In the form of some questions and answers, or a very self-indulgent interview of myself, here are some reasons why Liberalism is bad—especially bad for Catholics.
It should also show why the people who call themselves “conservative” are just as liberal—or even more liberal!—as those who consider themselves “liberal” or “progressive.” In other words, why Democrats and Republicans are all liberal.
Finally, here are some reasons why we need to develop an appetite for an end of all forms Liberalism. Why we need what Bernard Lonergan once called “a second Enlightenment.”
Peace and good!
Q: What is liberalism?
A: Liberalism is the product of the modern Enlightenment that created the political apparatus that is the secular nation-state.
Q: Why is that bad, would you rather have Kings or despots?
A: We would all like a perfect King and would equally dislike a despot, but this is all besides the point. Liberalism has a King too, you know. The liberal King is the autonomous individual. This new King rules in a more complex way than the Kings of the past, but is still a false King and still makes a claim to autarky. As Catholics, we desire the reign of God. So, in a real way we should feel very strange in a secular nation-state or a monarchy where the King is anything less than God.
Q: Okay, so who are the liberals?
A: Anyone who accepts the secular nation-state and its King, the autonomous individual. In the USA, this would include almost every politician in both major parties.
Q: Are you saying that “conservatives” and “republicans” are liberal?
A: Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Look at their historical genealogy. They all come from liberalism; the apple cannot fall too far from the tree. Look at their beliefs. They belief in the autonomous individual more strongly than their counterparts. They must be liberal. In many ways, they are more—not less—liberal than than the self-proclaimed “liberals.”
Q: Are “liberals” and “democrats” liberal too?
A: Yes. They come from the same historical moment and they share similar beliefs in a secular nation state and the autonomous individual. They also buy into the secularism of liberalism more strongly than their counterparts.
Q: Why is a belief in an autonomous individual bad?
A: Because individuals don’t exist. In order for there to be a truly autonomous individual the world could not be as it is. Individualism is an isolated and alienated concept that is bad for us because we desire communio and love. For individualism to be true, God must die and the individual must replace it.
Q: So what is the alternative to this liberal King, the autonomous individual?
A: The human person. The referential being that exists only insofar as it is loved. This person can have thoughts and desires that belong to him or her psychologically, but such things are never beyond the order of love (ordo amoris). That order of love is the center of a true politics for the person. It is the alternative to the nihilism of liberal individualism.
Q: What other things are bad about liberalism, more practical things?
A: Well, liberalism came to us in the modern Enlightenment that has always committed itself to instilling secularism as a new religion. This may seem to allow for more religious expression but it also has a more nefarious effect: it becomes the new Holy Empire of belief. You can belief anything you want so long as you don’t really believe it and practice your belief in a secular way.
Q: What’s wrong with that?
A: We are in effect prevented from believing in a way that goes beyond the secular idea that individual choices rule the day. It is a terrible form of relativism and fundamentalism.
Q: But hasn’t a secular nation-state quelled a large amount of religious violence and warfare, like the Holy Wars and Crusades?
A: Yes, but not all of it. And while it has prevented a certain amount of Church-sponsored warfare, it also has created the most devastating warfare that the world has ever seen: the wars between nation-states. Liberalism has largely paved the way for literal “World War.” And there are still Holy Wars being fought too, to boot.
Q: And what is the alternative?
A: A true community of persons who live on a religion of love that demands respect for the personhood—the referential relationality—of each person as a non-negotiable principle of political order. In other words, to be a human family.
Q: That sounds Utopian. Are you talking about world peace and harmony, are you a hippie?
A: No. Human families are tragic, not Utopian. They are not perfect. But they seem to understand that there are no individuals that rule alone, in isolation. And they also seem to grasp that nothing can be neutral. No mediator can be secular and objective, everyone has an interest insofar as they desire love and community. The brilliance of the human family as politics is that families live the in the flux of uncertainty and vulnerability, not outside it in some sterile place. They cannot pretend to escape from the order of love—even when they hate it they must love it to do so.
Q: So, in summary, why is liberalism bad again?
A: In no particular order: Liberalism is bad because it cannot move beyond its own historical ties to the modern, secular Enlightenment. It has no imagination to think beyond the grasp of the political apparatus—a nation-state— that is ruled over by some arrangement of autonomous individuals who are free as long as they don’t believe in it. Liberalism is bad because it lies about who we are as persons, not individuals. Liberalism is bad because it monopolizes religious belief under the mediation of a secular religion of state neutrality. Liberalism is bad because it is at the heart of every major political aberration we find on both sides of the aisle. Liberalism is bad because it makes world wars possible. Liberalism is bad because we know that the politics of the day are corrupt on either side and it is the motor that keep those politics alive. Liberalism is bad because it prevent us from truly believing in the reign of God. Liberalism is bad because it prevents us from aspiring to become a human family governed by an order of love. Liberalism is bad because it prevents us from being Catholic.
