The Ethical Condition by Michael Lambek

Author:Michael Lambek [Lambek, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, Social, Social Science, General, Anthropology
ISBN: 9780226292243
Google: Ad0pCwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 24693143
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Conviction

I accept Austin’s point that seriousness is not a matter of an outer performance corresponding to a prior inner intention and that the outer performance is therefore not to be judged as true or false with respect to some hypothetical inner one. Arguments concerning public versus private language are enormously helpful. Austin (and other philosophers of language) demonstrate the consequences of public utterances, and Rappaport adds the way that ritual both reinforces or enhances illocutionary force and commits performers to accept the liturgical orders in which they are participating. But they omit a good deal when it comes to learning religion; that is to say, they omit a good deal if learning religion is to mean more than acquiring deliberative and procedural knowledge, and if we recognize that participation in ritual acts can have a significance for participants or raise concerns that exceed (or otherwise depart from) their public acceptance of the liturgical order of which their own acts are a part. One does not need to posit an independent “inner artiste” in order to ask what the acquisition of religious knowledge or competence comes to mean for those acquiring it; what the performing of specific acts comes to mean to the specific individuals who carry them out; and what kinds of performance anxieties attend the specific liturgical regimes. It remains valid to consider the passion with which certain religious adepts pursue their goals or accede eagerly, happily, or with equanimity to the challenges religion places before them, or conversely, to consider their concerns over whether they have things right, are as virtuous, powerful, or effective as they are supposed to be, and so forth. In sum, a central problem in learning religion—and not just Protestantism, though it may be found most acutely there, in the form of sincerity—is acquiring conviction. Kierkegaard summarizes the problem succinctly when he writes (in the first epigraph of the chapter) of learning “to catch up with oneself.”

Even when one has learned to smoothly inhabit a way of life and a set of practices that comprise it, these practices and this way of life will continue to throw up challenges—and indeed must do so (within reason) if they are to retain our interest. Intrinsic to the idea of a challenge is discovering whether we have been up to it. Learning then entails both meeting specific challenges and recognizing that they are meetable, that in general we are up to meeting the challenges that this way of life, this set of practices, throws our way. In the case of ritual this includes learning that the certainty of acceptance entailed in performance does trump the vagaries of belief and skepticism. Seriousness entails a commitment to ensuring that the performative acts in which one participates are carried out felicitously; conviction (here) can be understood as the knowledge that they can be. These can only be realized after the fact.

What can go wrong in the performance of ritual? Austin elaborates a typology of infelicities. In his inimitable language, or

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