Possible Ph.d Thesis

Hey guys,

First, I should warn you this has absolutely no connection to cars or even engineering. I like science and melting metal with electric fire but I suck at math, so a degree in one of the hard sciences isn't going to happen.

So I'm doing philosophy, specifically ethics. My basic argument is that the dominant ethical positions of Western liberals/conservatives/atheists/missionaries/bakers/bankers/whoever boil down to one of the following groups-

A) people who accept the ethics of Christ but reject the forms of Christianity.

B) people who reject the ethics of Christ but love the forms of Christianity.

I know this is way, way off topic, but you all are really smart and I'd like your thoughts.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath:

Those two categories aren't completely clear to me, but I do know a few people who are very much Christian in their beliefs and values, yet also accepting of others and their non-Christian faiths.

You have a significant number of groups there and unless your thesis is 80 pages+, I would have trouble seeing how you could defend that stance. I would narrow down the focus. From my understanding of thesis writing, the topic does not need to be reasonable, it only needs to be defend-able.

My gut reactions are: 1) it's way too broad, and 2) so what? That's oversimplifying of course, but based on what I've seen a doctoral dissertation these days is going to have to be extremely tightly focused to break any ground. Your premise is based on showing that two subsets of a population exist, but to what end? What conclusions might be drawn from proving your hypothesis?

It's meant to be a modest expansion on Nietzsche's master/slave morality paradigm.

Where I'd be pushing forward is attempting to explain a relatively precise path of decline you can trace from either having slave morality- which I'm calling ethical Christianity in an attempt to be less inflammatory - or having master morality - which I'm calling formal Christianity for the same reason.

Here's the Nietzsche I'm talking about ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_morality

Here's an outline/sketch of where I'd like to go with it ...

https://bengarrido.com/ethics-that-dont-suck/

Here's an idea, find the #1 group that left Christianity because of #2 people.

Dig into that thesis.

your above statement makes it more clear, but I think your "sugar coating" by bringing in Christianity is adding ambiguity.

I also feel you premise directly above is very different than the one in the first post.

Also, if you remove Christianity (which you seem to using a a set of values as well as a social identifier) is there anything new about your argument?

No, your basic understanding of liberals is flawed. There are two groups, though. They are:

1. Delusional.
2. Evil.

Most are delusional. The evil ones lead.

I'm puzzled by this. Will a degree in philosophy help you enjoy science and melt metal with electric fire"?

Dr. Hess wrote: No, your basic understanding of liberals is flawed. There _are_ two groups, though. They are: 1. Delusional. 2. Evil. Most are delusional. The evil ones lead.

I would think an examination of why some people think it is appropriate to break people into wildly generalized and specific groups and seem to have an irresistible need to tell people about it despite being clearly told not to by the rules of behavior in the group they belong to would be an interesting thesis.

So this is getting political. My apologies. Backing slowly away ...

To get back the the ACTUAL question here: What do you mean by "forms of Christianity"? For #2 are you generally referring to those that might be called "Christian in name only", e.g. people who call themselves Christians, but don't seem to follow the "rules" (e.g. take the lords name in vane, judging others etc.)

I would think this all could be a bit confounded by the drifting of the central morals of the religion by the prejudices of men (e.g. pope, preachers).

I would guess the attraction to the "forms" (if I understand what you may be referring to) might have a lot to do with group dynamics (e.g. traditions and pressures). Another aspect is how I have heard there are those who are Mormon, but don't really "believe". They are just attracted to the very strong family and group structure it has.

In reply to aircooled:

Kind of.

I've been reading a lot recently on the early church, particularly Paul and St Augustine.

The ethics of this early church were very, as Nietzsche would say, otherworldly. By this I mean that the ethics are based on the idea of this life sucking and the next life being awesome.

Being wealthy, being elite, having power, being intellectual- these things strongly predisposed you for hell. Augustine provides a good example of otherworldliness in his "City of God." In this book he explains how it's hunky dory that Rome, greatest city in the world at the time, burned to the ground because hey, heaven is coming and it's way better.

Also, the beatitudes. They basically slot into modern socialism unmodified.

"Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven; for in like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."

