July 1, 2009
Cross-posted at First Things
Inspired by Patrick Deenan’s outstanding essay about sociologist and cultural philosopher Robert Nisbet, I’d like to define a term that appears as a theme in his work and was popularized by Russell Kirk: the moral imagination. (The term comes from Edmund Burke, and its quotation is below the fold.) It can be defined as a uniquely human ability to conceive of fellow humanity as moral beings and as persons, not as objects whose value rests in utility or usefulness. It is a process by which a self “creates” metaphor from images recorded by the senses and stored in memory, which are then occupied to find and suppose moral correspondences in experience. An intuitive ability to perceive ethical truths and abiding law in the midst of chaotic experience, the moral imagination should be an aspiration to a proper ordering of the soul and, consequently, of the commonwealth. In this conception, to be a citizen is not to be an autonomous individual; it is a status given by a born existence into a world of relations to others. To be fully human is to embrace the duties and obligations toward a purpose of security and endurance for, first and foremost, the family and the local community. Success is measured by the development of character, not the fleeting emotions of status. Thinking “sacramentally,” (meaning humans are connected with a sacramental order of creation, a configuration of the mind in communion with the divine and beyond the rational) this is a sense that nature was created in such a manner that humans can draw “true analogies,” wisdom inaccessible by scientific method. Lived experiences, registered in memory and conjured through other experiences, can be interpreted through imagination so that memories may become images, analogous to the experience.
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Posted by jonathanjones02
June 24, 2009
(Cross-posted at First Things)
It is, usually, far too awkward to import great figures of antiquity into current political discussions. That said, let’s give it a shot. Thinking through the definitions of conservatism, it seemed to me plausible that a conservative could perhaps make a claim to Cicero. This would assume an “imaginative,” not a historical, disposition: a divine intent in history, God-gifted immutable laws of morality, to which man has a duty to conform; order as a first requirement of good governance, achieved best by a restraint and respect for custom and tradition; variety as more desirable than systematic uniformity and liberty more desirable than equality; the honor and duty of a good life in a good community as taking precedence over individual desire; an embrace of a skepticism toward reason and abstract principle. Why Cicero? Following the Stoics, he taught that virtue and vice are distinguishable through a natural law, that there is an eternality to nature and a moral constitution to the universe, and that a “mixed government” might be advisable. Following the Pro Murena, let’s take a look.
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June 10, 2009
Ross Douthat (or, as I’ve nicknamed him, “he who should be read every Tuesday”) has a very good column about the politics of abortion in the wake of Tiller’s murder. The judicial fiat of Roe v. Wade is far and away the largest impediment to compromise and thus significant improvement in the climate of this most contentious of issues. Democratic debate and negotiation dampens extremism and facilitates discussion among people unlikely to ever agree. Yet by inventing a constitutional “right” out of thin air, the Supreme Court has perpetuated exactly the opposite. This is not to suggest the justices are more responsible for the many tragedies and unspeakably evil acts that occur than their direct participants. It is to state, rather, that this overreach has produced a landscape that disallows U.S. citizens to take the same reasonable actions for or against restrictions of almost every other advanced democracy. And it is in such a landscape that extremists like Tiller and his killer find more room to operate.
