Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

I have used the term willful obversity to avoid, on the one hand, the hob-goblin of evil that Bloom's satanic impulse conjures up, though his analysis of the romantic stems from Milton's own extended (and obversely sympathetic) analysis of the Edenic myth, or the elevation of academic snarkiness that 'ironist' seems to justify, though there too one could argue that American moral and political discourse is irony deficient.  Nevertheless, the romantic impulse is clear enough -- the rebellion against conventional mores, against settled senses of the good, particularly when that settled good is not good for me.  The use of 'conventional,' however, can pass by too easily.  It is a term used in modern discourse almost as a pejorative.  The conventional is set not only against the trivially unconventional -- the one who thinks, to use the current cliche, outside the box, improvising improved means to unimproved ends.  If one finds the conventional truly and deeply limiting, and one must find the conventional limiting if one is to assert and be recognized as an individual qua individual, then too the conventional is set not only against the trivially unconventional, but against that which is more authentic at least for me, against my own private perfection. 

A deeper irony emerges, and it stems from the close examination of language as an epistemological impediment brought it to the fore.  We use language to point at reality, but language itself is conventional through and through.  If one begins using unfamiliar words in unfamiliar ways, one becomes not only unconventional, but incomprehensible to others.  Moreover, Chinese is not an oddly translated form of English, but a way of speaking about the world whole unto itself, with its own lexicon and its own grammar, a lexicon and grammar to varying degrees incommensurate with English -- part and parcel of a Chinese, as opposed to English, form of life.  The same holds true, or so it seems, for most socially constructed human activities, for most forms of life.  They are, to use the linguist's term, coherent, but arbitrary.  There is no direct correspondence between the words we use to describe reality and reality, divine or otherwise, and insofar as our ways of talking about reality are conventional through and through, fraught with conventions that have developed over time in response to emergent historical contingencies, they could well have been otherwise and could well become otherwise.  

An even deeper irony emerges, and it stems from the predicating assumptions.  If there is nothing but what we have constructed for ourselves, if our private perfection is to have any public meaning, it must not only free itself from an over-arching convention that has gone somehow awry, but must communicate itself.  Therein lies the rub.  The governing intentionality of the romantic project is to create a "private perfection," but to do so the individual must differentiate itself from other individuals qua individuals, and the more thoroughly one differentiates one's self, the more thoroughly one speaks and acts outside the conventional, the more incomprehensible and alienated one becomes.  Much madness might be divinest sense, but it is still much madness.  If one is to assert and be recognized as an individual qua individual, and to do so comprehensibly, one cannot escape the question of "human solidarity" and one's contingent place within a form of life that must be reformed -- not tweaked, but reformed whole cloth.  The romantic project is essentially revolutionary.  The existing form of life must be destroyed, and a new form of life placed in its stead, and one must become not only an individual qua individual, but to use Emerson's term, a representative man, and what the representative man represents is the zeit-geist of a new human potential, becomes the catalyst for a new human solidarity.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

In some respects, I hear myself arguing that the Marxist state represents a reducto ad absurdem culmination of the 18th century enlightenment project with its valorization of science and the importation of its basic assumptions and methods into the social sphere -- a wholly secular state and, insofar as the conclusions of science seemed to trump and transcend the truths of religion in their immediate material utility, a wholly rational state.  The difficulties with the Marxist project have been well detailed, and conservative thinkers like Hayek are, I think, essentially correct when they tell us that "the uncritical transfer to the problems of society of habits of thought engendered by the preoccupation with technological problems, the habits of thought of the natural scientist and the engineer" tended to "impose ideals of organization on a sphere to which they are not appropriate," and those ideals of organization all required the willing sublimation of the individual subjectivity within the state, a willingness that would come of its own accord with with well planned and executed changes in the material contingencies of existence.  That it did not come of its own accord, that physical forms of persuasion were needed to help along the willingness of the populace, that it itself became an ersatz religion willing to use immoral means against individuals to achieve the moral transformation of the state, gives some credence to Hayek and others insistence on "respect for the individual man qua man," and the romantic notion that puts the private above the public, that for the individual man "the recognition of his own views and tastes [are] supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed."  Romanticism emerged as a response to the same 18th century project, and if Marxism represented a reducto ad absurdem culmination of its progressive assumptions, Nietzsche perhaps represents the culmination of the romantic thought.  In broad strokes, romanticism might be described as a reactionary response to science and its sublimation of the human spirit to the material, the individual to the social.  Romanticism in its various iterations has sought to recover divinity in man, not in the traditional sense (though often the romantics, as they aged beyond adolescent rebelliousness, lapsed into one form or another of traditionalism) but rather as a response to the same conditions of existence, the same historical contingencies that had animated Marx.  It was, in part, a reaction to industrial capitalism that to all appearances had suborned the majority of mankind to the condition of a machine, a condition that alienated them not only from themselves, but in its clacking and coal smoke surround, more natural forms of existence, more organic ways of being in the world.  The romantic project, no less than the Marxist project, wished to recreate man, but unlike the Marxist project, the reformation of man would not come from without, but from within -- from what Harold Bloom might call the satanic impulse -- or in the diminished key of a latter day Nietzsche what Rorty might call irony -- the "means to private perfection rather than human solidarity" -- or in Hayek's terms "the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents."