Nietzsche says this is because the early Christians were all basically sickly slaves who had nothing but resentment. Tertullian, an early church father, provides a pretty convincing example.

"At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.”

So from a practical, ethical standpoint, we have three basic pillars in the early church- a) distrust of the powerful/healthy b) resentment c) otherworldliness/dislike for the finer things.

These characteristics, in my opinion, map very neatly onto more modern figures like Karl Marx, Ghandi, and Robespierre. You will immediately note none of those guys identified as Christian, even though they were dead ringers for the church fathers ethically.

Why don't they identify as Christian? My answer is that what we call Christianity today (or basically any time in the last 1500 years) has rejected those ethics and replaced them with forms. Crosses and rituals. Instead of power making you fetid and awful, a la Paul or Christ, now the pope wears a golden hat. Instead of hating existence a la Augustine, formal Christians concern themselves with building traditional edifices.

If you're otherworldly, why bother?

So basically, most people are Christians, whether formally or ethically. Evangelical atheism is an attack on the forms of Christianity, sure, but it's also almost always an affirmation of early Christian ethics. On the other side, asserting "Christian family values" is almost always an affirmation of forms and rejection of early Christian ethics.

My project is to show how either path, the ethical Christianity of Occupy Wall Street or the formal Christianity of the House of Windsor, leads to decline and fall.

Indeed, one big impetus for this project is my suspicion that people very much like our formal Christians killed the Roman Republic and that people almost exactly like our modern ethical Christians killed the Western Roman Empire.

In reply to Nordic Saab:

I agree. However I'm struggling to find a better term.

The new idea is attempting to show how both flavors predictably lead to decay.

aircooled wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: No, your basic understanding of liberals is flawed. There _are_ two groups, though. They are: 1. Delusional. 2. Evil. Most are delusional. The evil ones lead.

I would think an examination of why some people think it is appropriate to break people into wildly generalized and specific groups and seem to have an irresistible need to tell people about it despite being clearly told not to by the rules of behavior in the group they belong to would be an interesting thesis.

Burn

I think your thesis will take whatever direction your research leads you. Science or not, you're still producing objective knowledge. Don't get too comfortable with any given theory.

Unless you plan on performing population statistics, I don't think you can paint anything but the broadest picture. There are too many people with too many anecdotes to get good information on the state or ethics in the world. Your hypothesis relies on people fitting into your model. Finding out if they do and scoring that will be tricky.

I think you're muddying your ideas by tying them to Christianity.

It sounds like maybe what you mean is that the two types of people are:
1. Those who use ethics to shape their behaviors.
2. Those who use their behaviors to shape their ethics. (Or who use ambiguous morality handed down from "authority" to justify behavior.)

It sounds like you are putting the first group into valuing ethics above things like materialism, status, person gain, etc. And the later to value those things above ethics. Or that one group uses trappings of morality and tradition to oppress, and the other uses ethics to try to combat oppression.

I'd say this is a gross simplification, because you don't have people who fit into neat groups. You will have people who are just selfish and are fine admitting it. You have lots of people who just seek liberty and relative comfort (they neither wish to oppress, nor are motivated to fight oppression/injustice; they just want to be moderately comfortable). You also have people who start of as those who fight oppression, and then become the oppressors themselves.

Even though these are the more nebulous social sciences, your theory is hollow if you are not able to use it to predict behaviors/phenomena.

Honestly, I would posit a separate theory to better describe the phenomena you are looking at. Take two axes: on one is Authoritarian v. Libertarian - on the other is Traditionalist v. [Progressive/Radical/something]. You are equating that Authoritarian = Traditionalist. This ignores that you can (and do) get Authoritarian Progressives. Heck, you can get plenty of Libertarian Traditionalists. You see many in like farmers or clergy.

Or maybe you mean...

There are two kinds of people: the ones who are motivated by self interest, and the ones who pretend they're not motivated by self interest.

(Being motivated by self interest does not mean that you do not believe in being guided by ethics. I believe strongly that being ethical and encouraging ethical behavior creates safety and stability. That those things lead to growth and prosperity. Even on a personal level: If you are ethical, people trust you. If they trust you, they offer you opportunities and rewards. If you are unethical, you can trick your way in to rewards, but must then deal with the stress of working extra hard to maintain the lie.)