Don’t forget, Liberalism is bad.
For more on this subject at Vox-Nova see:
http://vox-nova.com/2009/12/04/liberalism-is-a-destructive-force-on-american-catholics/
http://vox-nova.com/2009/11/23/liberalism-is-a-bunch-of-lies/
http://vox-nova.com/2009/11/30/zizek-on-modernity/
Awesome post, Sam – I’m definitely getting clearer on this. Thanks.
This is an interesting piece.
“A: A true community of persons who live on a religion of love that demands respect for the personhood—the referential relationality—of each person as a non-negotiable principle of political order. In other words, to be a human family.”
This is not an alternative. It’s not descriptive and it’s not anything concrete. The political question is and always has been HOW do we produce such a society. What is the way we organize it? Does this society have laws? How is political authority exercised? Where does political authority lie? How do we transition from the current society to this new society? How do we arrange our economic affairs in this new world order? How do we provide for private property? There is a lot of talk about using our imagination to think outside of liberalism and to come up with an alternative arrangement for our political life, but there is nothing produced this vaunted imagination. I think this is probably because imagination itself has limits – just like everything else human! This lack of imagination cannot be ignored and is indicative of the ultimate problem with this critique.
In reality, principles need to be implemented. This means choices will have to be made, goods will have to be sacrificed. One thing will have to be chosen over another thing. This criticism is totally unhelpful as it is. It’s not close to being a fair critique of liberalism. A fair critique would see liberalism in light of all the other political arrangements mankind has had throughout history. If historical analysis played any part in this critique, liberalism would not come out nearly as evil as is suggested in this conversation. It’s certainly not perfect – no human political arrangement is – but it’s not nearly as bad as is suggested by this rant.
And as far as “Liberalism is bad because it prevents us from being Catholic.” – If the secular authorities are preventing you from being Catholic, you’re confusing being Catholic with being something contingent upon the world. Catholicism is a religion of the body and the soul – yes – but the inbreaking of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is not contingent upon justice being done in our political communities. Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world.
Also I think we would all benefit from a more detailed definition of “belief in the autonomous individual”.
I think classical liberalism, that is, limited republican government is a good form of government but I do not “believe in the autonomous individual”, as you have defined it. What do you mean?
Hey y’all,
I’ve been reading Cardinal Francis George’s new book, “The Difference God Makes,” and while I’m sure he’d echo many of the criticisms of this article (in many ways the book itself is a review of philosophical liberalism’s effect on society and the church), even he wouldn’t go so far as to outrightly condemn “liberalism” as such:
“Personally, I tend to think that the practical case for holding our liberal political and economic institutions responsible for the culture that now clashes wit the faith is still waiting for an adequate elaboration.”
Maybe you should forward him this article :P
More on the idea of the “second Enlightenment,” a la Lonergan, please!
There is a lot of talk about using our imagination to think outside of liberalism and to come up with an alternative arrangement for our political life, but there is nothing [that has] produced this vaunted imagination. I think this is probably because imagination itself has limits – just like everything else human! This lack of imagination cannot be ignored and is indicative of the ultimate problem with this critique.
What the modern political imagination lacks is a TRAGIC SPIRIT–an understanding that there must be compromise, that some people will be hurt–even killed–by the compromises that are necessary, and that, still, those compromises must be carried out in a spirit of charity, seasoned with mercy, and with full acknowledgment that human justice is imperfect.
It is this TRAGIC SPIRIT, by the way, that I think is almost completely lacking from that other argument constantly being carried out on these threads–the one about abortion. Sometimes babies must die, that their mothers may live. That has never seemed “just.” Sometimes octagenarians must die, so that scarce medical resources may be reserved for the young, with more of life ahead of them. Does that seem “just,” especially in light of the inequality of talents or wisdom or intelligence?
The best societies are those in which such “injustices” may be accepted, without canceling out charity. America does not any longer seem to be one of those societies.
Very good article, should be required reading for Catholics.
As Catholics, we desire the reign of God.
Do Catholics have a duty to help bring about this reign in our societies? If so, then how so? Should the coercive power of the political order be used? How do you keep freedom of religion in a society in which believers from a variety of religious faiths seek through force to establish their unique understandings of the reign of God?
And who is to be the “pater familias” of this ideal, all inclusive human family? I shudder when I think of the likely proposals. Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in his 2010 avatar? For me liberalism is anything but perfect, but, like is said of democracy, it’s the least-bad available at the moment.