To be continued. 

Rational Secular State -- Introcution Continued

In at least one sense, this gap between liberty and agency was the problem Marx confronted.  Unless the gap were narrowed, even closed, the problem of liberty was not solved, even with the state-sanctioned guarantee of rights -- perhaps especially with a guarantee of rights, particularly property rights.  State-sanctioned liberty, insofar as it guaranteed the rights to property and agency in the use of that property, allowed the continued oppression of those without.  In some respects, or so it appeared in the early days of the Marxist experiment that came to dominate the latter half of the twentieth century, the Marxist state seemed to hold the potential for the first fully rational state, a fully justified state.  It promised, at one level, to recreate all men as equal, not in some metaphysical sense, but in the only sense that mattered -- in the material conditions of their existence -- and insofar as the material conditions of one's existence determined one's potential as a human qua human, the project to recreate all men as equal was, in effect, a moral project aimed ultimately at the redemption of mankind.  Marx, in effect, addressed the gap between liberty and agency by reducing the wholly public condition of the former to the latter, and he did so by subsuming what had hitherto been the private condition of agency, a matter of individual will, into the public concerns of the state, a matter of collective will represented by the fully communist state.  The initial strength of the Marxist argument was its apparent scientific rationalism -- an argument based on the minute and perceptive examination of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist state -- an argument that specifically repudiated as well the theocentrism that historically had at once provided public justification for economic disparities and a palliative for private despair in the presumptive moral superiority of and the next-life rewards for those who suffer the indignities of this life.  The communist state promised a fully just state, and that moral promise fully justified the actions of the existing state.  That the actions of the Soviet state were no less brutal than the actions of the inquisition should have been no surprise.  While the brutality of the emergent police state bespeaks the Machiavellian desire of those in power to remain in power, it also bespeaks the power of any state sanctioned purpose, any governing intentionality that would subject the individual subjectivity to a collective and ultimately utopian imperative, to justify the most horrific acts.  As Aron put it, "ministers, commissars, theorists and interrogators," all those engaged in effectuating the purpose of the state, "will try to make men what they would spontaneously be if the official philosophy were true."     

