The Baloney Detective

Caravaggio: The Sacrifice of Isaac

As I have argued in the previous post “The Familiar Faces of  Faith”, contrary to Wittgenstein who remarked that “Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.” (“Religion als Wahnsinn ist Wahnsinn aus Irreligiosität ” in Culture and Value), the truth is that religion as madness, or religious madness, is a madness which springs from religiousness itself, the inherently conflicted, tormented, and inwardly and outwardly violent striving to be truly religious.

I will repeat here my main criticism of Wittgenstein’s remark: “In fact, not only is Wittgenstein’s suggestion that irreligiousness is the cause of religious madness implausible, it is also a piece of baloney because it contradicts an obvious truth! It is obvious that if we have a case of religion as madness, or religious madness, or religiousness gone mad, it must have something essentially to do with religiousness. Otherwise, it would simply be madness and not particularly a case of religious madness. So, in its very nature, religion as madness, or religious madness,  must have its roots in religiousness.”

I am very far from suggesting or implying that it was Caravaggio’s intention to do so (But it is correct to say that he wanted to communicate a truth about the violence of Abraham’s action. Representations of acts of violence are an integral part of his art,  and, perhaps, have something to do with his temperamental propensity for violence.), but nothing shows this truth better than his masterpiece The Sacrifice of Isaac.

The self-inflicted torment, springing squarely from his religious madness, in the visage of a father determined to savagely sacrifice his beloved son should give us more than a pause for reflection on religious madness.

And I am not really impressed with the intervening Angel.  He is no paragon of compassion since he points to the equally innocent ram as the alternative sacrificial victim!

I can think of no other picture than this, one of the 14 “black paintings” Goya created in his mid-seventies, the “Pilgrimage to San Isidro” depicting a procession of the faithful pilgrims to the hermitage of St. Isidore in Madrid, Spain, which shows the true face of religious faith.

“The face is the index of the soul.” Indeed!

In a remarkable set of remarks from the notebooks of the twentieth century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, collected together and posthumously published with the title “Culture and Value“, we find an entry in 1931:  “Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.” (“Religion als Wahnsinn ist Wahnsinn aus Irreligiosität”)

This remark suggests that religious madness, or madness manifested in religious forms, is a madness which springs really from an absence of religiousness, from the lack of a truly religious spirit,  and probably from a life marred by vices cloaked in the mantle of religiousness.

But there is an obvious problem in Wittgenstein’s remark. If the cause is “irreligiousness” or lack of religiousness, how can the effect take the specific form of religious madness? How can “irreligiousness” lead to religious madness? Rather, it would make sense to think that religious madness must be traced back to its religious roots, to religiousness itself.

In fact, not only is Wittgenstein’s suggestion that irreligiousness is the cause of religious madness implausible, it is also a piece of baloney because it contradicts an obvious truth!

It is obvious that if we have a case of religion as madness, or religious madness, or religiousness gone mad, it must have something essentially to do with religiousness. Otherwise, it would simply be madness and not particularly a case of religious madness. So, in its very nature, religion as madness, or religious madness,  must have its roots in religiousness.

If one’s religiousness is merely a matter of paying lip service to religious dogmas, or armchair philosophizing about its imagined merits, then there is really no threat to one’s sanity. But there is an upheaval the moment one takes religiousness seriously and strives earnestly to be religious.

Just think of the travails of taking seriously the command of Jesus of Nazareth to abandon everything and follow his course or path! Ponder the praxis of becoming “like unto children” to qualify for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven! Reflect on the ramifications of striving to overcome all desires in order to attain Nirvana! Contemplate the consequences of cultivating total detachment to attain the goal of liberation in Hindu yoga! Do this and you will understand why I hold that religious madness springs actually  from the striving to be truly religious.

Religion as madness is invariably a madness springing from an excess of religiousness,  from an excess of “enthusiasm”, as the Scottish philosopher David Hume would have called it, which the struggle for authentic religiousness always breeds in one form or another,  from the self-inflicted tortures of trying to live in accordance with the irrational imperatives or ideals of  one’s “faith”, and from the atrophy of reason and discernment such obedience to the dictates of  one’s “faith” invariably engenders in human beings.

You only need to look at the faces of the pilgrims to San Isidro in Goya’s dark masterpiece to know this truth!

Goya: Aquellos Polvos

Do you see what happens when the real dunces, the ones doing the “judging” in this print from Goya’s Los Caprichos series, rule the day?