Individuals dont’t exist? What then enters into community by means of relational rationality?
With all due respect, this is just too vague and wooly a description of a Liberalism which no conservative would recognize. Most Catholic Conservatives see Liberalism not in Economic or Political terms. But in issues such as Gay Clergy, Woman Preist, Liturgical Abuse, Ecumenism and Contraception.
If you are not going to address these then it’s really a pointless exercise. I am happy to be called a liberal since I do not see it as my place to tell other people what to do or how to live their lives.
I don’t think you can really be anti-liberalism and not discuss how not to be intolerant at the same time?
Individuals dont’t exist? What then enters into community by means of relational rationality?
No one “enters into” community. As human persons we are always and everywhere, intrinsically, in community whether we realize it or not.
With all due respect, this is just too vague and wooly a description of a Liberalism which no liberal would recognize. Most Catholic Liberals see Liberalism not in Economic or Political terms. But in issues such as pastorally-oriented Clergy, respect for the dignity of women and minorities, Liturgical renewal, Ecumenism and a Church that serves more than just the higher social classes.
Maybe it’s a product of this being a very brief summary, but several items in this analysis seemed surprising or unexplained to me. If I may…
As Catholics, we desire the reign of God. So, in a real way we should feel very strange in a secular nation-state or a monarchy where the King is anything less than God.
I could well see this description being applied to some more extreme lines of Protestantism (Quakers, Mennonites, etc.) but I find it hard to square with Catholic history in that the Catholic Church is rather famous for its close relationships with a number of monarchies for long periods of time: the Spanish, Austrian and French monarchies spring to mind, the papal states were of course directly ruled by the pope, in the East the Byzantine Empire was very much recognized by and associated with the Church. Indeed, the text of the mass included a prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor up until the ’20s, as I recall, despite the fact that post had been vacant for some time by the point.
Do you mean that the Church has always recognized all authority as stemming from God, and so has never recognized the power of the state as absolute? But if so, it seems hard to see how this would diverge from American liberalism, as the writings of the “founding fathers” and most American political leaders throughout its first century are replete with references to all true authority and law stemming from God.
A: Because individuals don’t exist. In order for there to be a truly autonomous individual the world could not be as it is. Individualism is an isolated and alienated concept that is bad for us because we desire communio and love. For individualism to be true, God must die and the individual must replace it.
I would certainly agree that individualism as you define it is bad, but I’m unclear how we are to see such a conception as being at the root of classical liberalism. Perhaps, given the most extreme reading possible, one could read this into Hobbes a bit, but I certainly don’t see how one could read this kind of absolutist individualism into, say, the American Federalists, who would seem to be the most obvious intellectual ancestors of American conservatives. I also don’t think you could read this view at all into Burke or Adam Smith, who would be the other obvious intellectual precursors to conservatism.
Indeed, I think one of the most serious mis-readings that social democrats often suffer from in encountering the set of ideas the Federalists endorsed it to assume that because the Federalists believed strongly in limited government, they must therefore not have believed in any relationship or obligation between persons. Rather, the difference is that the Federalists saw a highly circumscribed role for the state specifically because they believed in the importance of the relationships between persons, and saw those relationships as the primary means for social cohesion, rather than the actions of the state. This is also why the Federalists supported highly circumscribed suffrage and indirect means of electing representatives: because they envisioned a republic in where people only participated at the level in which they had relationships, not a state in which people pursued a direct, democratic relationship with the state.
In that light:
Look at their beliefs. They belief in the autonomous individual more strongly than their counterparts. They must be liberal. In many ways, they are more—not less—liberal than than the self-proclaimed “liberals.”
I think it’s important to consider: Is it that “conservatives” have a stronger belief in the autonomous individual than “liberals” in the modern context, or is it that because they do believe in the solidarity of personal relationships they want to see needs met through those real communities rather than through a direct relationship with “the state”. Desire to see the state subsidize an individuals ability to live comfortably without social relationships is not necessarily a sign of greater community, it may be a sign of less community.
Such statistics are certainly not conclusive, but it’s perhaps illustrative that the majority of groups such as those who are married, those who have children, and those who actively participate in a church are found to be, in the majority, conservative. While those who are single, do not have children, and are not active members in a church are, in the majority, liberal.
Oh, one other minor point:
I’m not sure that one can attribute world wars strictly to liberalism, so much as to the technology which allows communication, transit and weapons of the sort that can support the carnage of a world war. Can we really doubt that the wars between the Turks and the Austrians, between the Spanish and the Moors, between the Cathars and the Catholics, the wars of Spanish Succession, the wars surrounding the Protestant reformation, etc. would have been any less destructive and widespread if the means had been available?