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

The difficulty, of course, was the emergent difference between liberty and agency.  To grant liberty, and to protect it as a universal right through legal restrictions placed on the state itself, did nothing to guarantee agency.  The freedom to act did nothing to guarantee the capacity to act.  I say 'emergent difference,' in part because the American continent provided a unique set of circumstances that, for a while at least, made the necessary condition of liberty seem wholly sufficient.  Within the largely agricultural and mercantile economies of the colonies, coupled with the open land to the West free from hereditary holdings, the guarantee of liberty gave men a "new sense of power over their own fate, the belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot," to borrow a phrase of Hayek, a belief buttressed by the "the success already achieved among men."  The narrow gap between liberty and agency was brought about by a unique set of historical contingencies, by colonization and the fresh green breast of the new world, a land not only commensurate with man's capacity to wonder, but also a land open to those willing and able to exploit it.  If the individual was no longer subject to the subjectivity of the state, if they were no longer limited by the subjectivity of the public sphere, they were limited only by those attributes of character always relegated to the private sphere -- what Franklin and others, were they alive today, might describe as their 'work ethic.'  Their fate was not contingency-imposed, but the self-imposition of one's conscientiousness, one's industriousness, one's courage, one's imagination and intelligence.  The gap between liberty and agency had always been wider elsewhere, and with the emergence of the industrial capitalist economy, wider on the American continent as well.  It was not immediately apparent, in part because the industrialization of the US fueled and made possible the westward expansion, a contingency that continued to blur the class distinctions that were more visible in the motherland of Britain, but the capacity to act depends upon the means available, and in the capitalist economy, those with means were clearly more liberty to act on behalf of their interest than those without.  If 'the rich were different,' and it seemed clear enough to most as the industrial capitalist economies matured that the rich were in fact different, a good deal of that difference lay in the accumulation of 'means.'  Those with means were clearly more at liberty to act than those without, and as the gap between the have's and the have-not's widens, so too does the gap between those who are and those who are not at liberty pursue their private interests.  Again, however, it was not immediately apparent, in part because the anecdotal exception, the rise from rags to riches, seemed at least possible (though perhaps always a bit implausible) as a matter of romantic self-assertion -- if one exercised diligence, if one worked-hard, if one took risks, especially if one were clever, then one could rise above the contingency-imposed limitations and acquire the means to pursue one's private happiness.  One suspects, however, that contingency more often than not disappointed the hopes of the aspirant.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Any theory that sets aside any possibility of the utopian, the end to end all ends once and for all, sets aside as well any possibility of 'progression.'   Progress must be progress toward something, and the 'more perfect union' must be progress toward an idea of the 'perfect union.'  The notion of social progress found its natural ally in scientific progress, which was at once a notion of historical progress, but in its epistemology a self-consuming historicity.   We know more today than yesterday, in part because one labors to extend and to correct the knowledge of our predecessors, but its epistemology was predicated first and foremost on a reality that is, so to speak, 'out there' -- a Kantian 'ding an sich' that can be apprehended, but can be apprehended only imperfectly by a single subjectivity.  If science fails to fully comprehend the truth, the failure lies not in science, per se, but in the singularity of the single subjectivity, its imperfect comprehension of reality, an imperfection that is corrected (if never quite entirely) by the social nature of science.  It is not simply the observed truth, which leaves room for the singular revelation, but a truth verified by in its observation by others.  A single individual might be mistaken, might see a ghost in the shadows, but the confirming question, 'did you see that?' sets aside (if never quite entirely) the possibility of the ephemeral.  Scientific progress, of course, is not entirely without its tenants of faith, one being that the reality 'out there' is orderly, that it obeys certain 'laws,' and those 'laws' in turn can be accurately and objectively represented in a way free from any subjective bias, an accuracy and objectivity achieved, as it were, through peer review.  Although there is ground to question these tenants of faith, they nevertheless allowed science to model progressive thought, and those same tenants of faith -- that there is as well a human reality, that it is orderly and obeys certain laws, and those laws can be refined and improved through a collective process of verification -- informed the opening words of the American constitution -- "in order to form a more perfect union, we the people ... "

