The Pistic Aspect

By including this aspect among all the others, Dooyeweerd was saying something very important: religion, vision, commitment etc. are not to be given special status, neither elevated nor set aside, in our thinking. As Russ Reeves has well said,

"The inescapability of religion is also important - in religious studies, there is surprisingly little clarity regarding what 'religion' actually is, and it is defined in a variety of odd ways (and often left undefined), something some people have but others don't. Dooyeweerd's perspective not only makes more sense, but makes religion a universal (and useful) analytical category."

The tendency to elevate or set aside such issues can be linked to the Nature-Grace Ground Motive.

In brief, pistic functioning is to do with two things:

• Whether we exercise vision, commitment, faith.
• Whether the vision, commitment, faith we exercise is valid or invalid.

On the latter point, consider the following visions for a business:

• To make lots of money for the owner
• To make lots of money for the firm as a whole
• To ascend the league table of competing firms
• To meet a major need in society

Which would most inspire the workers and managers in the firm to work together and make a long-term success of the firm? Consider the firms that have lasted more than 100 years, and ask what proportion of them started off with each type of vision. In the UK and Ireland we have Lever Bros, Cadbury's, Boots, Guinness, and so on. A disproportionate number started off with the fourth vision. While the first vision might inspire the small circle of owner's friends, and the second and third, the mobile middle managers whose sole aim in life is excitement, it is the fourth that can inspire right through the firm. It is not sufficient to have any vision, but a 'right' vision. (Think: what does 'right' mean? Shalom?) (Think: are all faiths equal?)

Common Misconceptions x

• Pistic is not centrally to do with formal creeds, in which we say "I believe X, Y, Z." Many such creeds are more logically than pistically qualified. Very often someone will rehearse such a creed but it does not express the heart. Pistic refers to the element of commitment to such creeds in the heart of the heart of the person and the degree to which that commitment expresses the vision they hold of who they are.

The Aspect Itself

Other Names for Pistic Aspect

Shalom - Contribution x

• Courage
• Commitment
  • All actuality is commitment of a sort - at least actuality in the human aspects?
• Meaning in life; purpose; significance of the individual
• Vision and Mission
• Spirituality

• Intimate and full relationship with the True and Living God. What more can I say?
• Lots more. Because the more we have this relationship, the better will be the world into which he has put us. (Though the harder we ourselves might find it.)

• "It is better to have been cheated a few times than never to have trusted." Dr. Johnson.

• "It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained ... the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognised as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness." [Georg Hegel, 1967, The Phenomenology of Mind, 233, cited by Terry Miller] - pistic is belief strong enough to risk one's life for. Also ethical aspect. Hegel understood something of these two aspects.

Detrimental Functioning and Repercussions x

• Our vision of who we are determines what we deem fashionable or not (e.g. 'old fashioned'). Also it determines whether we are applauded or seen as traitors. The vision of who we are that architects and planners held in the 1950s and 1960s was that being 'modern' was all important, while much of family life was deemed unimportant or 'old fashioned'. So concrete geometric buildings were fashionable (and anyone who suggested a pitched rather than flat roof was seen as a traitor, I have been told by those in the construction industry!).

  Example: In the 1960s an architect won an award for student accommodation in the UK. He designed a jousing complex in Runcorn called Southgate. Concrete with walkways and round windows. I lived there for six months. Inside the accommodation was quite good for a single person but outside it was ugly, and there was no place for children to play, except screaming along the boring walkways. In the 1990s it was pulled down, to make room for a more traditional estate of houses and gardens! The 1960s construction fashions had a false view of who people are.

  Salford James Street Salvation Army hostel got knocked down a couple of years ago. It was concrete affair of rectangles, completely uninviting and drab. Why should the poor be subjected to an inhuman place to live? Because of the planners' vision of who people are.

