OUP (Oxford). 2014. Pbk. 220 pages. £21.49.
In genuine philosophical style this book desires to go wherever the argument leads. The argument in question is whether naturalism, God and values are compatible. The answer given by Ellis is not only that they are, but even more strongly, that a reductionist naturalism, sometimes called a ‘scientific naturalism’, fails to allow us to account for the moral practices which make our lives truly human. Describing what is by relying exclusively on natural science even reduces nature to less than it is, once we allow for things such as moral values to have an ontological status. Through detailed reconstructive argumentation with a range of influential philosophers such as Peter Railton, John McDowell, David Wiggins, John Randall and Emmanuel Levinas, Ellis argues that once one has uncoupled allegiance to a narrowly defined scientific naturalism from reasoned argument tout court, the option of an ‘expansive naturalism’ presents itself as a rational option to talk about moral values and, by extension, God.
Tightly argued central chapters of the book reveal that natural scientific analysis is itself circumscribed by a limited ontological horizon that, by definition, removes the possibility of reasoning about values and God. However, such an ontological horizon is itself not a scientific thesis but a metaphysical judgment which, though possible, is not necessary for anyone wishing to discuss the philosophical possibility of investigating morality and theology. Reminiscent of earlier twentieth century critiques of the logical positivists by figures such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Ellis argues that some contemporary forms of reductive naturalism have been ‘bedazzled’ with the power of the scientific method, so that they fail to acknowledge the possibility of other forms of analysis, such as moral philosophy and theology, to speak about the reality of nature.
Once such a limited ontological horizon has been identified as itself a particular metaphysical option, Ellis opens the way for a philosophical theology that can speak of God in the metaphysical terms of an ‘expansive naturalism’. Turning to the great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner and the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, Ellis argues that the metaphysics of transcendence is revealed in the human face of the other, who always calls us to the infinite moral responsibility that reveals God on the very face of human nature. God, in Ellis’s account, is both the ontological source of reality and also radically distinct from it: immanent and transcendent at the same time.
Though drawing on recent philosophical discussion of naturalism, Ellis’s work is fully compatible with a Patristic conception of panentheism. But what makes Ellis’s work of particular contemporary interest is that she succeeds in revealing naturalism in its current dominant philosophical guise as a particular reductive metaphysics, which undermines our very capacity as human agents to speak about living a truly moral life. It turns out that not only does scientific naturalism prevent God talk, but it even prevents proper human talk.
There are so many points in this wonderfully well-argued book which merit further reflection and discussion. When we uncouple discussion of nature from sole reliance on the natural scientific method, we open out a vast panorama of human inquiries, moral, philosophical, aesthetic and theological. In the end, Ellis reveals what all good philosophical enquiry does: that once we dig deeply into matters, questions become liberated which prior to this investigation may have been hidden from view.
Tony Carroll is Dean of Pastoral Studies at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield.