Philosophy, Movies and Me

As I get older I feel a shift occurring in my underlying philosophy. I used to be a hard-core, rationalistic, "Enlightenment-based" philosopher. Knowledge, logic, science... those were the keys to advancing mankind as a collective concept (though still a Christian, but salvation is noncorporate, its influence being through the conversion of individuals who, acting in concert, become "salt", but I never bought into the idea of theonomy). The last couple of years, through observation of society and intense reflection, has brought a change. I find myself moving more and more in the direction of a type of Christian existentialism (or perhaps as Marcel would day, a Christian "neo-Socratic" direction). I now think Aristotle was wrong in his Metaphysics to define man as a rational animal. I think that while we as a species have the capacity to be rational, mankind for the most part has chucked that idea right out of the ontological window. I find more and more that people actually recoil when faced with any type of logical argument, their only rejoinder coming as a variation of "How can you say that, you hurt my/his/her/their feelings!" During my lifetime this type of irrationalism began picking up steam in the 1990s and has finally swamped the boat. Now I refuse to agree with the atheistic existentialists that life is absurd, that it has no meaning, but I am ready to yield up a part of my world, the part that believes society is basically rational and will do the "right thing" when faced with a difficult choice. I now no longer believe that. I'll talk more about the philosophy involved later, but I want to briefly mention two recent movies that have touched me and hopefully demonstrate some of this shift I am facing.

The first movie is Sophie Scholl, The Final Days. If you don't know the story I strongly suggest you read some of the pages about the White Rose group. In short, in 1943 a small group of students in Munich came together and began publishing leaflets protesting the atrocities of Herr Hitler against both the German people and against mankind in general, even though if they were caught they would be tried as traitors and put to death. To borrow from the aformentioned site about the White Rose:

The members of The White Rose worked day and night, cranking a hand-operated duplicating machine thousands of times to create the leaflets which were each stuffed into envelopes, stamped and mailed from various major cities in Southern Germany. Recipients were chosen from telephone directories and were generally scholars, medics and pub-owners (which seemed to puzzle the Gestapo -- but who better to spread the word or post a leaflet!). While Hans and Alex alone drafted the first four leaflets, they counted on Christoph Probst to comment and criticize. Jürgen edited the third and fourth leaflets and traveled to Berlin with the dangerous documents. Willi contributed to the fifth leaflet and did a generous amount of leg-work, getting supplies and trying to recruit support outside of Munich. Sophie worked hard at getting stamps and paper (one couldn't buy too many stamps at one place without arousing suspicion) and also managed the group's funds. Kurt Huber contributed to the fifth leaflet and solely drafted the sixth (and final) leaflet, while Hans was apprehended with a rough-draft of a seventh leaflet written by Christoph Probst. All members traveled throughout Southern Germany (and beyond) to mail stacks of leaflets from undetectable locations. Hundreds of leaflets were also left at the University of Munich, carefully hand-delivered in the middle of the night.

They were caught and the film takes you through the trial of Sophie, Hans, and Christoph (they were arrested Feb 18, 1943, tried, and executed on Feb 22, 1943). As I sat in the theatre listening to their words I was struck with the following question: "What ideals do I have worth dying for?" Now that is extreme and thank God we don't actually face such decisions in our current society. I am free to express my beliefs and opinions without having the threat of the guillotine, but for what beliefs am I willing to face such an end? I bitch about our government but I still pay my taxes, I don't join any protest groups (I used to think the Republican party was a protest against the atrocities of big government but that is DEFINITELY no longer the case). I don't take to the streets to try to rally people to any of my so-called causes. I risk nothing for what I claim to believe. Instead I act as just another little drone in the cogs of American social machinery. Seeing that movie was like a slap in the face. Yet how quickly the sting seems to pass... Before leaving this movie I do want to comment on one Christian-related moment (Sophie was portrayed as a Christian and a right good one from what we see). Just moments before her execution she is allowed to see her parents. Her mother tells her "Sophie, remember Jesus Christ". Sophie replies something to the effect of "Mother, you remember Him too". Brilliant! It's one thing to tell a Christian facing death to remember all the promises of God, but with this instantation of life about over it's somewhat easy (that doesn't sound right but I hope you understand what I am saying... if not, write me), but for the people who have to live on after their loved one is gone, THEY are they ones who need the comfort that comes from true faith. For the Christian who passes from this existence, they are in the presense of God, no longer in need of anything. Those left here on earth are in even greater need of His grace and comfort. I thought this was a wonderful moment in the film.

The second movie that hit me is Thank You For Smoking. Here, Aaron Eckhard plays tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor. This movie is one of the best examples of moral relativism and semantic holism that I have seen since the British classics of Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch and Yes, Minister's episode "The Whisky Priest" (emphasis on the bit about Humphrey being a moral vaccum). Ah, I can hear you ask "What is semantic holism?" Simply put (and with some gloss), semantic holism is the idea from philosophical linguistics that truth value in language is only possibly within a larger context of language. Any individual phrase can have any truth value you want (or put another way, a sentence in isolation has no truth value). Nick Naylor relies on this thinking, that you can make any sentence mean what you want my sifting your context at any given time, in some remarkable ways. What surprised me is that I have heard his arguments before with respect to many different "debates". Logic and rationality are irrelevant as long as I get what I want. The more I reflected on this, the more I saw it in our society and the more depressed I became. IS there any such thing as truth anymore (now before you get too shocked, I do believe in Truth, but I am trying to speak for society)? Is winning really more important than being right? Are you better off being a "moral vacuum" than actually believing in anything? And if so, where will this take us? I am afraid that if this really is true then we as a society will suffer the same fate Jim Hacker predicts for Sir Humphrey: "If you believe that, Humphrey, then when you die, you will go to Hell."