As one might have gathered, although the tenants of faith have been broadly challenged on a number of fronts, I nevertheless feel compelled to offer some defense of 18th century scientific rationalism, and its progressive optimism for a couple of reasons.  First, of course, it provides at least a point of departure for what concerns me most.  The challenges to scientific rationalism are fundamental, and if not fundamental, then at the very least significant challenges as well to an American way of being in the world.  My concern stems perhaps from the sheer pressure of contingency.  I am American, and the American way of being in the world is my way of being in the world.  Though I have spent time on both ends of the globe, in Europe and in Asia, I cannot say what it means to be either European or Asian, but I can say what it means for me to be an American.  I can only speak from my contingency, and that contingency provides both my insight and, without doubt, my blindness.  Nevertheless, second, I believe the 18th century thinkers got it mostly right -- mostly.   Although something of an over-simplification, the bone in the craw of the modernist and post-modernist thinkers comes down to the matter of 'truth' and what constitutes 'truth.'  It seems each human attempt to apprehend 'truth' and articulate it within a comprehensive doctrine has failed.  The most pointed failure has been religion.  While the western tradition that gave rise to the likes of Locke and Jefferson could perhaps get some consensus around the notion of Christianity as the one true religion, there was clearly insufficient consensus among the Christians to form the basis of a state, and if a state were to be had, it must seek its legitimacy elsewhere.  The turn from the theo-centric state had many salutary effects, but it was a rather significant break from a long preceding history where the sovereign received legitimacy either as a god or from god.  It vested legitimacy in the people, and reified what had hitherto been a philosophical abstraction, the social contract, within the American constitution, creating a wholly secular state.   It left unanswered, however, the question 'to what end?'  If John Winthrop could cite Matthew 5:14, and characterize the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a 'city on a hill,' with every expectation that the purpose of the colony transcended the merely commercial as instrument in the fulfillment of God's will and God's plan for them, the Constitution left open the question of purpose as a matter of public governance and relegated it to the private sphere.  The state itself existed for no grander purpose than to insure that people were free to pursue their private purposes, to include their religious purposes, with only those restrictions imposed by general civility and safety.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Some ways of being in the world, individually and socially, privately and publicly, are better than other ways of being in the world, and it is possible to choose one over the other rationally.  A great deal is implied in that statement, and there is an historical discussion of rationality and what it means to decide rationally that I could not hope to detail in a single monograph.  Let me just suggest that rationality of a rational act is predicated on the ends it serves, and the fundamental challenge to any notion of rationality is the question of 'ends' or 'purpose,' both in the pragmatic sense (an act is more or less rational if it has instrumental utility to a given end) and in the moral and ethical sense (an act is more less ethically rational if it can be justified relative to a given end).  While the second parenthetical remark has been roundly challenged in the folk wisdom -- the ends, or so we want to say, do not justify the means -- we are left with the question, 'what then does?'  It is folk wisdom invoked when the ends themselves have been abandoned, not when they are being served.  The initiating political question -- how best to live among others? -- elicits the answer -- well it depends -- and it depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, privately and publicly.  In that shoulder shrug, 'it depends,' the contemporary contribution to the discussion of rationality derails itself in a humanist theory of relativity that seems to be the final word on the matter because it denies that there can be a final word on the matter.  The rationality of an act depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, individually and socially, privately and publicly, and in the absence of a final end, once and for all, then the rationality of an act depends upon the ends we set for ourselves within the various contingencies within which we find ourselves.  Adolf Eichmann was not inherently irrational or evil.   The banality of Eichmann's acts resides in their utter rationality relative to the 'purpose' the Third Reich had set for itself, and his acts were not brought into question within the context of the Third Reich itself, and might never have been brought into formal question had the Third Reich somehow prevailed.  They were brought into question only from without, only when the Third Reich and the ends it served were vilified.  Given the urgency of the demand, the initiating political question, or so it would seem, is less the instrumental question of 'how best to live among others,' more the intentionality question of 'what ends do we serve?'  If indeed our choice of ends arise out of contingency, affect contingency, and sink back into contingency -- if indeed there is no position outside contingency from which to view contingency -- then in what way do we decide upon the ethical and moral efficacy of our acts? 

The Rational Secular State -- Introduction

I should probably confess from the outset that I have no utopian goals in mind, not simply because I lack ambition, but because I do not believe utopia is possible.  My reasons will become more and more apparent as we go along, but the state cannot be perfected for mankind, nor can mankind be perfected for the state.  the utopian vision, the imagined perfection, inevitably ends up denying that which is most essential to our being human.  The utopian vision always gives precedence to the public over the private, and at the extreme, denies the private altogether.   It would sublimate the subjectivity of the one subject, the individual, to the public imperative, and in doing so the imagined perfection always denies freedom, substituting a single public morality for the possibility of individual moral agency.  One is subject to a single mechanistic possibility that forecloses all other possibilities once and for all, and if the foreclosure is not death outright, then death is an ever present possibility for those who cannot bring their subjectivity into conformity with the public imperative, particularly so for those who must insist upon themselves not only as moral beings within the privacy of their own thoughts, but as moral agents within the public sphere, and the protagonist in the utopian epic, from Metropolis to the Matrix, is always the antagonist, the one who must insist upon himself or herself as a moral agent, even if his or her insistence is conceived in suffering and rewarded with death.

I should probably confess from the outset as well that I must distance myself as well from the radical individualism that gives all precedence to the private over the public.  No one I think denies that we live in a world with others, and that others are part and parcel of the contingency within which we must live our lives.  It is, in effect, the originating question of political philosophy -- how best to live among others -- a question that cannot be answered outside a web of mutually interdependent rights and obligations.  While I might be something of a singularity -- a subjectivity without experiential, only inferential access to another's subjectivity -- my singularity is nevertheless subject to the historical contingency of the here and now, and I can agree with Rorty and others when they insist that there is no privileged position outside the here and now from which to view the here and now.  No one I think believes they are wholly free.  We are all captive within public circumstances that are not wholly of our choosing.  We can be glad for our luck, or curse our fate, and we do have some immediate sway over both, but nothing can change the simple observation that we are a single human being, living a single life, within a single time and place.  Anyone who is living a life knows that we make choices, but those choices are the best one can do here and now, and the result of those choices ad to our mixed bag of suffering and happiness.  Our choices arise out of contingency, affect contingency, and sink back into contingency in ways that cannot be wholly predicted, and that unpredictability precludes not only the possibility of the imagined paradise, but also the wholly consummate individual qua individual.  We navigate, but do not create, our own contingency.

To be continued.