• Illusion is harmful beliefs or commitment.
• If we push our own goals on others, then those others will often resist. This may be explained by the 'pushiness' as being a pistic absolutization (even when not explicit, it is often seen as an assuming, or at least wishing for, some authority over the others that is not to be questioned). Even we get our way, those others will not put their full heart into fulfilling our goals, and the result will be less than it could be even from our own point of view. However, if we are generous (ethical aspect) and open, allowing the others to question our goals and even change them, then those people will often affirm our goals - this depends on pistic view that we are no better than others.

• Pushing others down, humiliating them, denying them dignity.

• False religious belief and commitment 1. Hypocrisy. Though lingual in nature, hypocrisy is deceit about our deepest nature and belief and commitment.
• False religious belief and commitment 2. Idolatry. This is the treating something in temporal creation as of absolute worth, worthy of our deepest commitment, and worthy of having other things sacrificed to it.
• False religious belief and commitment 3. Apostasy. Turning away from the True and Living God, who is our only hope and joy and freedom and beauty and saviour and sovereign. See below.
• Fashions. Adherence to a fashion has something of a pistic element in it. That is, not just adopting a fashion, but adhering to it, is a minor pistic commitment.
• Sneering. Rejecting something, not because it is bad but because it is out of fashion or beneath one, is a wrong pistic commitment, though of a minor sort.
• Sharp and aggressive anger comes when a pistic commitment (fashion or sneering) is challenged.

Most pistic harm comes from absolutization of what should not be absolutized. Many 'isms' are viewpoints in which some aspect is absolutized; aspects should not be. The result includes reduction to an overly narrow view, with consequent problems, an attitude of reductionism, and the marginalization of many valid and important points of view.

Non-Absoluteness x

Special Science x

Institutions x

• Religious institutions, but see above.

Contributions from the Field x

• William James: Varieties of Religious Experience, which attempted, from an academic point of view, to distinguish these. He concluded that the following are characteristics of religious life and, to the extent that these insights may be valid, they describe some of the functioning of the pistic aspect and some of the results of that functioning:
  • that the world is part of a greater spiritual whole, from which it draws its chief significance;
  • that union with this is our true end;
  • that prayer etc. that communicates with this generates effects in the phenomenal world
  • 'psychological' effect: a new zest in life
  • 'psychological' effect: an assurance of safety or peace.

• Charles Taylor: "We all see our lives, and/or the space wherein we live our lives, as having a certain moral / spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness, a richness; that is, in that place (activity or condition), life is fuller, richer, deeper, more worthwhile, more admirable, more what is should be. Thhis is perhaps a place of power; we often describe this as deeply moving, as inspiring. Perhaps this sense of fullness is something we just catch glimpses of from afar off; we have the powerful intuitiono f what fullness would be, were we in that condition, e.g. of peace or wholeness; or able to act on that level, of integrity or generosity or abandonment or self-forgetfulness. But sometimes there will be moments of experienced fullness, of joy and fulfilment." Here Charles Taylor expresses a kind of 'private religiousness', which is experienced by people whether or not they consider themselves religious in the conventional sense. It is this kind of thing that Dooyeweerd was trying to capture in the pistic aspect, as something that all human beings function in, whether they see themselves religious or not. '

• Gramsci: The idea of acceptance by us of something by acculturation, as a kind of taken-for-granted commitment, is a pistic functioning. Hegemony is when this becomes widespread in society.

• Bruce Reed: The Dynamics of Religion [1978]. He tries to explain conversions etc. by an 'oscillation theory', where the person oscillates between engagement and disengagement with everyday life, the latter being a 'regression' to 'dependence' and an opportunity to reorder the way the person construes reality. This might throw some light on pistic processes and their foundational dependency on functioning in earlier aspects.

• Jacinda Tan found that a major factor in Anorexia Nervosa is identity. Identity, which is a deep belief and commitment about who one is, is pistic functioning.

