Self-Transcendence and Virtue

Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology

Jennifer A. Frey, Candace Vogler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429891168
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Recent research in the humanities and social sciences suggests that individuals who understand themselves as belonging to something greater than the self—a family, community, or religious or spiritual group—often feel happier, have a deeper sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, and have overall better life outcomes than those who do not. Some positive and personality psychologists have labeled this location of the self within a broader perspective "self-transcendence." This book presents and integrates new, interdisciplinary research into virtue, happiness, and the meaning of life by re-orienting these discussions around the concept of self-transcendence.

The essays are organized around three broad themes connected to self-transcendence. First, they investigate how self-transcendence helps us to understand aspects of the moral life as it is studied within psychology, including the development of wisdom, the practice of moral praise, and psychological well-being. Second, they explore how self-transcendence is linked to virtue in different religious and spiritual traditions including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Finally, they ask how self-transcendence can help us theorize about Aristotelean and Thomist conceptions of virtue, like hope and piety, and how this helps us to re-conceptualize happiness and meaning in life.

Part I
Perspectives From Philosophy

1
Epiphanic Moral Conversions

Going Beyond Kohlberg and Aristotle

Kristján Kristjánsson

1. Introduction: The Road to Damascus

Why include a chapter on epiphanic moral conversions in a volume with self-transcendence as a major theme? As a neo-Aristotelian, I worry that many current virtue-based theories of the good life, including neo-Aristotelian ones, fail to account for human beings’ deep-seated orientation or urge—sometimes referred to as “a transcendent urge” (Cottingham, 2012)—towards extraordinary, idealized experiences of the true, good, and beautiful. This urge is revealed, inter alia, in the inter-human aesthetic impulse and a strong drive towards some sort of spirituality. In a 2000 survey conducted in that pretty secular country, the United Kingdom, 75% of respondents claimed to be “aware of a spiritual dimension to their existence” (cited in Evans, 2017, p. 6). One could even argue that the desire for getting high on drugs—especially psychedelic drugs—has the same psychological or biological provenance (Evans, 2017). Sensuous affinity for the landscapes and life-forms of the world, as well as their representation in art, and awe before the immensity of the universe are examples of the sought-after experiences. Incorporating these considerations into his (naturalistic) account, Flanagan describes the good life in terms of a complex “psycho-poetic performance” (2007, pp. 16, 187). In contrast, despite his profound interest in the moral value of poetry, Aristotle did not see art as satisfying a transcendent urge (see further in Kristjánsson, 2016).

The entry point of this chapter is the assumption that lack of engagement with the transcendent urge as a facet of human existence—or human nature, if you like—explains the conspicuous absence of the topic of epiphanic moral conversions from most current agendas in moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral education. If broached at all by academics, such (alleged) conversions tend to meet with skepticism or outright denial. The eerie silence and lingering skepticism are perhaps not unreasonable scholarly responses. As we see in Section 2, there are various good reasons—logical, psychological, and developmental—for questioning the legitimacy of this phenomenon, and the skeptics include some of the biggest names in the relevant fields, from Aristotle to Kohlberg. Yet, most ordinary people seem to have either heard of abrupt moral conversions in others or had such experiences themselves. When I ask my students every year about their own experiences, only a few—but always a few—say they have had a moral conversion, or at least experienced formative events of intense moral enlightening. A 2002 Gallup poll found 41% of Americans answering in the affirmative the question of whether they had ever had a “profound religious experience or an awakening that changed the direction of their life” (cited in Yaden & Newberg, 2015, p. 31). However, as this was a double-barreled question, we do not know how many would have said yes to the latter part only: namely to the sort of experiences that interest me here.

The challenge facing this chapter is to make sense of such experiences while responding satisfactorily to the academic misgivings that cast doubt on them. My exploration will be unapologetically cross-disciplinary. The best way to understand this elusive topic is to shed light on it from many different academic lanterns: in philosophy, psychology, and education. My exploration will also, however, be apologetically eclectic and cursory. In default of a firm discursive tradition, the safest bet is to be inclusive at the beginning and to wade through the crests and troughs of as many sources as possible. Most of this chapter, therefore, assumes the form of a critical review.

