Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  The state of Louisiana now officially mandates displays of the Ten Commandments in both public and private schools. When I first heard about this, the thought that came to my mind was, "whose version of the commandments"?  The passage in Exodus 20 is somewhat different from that in Deuteronomy 5. And neither of them neatly breaks itself down into a list of ten bullet points. The traditional Jewish understanding of the "ten commandments" involves a first commandment that demands monotheism. A second commandment that prohibits graven images. And so forth. In this version, there is only one commandment against "coveting". The Roman Catholic Church has another take on it. The RC Church, after all, enthusiastically embraces icons (the Eastern Church even more so). The RC Church regards iconoclasm, the smashing of images of the sacred, and even of God Himself, as a heresy it has done well to overcome. So it soft-pedd les the whole no-graven-images thing. (...

The first amendment to the US Constitution begins, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...." Notice that it does not say "Congress shall not establish a religion." It says "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." I make this observation because in my experience people defending, say, laws that put a depiction of two tablets with ten commandments on them in public places are apt to ask, "What religion does it establish?' Their point apparently is that the event to which such art makes allusion is important to at least three world religions, thus the depiction thereof in a courtroom is not an "establishment" of any of those religions, thus it is not a violation of the establishment clause. I attempt to point out, when I encounter such a feint, that the language quoted above doesn't merely prohibit Congress from establishing a religion. It prohibits laws respecting an establish...