[HPforGrownups] Calvinism

[Aberforth's Goat]

No: HPFGUIDX 23828

Gads! This list could talk the hind leg off an elephant! You get a thread
started, miss two days and by the time you get back, you're reduced to
making me-too noises. Anyway, I couldn't help but chime in on a couple.

Amy wrote,

> Good point by Amanda.  I'd add, especially per Luke's comment, that this
> paradox (our actions are predestined but we feel like we're choosing
freely)
> is not limited to Calvinism.  Even people who don't believe in God at all
> have to resolve the determinism/free will problem:  are we all just doing
> what we are "wound up" to do by our previous experiences, the exact
> configuration of the atoms of the universe the moment we were born, etc.?
> Even though we feel like we're making choices?

Right. "Determinism" would have been nearly as good a title for the
thread--although the particular sort of determinism we see (*maybe*) here is
of a moral character, hence Calvinism. Another possibility would have been
(with thanks to Amanda!) "Oedipus Complex"--only Freud got there first.

> It seems to me that JKR herself is feeling the pull of both ways of
> thinking:  strongly believing in choice over predestination, yet enjoying
> the literary convention (a rather boring one IMO) of four Houses, four
> personalities, never mind that the kids are only 11 when they get put into
> their compartments.

Yeah. I don't have the impression that Rowling has spent a lot of time
wrestling with the philosophical implications of the four houses'
characteristics--or if she has, she hasn't begun to elucidate yet. So far, I
have the feeling she uses the four moral & psychological "house types" more
to create clear cut "teams" of good guys (coming in three varieties) and bad
guys. And also to entertain us--because, philosophically problematic or not,
the four house types belong precisely to that quirkiness which makes the
Potterverse so enthralling, just like floo powder and Fizzing Whizzbees.

Amanda wrote,

> You *can't* escape from predestination. That's what predestination
> means. If Snape is acting honorably, it is because he was predestined to
> do so. That his situation makes his predestined choices such a struggle
> for him is the pity. (Which sort of argument is why I dislike
> predestination and plays like OEdipus Rex).

True. However, I would distinguish between philosophical determinism
(including the whole smorgasbord of Calvinisms, compatiblist or not) and the
sort of prophetic or orphic determinism intentionally created in Oedipus Rex
and *possibly* created by the Hogwarts sorting hat. The former is a general
proposition: my choices are determined. The latter is a specific prediction:
I will, necessarily, do such and so--wed my mother in OR or act according to
the moral polarity of my house type in HP. The former is a concept we can
never really escape, however we harmonize it with the vital but undefinable
concept of freedom--the latter is an insult to our dignity.

The more I think about it, the less I can believe that Jo understands the
house types in this "orphic" sense. The sorting hat is more like a forensic
psychiatrist than an oracle. It simply profiles its wearer and sends him to
whichever house he fits best. The Slytherinish sort have a strong tendency
to go bad (having developed a nasty  house tradition doesn't help, I
suppose)--but they don't *have* too. If there's something odd about the
Potterverse, it's that ambitious Potterversians have such a high immorality
quotient in comparison to the other personality types. As Marianna pointed
out, in our wolrd the brave and noble can be rash and hot headed--the honest
and hard-working can be narrow minded--the studious often become detached,
bureaucratic, even cruel.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray, who notices that it's way past his
bedtime and hopes he hasn't been talking even more nonsense than usual.)
_______________________

"Of course, I'm not entirely sure he can read, so that may not have been
bravery...."