On the road to Damascus, Saul—the rabid persecutor of early Christians—had a divine revelation that had a profound effect on his life (Acts 9.3–7). Motivated by this “Damascus experience,” the sinner Saul turned into the apostle Paul through a religious conversion and a radical self-change of moral reform. World literature is also brimming with descriptions of epiphanic moral conversions, although we may obviously question the extent to which those mirror moral reality. To choose two examples almost at random, Dostoyevsky’s (2015) famous short story, “The dream of a ridiculous man,” written in 1877, illustrates the life of a man obsessed from an early age with his own ridiculousness and the meaninglessness of his existence. Determined to end his life, and wandering outside at night with a revolver in his hand, the protagonist stumbles upon a desperate young girl of 8, wearing nothing but a wretched little dress, “crying for her mammy.” Assuming that her mother must be lost or dying, he wants to help her, but the girl abandons him before he can carry out his intention. In the wake of this experience, however, the “ridiculous man” comes to the conclusion that his life is not so ridiculous after all; he is still a person with feelings rather than “nothingness” at the core of his being and an inner voice telling him to love others like himself. The story ends on a positive note with an observation about how he tracked down the little girl—and “shall go on and on.”

In an even shorter story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun (2005), “An incident,” written in 1920, the protagonist is a world-weary, misanthropic traveler, being pulled towards his destination by a rickshaw man. The rickshaw accidentally hits an old woman in rags; she falls to the ground without being seriously injured. The traveler impatiently orders the driver to move on, but the latter disobeys and decides to help the old woman to a police station. In an act of contrition, the protagonist aspires to give money to the rickshaw man. Afterwards, however, the incident has a prolonged and profound effect on his life, “teaching me shame, urging me to reform, and giving me fresh courage and hope.” In sum, both stories convey the message of how a coincidental event can creative cognitive dissonance in people, strong enough to motivate them to change their overall moral outlooks in abrupt and radical ways, by envisaging horizons of moral goodness that were previously closed to them.

Social science seems to be lagging behind literature in illuminating morally reformative “Damascus events.” This is not to say that the topic has eluded all social scientific scrutiny; I discuss a number of salient sources in Section 3. However, the greatest attention paid to moral conversions in social science is in areas that are slightly peripheral to the interests of the present chapter. One is in the field of near-death studies, which is peripheral in terms of frequency. For obvious (and fortunate) reasons, very few people will ever have the experience of being at death’s door and then returning from there unscathed. Moreover, some of the experiences described in this literature are somewhat airy-fairy and may cause brain hemorrhages in the analytically minded. The other area is that of religious conversions (Lonergan, 1990) and a sub-area of those, “calling experiences,” studied extensively within the fields of psychology and sociology of religion (see e.g. Batson & Ventis, 1982; Yaden & Newberg, 2015). Research in this field rarely focuses specifically, however, on the change of moral beliefs or priorities. For present purposes, more enlightenment may be gained by turning the attention to philosophical research, both in the history of ideas and in the field of emotion studies. I tap those sources in Section 4.

In the field of education in general, and moral education in particular, the topic of epiphanic moral conversions is sometimes brought up in connection with a popular, if somewhat cliché-ridden, theme of a charismatic teacher who successfully challenges students to reform. Recall, for example, Jaime Escalante in the film Stand and Deliver, John Keating in Dead Poets Society, or Jean Brodie in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Some “charismatic” teachers may be accused of a degree of superficiality, and the self-change they bring about in students may, similarly, turn out to be short-lived and superficial. Be that as it may, Escalante, Keating, and Brodie all seem to turn their students’ self-conceptions upside down in ways that are morally relevant (see further in Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 10). But what distinguishes the self-changing experiences depicted there from those of more ordinary (gradual/incremental) personal development and growth, and how can self-change of this kind—if needed—be triggered through classroom interventions? I address the educational questions relating to moral conversions in Section 5.

I have already given readers an indication of the sort of roadmap that I propose to follow. Before I proceed further, however, let me clarify my methodological assumptions by listing the criteria I see as characterizing the phenomenon of epiphanic moral conversions and that I have used as guiding lights to identify the relevant literatures. I list these criteria here simply to narrow down the topic. There may be interesting psychological experiences that do not satisfy all these criteria but are still worthy of study. However, my present focus is on (alleged) experiences that satisfy all of them.

First, I take it that epiphanic conversions constitute abrupt, swift, or even catastrophic turning points (cf. MacLaughlin, 2008, chap. 1). William James made a distinction between gradual/incremental and sudden conversions (1958, pp. 152–153). The former are obviously the bread and butter of all moral development/education and may deserve, as such, the descriptor “conversion,” but it is only the latter that occupy my current scrutiny, as they involve “quantum psychological changes” (Bien, 2004) or “Aha moments” (Irvine, 2015) that present unique and puzzling features. The relative swiftness of the actual turning point, however, does not exclude a period of gradual moral preparation that may be noticed when the conversion experience is viewed in hindsight (Irvine, 2015, chap. 4).