7 Comments | Abortion, Culture of Life, Democracy, Health Care, Human Person, Human Rights, Jonathan | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
June 8, 2009
Recently, I was fortunate to spend an extended period of time at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal as my dissertation and book proposal on modern American political thought rounds the corner. Annette Kirk, from an old and very activist New York Catholic family, was extraordinarily generous with her time and with documents about her late husband. I’ll post from those insights periodically as material is continuously organized. One piece I found particularly fascinating was a genealogical history book, written by Russell Kirk’s great-grandfather. Although he converted to Catholicism in the 1960s, Kirk’s predecessors were what might be termed “Old Spiritualists” – quasi-Protestants – and some were known to retire after dinner to commune with the dead. Anyway, one Ebenezer W. Pierce, writing from unsettled northern Michigan in 1870, had great respect for Catholics. These were some of his reasons:
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June 2, 2009
Cross posted at Postmodern Conservative
Postmodernism, a critique of the over-ambitious nature of Enlightenment rationalism, is the beginning of an age deeply disenchanted with modernity. What is modernity and (following the most powerful of Twentieth Century constructs) its –ism? This generalization strikes me as a decent one: modernism and its stylistic descendants can be reasonably conceived of as the defiance of common experience, endless experiments based in theory and speculation, very few of which work out; by contrast, tradition, those practices based in experience, are more likely to succeed. Without echoes and remembrance of our human experiences, where is eternal life? The loss of place is the great dread of Sheol, Purgatory, and Hell. It is the absence of relational communion whose summit is Eucharistic Communion, a descent into the despairing punishments of nothingness. A lonely absence is the fate worse than death. Much of the modern human is a tourist, a sampler, a “chooser” of taste and fashion consistently and fundamentally unnourished. The complexities of the human experience will defy the reductionisms of modernism, from the many varieties of Marxism to utilitarianism to architectural “cleansing,” if we allow it. A reality beyond our experience – the embrace of mystery that is postmodernism rightly understood – is revealed in historical and limited circumstances. These can be uprooted in the embrace of wandering, shallow emotions at the peril of an imaginative core that prompts truth to become gradually known. The faddish freedoms that supposedly liberate from the past are an absence of place. These reduce humans to the small and unimportant, granting little more than the illusionary lie that life is a monologue and one is capable of creating, even of directing, a destiny. What is needed is greater skepticism of the apostles of Progress and greater scorn to the notions that politics may be reduced to a set of problems that our rational intelligences may solve. No cold, synthetic creation such as government will ever accumulate sufficient knowledge or goodness to “solve” anything. But an understanding and appreciation of place, of belonging, will help.
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May 21, 2009
As the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin is noted across the world, it is fitting that researchers continue to make landmark discoveries that may well dramatically inform the understandings of our ancestry (learn more about “Ida” here). This is an exciting time for those interested in evolutionary change and biological difference. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, praising the great scientist’s “spirit of inquiry,” reminds us that science and religion are partners in a mysterious truth always present in the creativity and variety of life. Darwin – a genius, gentleman, fearless seeker of truth, and devoted father of ten – has been much abused from many angles by many agendas. As the Vatican “buries its hatchet” with Darwin, (Cardinal Schonborn tells us that design is written into nature) below the fold I present some popular articles and lectures I’ve enjoyed recently that consider his life and how his discoveries still impact us today. Research consistently indicates that our genes shape much of human behavior, and so I expect that evolution will never cease to be a fascinating subject.
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May 19, 2009
It is always good to read, whenever possible, arguments from the “other side” of where one’s sentiments tend to exist. One scholar of political science who has been throwing buckets of cold water on the work of political theorists for years is George C. Edwards. His book On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit is a formidable and worthwhile endeavor. The author defines the effects of what we might term presidential rhetoric somewhat narrowly. Here are his three “fundamental and widely shared premises about presidential leadership:” 1). Public support is a crucial political resource for the president 2). The president must not only earn public support by performance, but by actively taking a case to the people 3). Through the permanent campaign, there can be successful mobilization of the public. Yet he is skeptical of the premise that the power of the presidential pulpit is strong: we should not assume that presidents, even skilled presidents, will be able to lead the public (or that Congress will follow the public if the president succeeds). If even the most rhetorically skilled presidents find it difficult to move the public, he writes, then studying variations in those skills does not reveal explanations for difficulties. If all kinds of messages fail to resonate with an electorate, then the question is broader than the nature of messages themselves. On Deaf Ears is a quantitative investigation into what he believes to be the absence of relationships in models of messenger/message, audience, and response.
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May 14, 2009
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part I
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part II
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part III
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part IV
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part V
(Cross-posted at First Things)
The embrace of uncertainty is an intersection of two large and confusing terms, postmodernism and conservatism. The “postmodern conservative” is skeptical of new models and standards of “efficiency,” and distrustful of an elevated rationality. The hegemonic pretenses of Enlightenment, the philosophical earthquake that birthed the limitations – and the persistent inhumanity – of modernity’s individualism and rights are a cold and flimsy moral architectural structure. The question: is tradition and revelation (such as Thomism, a Christian tradition of reason) mixed with the reflexive critique of modernity a means of return to discipline instead of a mastery of means? How, in other words, to maintain a standard of quality of life, informed by the accumulated wisdom of generations, when the standards of efficiency and rights – truly, a hurrying to nowhere – are so deeply embedded in our culture and the conduct of existence?
