What Will "Bear Our Weight": Newman on the Integrative Method

What Will "Bear Our Weight":Newman on the Integrative Method The Rt. Revd. and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Willliams (bio) A number of Newman's readers have noted the convergences between some of his ideas and those of Ludwig Wittgenstein. They are not by any means natural bedfellows, and it is important not to push them together too hastily, or to treat Newman as more of a technical philosophical analyst than he was. But his notebooks and essays as well as the formidable Grammar of Assent testify to an interest—unusual for his time—in two themes that contemporary philosophy, influenced not only by Wittgenstein but by phenomenology (and even more recently, neuroscience), has increasingly sought to tackle. One is the contrast between the acquiring of a set of true propositions and what we habitually call understanding. Newman speaks of an "integrative habit of mind" which, like those nebulous terms "judgment" or "taste," is something into which we grow over time by an exercise of the mind that is more than plain rational argument—in the sense we ordinarily give to the word "rational." Our intellectual life is a range of skills and habits through which we make connections allowing us to advance, both theoretically and practically. We discover what will, so to speak, bear our weight as we continue to speak intelligibly and in mutual recognizability about the environment we share. And this discovery in the intellectual sphere is more similar than we might imagine to the way in which we grow into practical certainties in our actions: Newman tellingly compares our normal intellectual activity to the educated instinct of the rock climber, testing what will hold, feeling for [End Page 197] a grip, not operating by a clear prescribed plan. Putting it slightly differently—and relating to the second theme—he is reminding us that what counts as a good argument, and thus as a "reasonable" decision, varies significantly and interestingly depending on the context. It is always worth asking in any kind of discourse what models of certainty you are taking for granted, what actual work the notion of certainty is doing (as Wittgenstein sets out in his demolition of empty and artificial accounts of the kind of thing we are supposed to "know" with certainty in some philosophical traditions) and whether they are appropriate to their setting. One of the most remarkable things Newman does in his discussion in the Grammar is simply to show that the "integrative habit" of language and reflection is at work in the sphere of religious conviction and agency in a way quite similar to how it works elsewhere. There is no yawning chasm between faith and reason, no plea for religious language to be exempted from the protocols of reason, simply because our reasoning is diverse, contextually inflected, and never restricted to deductive necessity. Newman is anything but a relativist; the focus is on how our habits of mind and body, taken all together, enable us to find our way reliably around a world which does not depend on our choice and preference. We are responsible for getting it right. If we are wrong about what will "bear our weight," there are consequences. But the fascination of his discussions of religious conviction, educational philosophy, the whole spectrum of intellectual method, is that he offers a notably (and appropriately) "integrative" account of how we construct a coherent environment by both physical and mental kinds of learning, how our certainties are shaped by history, relationality, and trust rather than timeless ratiocination. It is his sensitivity both to the diversity of what counts as "argument" and "reason," and to the imperative of exposure to a reality we do not control or contain that gives his work so much of its abiding intellectual value. At a time when a disturbingly narrow and mechanical model of education—and indeed of mental process as a whole—continues to gain influence, Newman's analyses of the "integrative" work of intellect have a specially compelling and timely interest. [End Page 198] The Rt. Revd. and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Willliams University of Cambridge Rowan Willliams Rowan Williams was born in Wales and spent much of his early ministry...