With all due respect, this is just too vague and wooly a description of a Liberalism which no conservative would recognize. Most Catholic Conservatives see Liberalism not in Economic or Political terms. But in issues such as Gay Clergy, Woman Preist, Liturgical Abuse, Ecumenism and Contraception.
Precisely. They did not recognize that they are liberals and they misuse the term “liberal.”
Everyone (or no one) is a liberal according to the definition supplied in this piece.
Everyone (or no one) is a liberal according to the definition supplied in this piece.
What a baffling statement. “Everyone” in the united states? “Everyone” in the world? Really? Do you ever come out of your little bubble?
Michael, I meant the sentence to be taken in its entirety. The sentence is an indirect way of asking for a better definition of “liberal”.
I wrote this earlier today, and I wasn’t going to send it, but seeing how this conversation is developing, I figure I might as well try.
I don’t claim to be much of a political thinker, and most of this is just off the top of my head. I don’t have any answers here; just thoughts.
I know that this is long and rambling, and I apologize, but I thought that I would throw it out there.
______________________________________________
I must say that I want more from this post by way of a breakdown of how humans organize belonging, and I would like for the idea of individualism to be probed along lines of affiliation. I’d also like to see issues of responsibility and duty brought into this jeremiad.
Belonging: it established by birth (the family), by place of birth and law (US citizenship), by historical ethnicity and law (Israeli citizenship), elective ritual based on adherence to shared beliefs regardless of birth, place, or law (early Christianity prior to infant baptism), or by non-elective ritual and familial obligations to the new-born (e.g. infant baptism).
I think that a key element here is how law functions in tandem with other forms of belonging. The question of what establishes membership (and hence dues both to and from a member), be it biological, geographic, or legal belonging, is never singular. Yet the first two are what we can call natural: concepts of family and place of origin are found in all cultures (as far as I know), which are ways of making sense of being mortal bodies (reproductive and locative). The third, however, admits of far greater variation. While we can say that law is natural to humans, we can also say that legality (how law interacts with the judicial triad of the distributive, retributive, and commutative) is always particular to each community. Whereas birth/death and place are always present, the law can be broken, changed, amended. Law is a factum. While we know, anthropologically, that how humans organize around reproduction and place varies, there is an externality to the law recognized by our need to speak of natural law.
By external, I don’t mean coercive, but rather that which must be arrived at and agreed upon socially.
Here is where I’m having such a hard time with how Vox Nova bloggers who rant against liberalism as atomistic existence: it’s a bogie. This is why I’d like real engagement with the different levels of our belonging in our current situation as something that can’t be a fictive kinship group but must revert to law because family entails loyalties and exclusivities that can divide us against our other forms of belonging (Hegel’s reading of Antigone is the locus classicus for this point regarding family v. state loyalties; I suppose we can look at the Thirty Years War as the great lesson about divided loyalties between geography and belief-group).
Law works on top of our conceptualizing of the fundamental as coercive
We can leave our family, but no matter what attitude a person adopts, its presence or absence always interpellates (to use Althusser’s term), gets under the skin of, anyone with memory of having been from it or of having learned of one’s natal alienation (either through slavery or adoption; to put both of these under the genus of natal alienation is not to say that the latter is the same or has the same effects upon a person as the former).
Likewise, we can leave home, and it seems that for many cultures, doing so ( especially if one is male) is necessary to achieve full membership in the eyes of others (although not of the law, which resorts to time as a determinant factor in how it treats moral agency and rights).
In other words, a person can break away from his or her family but never be rid of it, and a person is expected to separate from a familial homestead, and yet this does not amount to exile or abandonment. Eteocles and Polynices are still brothers, even when they’ve killed each other.
The law, however, is something breakable that requires a redefinition of a person’s belonging and can amount to locative or biological expulsion (through imprisonment, exile, or death, or as with Polynices, the refusal of burial). When a person kills a family member, law is broken, but there is a “something more” to it. Law, in this case, is not fundamental. Such an act, however, does not undo a person’s belonging to a family. Instead, humans give recognition to the family by seeking redress, by means of the law, for such an act. The law is the human attempt to construct nature when nature has no way of asserting itself (or as Benjamin called it, “second nature”). For this reason, Plato and the Stoics (see Seneca’s Epistle 90), saw laws (and some Stoics, even the arts) as a sign of corruption, a fall into a need to think and assert force (bias, vis) to the human will.
Do you propose to establish your ordo amoris by law? Is this not the only way that you can give body and place to the form of belonging that is constantly being broken?