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May 11, 2009
Sociologists Emile Durkheim and Robert Nisbet are influential yet understudied today given the rise of social science methodology within that discipline. I think they would have much that is valuable to say were they alive now, and much that would conform to Catholic thought. Justice, they thought, requires virtuous forms of life from all members of society. Humans are ritual creatures – ritualizing a divine with or without Christ. In the pursuit of honors, riches, lust, and fame, we fill the void of those fantasies with some manner of creative work and an often perverted marking of birth, marriage, work, and death. Driven by appetite, by the longings for affection and attention and love, humans in their communities gravitate toward order; and an order without virtuous members can descend into unlimited appetite to maximize illusionary, unfulfilling desires. Durkheim and Nisbet insisted that the complex web of social relationships, of the social environment into which we are born and by which we perform our rituals, are irreplaceable, essential, and fundamental. These limit and guide behavior by the accumulated wisdom of generations. And yet human environments change – herein is the dislocation, the invitation to dysfunction. These sociologists, examining wide stretches of history, suggested that personal and communal health is located in the slow and the organic. Choas and anomie breed where institutionalization has yet to take root and where moral guides lose legitimacy. All communities, traditional and revolutionary, depend upon this justification: the ability to sustain interest and to provide meaning. Let us find our meanings in our families, the imitation of the Holy Trinity, and in the Eucharist, the source and summit of our human existence.
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April 29, 2009
John Betjeman was a truly outstanding poet – among the greatest of the 20th Century and likely the most popular English poet of his time. Yet it could still be argued he is underappreciated. The author of lovely poems about life, his homeland, and Christianity, he was a devout Anglican and devoted family man racked with guilt and self-doubt. I return to him whenever I feel the same, inspired by his belief – and the theme of much of his work – that Love Is Everything. This was not a sentimentalist, empty-headed call to minimize the evil of the world in a happy embrace of emotionalism, but rather a commitment to share our sufferings and troubles with those we love and with the Supreme Love, made known to us as Jesus Christ. Betjeman struggled all his life with melancholia, yet he clung contently to his family and his home, finding virtue as a social creature in the community and in the traditions of his birth. In his celebrations and laments, the consistent root was a search for God: a longing that continued until the full reunion of a death, the finality of a life well lived. In this he was the same as his rival Evelyn Waugh, who in private letter to the family once admitted to being “by nature a bully and a scold.” As He does for us, Christ saved these great literary figures from themselves and allowed them to become more fully human, capable of greater and greater love.
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April 6, 2009
Today is (more or less) opening day for the greatest of sports, baseball. A game of strategy, teamwork, skill, and many possibilities to showcase individual stamina and accomplishment, baseball is also, perhaps, the most family friendly and social of games. Playing catch with dad is often a rite of passage into both boyhood and manhood, and the explosion of the sport across environment and gender, and of adaptations such as tee ball in recent decades, here and across the world, attest to the universal appeal of youngsters running, throwing, catching, hitting a ball, sliding in dirt, and being with friends. Not steroids, labor trouble, or a wide variety of childish antics have dimmed the game’s appeal. Football – high speed violence and committee meetings – may be the most popular American sport, but baseball, unregulated by a clock, unspoiled by “penalties,” leisurely in approach, widely adaptable for all talents and aptitudes, interactive with fans, and decentralized in its professional product, is meritocratic, elitist, and egalitarian all at the same time. Its superstars rise from a wide variety of backgrounds by their gifts and hard work, and all kids can dream of reaching the big leagues due to the rather differing skills required of various positions. The game reveres its traditions, values its statistics and great historical figures, and tends to error on the side of simplicity. There is no “replay,” and it is understood that the human element means tough decisions made quickly may or may not be “fair,” but such is life, so pick yourself up and go again. The recently retired Greg Maddux, my favorite player of all time and one of the greatest pitchers of all time, like Cal Ripken and many others exemplified the very best of this beautiful sport: show up every day, do your best, don’t complain about a long season, prepare, don’t show or mouth off, play well with others, give back to your community, and appreciate your many blessings. So go to a game, eat a hot dog, try to catch a foul ball, and soak in an invention that can teach us how to conduct a better life.