Beer Baron wrote: I think you're muddying your ideas by tying them to Christianity. It sounds like maybe what you mean is that the two types of people are: 1. Those who use ethics to shape their behaviors. 2. Those who use their behaviors to shape their ethics. (Or who use ambiguous morality handed down from "authority" to justify behavior.)

Umm, not really. One of the biggest points Nietzsche made is that "ethics" is subjective stuff we make up on the fly. I actually don't agree in an absolute sense, but for our purposes here, just assume that I'm rejecting any absolute "ethics."

I would point out that we don't have to subscribe to the Christian notions of ethics, we just mostly do because of choice/tradition/inertia/whatever. We could just as easily believe that the best life is one that leads to a glorious death in battle (like the Ancient Greeks) or that being ethical consists in fillial piety and retirement in the face of evil (like the Confucians).

In other words, there's no reason our "ethics" have to look like they do.

The people fighting oppression, in Nietzsche's analysis, are mostly sickly slaves fueled by resentment, by the way, so I'm not sure if I'd be alright calling them the heroes of our story. The oppressors, by contrast, are healthy and natural but they also aren't very cunning, according to the Nietzschean anaylysis. I would go farther and call them the fathers of a very specific type of decline. Again, not very good heroes.

The idea is that we should be trying to escape from BOTH paradigms. This is why I'm tying it to Christianity. The oppressor and the fighter of oppression dynamic really only makes sense in a Christian framework. Ship a Wall Street Banker and a Black Lives Matter activist to Athens circa 300 B.C. and everybody will wonder what the hell they're talking about because there's no Christian framework to reference.

I want to see a study of just how required math actually is in many engineering fields worldwide.

In reply to DaewooOfDeath:

I think I follow you more closely now. My biggest critique, is that I do not buy the absolutism that this is the dominant paradigm in western ethics/politics. It would be easier, and more accurate to argue that this is a major paradigm, but not the dominant one. I also do not buy that either of the groups in this paradigm are following the ethics of Jesus.

I'm not totally versed in non-western history and philosophy, but I suspect you would have a hard time proving the negative that this is a paradigm that exists exclusively in Christian philosophy.

Nor do I believe this paradigm stems from Christian philosophy so much as stemming from... probably enlightenment philosophy. If you dropped the Wall Street banker and BLM activist into 15th century England, people would be just as confused.

I could be ill-informed in my understanding of theology/philosophy, but I'm not sure that the sort of people who seek to overthrow oppressors are actually following the ethics of Jesus. My understanding is that he was less "overthrow the oppressors" and more "blessed are the peace makers" and "turn the other cheek". I know less about Mohammed than I do about Jesus, but "Overthrow the oppressors" sounds more like Islam.

DaewooOfDeath wrote: A) people who accept the ethics of Christ but reject the forms of Christianity. B) people who reject the ethics of Christ but love the forms of Christianity.

So most modern Atheists compared to most modern Conservative Christians?

Interesting, I would love to read your final paper

DaewooOfDeath wrote: My basic argument is that the dominant ethical positions of Western liberals/conservatives/atheists/missionaries/bakers/bankers/whoever boil down to one of the following groups- A) people who accept the ethics of Christ but reject the forms of Christianity. B) people who reject the ethics of Christ but love the forms of Christianity.

Though I suspect the dominant one is C, where people believe they accept the ethics of christ and love their form of Christianity.

I'll agree with the other comments that your premise seems too broad and vague for a good thesis paper. I would think narrowing the focus down would help.

The phenomena you seem to be trying to describe, I have a counter theory to explain:

People are predominantly self-interested. Self-interest can run amok and be harmful to society and the individual when people use appeals to tradition or higher authority (i.e. Religion) to justify their actions and hide (from both society and themselves) that their motivations are actually self serving.

^That theory explains the behavior of Wall Street bankers, BLM activists, Westboro Baptists, etc.

So what are the foundational beliefs of the two sides? What are they rooted in? Without defining that, you will have a really hard time defining or comparing anything. Even Christian beliefs can be all over the board based on traditional and even Bible interpretation.

I just want everyone to know how much fun it is reading this thread if you replace "Christ/Christian/Christianity" with "Christian Bale"