The Vision

Let us not forget that we want to make the individual, and not the collectivity, the supreme value. We want to form whole men by doing away with that specialization which cripples us all. We want to give to manual labour that dignity which belongs to it of right, by giving workmen the full understanding of technical processes instead of mere mechanical training; and to provide the understanding with its proper object, by placing it in contact with the world through the medium of labour. We want to make abundantly clear the true relationships between man and nature — those relationships that are concealed, in every society based on exploitation, by “the degrading division of labour into intellectual and manual labor”. We want to give back to man, that is to say to the individual,the power which it is his proper function to exercise over nature, over tools, over socitey itself; to re-establish the importance of the workers as compared with material conditions of work; and, instead of doing away with private property, “to turn individual property into something real, by transforming the means of production… which at present serve above all to enslave and exploit labour, into mere instruments of labour freely and co-operatively preformed.

~ Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty

Intervention, 9-11, and Ron Paul

I just watched this montage of clips from the South Carolina debates featuring Ron Paul, who until now I did not know much about. He sounds like a classic neoliberal: laissez-faire economics, state’s-rights government involvement, and isolationist foreign policy… so why do the Republicans hate him? Well, it seems it’s because he is willing to state the obvious about 9-11. Both Giuliani during the debate and Sean Hannity (what a prick) after the debate came unglued at the suggestion that our interventionist foreign policy has directly led to the hatred-fueled attacks on September 11, 2001.

From what I can perceive about Ron Paul, he seems to represent what has been the classic Republican position throughout the 20th century. It is a curious situation that the man who sounds most conservative is continually accused of being “out of step” with his party. What happened to turn the Republicans into a party of jingoistic, big-government, empire builders?

The Goodness of Sacrifice

In the November issue of The Atlantic, David Foster Wallace posed the question, “Are some things still worth dying for?” In his sort editorial he submitted that we have forgone the necessary public debate about how we ought to balance liberty and security in our post 9/11 era. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s oft cited declaration, “Therefore those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” Wallace postulated:

What if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life — sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?”

What I find really interesting in Wallace’s suggestion is that it calls into question one of the key boundaries that delineates modern Americans from modern Christians. As a Christian I know that I am fundamentally set apart from the ideology of America because one of the foundational assumptions of that ideology is that the “American Way of Life” (i.e. safety and comfort) is a good worth killing for. For the Christian, killing is not an option, for we understand that we are called to sacrifice ourselves for the good of the world. This is the cost of our discipleship to Jesus Christ. And I am very comfortable with this distinction, because it allows a clear, black & white, contrast between the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of America: one kills for comfort, the other sacrifices for peace.

But if Wallace is correct, then this line of demarcation will become muddied. I am not sure how I would make sense of an American who would willingly give up their security and comfort for the good of a “democratic way of life,” regardless of what that might actually mean. In today’s America the most people are willing to sacrifice for the good of America is a bit of space on the back of their car for a ribbon or flag decal. But to actually begin (again) to see that some things are worth dying for, well, this would change things. And more than anything it would require that Christians like myself really begin to see that it is not sacrifice itself that warrants glory. Rather, it is that for which we are willing to make such a self-giving that determines whether our sacrifice is true, good, and beautiful. Franky, that requires a lot more work.

Phenomena As Production

I came across this insightful passage in Herbert McCabe’s Law, Love & Language (thanks Halden!). For some reason I had never connected the fact/value split with production before:

Very roughly the bourgeois industrialised society is one in which men come into relationship, form a community, hence come to agreement and thus to ‘truth’, only in terms of production. What lies outside of this sphere is free, is not a matter of agreement, is ’subjective’. The world of hard facts is the world in which the factories are working, wages are being paid, goods are being distributed; this is the are of necessary agreement in the bourgeois society. Such a society does not require agreement in matters of aesthetics, religion, or ‘private morals’; these belong to the sphere of comment and are relegated first to private judgement (sic) and then, as their social irrelevance becomes clearer, to the subjective world of ‘values’.

I’d be curious to hear people’s comments on this: Is McCabe too simplistic in his appraisal?

In Defense of Young Boys

A rather cheeky post has recently appeared on Danny Jenkins’ “Musing on the Theo-Political,” entitled “What Stanley Hauerwas Does to Young Boys.” The post consisted entirely of a quote from Halden’s post about why he isn’t going to vote, wherein he argues that voting is merely a choice between two terrible options that have been bequeathed to us by our benevolent corporate behemoths. Of course, Halden never mentions Hauerwas in this post, but I can see the point “Paul” was trying to make. A cursory read of Haurewas’ work could certainly lead one to believe that our best hope as Christians in America is to foresake politics and retreat into our sectarian enclaves. This is an argument that some make (you can check out critiques of this non-approach to politics by John Stackhouse and Slovoj Zizek) but I think it naive to attribute this passive sectarianism to Hauerwas. If any one were to spend actual time reading Hauerwas they would discover that his maxim, “The primary task of the church is to be the church,” is not a call for withdrawal, but a call for us to attend carefully to our own identity in order that we may serve the world on the terms of Christianity rather than on the world’s own terms. Hauerwas’ politics is not a politics of weakness or withdrawal, it is a politics carefully and intentionally Christian. Even Jeffrey Stout would agree.

This, of course, does not dismiss that fact that some people who read Hauerwas find themselves in a position where they reject the idea of voting (even if Hauerwas himself does not. Check out the comment on Halden’s post by Melissa Florer-Bixler). But what are the reasons for such non-participation. I think Halden’s point was manifold: He doesn’t vote because 1) the choice is either between a giant douche or a turd-sandwich (thanks South Park), 2) elections are ultimately determined by corporate plutocrats, and 3) voting functions as a legitimating ideology that serves the purposes of plutocracy under the guise of democracy. I think, to a degree, each of these points has merit, especially the latter two.

Religious, Not Spiritual

“I think of myself as religious but not spiritual. Partial to the sensuous, communal, and cerebral forms of ritual and text, I’ve always considered ‘spirituality’ too ethereal and invertebrate a way of being.”

Lately I’ve been reading as many articles and book reviews by Eugene McCarraher as possible. I find his work to offer a fresh and pugnacious perspective on theology. Fresh because, as a Catholic Historian of American political economy, his work crosses the disciplines of politics, economics, theology, philosophy, and social theory in exciting and often illuminating ways. Pugnacious because his writing treats academia as a street fight; those who find themselves on the receiving end of his ire are often treated to high-brow beat-down.

As the quote above suggests, though, McCarraher offers a vision beyond our stale infatuation with “spirituality” and its concomitant appeals to tolerance and openness. McCarraher points to a religious life that is both political and economic (a true polis and oikos) and in this regard invites us to envision what a truly Christian world might look like as a radical sacramental participation in the divine.

State of Exception

necessitas legem non habet*

When the ideals of the law are suspended in order to reach the end of law (the common good) then you find yourself in what Giorgio Agamben calls the State of Exception.

[T]he state of exception separates the norm from its application in order to make its applicaiton possible. It introduces a zone of anomie into the law in order to make the effective regulation of the real possible.

The operative ideology at work in this situation is that no sacrifice is too great in securing our desired end, least of all the temporary suspension of the form of that end itself. The Roman Republic secured for itself a state of exception when, during a time of necessity, the often slow deliberation of the joint consuls — and thus the form of the Republic itself — would be suspended in order to allow a dictator the power to make necessary decisions. For the Roman Republic, this was to be limited to a sixth month period. In the end, however, the state of exception became permanent and the Republic became an Empire.

Rome failed to maintain its ideal with a six month state of exception.

We are in month ten.

* necessity has no law