• Maslow's concept of self-actualization, which, according to him, is rarely achieved. Self-actualization must be understood holistically, as "perceptions of reality, acceptance, spontaneity, problem centring, solitude, autonomy, fresh appreciation, peak experiences, human kinship, humility and respect, interpersonal relationshhips, ethics, means and ends, humour, creativity, resistance to enculturation, imperfections, values, and resolution of dichotomies" [Maslow 1954, 128]. At first sight some of these might seem of pre-pistic aspects - e.g. resolution of dichotomies might seem of the analytical aspect - but in the context of self-actualization they are much grander than this, and perhaps he was trying to express pistic renderings (retrocipations) of other aspects. Exploring this could throw some light on the nature of intense pistic functioning.

Ontology Has Bad Name

To see ontology as involving the pistic aspect helps: ontology involves commitment, whereas epistemology involves only the analytical or lingual aspects (depending on whether you see it as analysis or language games). In real life, we function in every aspect, so we function pistically too, and hence make ontological commitments - that is at least those minor commitments about little things in life. When we go to the loo we don't just hold an epistemological opinion that there is a loo there, we commit to it!

Why has ontology got a bad name? If ontology is pistic functioning, then we can perhaps explain this by harm of pistic functioning, which is idolatry or any giving of undue importance to something. Most ontology, or essentialism, has assumed self-dependent Being. As Clouser (1991) argues, this is a kind of idolatry, giving divine status to something that is not divine. Functioning against the laws of an aspect leads to repercussions, and the pistic has the longest response time, so gradually the harm from this pistic commitment starts to congregate, then have effect, then be noticed, then realised, then reacted against. Hence the reaction against ontology.

But ontology, if we function in line with the laws of the pistic aspect, and give God is proper respect as God, can give us freedom and joy ahd shalom.

The Aspect Among Others

Law-dependencies x

• Pistic needs ethical in order to be good (not harsh, repressive); ethical needs pistic in order to be effective.

• Creeds are an attempt to put linguallyour beliefs. Not really an anology between the aspects but rather the use of the lingual aspect for purposes of the pistic.

• Though the Cognitive Science of Religion (of interest since the 1990s) might be motivated by a desire to reduce religion to a cognitive functioning, nevertheless some of the work within it discloses some of cognitive (sensitive and analytical) functioning on which pistic functioning depends.

Analogies x

• Bourdieu [Outline of a Theory of Practice p.172] has been discussing gift-based societies and economies in Algeria. He concludes with "The historical situations in which the unstable, artificially maintained structures of the good-faith economy break up and make way for the clear, economic (i.e. economical) concepts of the undisguised self-interest economy reveal the cost of operating an economy which, by its refusal to acknowledge and confess itself as such, is forced to devote as much time to concealing the reality of economic acts as it expands in carrying them out" [added emphasis]. The emphasised words indicate the root problem: refusal to confess what it really is. This is a pistic functioning, and Bourdieu shows how this adversely affects the norm of the economic aspect, which is frugality and avoidance of waste.

Antinomies x

Common Reductions x

• The mediaeval elevation of sacred over secular (which we still have today in many religious circles) can be seen as a teleolgical reduction of all things to the pistic aspect, or at least the religious parts of it.
• Existentialism can be seen as an ontological or epistemological reduction to the visional parts of this aspect.

Reductions of faith aspect to others. Non-religious thinkers have argued for the primacy of such features as

• will (formative aspect)
• self-interest (ethical aspect)
• emotion (sensitive aspect)
• custom (social aspect)

Notes x

Dirkzwager's Comments

".. the pistic .. has as its central meaning the relation of the created to its Creator; faith and trust on the subject side and responsibility for the creation towards its Creator. In Jesus Christ we know it as a Father-Child relationship. This can be disbelieved and denied, with disastrous consequences for the whole of cration."

"It [sustainability] is a quite new concept and I think we should ask ourselves why it came to the fore. I think it is a natural and timely event in the course of the unfolding process. Just recently man realised that he made a mess of the creation (his "environment" and his "thinking") in the course of history, and thus mankind became conscious of it's responsibility (and it's guiltyness). This is essentially a process that opens up the pistic modality. Here it is decided how the problems are to be solved. Unwarranted faith in technological systems design (a kind of reductionism) without a fundamental philosophical insight into the true nature of the creation obstructs real solutions and may cause new, unforeseen problems."

