Several months ago the Irish Times published an interview by Joseph Humphries with Joseph Mahon (‘Unthinkable: Is philosophy having an existential crisis?’ Irish Times May 24, 2016). The views expressed in this interview merit some critical attention on account of their implications for the political fabric of Irish society.
Mahon observes that since the 1960s there has been ‘an ongoing battle within philosophy between those who say that you are not really doing philosophy unless you are working on Kant or Hegel, and those who want to steer the discipline towards practical ethics and public-policy issues.’ This battle can be described as one between ‘pure’ philosophy and ‘applied’ philosophy.
Whether he intends to or not, Mahon nevertheless illustrates very clearly the intimate connection that obtains between what he calls ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ philosophy. In this regard he quotes two sentences, in his estimation ‘arguably, the two most important sentences of the 20th century’, from Simone de Beauvoir: ‘The female is the victim of the species’, and ‘One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.’
These two sentences, he contends, ‘provided the intellectual foundation for all progressive thought and public-policy initiatives relating to reproductive freedom, women’s rights and equality law.’
Mahon’s musings raise concern in the light of the erosion of basic democratic principles in Ireland over the last decade in particular. One could cite a number of examples of the way in which the state has extended its control into areas where it has no right to interfere. Here I limit myself to two.
The Medical Practitioners Act 2007 reduced the number of physicians on the Medical Council to 6 (of 25) members. The majority of the members of the council as currently constituted are therefore not medical doctors, though some of them are from other areas of the healthcare profession. Significantly, six of the twenty-five members are political appointees.
Significantly, the Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics issued by the Council in 2009 introduced substantial modifications in reproductive health policy. While this departure may have been due in part to other factors, it is difficult not to think that there was some truth in Bishop Kevin Doran’s contention at the time that it was also ‘a result of political interference in the structures of the Medical Council, arising from the Medical Practitioners Act, 2007.’
It is of course crucial that all bodies such as the Medical Council be subject to external monitoring. Political interference is however quite a different matter.
A second example of worrying interference by the state in matters beyond its proper remit concerns the family. Understood properly, the family ought not to be the object of a justice that redefines and manipulates it according to its own designs. The family, founded on the sexual bi-polarity of male and female, is rather the foundation of justice in society in the sense that justice ought to respect the family as the fundamental source of society which it [justice] regulates.
Rather than torpedoing the natural family in an attempt to engineer new artificial forms of ‘family’, legislation ought to cultivate conditions in which natural families can flourish. It is such conditions, moreover, that arguably contribute best to the well-being of children.
De Beauvoir’s conception of human nature is dualistic: there is no is no kind of connection between mind and body, and the mind in fact sees itself as being morally free to do whatever it likes with the bodily aspect of our being. This view is philosophically seriously flawed.
If society is man writ large, to give free rein to a dualist understanding of human nature is potentially catastrophic since a dualistic understanding of human nature translates into political tyranny. In Plato’s Republic we find a powerful illustration of this point. The twentieth century offered various lessons that would be best not repeated.
The two examples I have offered ought to give pause for thought. Regardless of one’s personal stance concerning the issues I have touched upon, one must ask oneself: am I happy that the state should in principle have untrammeled freedom to interfere with society and with the private sphere and to manipulate them according to its own designs, however subtle such manipulation may be?
Let me conclude with two ideas.
Firstly, those who wish to support recent political agendas in the sexual and bioethical spheres on the part of the state will realise, of course, that a negative answer to the question above will hinder the advance of these agendas
Secondly, it is undesirable that philosophers should collude, albeit unconsciously, with the state in its violation of the autonomy proper to society.
About the Author: Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP
Fr Kevin O’Reilly OP, formerly taught at the Milltown Institute, Dublin, and holds doctorates in both philosophy and theology. In the forthcoming academic year he will teach moral theology at the Angelicum University, Rome.