Alexander Pruss, a philosophy professor at Baylor, often posts wonderful things like this on his own blog and the more medieval-minded Prosblogion:
The following argument is valid, and is sound if we take the conditional in (2) to be material.
1. (Premise) In despairing, one engages in a vice.
2. (Premise) If there is no afterlife, it is sometimes appropriate to despair.
3. (Premise) It is never appropriate to engage in a vice.
4. So, there is an afterlife.Let me say a little about (2). Despair is appropriate in situations of objective hopelessness. But if there is no afterlife, then when one has misspent one’s life in wickedness, and is now facing death with no opportunity to make things up to those whom one has mistreated, then despair is appropriate.
If there is an afterlife, then one can hope for mercy or justice.
Read more here.
April 17th, 2012 | 10:44 am
If we despair of understanding the argument, does that prove there is an afterlife?
April 17th, 2012 | 10:56 am
The argument is flawed. It will require an aditional premise that connects 3 with the existence of an afterlife. On the other side, I think the second premise is false, and so the latter statement “If there is an after life, theon one can hope for mercy and justice” is more doutbfull (what if the afterlife is as unjust or mor unjust than life here on earth?).
April 17th, 2012 | 11:07 am
I’d say given (3), then (2) and (1) are mutually contradictory. If it’s appropriate to despair, then it’s not a vice.
April 17th, 2012 | 11:50 am
It seems to me (to the extent I understand it) that the argument is—at least at first—making use of the Christian concept of despair, which rests on a lot of unstated assumptions. The Catechism says, “By despair, man ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice – for the Lord is faithful to his promises – and to his mercy.”
In order to despair in the sense of the argument, one must believe in the Christian God, but one’s belief (or faith, or emotional attitude) must be flawed, since true faith precludes despair. An atheist, or anyone else who doesn’t believe in the Christian God, can’t really despair, because in order to have the flaw in faith that is despair, you have to have the faith to begin with. So only those with a certain level of faith can despair, and of course in order for despair as understood by Christians to be a meaningful concept, they must be correct in their belief in a God who desires their salvation. If there is no God, or if there is not a benevolent God who wishes salvation, then there is no sin of despair.
So the whole idea of despair as a vice also depends on the Christian understanding of faith in the Christian God. It seems to me that (1) and (3) are not really separate premises. They are interconnected Christian beliefs.
Pruss says, “But if there is no afterlife, then when one has misspent one’s life in wickedness, and is now facing death with no opportunity to make things up to those whom one has mistreated, then despair is appropriate.” But the way he uses the concept of despair here is different from the concept of despair in the Christian understanding of the sin of despair, which it seems to me is what the rest of the argument is about. So the whole thing is muddled, because we don’t have careful, consistent definition of despair. If despair is “to lose hope utterly” or “to give up hope for or belief in the success, progress, or achievement (of),” then despair is sometimes rational and correct.
In a comment, Pruss says,
But according to Christian (or at least Catholic) thought, a person in hell has no chance of being saved. So if he “ceases to hope for his personal salvation from God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins,” he is simply accepting a Christian teaching. Hope, in hell, is self-delusion. Despair is appropriate. If someone in hell believes their winding up there was inevitable because God could not have forgiven them, then that is something like despair. But if the person believes his salvation is no longer possible, then that is not despair. It’s belief in Christian doctrine. I am not sure it even makes sense to speak of vice and virtue in the (Christian) afterlife. According to Catholic teaching (which I find difficult to understand or accept), the power to make morally significant choices seems to end with death. You cannot commit the sin of despair after death, because you cannot commit sins (or at least mortal ones) after death. Otherwise people who were in heaven could commit sins and get sent to hell. (Why angels are alleged to have rebelled and been banished to hell is difficult to explain if humans who attain salvation cannot also rebel.)
So it seems the whole argument is muddled by assuming Christian understandings of despair, vice, and so on, but not defining them adequately, and then not using them consistently.
April 17th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
Has Prof. Pruss watched the new movie “Melancholia”?
It is about just that.
April 17th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
How is prosblogion more medieval-minded?
April 17th, 2012 | 9:44 pm
How can you have a syllogism with three premises?
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