Quote of the day: on the expansion of political desire
March 6, 2010
Radical political thought is always about more than the setting forth of a programme, more than the diagnosis of the ills of society, more than the sketching of the architecture of a just polity. It should also be about the education of political desire… and the expansion of the social imaginary. This is not a question of positing the impossible but realistically and rigorously both exploring and expanding the ever changing limit of the possible.
Richard Fitch, “The Pelagian Mentality: Radical Political Thought in Fifth Century Christianity,” in Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives, ed. Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 26.
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Nah. I’d rather continue to desire the same old political structures and operations as the only possibilities I can imagine.
This limit he describes is “expanding” and “ever changing”. Surely this is another way of saying that he believes there is no limit to what is possible. It seems he shares some of that ever latent scientistic Enlightenment optimism. It also makes this reader wonder: has he ever thought this through?
Zach:
1) I doubt he would deny the limits of our physicality and all that, but that’s not really what he is talking about.
2) Belief in the expansion of “the possible” does not necessarily entail belief in the Enlightenment version of “progress” or “scientific optimism.”
3) Have you no eschatology?
Michael:
(1) Ok, but would he deny that there are a finite number of kinds of political regimes? This is what I meant, I guess.
(2) True, it does not necessarily entail it. But it is a undeniably similar theme, and one cannot help but question whether or not it is related.
(3)When I think about eschatology I think about the Last Things: Death, The Resurrection of the Dead, the Final Judgment, the Second Coming of Christ, the End of Time, Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, etc. I think about the distinction between the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. I think about the desire for the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom and the impossibility of complete perfection before the end of time. And stuff. What is the reason for your question?
(1) Ok, but would he deny that there are a finite number of kinds of political regimes? This is what I meant, I guess.
He’d probably say that the number and types of “political regimes” would be infinite. He would probably also want to think beyond the constricting idea of “regime.” But I can’t say for sure.
(2) True, it does not necessarily entail it. But it is a undeniably similar theme, and one cannot help but question whether or not it is related.
A lot of things are “similar.”
(3)When I think about eschatology I think about the Last Things: Death, The Resurrection of the Dead, the Final Judgment, the Second Coming of Christ, the End of Time, Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, etc. I think about the distinction between the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. I think about the desire for the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom and the impossibility of complete perfection before the end of time. And stuff. What is the reason for your question?
Eschatology is about much much more than the “Last Things.” The reason for asking is that it seems as if you have no eschatology. Beyond a focus on the “last things,” of course.
Excellent quote. Catholic and,more broadly speaking,the Christian world in general needs to have more faith in the coming of the kingdom, more faith that Jesus was not kidding when he said the kingdom of God is among you.
Doesn’t the word eschatology mean the Last Things?
I’m not a academic theologian so my understanding of the idea is perhaps limited, but can you explain what you mean a bit more?
Also I think upon reflection one sees that the kinds of regimes is limited and not infinite. Plato and Aristotle understood that a regimes character or basic form is a consequence of where the political authority rests, be it in the hands of a monarch or the hands of the people, to cite two examples.