14 Comments | Jonathan, Leisure, Life, Sports, Youth | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
April 3, 2009
In previous consideration of the term “constitutive,” it was suggested that persuasion (writing, speaking, persona, body language, lifestyle, and so on) is that which defines and “makes real” a culture in language and its performance. A spoken word, as such, may become something like a “definition” of a character for the speaker and at least one other (the audience), forming a community through a language provided by culture and modified by its use. I would like to continue on this theme, exploring briefly how a consideration of imagination as a kind of knowledge can “deal” in images independently of sense, opening the possibility of “reordering” objects not derived from sensory experience.
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April 2, 2009
John Rawls, one of the most formidable defenders of liberalism in the 20th Century, was a religious young man. A very interesting article illuminates what could have been had he chosen a theological path. Consider this passage, written in his early twenties:
We reject mysticism because it seeks a union which excludes all particularity, and wants to overcome all distinctions. Since the universe is in its essence communal and personal, mysticism cannot be accepted. The Christian dogma of the resurrection of the body shows considerable profundity on this point. The doctrine means that we shall be resurrected in our full personality and particularity, and that salvation is the full restoration of the whole person, not the wiping away of particularity. Salvation integrates personality into community, it does not destroy personality to dissolve it into some mysterious and meaningless “One.”
His book Political Liberalism, as elsewhere, argued that it is necessary and vital to “work out a political conception of political justice” for a constitutional democratic regime with a plurality of doctrines, both religious and nonreligious, liberal and nonliberal; yet a fundamental difficulty is that with “reasonable pluralism,” a religious good of salvation cannot be the common good of all and political conceptions must employ not a concept of the good but rather liberty and equality together with a guarantee of effective use for freedom. (It is rather odd that some libertarians have tried to adopt him). Rawls is fascinating, difficult, and worthwhile, and its hard not to lament he abandoned theology.
3 Comments | Jonathan, Libertarianism, Philosophy, Politics, The State, Theology | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
March 20, 2009
To read R.R. Reno’s excellent essay, “The Sledgehammer of Modernism,” (be sure to click through his examples) is to realize there is much to lament about the movements of modernist thought as applied to our buildings. Because our visual sensibility can be a form of worship and an invitation to contemplation, the application of skill and the enjoyment of aesthetics matter to the spiritual life. The large and difficult term of modernism suggests empirical fact and measurement…in some way an insistence upon taking charge of the environment as nature becomes a set of laws susceptible to human knowledge. Such an environment thus loses its earlier property as a text upon which the will of a supreme being is inscribed and through which humans can come to understand more profoundly their proper place in an order. In modernity, this is to say, the process of “modernization” is always under way – who has time for tradition and accumulated wisdom? Architecture is important because it is a substantial and public act. These “modern” buildings – their straight lines an invitation to anxiety, the drab, clinical grayness of concrete and glass violent to the soul – degrade shared environments. They are monuments to the supposed rationalist cleansing genius of their creator. It is style and not ideological sincerity that should matter in architecture. Such buildings have all the personality and lovableness of a bureaucracy – where is the subtlety, texture, depth, the public sense of beauty?
11 Comments | Art, Beauty, Culture, Faith, Jonathan, Life | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
March 19, 2009
I have become fascinated by the uses of persuasions, and of language in particular, to express an imaginative, creative ideal claiming to be a channel toward salvation from formidable, seductive, but ultimately empty moral temptations: rhetoric as an ethical and an instrumental discipline, “struggling” against a “debasement” of “reality” partly through the “upholding” of language. Narrative form, this is to say, can instruct and persuade. I think there has been something of an abandonment of a serious, humanistic search for truth and knowledge for the chasing of science, relativism, semantic games, and an assumption there is nothing beyond the scope of method, thus misusing language by a turn toward scientific, observational thinking and patterns. A “constitutive” rhetoric, though, is able to form, present, and explain value…..James Boyd White’s When Words Lose Their Meaning is one of the best books I’ve read in some time.
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March 12, 2009
Gregor Kollmorgen has just translated the Holy Father’s letter concerning the lifting of the SSPX excommunications. The whole thing is worth reading and is copied here after the fold. Sample: “It has saddened me that even Catholics who could actually have known better have thought it necessary to strike at me with a hostility ready to jump…”
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March 4, 2009
Terry Teachout’s post about the “middlebrow moment” raises an interesting point about the inability of liberal democracies to partake of a shared, higher culture – nothing for everybody and something potentially destructive for everyone. There are many atomizing forces of culture and community, big government, big corporations, human self-centeredness, and an individualist ethos first among them. All are harmful to the small, local communities formed most strongly by the family, where morality is best learned and the common cultural values that may then extend outward are originated. Catholic social teaching conveys that justice is necessitated by virtuous forms of life from societal members – honest and effective work, respect for the dignity of workers, and charity among the less fortunate and the materially blessed. Renewal of any temporal sort should reject the individualism and collectivism that swims in so many of our political and social currents, as each ignores the public character of human needs that find little place in the market or state coercion. I think Daniel Larison is right in his argument that communication should foster common values formed in communities. Yet this is hard work. It is more fun to temporally satisfy the ego, to shout and argue. In thinking about what is beneficial to generations, our all too common exiles from family and place are not normal or desirable. We need the limits gifted to us by place and relatives, that which came to us not of our choosing. Our biggest domestic problem, the alarmingly high rate of illegitimacy, is in part a product of what we have come to value. Community, culture, and family, intimately bound together, are ultimately about membership: a group of the embedded partaking in a network of memory, belonging to one another. Far too many of our lifestyle choices and social, political structures shatter what the authentic would hold together: consumption and production, sensuality and fertility, freedom and virtue. Abstract, unrooted freedom in any totalizing form is an invitation to loneliness and despair.
8 Comments | Catholic Social Teaching, Communion, Culture, Human Person, Jonathan, Liberalism, Politics, The State, Utopia | Permalink
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February 25, 2009
I finally got my hands on the Solzhenitsyn Reader, and am struck by his “postmodern” sensibilities (some background here and here on this term and the passing of, perhaps, the greatest writer of the blood-drenched 20th Century). The theme of his life, work, and struggle was the futility and destructiveness of attempts to overcome nature through action as directed by the thoughts of status-seeking, sinful humans. Postmodernism need not be foundationless, a celebration of endless self-creation from nothingness. It can be a sentiment of limits, something conducive to the humbling of hubris, and a realistic acknowledgement of the boundary of human understanding. This was Solzhenitsyn. There is much about being and self, he thought, that will always elude comprehension and control, even as it is possible to know enough to live well. An arbitrary character of human authority and the freedom from all standards aside from will are “hypermodern,” whose intention is not to understand nature but to guide transformative action in accordance with desire. In his famous commencement address, he stated the societal pursuit of a “destructive and irresponsible freedom” has been granted boundless space. Modern society has little defense against the “abyss” of human decadence. Our impulse for “self-creation” is a caricature. He calls us to “live in the light of the truth,” which I think means the truth about human purpose and our limitations. We must be conscientiously responsible – human reason exists not to transform reality but to understand and to come to terms with it. Solzhenitsyn wanted a return to “realism,” but not one confused with the possibility of comprehensiveness (which only rests with God). The project of transforming the human person into the autonomous individual or the collective is unrealistic. We can recognize the limits of being an individual or a member of an artificial collective because we remain more than those. The world created to make ourselves fully at home turns out to have made human beings less at home than ever. Here is his easy to state but much harder to accomplish lesson: the dehumanizing aspects of value relativism and unrestrained “freedom” as a high virtue can be countered, first, by an epistemological modesty.
2 Comments | Culture, Dialogue, Ethics, Human Person, Human Rights, Jonathan, Literature, Spirituality | Permalink
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February 20, 2009
Distressing news today from Spain: the government appears ready to legalize the “terminations” of children on demand in the early stages of pregnancy.
The move is the latest in an ambitious programme of social change under Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero that has seen him clash repeatedly with the Roman Catholic Church.
Since coming to power in 2004 his socialist government has legalised gay marriage, eased divorce laws and dropped religious education from the curriculum in public schools, all measures which have deeply angered church leaders.
4 Comments | Abortion, Culture of Death, Culture of Life, Jonathan, Politics, The State | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 18, 2009
As tool-making animals, we take our brainpower and freedoms to transform nature, which in turn transforms us. Technology, much of which we think we cannot live well without, can be a perverse conduit toward making ourselves unhappy. We are proud of these accomplishments even as we wish to free ourselves from their burdens – led by, I think, a displacement of flesh and blood bonding. Many have been skeptical of the dogma of an essentially uncritical acceptance of the goodness of such promised liberation, finding it to be a minimization of the discipline and manual work which are helps to moral virtue. Is not the perpetuation of individual life, an inherent characteristic of many modern technological projects, harmful in some way to our existence as social, sacramental beings? If culture is, among other definitions, the locus of ethics and morality, a conduit of norms to succeeding generations and embedded in the fabric of everyday life, we should talk and think about this a lot more than we do. Rod Dreher’s post today (at the risk of irony) is a good place to start. Should we view technology, especially that which distracts, as a product of hubris?
