Tag Archives: Alasdair MacIntyre

2012 Election as a Denial of the Common Good

Posted on by

Modern states retain the allegiance of those heterogeneous, overlapping and sometimes competing social groups to which their subjects belong by negotiating temporary settlements with those groups, whenever failure to achieve settlement with them would exact too high a price for the state to pay.  But, in so doing, those engaged in government and in politics have to adopt a range of varying and sometimes incompatible stances, appealing to different and sometimes incompatible values, here giving market considerations an overriding value, there denying them this weight, here accepting government responsibility for this or that aspect of social life, there disowning it, here expressing respect for custom and tradition, there flouting them in the name of modernization.

Alasdair MacIntyre, “Politics, Philosophy, and the Common Good” 245.

As we temporally approach the 2012 election, we would do well to remember this key point — the government provides a series of settlements between competing groups without reference to any goods that might reasonably help us in our everyday lives adjudicate disagreements but only with an eye toward its own self-preservation.  Today, that self-preservation lies in service to the capitalist market and corporations.  The Citizens United Decision, which declared corporations to be persons, only highlights the indebtedness of government to corporations.  Obama’s opposition to Citizen’s United makes not an iota of difference to his political platform and raising money for the presidential campaign.  Romney’s allegiance to corporate personhood stands as a pointer to the lie of his stated commitment to the sanctity of life and pro-choice stance.

Make no doubt– whether consciously or not, the representatives of the two major parties cannot represent the common good of the people of the United States who vote them.  Those who still vote for either major party are trapped in the illusion that what matters is this or that over-riding moral issue — abortion and war on one side, economy and war on the other.  To separate out these two positions from all others is to fall into the trap of thinking we must vote for one or other of these major parties.

An autonomous vote is by definition a vote for neither of those.

Radical philosophy?

Posted on by

The theme of the Radical Philosophy Association conference was, “What is Radical Philosophy?”  I’m not sure what sort of answer I got out of all of it, though, to be fair, I did miss some plenary sessions due to travel arrangements.

I think we have to begin by looking at what it means to be radical.  Radical is always historically situated.  What is radical in one moment in history will not be so in another historical moment.  Paul’s comment that husbands are to love their wives the way Christ loved the Church could be seen as radical for its historical time, but, coupled with his belief that wives should obey their husbands, it loses any sort of radical impact today.  What would be the equivalent?

Marxism was radical for its day, but I left the conference wondering if it is still radical.  One session I attended tried to defend early Frankfurt School critical theory as still being relevant and radical today.  I think this thesis contains some truth — the attempt by the members of the early Frankfurt School to connect theory with practice, to unite social science and philosophy, and to question the whole presumption of modernity remain radical.  These questions are the ones that Jürgen Habermas has moved away from.  So it is left to us third generation Frankfurt School theorists to return to our roots.  Obviously, I think that MacIntyre’s concept of practices helps us to do this.

Another session defended the radical-ness of feminist phenomenology.  For these feminists, phenomenology helps us to uncover the underlying structure of our consciousness as it engages with the world as it is given to us.  What, for instance, does the constant and continuous inundation of sexual images of women mean for how human beings encounter and act in the world?  This is an important question, and phenomenology can help us to discover these prejudices.  But I’m afraid that I do not see how phenomenology alone can help us to resolve these prejudices.  Again, I think we need to turn our attention to the concepts of tradition and practice to move forward.

Other theories and theorists were discussed, most notably, Foucault.  Aside from my own presentation, though, I do not remember anyone discussing MacIntyre.  Here I think we face a great challenge.  How do we make sure that radicals are availing themselves of the right theories and theorists?

Perhaps the most radical philosophy is to begin to engage the conversation.

Five Thoughts from Buffalo

Posted on by

–Buffalo, New York, Canisius College, SJ, The Radical Philosophy Association conference.

