Reflections on Arthur Danto's Commentary

Author(s): Julian N. Hartt

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 2, Interpretation and Culture (Winter, 1986), pp.
199-201
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468884
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 Reflections on Arthur Danto's Commentary

Julian N. Hartt
A RTHUR DANTO provides a striking application of a modern/
classical distinction between causes and reasons. He suggests
that religion recommends if not dictates giving up on the
causes and settling for a systematic meaning of suffering.
Here Danto exploits a conception of causality as antecedent effi-
cient agency. Thus teleological explanation is excluded; the question
Why? in application to any phenomenon is ruled invalid from the
outset. Finality, it appears, goes into exile carrying with it the heart
of religious construals of human good and evil.
I note in passing that Danto here offers no defense-no expla-
nation-for this reading of causality. True, it is backed by a formi-
dable consensus; it comes near to being a hallmark of modernity. Is
that a good and sufficient reason for accepting it?
Also in passing I note that the Bible itself offers several powerful
indictments of the sentential construal of suffering. One of these is
so obvious I am puzzled by Danto's failure to note it: The Book of
Job. In an odd way Job's positive recommendation, to accept the
impenetrable mystery of divine creative power, is analogous to the
posture of philosophical naturalisms, ancient and modern. The bind
comes in determining what, if anything, counts as the irreducible and
intractable Given.
Another indictment of the sentential construal of suffering is found
in Christian scriptures: Luke 13: 1-5. Jesus cryptically condemns a
religious habit of positing antecedent sin to account for subsequent
distress.
The purpose of these citations is to encourage discontent, divine
or other, with allegations about religion as such, whether made by
Nietzsche or Danto or the village atheist. This brings us to what I
take to be Danto's main point, namely, that religion invents a problem
for which it is then and thereby licensed to invent a persuasive but
illusory solution. This is a bit like the old wheeze about John's expla-
nation of why he was pounding his thumb with a hammer: "because
it feels so good when I quit."
Close to the heart of Danto's critique is a conviction that nothing
can reasonably be identified as the meaning of history. So whether or
not religion professes a sentential interpretation of history it griev-
200 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

ously errs in claiming anything as the meaning of history. It is thus the

first step into hermeneutics that is the cardinal mistake.
This is hardly the place for a serious engagement in the conflict
between critical ("analytical") and metaphysical ("constructive") the-
ories of history. The religions I dealt with, Judaism and Christianity,
are committed traditionally to a metaphysical doctrine, that is, a belief
that reality, historical and deiform, evinces a comprehensive meaning
to and for people able rightly to read and appropriate it.
Danto is surely right in holding that this profession rests upon and
expresses privileged knowledge: revelation. On this, traditional Ju-
daism and Christianity make common cause. Just as surely Liberal
theology construes the "privilege" not as a nontransferable asset of a
historical community but as an endowment or investiture of human
being as such. This move entailed the reinterpretation of the doctrine
which functions as the linchpin of History: Election.
I call this to attention because Election is the absolute presupposi-
tion of the sentential interpretation of history in Judaism and Chris-
tianity. Above all else, Election is the promise of an enduring and
boundlessly fertile life in communion with God. Without that promise
the threat of punishment, of which the essence is alienation, is un-
intelligible. Accordingly, Liberal theology dehistorized Election in
order to universalize the process and the goal of moral-spiritual
evolution.
I come now to Danto's final observation, namely, that the con-
cluding part of my paper is ambiguous. There I meant to report it
as a matter of fact that theological Liberalism failed to cope with the
stupifying upheavals of this century. I suggested that the Liberals
had made a bad investment in History, specifically in the doctrine of
Progress. For that suggestion I do not claim anything but accuracy-
certainly not originality.
But I do not accept the dichotomy Danto offers me: either a faith
"more robustly prophetic," entailing, as he sees it, an indefensible
optimism; or, that "at last we are on our own," entailing, I suppose,
a postulational atheism. If the prophetic faith involves a fresh com-
prehension of Covenant, I am happy indeed to embrace it anew. This
does not mean that a pat explanation of the Holocaust is acceptable,
whether or not it be optimistic, whether or not it be causational in a
modern mode or outrightly theological-metaphysical. But on the
other hand I do not suppose that Danto is recommending the silent
treatment for the Holocaust. In fact, he is within speaking distance
of the Liberal view, namely that religion must reinforce rather than
dilute or distract the obligation to accept the consequences of our
REFLECTIONS ON ARTHUR DANTO'S COMMENTARY 201

actions. With that I have no quarrel. Nor would Augustine. Nor the
prophets in Israel.
So it comes down to this: Danto is unhappy with the big picture of
the human condition painted by religion. I take it that he is unhappy
with any effort to comprehend "all time and eternity" either in a
theory or in a "picture." For my part I view that metaphysical drive
as native to the soul rather than a millenia-long aberration. It is,
accordingly, something with which religions have to reckon. Liber-
alism accepted that obligation. For that it is to be honored.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA