Here again I find myself posting a paper I wrote for school. I plan to write actual posts soon. You will pardon the references (If you read it) to various texts that I had to pretend to understand for class, which are offered with no context. I had been itching all semester long to write about Chesterton and I decided to sneak him in for my final paper.
Here we go...
It seems that in the end our discussion must simply come down to the topic of perfection. Our semester began with this discussion and now comes around to it again. Sadly, I cannot promise that this paper will be perfect, but I will give it a shot. Plato defines perfection in terms as the true ‘Form’ of things. Aristotle sees perfection more in terms of completeness and being whole (Hyde, 2007). While the definitions are not dissimilar, it is the later definition, which I intend to reference when I use the term perfection.
The humanity which seeks perfection is feeling that things are not complete, something is missing for there to be a whole. In class, we spoke about the perfection at the Garden of Eden. Many philosophers which Hyde quotes, speak hypothetically of the world at its inception as being perfect and lacking in nothing. Interestingly few authors seem to deal with the question of original sin. It is at the scene of the first temptation that our discussion of perfection can really begin.
The serpent’s lie to the woman was what I will call the seed of imperfection. The serpent caused the woman to doubt God’s word. The serpent was cunning when he laid the trap, telling the woman of how she would become like God knowing both good and evil. In essence the woman was tricked into doubting her perfection, that some how acquiring more knowledge would make her more perfect.
The original sin in a way was an attempt to make perfect what God had already made perfect. In doing so, a balance was tipped and humanity is now seeking to attain perfection on its own. Humanity retains a resemblance to God, in whose image it was created, but humanity is imperfect because they are not complete. They have become separate form their origin.
Bonhoeffer argues that what “God had given man to be, man now desired to be through himself.” (1995). Man in the image of God is perfect; man in the image of man is not. When Jesus says to “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.” (New International version, 1996) Jesus is laying down a standard of what it means to be perfect. It is impossible to seek perfection if one has no concept of what that it is.
The problem with the present day morality, argues G. K. Chesterton, is that it has not concept of virtue and can only point to imperfection. In Chesterton’s view, man is forever seeking perfection in terms of what is called ‘progress’. The problem Chesterton sees is that we never seek to learn what is “good” or what is perfection. We talk about liberty, progress, and education to avoid talking about what is good. Chesterton explains that this is like saying; “Let us not decide what is good, but let us settle on whether we are getting more of it.”(1905). In order to have progress or perfection it is necessary to have an ideal or a direction.
Burke argues that having too much perfection is disastrous Hyde argues that the opposite is true as well, man is prone to be rotten with imperfection to the extent that he has no attributes such as faith, intellect or ethics. Chesterton agrees with both in a way. He might side with Burke and argue that we have an unhealthy desire for a perfection that we cannot define. As far as Hyde’s point of view, Chesterton argues that because there is no true ideal for what is perfect we end up being rotten with imperfection because it is the only thing left to know.
Chesterton believes that we must know what good is in order to pursue perfection. What then is good? The first thing that must be mentioned is childhood. For there is a sense of completeness and purity, which Chesterton associates with childhood. What we see in a child is perhaps is a glimpse of perfection. Jesus spoke of becoming like children to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Chesterton talks about how this praise of childhood was hard to understand in Christ’s day. However, today we seem to embrace it completely. The ‘perfection’ that we praise in a child, according to Chesterton, is the ability to “play simple games and enjoy fairy tales.” (1993). Hyde talks about how we face the problem of boredom when it comes to perfection. In a sense, he argues that if we were to come face to face with perfection we would become weary of it. It is at this instance that Chesterton would point out that we have forgotten how to be children. A child may “exult in monotony” playing the same game or hearing the same story over and over without growing tired of it. Chesterton argues that God enjoys repetition, but humanity cannot “we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” Hyde wonders if we would grow tired of perfection if we had it. Jesus understood that if we became like children we would always enjoy it.
In answering the question of what is good Chesterton would argue that it is the man Christ who is not only good but in fact perfect. Christ was “…more human than a human being was then likely to be.”(1993). For Chesterton Jesus is the ultimate example of perfection. However, we need not accept Chesterton’s conviction to appreciate his point. Chesterton’s critique of progress and ultimately of perfection is that it has no fixed aim. Essentially, there is a constant shift of standards rather than methods. What was perfect in one age is no longer perfect in the present one (1990). Perfection becomes an illusion when we change the standards for it. There might be a thousands methods to seek perfection if perfection was an ideal. Yet, we would rather change the standards than the methods. Chesterton states that “progress cannot progress” (1990), I take a similar stance and argue that perfection cannot be perfected, it was the serpent that caused the woman to doubt this very point.
William James argues that for an idea to have “cash value”, it must have consequences. I think that Chesterton makes a similar point about perfection. That in order to have progress there must be a vision. Hyde argues that we must keep an open mind. The danger is that we will never conclude anything. The problem, as Hyde argues, is that that we believe only in imperfection. In a similar move, Chesterton believes that we will be ever changing our vision and not our world.
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