(1) I went to a great panel discussion on John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Alasdair MacIntyre on pedagogy. I wonder where Maria Montessori would fit into these discussions. She was a Catholic, after all, and a friend of a pope or two, I’ve read (over at Vox Nova a while back). Someone in the audience mentioned Montessori. She is one of these wonderful reformers of the era of Jane Addams in the United States, drawing attention to the rights of juveniles. Looking back to that era of reformers might be helpful as we seek to honor the natural law commitment to the care and education of the young in a society that increasingly treats youth as “disposible” (see Henry Giroux).

(2) I just bought a book called Philosophia, by Andrea Nye, on Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, and Simone Weil. If it is interesting, I’ll let you know how it goes. You’ll hear more from me on Simone Weil soon, since I will be writing a review of the new documentary An Encounter with Simone Weil.

(3) Hierarchy: How worried or not worried should we be about it? There was an interesting talk today on anarchist thinker Day. Not Dorothy (who might not be as anarchist as people sometimes make her out to be, her background was more Marxist than Peter Maurin’s) but “Anarchist Guy” Day…I did not catch the first name. (Interestingly, he apparently engaged with too-oft-neglected anarchist humanist thinker Gustav Landauer, whom I’m very interested in for his engagement with religious thought and his conception of hope, so I should really figure out who this Day fellow is.) Anyway, not surprisingly this talk on an anarchist thinker expressed concern about “hierarchy.” To what extent is hierarchy really a threat?

And: We belong to a church that is unabashedly hierarchical. Is it possible to have a hierarchy of symbolic roles without having a hierarchy of oppressive power? At its best, I think the Church’s hierarchy should serve an ironic function, subverting hierarchies outside the Church, but establishing a hierarchy in which those higher in the hierarchy serve in the humblest of roles, not as administrators.

(4) Punting off Jeff’s talk: if revolutionary social change requires a kind of pedagogy that meets people where they are, as equals, and learns their practices in order to work with them, what are some of the practices that one would have to learn, and what would that look like? Obviously this depends in large part upon one’s context. But are there some things in particular that stand out as practices from which revolutionary intellectuals tend to be too distanced and which they should learn?

(5) Why is “idealist” such a dirty word in these circles? I’m coming from a graduate program where German Idealism is taken super seriously, so it puzzles me that Marxists are so quick to use idealism as a kind of insult, considering the obvious influence of Hegel on Marx. I do not mean this question naively but rhetorically. I understand that there’s a history there, but I think it’s time we critically engage the German idealists again, and not just Hegel but Fichte and others of that context.

 

Talking Politics, Avoiding the Divide

Posted on by

Last night, I had the opportunity to discuss the question, “Why are we so divisive in politics in the Church and outside of it and how do we overcome the division?”  It was for Theology on the Hilltop.  Br. Jonah (who will soon be ordained!) invited me to discuss this with him to a roomful of interested seminarians and local laypersons.  While he took the theological position (focusing on the need for grace and the unity that lies at the heart of our relationship to God), I tried to elucidate a philosophical position.

Unsurprisingly, I focused on a few key issues: reason and modern forms of life.

Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, really diagnosed part of the problem: our modern moral language is corrupt.  We do not understand the meanings of the moral terms we use because they have been shorn of their historical roots.  (It’s interesting to note, I think, that one feature of dystopian literature is a loss of meaning — but that’s another issue.)  From my perspective, this loss of meaning with moral language occurs along with, if not because of, the way reason is revaluated in modernity.  Because of the great success of science and the attempt by Italians (like Dante) to rescue the Church from involvement in Italian politics, reason loses its ability to evaluate ends.  Reason becomes simply another form of power.  In the words of Hobbes, reason is “mere reckoning;” while Hume later declares that “reason is but the slave of the passions.”  (My forthcoming book, Reason, Tradition and the Good goes into more depth about this aspect of reason.)

