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Engaging with Extant Thought:
Listening, Affirming, Critiquing, Enriching (LACE)

Andrew Basden.

Draft.

Preamble

Some Christians are antagonistic to the world's thought. Others acquiesce to it, for example Christian businesspeople using popular business analysis techniques without question, or Christian researchers working on a theory without question, because that's their 'job'.

A growing number of Christians believe both are wrong, and that we should treat the world's thought as impaired insight.

The workshops on Shaping our Disciplines for Christ initiated by the Christian Academic Network argued that we both can and should contribute to the world's thought as explicitly and authentically Christian thinkers. Participants were encouraged to look at the paradigms that rule their disciplines or the presuppositions made within them - but did not give down-to-earth advice on how to actually engage with the world's thought.

Here we look at how we might engage with the world's thought.

Discourses

In our areas or disciplines, a number of discourses are going on, which includes researchers tryihg to understand some phenomenon and construct theories to contribute to humanity's body of knowledge in their area, and practitioners employing the bodies of knowledge in practice. The discourses are often carried out in journals - academic and professional.

Take the example of a new theory or model being published. This generates discussion at conferences and in the academic journals, and at some time, people using it and writing about it in the professional journals. That is what we mean by 'discourse' here.

Christian thinkers can contribute to this as Christians without either antagonism or acquiescence, by four activities or attitudes, which may be expressed as Listen, Affirm, Critique, Enrich (LACE).

Listen to the discourses intently and immanently (i.e. from the inside not the outside), to discern what is primarily meaningful at their core. This explains why the discourse occurs and what their main contributions might be. Try to understand not only the arguments that are going on, but the background and motivations of each. Also listen not only to the academic debates, but also to what people are saying who are trying to apply the ideas in practice. Respect for the diversity of meaningfulness is important here (I find an intuitive grasp of Dooyeweerd's aspects is very helpful here). Uncover their deepest assumptions and presuppositions.
Affirm what the other thought is aiming at by understanding immanently what it sees as problematic in previous thought, or what it believes to be an issue. Refuse to get distracted by peripheral paraphernalia (e.g. connotative terminology). The lenses through which researchers view the world can be identified by reference to Dooyeweerd's aspects.
Critique the way the other thought has developed what motivated it. It is usually this element that is problematic from a Biblical perspctive. Typically, we may critique thought for either:
- Neglecting an important aspects that is relevant;
- Taking a dialectical stance that splits reality in half.
Expose foundational presuppositions and work out if they prevent the idea achieving what it hoped. Example: The artificial intelligence debate remains unresolved because of dualistic 'either-or' presuppositions.
Enrich other thought, suggesting aspects that have been overlooked or suggesting other assumptions or presuppositions. For more, see fuller explanation and discussion of Enriching Other Thought.

Examples

Example of Listening

Listening often has two stages, (1) to distance ourselves from our immediate impressions or reactions, (2) to find out what the other person really means. We can see these when we come across Baudrillard's [2007, 120] "The secret of theory is that truth doesn't exist."

Phase 1. This short statement could be interpreted as directly opposed to Jesus' statement "I am the truth", and therefore, if taken emotively and unthinkingly, as something to fight against. However, if we listen to Baudrillard, perhaps he meant something else. By listening, rather than merely reacting to words, we can see at least three things.

Baudrillard's writing is full of aesthetic devices like metaphors and allusions, so maybe his use of words here is not to be taken strictly.
Baudrillard likes provoking (p.122], and it may be that the shorter the sentence the more it was intended to provoke rather than be an expression of total truth.
Looking at his behaviour as a writer (the linguistic pragmatics rather than the semantics) can tell us whether he really intended to say "truth doesn't exist" in the way we have reactively taken it. Further down page 120, he says "The French socialists were wiped out because ..." He was obviously seeing this as some kind of truth or reality, even if wrapped up in metaphors and provocation, a reality on which his argument is relying. Does not all argument presuppose some kind of truth (or at least agreement to what is true, which itself presupposes the possibility of truth in the sense of reality)? Hence Baudrillard cannot have meant that "truth doesn't exist" in this absolute kind of case.
His statement was his first response to a question put to him about what the secret of theory is. So, it should be taken as a response rather than only as a considered statement. This implies it might not be intended absolutely literally.

So, listening so far, we find reason to eschew our emotive reaction and think he might have meant something else.

Phase 2. Keeping on listening might give us clues about what he did mean. Baudrillard is trying to provoke us to considering things we take for granted about theory, in particular, theory's notion of truth. To the theoretical enterprise that is science and academia, 'truth' is seen as synonymous with theory: academics rely on established theory (broadly defined) and reliance means taking it as true. Everyday knowledge is not allowed as truth. But Baudrillard seems to be warning us to question that presupposition. Truth-as-theoreticians-take-it "doesn't exist", i.e. is a chimera.

Not only has this been argued by various postmodernists, but also the Christian philosopher Dooyeweerd argues it more deeply and from a different direction. He has a long discourse on the nature of truth. Truth is something we do, not something we know, and truth is founded in Christ. So, perhaps Baudrillard is saying, provocatively, what thinking Christians might actually believe.

Example of Affirming

To be written. See examples in Engaging with Secular Thought.

Example of Critiquing

To be written. See examples in Engaging with Secular Thought.

Example of Enriching

See example in Enriching Other Thought and various examples in Engaging with Secular Thought.

References

Baudrillard J. 2007. Forget Foucault, Interview with Sylvere Lotringer. Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, USA.

This page, "http://abxn.org/lace.html", is offered to God as on-going work. Comments, queries welcome.

Part of his www.abxn.org pages, that open up discussion and exploration from a Christian ('xn') perspective. Written on the Amiga with Protext, in the style of classic HTML.

Created: 29 January 2017 as 'engaging-lace' for the Christian Academic Network. Last updated: 5 June 2019, added example of listening. 16 September 2020 link to enriching.html, and examples in nv/engage.secular.

Engaging with Extant Thought: Listening, Affirming, Critiquing, Enriching (LACE)