This, however, seems to run into a problem.
What you want to do seems to me to require that you engage issues of moral epistemology. How humans make decisions about the good reflexively endows humans with dignity: to be forced to choose something that is objectively good for human flourishing against one’s will destroys what is foundational for human flourishing (a willing of the good). This creates a conundrum of how a society that exalts human dignity as founded in knowing oneself as the key to freedom can make claims on its members if those claims extend to a form of knowledge not based in the self.
Here is where liberalism has its foundation: that humans, over and above their reproductive and locative groups that cannot mediate all allegiances, can figure out, and to preserve their dignity must figure out and choose against the competing forces of other intellects, what is good. The law is coercive as a manifestation of these many wills (both living and past), and so the individual will is not isolated but forced to engage in a process of coming to self-knowledge as belonging with dues and obligations at multiple levels. Successful engagement in this process should lead to thick and thin relations (as made clear by Avishai Margalit in his Ethics of Memory) where an individual can flourish through loving.
To impose a demand of love seems to me to contradict the freedom of love that we are asked to learn.
The sentence is an indirect way of asking for a better definition of “liberal”.
One which does not include you, I suppose.
Hello everyone. I am sitting in the hotel lobby before my New Years eve gig and just read your replies. I am very ashamed to say that the vast substance of these erudite replies reveal my inability to communicate my thoughts clearly more than they do anything else.
Most seem to assume that my critique is primarily a piece of political theory, contemporary commentary, or something like that. Given its brevity and accesible style it is more of a vulgar way to make a purely historical point: liberalism comes out of the modern Enlightenment and its secular nation-state. If this is true, then, the friction caused by such a thing creates issues and problems, especially for Catholics.
Now, of course I over-extend this point in a few flourishes, but the primary challenge is this: to not use the word “liberal” ahistorically and come to terms with it as a term and a social reality.
As we do that I think the deep imperfection of it leads us to the desire for soemthing better, something to come.
I will try to address other points when I get back to OSU, but for now please try to keep the focus—and the obvious limitations—of this 20-minute (with edits) essay in mind.
I do deeply appreciate the enagagment. Happy New Year!
One more thing: At the very least, Vox-Nova cannot be credibly generalized as a “liberal” blog anymore.
isn’t individuality part of the definition of a person, or was Boethius just plain wrong?
Lee,
I will answer that question. The latin individua has a different meaning than the English individual. The latin can be best translated as “singular.” Individual however has a connotation of a closed singularity, while the latin does not have that closure.
Secondarily, Boethius, while an important philosopher in the development of the idea of the person, is not the end all of it; even the C.E. point this out: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11726a.htm
Here is an old post which you might find interesting, one which I wrote a couple years back: http://vox-nova.com/2008/03/11/person-vs-individual/
Nah, as I said up above, my politics are probably those of a classical republican, influenced by modern liberalism. I’d probably qualify as a liberal.
This post bothers me, and I am not sure why. Here’s a rough attempt to explain why:
For most of the past eight years conservatives have been in complete control of the federal government. For some of that time, a majority of state governorships were in conservative hands. In fact, the liberal governor of California was recalled and replaced by a republican, a rare event, I understand. Conservatism was riding high, and conservatives got every little thing they wanted: war in Iraq, a ban on stem cell research, a sustained public movement against gay marriage, an end to the estate tax and lower taxes for the rich. Everything.
And when it all failed, then came the cries of “but they weren’t real conservatives!” In fact, if you check his Conservapedia entry, you’ll discover that George W. Bush was in reality a liberal! That didn’t stop conservatives from linign up tp vote for him, and cheering when he won in 2004. It didn’t stop Peggy Noonan from calling his victory a “blessing” on the nation.
And now, conservatives are ready to “take our country back”. . . as if they didn;t already have complete control for almost a decade. Less than a full year of Obama, and they are ready for change? Either Obama is the worst president ever, or conservatives are deeple deluded.
And so, Sam, your post may indeed be a good-faith attempt to define our political terms and get at the “real” meaning of “liberal” and “conservative”. . . but it also seems to me to be an example of a deeper problem this country. . . and in fact the American church. . . suffers from: an inability to criticize conservatism. In order to disagree with someone or something, it must first be labeled “liberal.” And so Bush is a liberal, and the GOP dominated congress was liberal, and all these liberals have to be swpt away to make room for. . . who? Teabaggers and birthers and creationists.
I am a liberal and proudly so. It is conservatives, to my mind that have to explain themselves.