If that diagnosis really captures what’s going on in modernity, then how do we move past it?  First and foremost, we have to recapture our moral language and resurrect reason’s evaluative power.  To do either of those things, we must, as I argue in my book and have suggested on this blog, engage in concrete social practices and traditions.  What do I mean by concrete practices: chess, blues guitar, philosophy, midwifery, etc.  These are sets of activities the pursuit of which entails a pursuit of some good defined, not by our own initial wants, but by the practice itself.  And our pursuing these practices means that we extend our physical and mental abilities and stretch ourselves.  Community begins in practice, and the greatest practice is that of politics.  Politics, as I’ve said on this blog before, not in the contemporary American sense, but in the ancient sense of a community of people coming together to determine the common good.  Worker co-operatives are a great example of this kind of community politics.

What do I mean by tradition: Roman Catholicism, or more appropriately — Franciscianism, Augustiniasm, etc — Lakota culture, traditions of cooking, science fiction, etc.  Traditions give a broader picture of our practices and of our good.  By learning about and engaging in lost traditions, we grow as individuals and as communities.

Much more can be said about each of these.  And more can be said about modern forms of life, which I will turn to Monday.  And one thing I did not mention in this post is the notion of tension which took up a significant part of our discussion on Friday.  If you’d like to read more about Theology on Hilltop, see Sr. Hilda’s commentary here.

Rawls is NOT the Answer

Posted on by

I could not disagree more with Steven Mazie’s take on OWS!  Steven Mazie is an associate professor of political science at Bard College.  In his contribution to the Opinionator, he contends that OWS should turn to Rawls to find a way to frame their positions and begin to lay out there view of change for the future.  His view faces many problems

One primary problem with recommending Rawls to OWS is that Rawls’ “justice as fairness” can be used to support the status quo as much as argue against it.  Justice as fairness names Rawls’ political theory which promotes two principles.  The first principle of justice is that everyone should have an equally extensive set of liberties consistent with everyone have the same liberties.  As a moral principle that guides a constitution, this principle remains abstract.  At the practical level, it seems to me that the first principle of justice says nothing about one of the main concerns for OWS — that people with money have greater access to and influence over politics and political leaders.  These are liberties that, Rawls says, are not impacted by the second principle of justice (on inequality) and thus would mean nothing, for example, about reversing the Citizens United decision.

The second principle of justice — what Rawls calls the difference principle — states that inequalities in society are justified only to the extent that they benefit the least well off.  This principle could easily be agreed to and promoted by the political leaders of the last 30 years in America who have bought into Reagan’s trickle-down economics.  The whole point of trickle down economics is exactly that given tax breaks to the super-rich will benefit the least well off more so than taxing the rich.  For the life of me, I cannot understand how good-hearted people like Rawls or Mazie can promote their idea of the difference principle as somehow best for those least well-off.  It’s defense relies on a counter-factual that is easily denied.  If we say, for instance, that tax breaks have not brought about a better life for the least well-off, the right only need say “prove that taxing us would be better.”  Further, nothing in Rawls’ justice as fairness says that we need to pick that level of inequality which is least when the choice is between levels of inequality in which the least well-off do better.

Finally, the current problem is that the middle-class is doing quite poorly right now, and that has nothing to do with the difference principle as stated.

Rawls’ justice as fairness faces many other problems, and the proposal to use it makes a mockery out of OWS.  Anyone who has attended a meeting with occupiers is familiar with their direct democracy.  This direct democracy recognizes difference as fundamental to the democratic process.  Rawls, however, denies that difference is important.  Surprisingly, Mazie does not mention this in his endorsement of Rawls: “They’ll find a trove of ideas to enrich their movement, from Rawls’s “original position” (a heuristic for developing a society’s principles of justice in a context of impartiality), to his view of “public reason” (a mode of debating divisive issues), to his “overlapping consensus” (a vision of groups with incompatible beliefs settling on basic terms of political justice) to his distinction between “the rational” and “the reasonable,” where the latter includes putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and not merely advocating for your narrow self-interest.”

In fact, each one of these principles violate the fundamental democratic spirit behind OWS.

I agree with Mazie that OWS needs to look for inspiration to formulate their vision of justice.  That inspiration should come from someone like Alasdair MacIntyre, however, who has fought practically and theoretically for direct democracy and the end of capitalistic oppression and bureaucratic oppression for decades.