Robinson - Absence of mind : the dispelling of inwardness from the modern myth of the self

THE TERRY LECTURES

Absence of Mind

THE DISPELLING

OF INWARDNESS

FROM THE MODERN MYTH

OF THE SELF

Other Volumes in the Terry Lecture Series Available from Yale

The Courage to Be Paul Tillich

Psychoanalysis and Religion Erich Fromm

Becoming Gordon W. Allport

A Common Faith John Dewey

Education at the Crossroads Jacques Maritain

Psychology and Religion Carl G. Jung

Freud and Philosophy Paul Ricoeur

Freud and the Problem of God Hans Kng

Master Control Genes in Development and Evolution Walter J. Gehring

Belief in God in an Age of Science John Polkinghorne

Israelis and the Jewish Tradition David Hartman

The Empirical Stance Bas C. van Fraassen

One World: The Ethics of Globalization Peter Singer

Exorcism and Enlightenment H. C. Erik Midelfort

Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition Mary Douglas

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate Terry Eagleton

The Religion and Science Debate: Why Does It Continue? Harold W. Attridge, ed.

Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History Amad Dallal

Absence of
Mind

THE DISPELLING

OF INWARDNESS

FROM THE MODERN MYTH

OF THE SELF

Marilynne Robinson

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN & LONDON

Copyright 2010 by Marilynne Robinson. All rights reserved. This book
may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,
in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and
108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the
public press), without written permission from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robinson, Marilynne.

Absence of mind : the dispelling of inwardness from the modern myth of
the self / Marilynne Robinson.
p. cm.

Essays from the lectures delivered at Yale University, the
Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-300-14518-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Religion and science. 2. Philosophy, Modern. 3. Thought and thinking.
I. Dwight Harrington Terry Foundation. II. Title.
BL241.R58 2010
201.65dc22 2009044020

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The deed of gift declares that the object of this foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The founder believes that such a religion will greatly stimulate intelligent effort for the improvement of human conditions and the advancement of the race in strength and excellence of character. To this end it is desired that a series of lectures be given by men eminent in their respective departments, on ethics, the history of civilization and religion, biblical research, all sciences and branches of knowledge which have an important bearing on the subject, all the great laws of nature, especially of evolutionalso such interpretations of literature and sociology as are in accord with the spirit of this foundation, to the end that the Christian spirit may be nurtured in the fullest light of the worlds knowledge and that mankind may be helped to attain its highest possible welfare and happiness upon this earth. The present work constitutes the latest volume published on this foundation.

T hese essays examine one side in the venerable controversy called the conflict between science and religion, in order to question the legitimacy of the claim its exponents make to speak with the authority of science and in order to raise questions about the quality of thought that lies behind it. I propose that the model from which these writers proceed is science as the word was understood by certain influential thinkers in the early modern period, the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. While it is true that at the same time and in the same culture a new and truly modern physics and cosmology were emerging, both are conspicuous by their absence, then as now, from the arguments of these self-declared champions of science, reason, and enlightenment. The very limited terms that are treated by them as appropriate to the subject around which the controversy has always turned, the origins and nature of our species, inevitably yield a conception of humanity that is itself very limited, excluding as it must virtually all observation and speculation on this subject that have been offered through the ages by those outside the closed circle that is called modern thought.

It is clear that there is a generous element of the arbitrary in the stance assumed by these self-declared rationalists. If one were to say Either God created the universe, or the universe is a product and consequence of the laws of physics, it might be objected that these two statements are not incompatible, that neither precludes the other. But the second is conventionally taken to preclude the first. So, for purposes of argument, let us say it does, and that the origins of the universe can be taken to be devoid of theological implication. Likewise, if evolution is not to be reconciled with faith, as many religious people as well as many scientists believe, then let us say, again for purposes of argument, that complex life is simply another instance of matter working through the permutations available to it.

These two points being granted, is there more to say than that existence, stripped of myth, unhallowed and unhaunted, is simply itself? Are there other implications? This starlit world is still the world, presumably, and every part of it, including humankind, is unchanged in its nature, still embodying the history that is also its ontogeny. Surely no rationalist would dispute this. Some might argue that life, absent myth, would be freed of certain major anxieties and illusions, and hostilities as well, but such changes would not touch our essential selves, formed as they have been through biological adaptation.

There is no reason to suppose that arriving at truth would impoverish experience, however it might change the ways in which our gifts and energies are deployed. So nothing about our shared ancestry with the ape can be thought of as altering the fact that human beings are the creators of history and culture. If mind and soul are not entities in their own right, they are at least terms that have been found useful for describing aspects of the expression and self-experience of our very complex nervous system. The givens of our nature, that we are brilliantly creative and as brilliantly destructive, for example, would persist as facts to be dealt with, even if the word primate were taken to describe us exhaustively. I am aware that certain writers have made the argument, or at least the assertion, that conflict arises out of religion and more especially out of religious difference. They would do well to consult Herodotus, or to read up on the career of Napoleon. Extrapolations from contemporary events proceed from far too narrow a base to support a global statement of this kind. And this thesis about the origins of conflict is novel in the long history of the debate over human origins, which has typically argued that conflict is natural to us, as it is to animals, and is, if not good in any ordinary sense, at least necessary to our biological enhancement. However, if attributing conflict to religion, thereby removing hostility and violence from a Darwinist or even a Freudian frame of interpretation, is a departure from tradition, it is at least familiar as a strategy that preserves a favored conclusion by recruiting whatever rationalization might seem to support it. Religion has always been the foil for this tradition, sometimes deplored as the sponsor of dysgenic compassion, sometimes as fomenter of oppression and violence.