Second, the conversions in question must be “epiphanic.” The meaning of this term may not be crystal clear, nor admit of a consensual academic specification, but I assume here that it refers to awakenings (to purported new truths) that are not only abrupt in a temporal sense, but also spontaneous and dramatic, involving radical reconfigurations of mental structures (see e.g. Jonas, 2015a; Schinkel, 2016). While these changes may sometimes be ill-definable, or even seen as ineffable by the self-transforming agent, they will nonetheless typically be experienced as sudden “irradiations” disclosing meanings that were previously “occluded” (Cottingham, 2012).

Third, the events eliciting the conversion will normally be unplanned and fortuitous, or what Irvine (2015, p. 17) calls “unbidden.” This is not a necessary defining feature, however. In some cases, agents themselves may undertake measures to facilitate their self-change because of a perceived need to change. As we see in Section 2, such cases present particularly thorny problems of their own from a logical point of view. Moreover, educators may deliberately design interventions to shake the moral foundations of their students, especially if those have been found wanting (see Schinkel, 2016). Nevertheless, the results of any such self-induced or other-induced interventions will always retain some measure of uncertainty and fortuitousness, as epiphanies rely on spontaneous reactions, and spontaneity can, by definition, never be fully planned. As Dees observes, if I am waiting for a specific conversion to happen, “I am already converted” (1996, p. 533).

Fourth, epiphanic moral conversions are strongly emotionally laden. This can mean either that they are triggered by intense emotions, such as awe or elevation (see Section 4), or elicit fierce emotional responses during and after the conversion, or both.

Fifth, those conversions involve radical self-change. What precisely that means depends on one’s self-theory. Realists (such as the present author) will take it to mean that it involves an essential change of the deep, underlying self, perhaps constituted by emotions of which the agent is unaware; anti-realists (who do not acknowledge the existence of any underlying self) consider it to involve a radical shake-up of the agent’s “self-concept” or “(moral) identity,” referring to the totality of the beliefs and attitude she harbors about herself (see Kristjánsson, 2010, chap. 2, on different self-theories). Obviously, a conversion of this kind might involve changes to both selfhood and identity although the agent still remains “the same” through the personal metamorphosis in a deeper metaphysical sense (Morland, 2016); we are not talking about a Kafkaesque change of a Gregor Samsa into a gigantic bug. Notice that this fifth criterion excludes cases where the agent “experiences” reform self-deceptively but where a radical self-change has actually not taken place.

Sixth, the change of heart triggered by the moral conversion must be towards moral improvement or reform. This is not said to exclude the possibility of epiphanic experiences that may disrupt or subvert moral convictions (e.g., in the field of science or arts, see Irvine, 2015, or dramatically negative moral experiences of great evils), but is simply presented here as a defining feature of the topic under present scrutiny. In addition to the intrinsic moral reform, the conversion experience will also often be seen to produce some extrinsic benefits, for example in terms of improved health or subjective well-being (see MacLaughlin, chap. 5), although I will not be focusing on those benefits here.

2. Academic Musings and Misgivings

Although Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1981) theory of moral development—once the towering paradigm in moral psychology—has mostly fallen out of academic favor of late, it is still taught in most undergraduate textbooks in developmental psychology. I assume that readers are familiar with his well-known developmental theory of six stages, culminating in the stage of post-conventional, autonomous Kantian moral reasoning. For those who are not, what matters is that Kohlberg saw moral development purely in terms of the advancement of capacities to reason well about moral issues. What matters even more for the present line of inquiry is that Kohlberg assumed that moral development is a slow and laborious process and that all agents need to progress through the stages in the same order, albeit not at the same pace. Even after a famous meta-analysis (Blasi, 1980) demonstrated scant correlations between stages of moral reasoning and actual moral behavior, Kohlbergian assumptions about the slowness of the moral developmental process still linger on in academic circles.

To be sure, Kohlberg did not see this developmental trajectory as an unproblematically incremental and continuous progress. For example, he noticed a dip at college age in many students, where—lured by skeptical relativism—they regress temporarily to Stage 2 hedonist-subjectivist reasoning. He called this “Stage 4½,” as it does not involve a complete reversal to child-like reasoning (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). However, Kohlberg did not, in his heyday, envisage a return from this dip—or from any other lower level of development—in terms of a sudden epiphany. As with other forms of reasoning, it takes time to sort out the puzzles and understand where reason leads you to and why. Kohlberg proposed moral dilemmas as a handy tool not only to measure moral ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Perspectives From Philosophy
• PART II Perspectives From Theology
• PART III Perspectives From Psychology
• List of Contributors
• Index