If your point is _strictly_ historical, in pointing out that classical liberalism has its origins in the period of the Enlightenment, and to an extent in Enlightenment though per se (Whether it classical liberalism in the American tradition is, properly seen, “Enlightenment” has a great deal to do with whether and to what extent one considers the Scottish enlightenment to be “Enlightenment” in the sense which some Catholics use the term as a bad word), I don’t think you would find much disagreement. I think the reason people see the needs to answer you at length is that you then go on to define classical liberalism as the political and spiritual exultation of the “autonomous individual” at the expense of all relationships, and lay out as a possible alternative to this the understanding of the person. I think most people who have thought much at all about classical liberalism and see it as anything other than an intellectual bogie-man see this as a rather extreme distortion.
I’m sure that much of the difficulty here is the brevity of your piece, but you seem to do nothing to actually substantiate the claim that classical liberals exalt the autonomous individual at the expense of all relationships, other than to assert it. Thus, the whole thing comes off (unintentionally, I’m sure) as sort of a “there is a good set of beliefs about people understood as ‘persons’ and there is a bad set of beliefs about people understood as ‘individuals’, and liberals hold the bad set, so liberals are bad.” If those who are accused of classical liberalism (an accusation I am certainly willing to accept, so long as classical liberalism is defined in the way that I understand it rather than through caricature) find nothing to recognize in the description of liberal beliefs about the “individual”, people will of course object.
I hope that you’ll find time to expand on the issue so that we can understand more clearly where you’re coming from, what it is that you think classical liberalism to be (so that we can understand if we’re even talking about the same thing) and what it is that you would envision as standing in opposition to it.
One more thing: At the very least, Vox-Nova cannot be credibly generalized as a “liberal” blog anymore.
Actually, I’m not clear how exactly it would refute this, as Vox Nova’s commentary (which generally falls in the line of social democratic, Christian Democrat, or otherwise politically progressive Catholic commentary) is itself rooted within the same set of political ideas and attitudes which are classical liberalism. If anything, these ideas seem to stem from a slightly later version of liberalism, one which responded to the already-well-underway destruction of societal institutions circa 1890 with advocacy for a much more direct relationship between the individual and the state via social programs.
Surely no one here, to my knowledge, has suggested returning to a situation in which political office is held by virtue of class and ancestry, in which there is not even a pretense of representative government, in which taxes are generally highly regressive, in which social services are restricted almost entirely to the work of mendicant orders, and in which government spending is almost entirely on the military and on building projects to benefit the aristocracy — which is what a return to the actual political institutions prior to classical liberalism in Christian Europe would look like.
Henry,
I would like for some confirmation on your assertions about the meaning of individuus/a/um in Latin. Your distinction seems rather fine, and so I did some searching to see if any sources or references would confirm it.
I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by “singular,” but to me it suggests “without compare” or “having only one occurrence.” Whatever you mean by it, where do you find it used in Latin-writing authors to mean singular? Can you provide a source or authoritative reference? My search has left me empty-handed.
The Oxford Latin Dictionary (which covers the language up to 200 A.D.) gives the definitions 1. a) incapable of being divided, indivisible; b) an atom (in the atomic theory of Democritus). 2. that cannot be parted, inseparable. 3. a) not divided or forked; not shared; b) equal, impartial.
“Not shared” certainly seems to have a sense of closure to me.
I also checked the Lewis and Short (which covers up to 600 A.D.), and it provides nothing more, except that instead of “not forked” (which comes from Pliny the Elder) it defines the word (in reference to plants) as “without branching.”
I did a text search of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, but he never used the word, even though it can fit the meter of his poem. Cicero used the word first, as far as lexicographers can tell, to translate atomos as it appeared in Plato’s Timaeus.
Perhaps you have an early modern source in mind. Maybe Hobbes in the De Cive? I don’t have access to Hobbes in Latin at the moment, but I did check Spinoza, who uses the word 4 times in Book I Prop 7 Schol. II of the Ethics, where he speaks (in the plural) of “a certain number of individuorum,” and then goes on to talk of 20 men. That seems both plural and more closed off than “singular,” to me at least. I haven’t been terribly thorough in this investigation (I stopped at book I of his Ethics, but I did check what I could of Descartes and found no instances of the word).
I apologize if this seems a bit pedantic or pushy, but since none of my sources or references turn up this meaning with such a fine distinction as you claim the word to have, and since there are clear uses (ranging over a millennium) where the word has a sense of closure, I thought it might be worth inquiring where you got this idea.
ES
The CE entry I posted a link to discusses Boethius’ use of the word (which is the use I mean).