3 Comments | Dialogue, Internet, Jonathan, Living Simply, Morality, Work | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 17, 2009
Two insightful pieces by two good writers: Roger Scruton states that meaning endures when attached to the search for identity, but that the retreat of Christianity from public and private life is dangerous to self and community. So we must return to the gifts received from our Judeo-Christian tradition. Second, Rod Dreher on the ‘culture wars’:“In America, the culture war will never die, only wax and wane across multiple battlefields. When you live in a large, diverse, pluralistic democracy, it comes with the territory.” I agree with him that Obama’s conciliation is a matter of style, and that substantively, he’s very solidly on the ‘cultural left.’ A creepy partaking in the style of princes, however, only goes so far – the messiness of human political organization will grind on. These months have been a reminder of the limits of rhetoric: politics is most often plays and pay-offs for the support of power, and as we have seen in the closed door rush to pass the (likely to be) biggest spending bill in U.S. history, none do it better than politicans well versed in the Chicago Way.
6 Comments | Economy, Jonathan, Politics, The State | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 11, 2009
Looking at the Casey abortion decision today, we see this quote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” And here it is: humans have the ability to think like a god. This state of mind (that individuals are responsible to themselves first, inherently possessing the constructive ability and the right to pursue freedom and its ensuring contracts) is, in practice, a politicized temptation to the exercise of a calculated, centralizing compulsion, often terrible, sometimes not. Personhood is reduced to subjectivity, ripe for manipulation by impersonal institutions and processes following their own cold logic. According to Rein Staal, “the aspirations that had inspired the founders of modern thought – the conquest of nature through science, indeed the conquest of human nature through science and the emancipation of power from moral restraint – had been achieved beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and they had turned to ashes before that success could be enjoyed.” One enemy is the utilitarianism of many Enlightenment figures, Bentham, Mill, and Rousseau first among them. Their ideals were the underpinning of utopian, ideological visions “left” and “right,” including the libertarianism and socialism strongly present in the currents of Twentieth Century American political discourse. To escape the structures of liberalism and “reconnect” with an older, pre-Enlightenment Western tradition is to avoid the scheming trample of long-developing culture and tradition, the asymmetrically strange and odd, the nonconformist, and the mysteriously religious. But is this possible? Utilitarianism – lurking in the universalizing, rationalist, secular equality of the Enlightenment, in the ideological fever of the French Revolution, and in the elevation of unmoored “rights” – could perhaps be countered by such a search for meaning. The things true for all people at all times, transcending matter and time, come through interpretation mediated by historical experience. From the understanding that man was made in the image of a Person invisible to us now, ethical principles emerge that facilitate humans living in community so that we will not be as the beasts. This order of a society, whatever its modern pretenses, can shine through to grant ethical meaning to existence. Such permanent things are the measure of true societal progress. Upholding these produce higher social goods than utility: norms of courage, duty, justice, integrity, charity, and familial help – the standard for judging persons and institutions. The appreciation of norms are acquired in the outgrowth of organic community unorganized by the mechanisms of the state, beginning with family and extending to the small spheres of community such as church and school. Accumulated experience is the teacher of life. We must search for the good things, which is the end and the purpose of our life, and then pass them forward.
32 Comments | Communion, Dialogue, Enlighenment, Jonathan, Libertarianism, Solidarity | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 9, 2009
George Weigel calls for a “full, public disclosure” concerning Fr. Marcial Maciel, the Legion of Christ, and Regnum Christi:
The question now is, how shall that good be saved?
It can only be saved if there is full, public disclosure of Fr. Maciel’s perfidies and if there is a root-and-branch examination of possible complicity in those perfidies within the Legion of Christ. That examination must be combined with a brutally frank analysis of the institutional culture in which those perfidies and that complicity unfolded. Only after that kind of moral and institutional audit has been conducted, and has been seen publicly to be a clean audit, can the Legion of Christ, and the broader Church, face the questions of the Legion’s future—which are, candidly, open questions.