"The main criterion is if it will lead to the whole of creation 'praising the Lord'."

"Artificial Intelligence might offer some quite good methods to be used in ELSIE [a knowledge based system], whether one believes that "human thinking and intelligence" in ALL it's modalities can be "duplicated" on the computer or not. The crucial pistic question is whether ELSIE implicitely suggests to it's users that it (the computer) can take over their responsibility or make them less responsible."

The Myth of Religious Neutrality

When people in mediaeval Europe used absolute claims about God for their own corrupt or trivial ends one of the most pernicious types of oppression grew. A reaction set in that drove into the deepest recesses of our culture the idea that one should never bring God into the affairs of the world such as science, philosophy, economics or politics (hence some parts of the USA Constitution).

But this cannot be. If God is, then our science, philosophy, economics, politics, and everything else is most deeply affected by that. Now, nobody can prove God is, or even prove what God is like, just as nobody can prove their own existence even to themselves - there is a fundamental limit to reason and proof . But that epistemological limitation does not affect the ontological status of the influence of God on his world. However, there is plenty of evidence on who God is, what he is like: he acted into the world over the last 4000 years and beyond, and communicated with us.

So, while the first two harms above are phrased in neutral form, the third one is not. It is making a bold statement that if we go against who God really is then harm will come - usually in the longest term - while if we go with who God is then ultimate and most wide-ranging good will come.

Roy Clouser (1992) published a book The Myth of Religious Neutrality , whose title I adopted for this section, in which he argues cogently and readably for the non-neutrality of science. He proposes three basic types of religious commitment, and shows how these affect our basic pre-suppositions about a few sciences like mathematics, physics, etc.

Pistic Commitment in Science

But we find scientists everywhere trying to prove their hypotheses, rather than disprove them. Why is this? Most academic papers show positive evidence, not attempts at finding negative.

(Of course, in the initial stages of formulating hypotheses, and getting them to the stage where serious disproof is appropriate, it is useful to look for evidence in favour. But in many (most) cases, that is all that happens. Why is this?)

It would seem that in many cases it is because of a pistic commitment that scientists have toward their pet hypotheses. It is sometimes known as psychological ownership, and is a pistic commitment even though in a mild form. Scientists, as humans, are pistically committed to their pet theories.

This is ironic, in a field (science) which claims to be free of such commitments and to be entirely logical or empirical. Yet because scientists are human, it should not be unexpected.

Indeed (and I'm grateful to Herb van den Dool for pointing this out) Polanyi said almost as much in his Personal Knowledge (which from its title could be seen as an antidote to Popper's Objective Knowledge?). As Herb points out, in referringing to Nick Woltersdoorf, actually "for the most part it is hard to disprove hypotheses, especially when they come in packages of big theories. For the most part scientists will first attempt to see if there was an error in the observations. If only they feel there can be no error there, they will attempt to only make small adaptations to their theories rather than throw them out. So in a sense hypotheses can't really be disproved either."

We also find pistic commitments, of a deeper kind, to paradigms in science - to ways of looking at things. These paradigms dictate what research questions are considered worth exploring (and funding), and what types of answers are deemed satisfactory. In too many cases these adherances to paradigms take the form of almost unthinking following of (intellectual) fashions. Things outside these paradigms are sometimes sneered at. This is the downside of pistic commitments.

Best and Worst

"The Jews sinned in this manner worse than the Pagans not because they were further from God but because they were nearer to Him. For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse."

This fits well with the pistic aspect being the last aspect, and even more with the kernel of the pistic aspect being our vision of who we ultimately are, what we place our faith on, what we commit ourselves to at the deepest level. It is, if you like, the deepest aspect.