Thanks, Henry. I read the Catholic Encyclopedia entry, but it references “singularis” not singular. Look up singularis in either the Oxford Latin Dictionary or the Lewis and Short. I won’t go through all the definitions again, but one of them is “solitary.” In Latin, semantic domains must be narrowed by the words in context (as in any language; consider the difference up and down make with knock: “knock down” vs. “knock up”). In Latin “res aliena” = debt; “res publica” = republic; “res novae” = political revolution.
I think that in answer to Lee’s question, I would be inclined to follow this route of looking to how the adjective is applied. Individuality is part of Boethius’ definition of a person *as a substance* (rationalis naturae individua *substantia*).
This conversation, however, being about political and social realities, is not about persons as substances (object quod), or would you dispute that? It seems rather to me to be about how we relate to each other.
At this point, can I request that this distinction be your distinction — that there can be singularity that is not closed off versus individuality which is — and that we leave semantics (about either Latin, with its extensive history, or English) out of it? Can we use language to mean rather than saying that language means all by itself?
I would like to tip my hat to everything in DarwinCatholic’s most recent post. Bravo!
ES
I would say that we must remember the fluidity of connotations implied in a word, and often when you have many possible meanings, we must not limit them to one which we want to make it out (this is true to myself and to others). There is something which connects the many meanings together (at least, for the most part), and a given writer does not necessarily mean what is used as “definition.” Indeed, definition per se is a limitation and often in error when seen in how a word is used.
But I did point out that as a whole, Boethius was at once a good start, but not a perfect answer. The idea of the self-contained “individual” in the modern sense is not what I get out of Boethius — he is trying to point out that a person cannot be divided into a further category — that we are not made of several entities within to combine to make ourselves as our substance. This is different from the issue of individualism as it progressed beyond this point of time. We agree that each person is unique, the problem is that a person is a relational entity as well, and not entirely separated from those around them. This aspect of the person is more understood in the East than the West in the time of Boethius, but has become the norm in both traditions as we come to the 21st century.
Way late to the game. This is for Kyle:
“As Catholics, we desire the reign of God.”
Do Catholics have a duty to help bring about this reign in our societies? If so, then how so? Should the coercive power of the political order be used? How do you keep freedom of religion in a society in which believers from a variety of religious faiths seek through force to establish their unique understandings of the reign of God?
Kyle, this reign has already been brought about. Jesus brought the kingdom and is the risen Lord. There’s no reason to think we need to bring it about. Rather, as Catholics, we participate in it as a free gift.
The problem for many of us in that we’ve been trained to think that Christians are supposed to be in charge. DarwinCatholic concedes this by saying that because the Church has conceded political ground to rulers of the sword that it’s somehow normative now. To suggest otherwise is to be an extreme Protestant?
The primary objective of Christianity isn’t to rule the world, secure religious freedom or protect ‘free market’ capitalism. The primary objective is to participate in God’s gift economy under the world’s true Lord. We don’t have to figure out some sort of secular arrangement according to modernist ideas, or even baptize one as the ‘best option’ of secular management. Rather we proclaim Jesus as Lord and follow, even to the point of suffering.
Liberalism rightly understood is against suffering for anything except the nation state. But, if you can make someone else suffer instead so that you can have religious ‘freedom’ and the ‘free’ movement of goods and services without suffering, all the better.
Let liberalism have its heroic individuals. Catholics don’t need heroes. The people whose stories we decide are worth passing on are called by a different name: Saints.
It’s true – the primary objective of Christianity is not to rule the world. But it does not follow that “We don’t have to figure out some sort of secular arrangement according to modernist ideas, or even baptize one as the ‘best option’ of secular management.” The Church has proscribed the laity with the task of participating in the order of our secular affairs. (CCC 1878 -1889) We have a responsibility to work for justice and peace, which is what all of these conversations are about.
If you think “religion” is a sphere of life distinct from another sphere called “politics” or another called “culture” then you might be a liberal.
It’s true – the primary objective of Christianity is not to rule the world.
That is, of course, not because the world should be ruled by some other sphere or entity, but because the world should not be ruled.
Or because it already has a ruler? A humble king that rules by a different set of ‘rules’, so to speak.
I must be brief at this time. ES and Darwin Catholic, I am impressed with the depth of your discussion in such a limited space. Henry, I was drawn to the concept of the Latin definition of the individual as being open and not closed. That seems to be of critical importance to the proper understanding the relationship between liberal and individual. If the individual becomes fixed in a belief of self and remains fortified in that belief then that self is no longer and individual because she or he is no longer free. That person is now a system of beliefs and closed off from further investigation. That person has become conventional within that belief system. Sam, your point about Love being the foundation from which we must relate in community with one another can only come about through liberation from conventional systems which place ritual above Love.