32 Comments | Abuse Scandal, Church History, Jonathan, Legion of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI, Vocations | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 7, 2009
The unspeakable horror of yet another child murdered outside the womb and thrown away like everyday garbage – Ron Paul, a delivery doctor, writes this is more common than we would care to know – is not only another sign of human wickedness but also of how Roe v. Wade must be overturned. Compromises that would outlaw such procedures and implement other restrictions, debated through the democratic process, would save many unborn lives and aid Catholic arguments. And they would allow us to far more effectively reclaim a small part of our moral compass as a people. Yet our current legal regime allows no such middle ground and no such basis for dialogue. Ross Douthat is, I think, on target when he suggests that Roe is fundamentally alienating, and very successful at reading anti-abortion arguments out of the debate. It is absolutist, deeply anti-democratic, and a stumbling block to discussion leading to action. In the meantime, its consequence combines with human decision to produce a haunting and unavoidable tragedy for all involved in the act of killing a child.
26 Comments | Abortion, Democracy, Dialogue, Human Person, Human Rights, Jonathan | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 6, 2009
What is Conservatism? Part I
What is Conservatism? Part II
What is Conservatism? Part III
What is Conservatism? Part IV
As one who identifies with “postmodern conservatism” defined here and reasoned here, I would like to jump in briefly to some worthwhile conversations. First, Sam Tanenhaus writes, well and provocatively, that conservatism is dead. (Some responses are here.) Second, Peter Berkowitz argues for a “constitutional conservatism” and Yuval Levin considers the intersection of populism and elitism in our current landscape. These and many other pieces, however, assume an acceptance of the modern, liberal, Enlightenment project. Following Phillip Blond, however, there is an alternative: a stand against the seperation of power and person. Conservatism will never be dead; and it will never be ascendent (T.S. Eliot: there is no such thing as a gained cause because there is no such thing as a lost cause). As long as there is localism, the family, the transcendent, and the organic community, there will be conservative sentiments.
A constituted community of conservatism, an invitation for readers and hearers to share in assumptions and conclusions, is based upon and reactive to notions of such large and complex terms as equality, justice, freedom, and virtue. By selectively and interpretively taking from the past and existing in the present, “invented” is the meaning of conservatism, which is why it may be defined as the “negation of ideology.” Its pratical application is an audience of association with the like-minded and the persuadable. Through a plausible (if at times unique and isolated) interpretation of historical figures, events, and even the constitutions that form governments, there is, for example, a sentimental “party of order” against a “party of the state of nature.” A critique of modernity is contained in the consistent, deliberate use of one word in place of another: “person” rather than “individual.” This constitutive community, for example, downplays the influence of John Locke upon the American constitution. As such, there is a loose “anti-Lockean” and “anti-Rousseauian” community. And through a determination to not reduce the beautiful to the useful, the “actual-ness” of society, organically and locally cultivated for more than utility, the ends of happiness ultimately found in the transcendent are reflected in the small spheres of home, family, and immediate community. Existence in the modern world is incorporative, not transformative. Natural law and permanent things are not a formula for pure reason. Sentiments of proper order entail traditions of custom that shape morality. Future considerations will elaborate further on the meanings and definitions of the modernist project that push against such sentiment.
1 Comment | Culture, Dialogue, Enlighenment, Human Person, Jonathan, Politics | Permalink
Posted by jonathanjones02
February 4, 2009
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part I
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part II
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part III
A Postmodern Conservatism? Part IV
Following previous generalizations, the “postmodern sentiment” suggests that narrative form – often aided by colorful, memorable, and quotable language – is a useful device for historical instruction and persuasion. We can see this in the skepticism of Edmund Burke, for example, that objective, scientific, empirical proof actually exists for one inclined to believe (or not to believe) an argument of how to conduct or organize human affairs. The flawed and finite behavior of human thinking – full of selfishness and status-seeking – is unable to know the full truth about the divine, about ourselves, and about our environment. Knowledge is filtered through unique perspective, and responses infused by rationality and abstract reason are openings for totalitarian terror when paired with the reality of sin. A postmodern conservatism suggests that given an individual reason to rule directly over others, it is easy and tempting to increase what reason is ruling – to expand, that is, from the political and legal and economic to the social and moral and spiritual. Postmodern constructions of moral imagination flow from such sentiments: finite, flawed, self-centered human thought and conduct is capable of discovery of truths about the divine and its created humanity. But only in part.