What that means, or at least implies, is that 'spiritual' does not equate with 'good'. There is a tendency today, as we move away from materialism, to think that materialism = bad and therefore spiritual = good, but both C.S. Lewis and Dooyeweerd would suggest otherwise. Dooyeweerd suggests otherwise because he proposes that the pistic is merely one aspect of our functioning, rather than as a 'higher' level of reality.

The upshot of this is that our functioning in the pistic aspect can be either good or bad, beneficial or harmful, in line with or against the grain of pistic reality. So it is in principle possible for people to be very spiritual and yet very wrong in their pistic functioning - and even to be very good in their ethical functioning, to boot, so they seem such nice, good, wholesome people. And C.S. Lewis suggest that it is also possible in practice, and even common in practice.

What is good pistic functioning, and what is bad, is another issue. But Dooyeweerd would claim something that today would be unacceptable.

Isms

World Views and Pre-suppositions

Our View and Treatment of Animals

One issue that came high on the agenda was that animals should not be treated in such ways - as mere artifacts for human convenience - but one witness suggested that actually the animals were well treated. This set me thinking: there are at least two types of 'treatment' of animals here. One was speaking about our (pistic) view of what animals are, the other about whether we threaten the life functions of the individual animals.

Let's take it further: it seems there are at least four different types of animal treatment here, each related to an aspect. (I admit it: I have used the aspects as a given taxonomy in order to help me tease out the differences - but they do seem helpful; see what you think.)

• biotic
• sensitive
• juridical
• pistic

Juridical treatment refers to giving animals what is due to them - their rights, if you like. Pistic treatment refers to what we think animals are - and influences what we believe animals are due.

Well, cloning a sheep might satisfy the biotic and sensitive aspects, and, in the case of the individuals involved, might even largely give them what is due to them. But it (might) go against the pistic, namely that animals are created by God, belong to him, are loved by him, and given their own dignity by him, whereas we treat them as merely convenient media for our drug research, or as mere economic objects.

(The question of eating animals is, arguably, another matter: eating something does not necessarily detract from its dignity - or does it? I will not discuss that here.)

Deep Effects on our Functioning in Other Aspects

Even so-called neutral scientific research is influenced in this manner. For instance, during the age of behaviourism in psychology there was an assumption that "Thou shalt not ask what goes on inside the human mind" and that only inputs and outputs could be studied. For instance, in architecture during the 1960s in the U.K. anyone who proposed a pitched roof was considered a 'traitor'. These are pistic influences.

Idolatry

Uniqueness and Non-uniqueness of Humanity

I think Dooyeweerd's view would have been that what sets humanity apart is that we can function as subjects in all aspects, while animals etc. can function as subjects in only the earlier aspects and only as objects in later ones. This sort-of includes the R.C. view, in that functioning as subject in this pistic aspect allows us to have a relationship with God.

Much more to be written and discussed here.

Spirituality

Hope

I posture a separate modality: Hope, retrosipating on Love and anticipating on Faith. This is the guiding aspect for the act of education of a child. The kernel of hope is Anticipation (verwachting).

Sounds good. But is hope really part of this pistic aspect? Certainly, it seems intimately tied up with our vision of what/who we are. I've asked him to examine the possibility in more detail, especially guided by our 'A New Aspect?'.

RESEARCH

• The kinds of pistic functioning and how they relate to religion of a more overt kind, need research.

• It seems, especially from words like "moral / spiritual shape ... more worthwhile ... more what it should be ... inspiring" in the Charles Taylor quote above, that pistic functioning has much to do with meaningfulness, Meaning in its broader sense. This is certainly in accord with Dooyeweerd, who observed [NC, I, 4] that meaning always has the character of referring, and thus eventually referring to a Divine Origin. Meaningfulness seems to presuppose or always-imply a Divine Origin (where 'Divine' has its Clouserian signification).

• Using Dooyeweerd's pistic aspect as a 'lens', see to what extent extant thinkers like those above can be all gathered together into an integrated rich picture.

