindly clarify, I’d be happy to respectfully respond, and do so, if you’d like, in a substantive manner.
Fair comment Keith.
"such a view" refers to Aldous Huxley's "Ultimate reality is impersonal..." to which Joad replies "no miracles, no arbitrary interferences of God with nature, no appearances at points of time of supernatural Personages. Such a view is, I dare say, quite easy to believe but...I do not see how it can possibly affect one's life"
"it" refers to this view of Huxley.
Thank you, Richard, for clarification. Joad may have disagreed with ‘such a view’ that some people might hold; however, for him to say ‘I do not see how it can possibly affect one’s life’ is, in my opinion, wrong. Humanistic-styled philosophy can indeed ‘affect one’s life’, on all sorts of affirmative levels: morality, decision-making, values, behaviours. And for it to do so without resort to what Joad listed as ‘miracles’, ‘arbitrary interferences of God with nature’, or ‘appearances at points of time of supernatural personages’. I find Joad’s comment — in its judging whether ‘such a view’ cannot ‘affect one’s life’ — to be not just hasty, groundless, insupportable, and wrong, but also terribly presumptuous about what’s sufficient to affect the life of a person.
Keith, your view of Joad was shared by many in his own time.
He changed his mind on a number of key issues throughout his life, and although this 'going against the grain' was courageous, it upset a lot of people and left him with few friends.
He was an ardent humanist most of his life, but renounced his humanism:
https://humanistheritage.org.uk/articles/c-e-m-joad/
He was an ardent pacifist most of his life - Chairman of the Peace Pledge Union [PPU] in 1937/8 - but renounced his pacifism in 1939.
A number of fellow academics and philosophers - especially at Oxford - treated him with contempt or ignored him. Bertrand Russell despised him. Bryan Magee saw him as an "essentially fraudulent character".
There is a cost to following one's own convictions.
A dear friend 'S' writes to me 'maternally':
"This is all too metaphysical for me! As a practising Christian, faith and hope in a kind, all-seeing, ever-compassionate God are the basis for my simple and strong belief. Mixing up Christianity and philosophy can only
lead to confusion in many people's minds"
If indeed "the universe is to be conceived as two orders of reality", it seems confusing to think in terms of a three-fold division of the human being. Added to which, I remember being taught that Christian belief is oriented to the resurrection of the body rather than the immortality of the soul.
Thank you, Alan, for your comment. I think that summarises well the Christian belief. If one does reduce reality to a single level, the question is which one should it be? There have been some creative proposals! As for Joad, he certainly thought that reducing it to matter alone was not an option.
Can I return to the comment earlier that "when the body returns to the ground (the natural ) we sense that something does not" - because I agree with this intuition. I think the suggestion here is that what remains is the 'personality', a sort of mental shadow of a physical person. Yet surely, if this is the argument, this personality lasts no longer than other people's memories, and further is skewed by possibly erroneous recollections or insinuations. Joad, for example, is now considered by most 'philosophy professionals' to be a lightweight, a fraud, a wannabee philosopher. Yet for years he was admired and respected. Which is the real Joad? Which one carrries on? It seems that history has sided with his detractors, but in this mystical sense, it is the younger Joad, the philosophy enthusiast with all the answers which twinkles forever in the firmament…
Elsewhere on the Internet, an adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury has criticised our term 'philosophical theologian' as applied to Francis Schaeffer. I replied as follows.
It would seem no great loss to surrender either the term 'theologian' or 'philosophical' for Schaeffer. He is often referred to as both, yet with what justification may be debated. 'Philosophical theologian' is a term preferred by Simon Blackburn for, well, philosophical theologians. I confess that it is I, as one of two editors behind this piece, who is responsible for the term here.
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