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Posted by jonathanjones02
January 29, 2009
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January 13, 2009
What is Conservatism? Part I
What is Conservatism? Part II
What is Conservatism? Part III
After reading some of the works of the unjustly overlooked British philosopher Michael Oakeshott, I would like to return to the question of defining this term, the “ism” that is not. Previous attempts have generalized as the negation of ideology, the political secularization of the doctrine of original sin, the cautious sentiment tempered by prudence, the product of organic, local human organization observing and reforming its customs, the distaste for a priori principle disassociated from historical experience, a rejection of frameworks of action, tenets, theory, and article of faith, and as an approach, a style, a sentiment, and a bias against efforts of utopianism, against ideology, and against the promise of a bright new future casting aside considerations of human nature. Oakeshott insists upon a propensity to enjoy what is available rather than to constantly wish for something else, and to delight in what is present rather than what was or what may be. The aesthetic experience, in other words, is reflective of ethical life.
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January 8, 2009
5 Comments | Art, Culture, Economy, Healthcare, History, Human Person, Jonathan, News, Philosophy, Public Policy | Permalink
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January 5, 2009
Few topics fascinate like fertility. This Mary Eberstadt piece about children and religion continues to draw comment, and it is always worth revisiting. Below the fold are the comments of blogger “Irenaeus,” a professor at an evangelical college close to Catholic conversion (and who unfortunately runs a non-public site).
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December 15, 2008
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has released a report on bioethics. It is an affirmation of Donum Vitae and another call for the fundamental dignity of the human person – especially at the initial stages of existence. Addressing fertility, abortion, cloning, hybridization, stem cells, gene therapy and other forms of genetic engineering, and various manipulations of the embryo:
The fulfillment of this duty implies courageous opposition to all those practices which result in grave and unjust discrimination against unborn human beings, who have the dignity of a person, created like others in the image of God. Behind every “no” in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great “yes” to the recognition of the dignity and inalienable value of every single and unique human being called into existence.
16 Comments | Abortion, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Human Person, Jonathan, Morality, Personalism, USCCB | Permalink
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December 10, 2008
John Betjeman is one of the most unjustly overlooked poets of recent times. An Englishman, he loved the countryside – its slower and more contemplative pace of life – and was skeptical of modernity. Here is his poem “Christmas” :
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.
Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.
And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.
And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
2 Comments | Culture, Jonathan, Literature, Poetry | Permalink
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December 8, 2008
Ross Douthat on abortion politics:
Compromise, rather than absolutism, has been the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now. Since the early 1990s, advocates have focused on pushing largely modest state-level restrictions, from parental notification laws to waiting periods to bans on what we see as the grisliest forms of abortion.
Michael Blowhard on what caused the 1960′s. John Derbyshire on “culturalism” and Justin Raimondo on Sen. McCarthy’s populism. Tense times with getting access to Russian documents. A shooting victim recounts the crime. Remembering Sen. Jim Reed. Please pray for Father Neuhaus, as it appears he is battling cancer.
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Posted by jonathanjones02
December 4, 2008
A reader of Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men, quite possibly the best political fiction we have (also, the recent film is quite good and follows the book closely), will receive an introduction to an overlooked style of American literature employed by some unjustly overlooked Catholic authors, Walker Percy first among them. This is the Southern Agrarian tradition. These thinkers, whose chief outlets were small circulation periodicals of literary and cultural criticism, emphasized religiosity, the identity of locality, the protection of civil society and its mediating institutions, family traditionalism, pride of history and heritage, and anti-interventionism. They actively opposed communism, corporate and social welfare, demographic change, and governmental, union, or corporate authoritarianism. Never organized, rarely agreeing, occasionally disagreeable, but united by sentiment, their influence still resonates. For these figures, a modernity overly enamored with economy, power, and material accumulation was insufficiently concerned with the content and development of family and civic character. Restraint, humility, and a more responsible (that is, cautious) personal stewardship were highly valued. They sought the local and the old rather than the global, the new, the abstract, or the ideological. Southern agrarians generally believed that family is the most crucial institution, and the very foundation of a good society which faithfully adheres to permanent things and ancient moral truths.
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