• Christians coming out from a time of persecution: how their worldview shifts, and how the worldview that helped them through persecution affects and perhaps distorts what they do afterwards. Christians who see themselves as 'real' still have a persecution complex.

• About people's beliefs: we need research that does not reduce it to psychology or sociology or economics, but takes the pistic aspect seriously.

• How to discern pistic directions of people? Pistic is deep, and so we cannot expect to read it off a display on the forehead of the person directly! Instead, we must learn to discern its presence indirectly. At least the three following give indications:
  • By what seems to be despised without reason.
  • By what seems to be applauded without reason.
  • By what are used as axioms that stop an argument. These are things that all involved agree without question are the facts about the nature of things.
  • By the direction that a society or community seems to be heading.

  Note that such research could be linked with extant work in the field that explore pistic functioning. But the danger is that most extant such work tends to reduce pistic functioning to psychology, so this must be borne in mind.

References

This is part of The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Questions or comments are very welcome.

Compiled by Andrew Basden. You may use this material subject to conditions.

Written on the Amiga with Protext.

Created: by 7 May 1998. Last updated: 18 May 1998 (added thing from Herb vdDool). 29 May 1998 added theme of worth etc. 31 May 1998 moved Real Downsizing to ethical aspect where it belongs. 30 August 1998 Marx. 30 August 1998 rearranged and tidied. 2 November 1998 added re Hope. 29 November 1998, 1 December 1998 Added a few more themes. 31 January 1999 Added re. how to discern pistic. 10 January 2000 CS Lewis about best and worst. 7 February 2001 quote from Russ Reeves, removed mailto. 5 March 2001 shalom added to an moved earlier. 21 March 2001 Ontology section; categorised the many themes. 21 September 2001 two-bullet summary added to themes. 14 March 2002 new list of kernel. 1 April 2002 dr. Johnson quote, rearranged ending. 24 April 2002 added Bourdieu quote to show effect of pistic on economic; moved creeds to dependency. 1 August 2002 people not going quiet. 14 September 2002 Note after themes about being post-social. 10 March 2003 .nav, 'certitudinal'. 22 July 2003 para on 'right' vision. 30 November 2003 life-giving commitment. 14 January 2004 all actuality is commitment. 28 April 2004 harm of absolutization; admin. 1 November 2004 Canada diverging; a misconceptions; some tidying. 24 August 2005 new .nav,.end, changed kernel, themes. 5 January 2008 rearranged 'harm'. 9 February 2008 link to absolutization. 8 September 2008 role models. 16 December 2008 branding. 12 June 2009 reputation. 30 April 2010 Buck-fuller. 22 September 2010 Dooyeweerd's and Basden's kernel. 12 October 2010 illusion. 4 February 2011 Seerveld 'confessional'. 6 March 2011 reductions to other aspects. 19 March 2013 link with ethical. 26 March 2013 dependency in cognitive science of religion. 16 May 2013 research. 23 August 2013 some extant ideas on pistic function from the field, some stuff shifted to Research, Ontol 'has a bad name'. 28 August 2013 Chas Taylor, more Maslow, more research. 21 December 2013 theme commitment, conspiracy. 6 January 2014 vision in construction. 12 May 2015 Hegel. 25 May 2015 alternative names at start rewritten. 3 September 2015 corrected '../'; rid counter; new .end; better .nav; removed link to Elsie, and tidied up some lines. 11 March 2016 Gramsci. 21 September 2016 briefly. 19 January 2017 nonabs: fuzzy. 10 October 2017 Added identity; changed bullets to headings. 17 April 2018 promise. 13 November 2019 importance, motivation. 25 January 2021 Ultimate aspect; rewrote label bit. 2 April 2021 Revamped the Defining The Aspect; added re.persp section, with example of Professional Help; moved alt names to separate section. 1 February 2022 Example of pistic-identity statement, mandatory. 8 June 2022 Jacinda Tan, Anorexia Nervosa as identity; bolded Field.