As a Catholic I do not “desire the reign of God.” I am a Catholic because of God’s Love being revealed to me while I was in the process of individuating from the genetic and social history I was born into. As a Catholic I desire everyone to know God’s Love. The term “reign” denotes authority and thus it seems to contaminate Love with fear which results in something other than Love.
The individual must live in a state of alterity in which Love is the Mystery to be understood in every encounter with another person or system.
I can agree with that: Christ’s law is love.
I’m hesitant to throw out language like reign, king or kingdom only because it’s scripture-language. But, yes, God is love. That is what I meant by a humble king whose rule is unlike the powers of this world.
This is an outstanding piece of satire and very funny. I hope to read more from this amusing author.
Charismangelican, I think that the language of scripture is the language of the human being who is inspired to write what God reveals and seems to indicate the level of the writer’s understanding God’s message.
It seems to me that we must develop a new interpretation and language that removes us from the language of traditional power to a language that appropriately reveals God’s Love.
[...] of the most frequent commenters here, Ronald King, raised a critique of my earlier post, Don’t Forget, Liberalism is Bad, that I found surprising. He rejected the notion that as Catholics we should desire the reign of [...]
“It seems to me that we must develop a new interpretation and language that removes us from the language of traditional power to a language that appropriately reveals God’s Love.”
That’s a very interesting thought, for sure.
I guess, in addition to the ‘scripture-ness’ of kingdom language I would bring up that I don’t like the idea of divorcing ‘love’ from ‘power’. Love is probably best understood as a type of power.
Jesus confronts the powers of this world. To say that we should avoid kingdom language in favor of some theoretical language that appropriately reveals God’s love is surprising. My gut reaction would be that God has already revealed his love through the Word made Flesh. Jesus IS God’s language.
Yes it’s a different cultural context, but I’d be wary of thinking that anyone I know is in a position to come up with better language than Christ and the Apostles.
The thought I had about language is that you and I know to some extent the language of the bible but those who do not understand that language are then relegated to an inferior position. It is just the same with any language of science and the concept itself may be very simple but the language of science creates a disconnect between the scientist and the layperson. This is where the human relationship begins to deteriorate when there is a power differential. One is attempting to become equal and the other is attempting to maintain a superior position. The male amygdala is conditioned to remain superior and dominant and this is very evident in political, theological, philosophical, etc. arenas. Out whole social system is based on competition and the desire to raise our state of personal value.
Spiritual power is a power but I think we must get away from that type of expression due to the thousands of generations of power struggles in human relationships and how it has influenced gene expression in the amygdala to be hypersensitive to facial expression, tone of voice and body posture that may indicate a potential threat.
We are all born into a genetic history of violence and threat of violence. We must use all the knowledge we have gained in the last decade about the neurobiology of healthy and harmful interpersonal relationships and use the strategy that St. Paul used with the Greeks. If we don’t then we have what we have right now.
Ronald,
I very much appreciate your challenge on the notion of power. I do disagree with you, but it is a fresh critique that I have not heard before and have to evaluate as such.
Do we need all the knowledge we have gained in the last decade about the neurobiology of healthy and harmful interpersonal relationships to stand against the powers of this world, or are St. Paul’s words in Philippians 2 and Jesus washing his disciples’ feet quite enough to drive a stake into the heart of competition?
He’s a humble king. As long as he is the image of divine kingship, then we don’t have to fear kingship.
When I gained knowledge about the physiological and psychological effects of physical and psychological violence and how these effects influence gene expression within the developing human being it became very clear to me why Jesus wanted Our Father to forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing. Now, I could go into a long dissertation on the mirror neuron system within the brain and how it wires the brain to react emotionally, cognitively and physically beginning in the womb and that this hardwiring becomes set around the age of 23-25 and the protein that secures emotional memory decreases by 90 percent at that time and makes it immensely more difficult to learn new emotional responses and consequently, new beliefs unless there is an epiphany through divine intervention.
Knowing these new discoveries creates new methods of problem-solving and conflict resolution. This falls directly in line with Christ telling how to love one another with an unselfish and sacrificial love which has been shown to create physical healing and rewiring of the areas of the brain that had been traumatized by violence.
Christ tells us in John 16 or 17 that He will be known by how we love one another. Obviously, we do not know how to love.
While the world may have a dearth of love, I can think of rather obvious examples of Christians who do know how to love.
But cheers to you for discovering new insights from creation to challenge and help us fulfill Christ’s mission. If only everyone was as excited about studying.
[...] bring this up because, in my recent writings against liberalism—here, here, and here—I think that endearment with or against the word has garnered more attention than [...]