Anti-Climacus

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: I've been working on a paper for an upcoming conference (on Rational Theism in the Public Sphere), and I find myself returning to the idea (contra Rorty) that the names that are attached to things sometimes don't matter very much. Part of the impetus for this is from 1 Peter: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." So far as I can tell, the implication of the verse is that it's not the name attached to the action that matters--it's what the action is*. But on this topic, Grotius, from Meletius:

"The Christian, therefore, unlike all other people, does not consider plundering justified on the excuse that it is called war, or theft because it passes under the name of interest. He judges things by their nature, not by what they are called or their frequency of occurrence. He furthermore excludes nobody from his love, even though he acknowledges there is a special bond between those who profess the same religion and for whom our love for that reason is bound to be greater and more spontaneous because there are common ties. Nor does he, like Aristotle, set barbarians apart from Greeks as though they were a different species or subject them to injuries or even servitude. But nature persuades him that these people too are humans and should therefore be considered brothers."



*or it might be better to say that the name is affixed to actions and dispositions quite apart from what a particular person might call it (I believe the technical term for this is 'moral realism'). This is not to deny the importance of naming, but rather to say it's from the correspondence between the named thing and the name given that a description gains its meaning and power (rather than something inhering in the power to name itself).