Cyril O'Regan - Review of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses (original) (raw)
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At the end of the twentieth century the triumph of capitalism and liberal democracy seemed so complete that Hegel's spectre of the end of history was raised. However, the 2008 financial crisis and, more acutely, the threat of Islamism has shaken such complacency so that John Milbank and Adrian Pabst speak of liberalism in metacrisis. The solution to the problem (which is a composite of left wing social and right wing economic liberalism) is in line with the theological position of Radical Orthodoxy: a post-liberal politics of virtue. Liberalism is rooted in an anthropology that the authors believe is bound to self-destruct, whether this is through the Hobbesian idea that man is in a war of all against all or the Lockean anthropology of man as a self-owning animal. Although these doctrines are false, they are self-fulfilling and tend to bring about the triumph of vice over virtue. We must look, rather, to Aristotle's zoon politikon as expanded by Aquinas for a new " settlement " based on sharing risk, responsibilities, and resources. Noting that this may be deemed unrealistic the authors challenge the very idea of realism (as amoral pragmatism). Although they do not use the term their idea seems to be that the experiment of history vindicates true realism, the rejection of ethics being ultimately unsustainable. The structure of the book is clear enough. In five sections (on politics, economics, polity, culture, and international relations) the metacrisis is first diagnosed and then the post-liberal alternative prescribed. I shall focus on the ninth chapter diagnosing the international crisis. I found the argument difficult to follow at times, possibly because of the paradoxical situation that I take the authors to be addressing, namely, that on the one hand liberalism is a reality, one that is in crisis and that needs replacing, and on the other hand, post-liberalism is already upon us in many ways, often negative. What is clear is the conviction that medieval Christendom in some sense represents a positive and viable model for the way ahead. The chapter on " The Metacrisis of the Nations " opens with a section on the Battle against Barbarism focussing on the rise of ISIS. Whilst it is conceded that the Western carving up of the Ottoman Empire was partly responsible for the rise of Islamism, the authors point to the longevity of Sunni-Shiite hostilities, and obviously think that even if ISIS is defeated in the near future it is quite possible that a successor may arise soon after. The significance is broached in the next section on Liberal Hegemony: it seems to give the lie to democratic peace theory whereby the sovereign state automatically ushers in civilisation. The authors attribute this to a contradiction within liberalism itself: although officially anti-imperial, Woodrow Wilson's project extended what in effect is an American Empire. However, despite the crisis, this world order looks as though it will be around some time and so the authors moot the idea of " international society " formulated by the English school of IR. Still, Western power is on the wane, indeed, the liberal order is in metacrisis. This is attributed to internal contradictions that stem ultimately from atheism. The experiment of history, so to speak, vindicates prophets such as Fyodor Dostoevsky (" Without God, everything is permitted ") insofar as ethics is more and more reduced to power politics. Christopher Dawson, too, is invoked as pinpointing the internal contradictions. On the one hand, modernity inherently globalises and tends to release great energies, but on the other hand it tends to break down the bonds that draw humankind together. Unsurprisingly we see a lack of vision by Western leaders, and a paralysis in their foreign policy.
REASON, FREEDOM AND MODERNITY Vol 4 The Good Life
"Volume 4 builds upon the closing section of Volume 3 which focused upon the subversion of the universal and communal character of the principle of rational freedom by a capitalistically structured civil society. Having dealt with the political implications of reason turning into its opposite, suggesting how the future social order is to be organised, this volume examines the moral questions raised by the 'bourgeois' character of capitalist modernity. The volume, therefore, discuses Marx's critique of rights based liberalism, especially as contained in On the Jewish Question. Human emancipation as the practical reappropriation of social power is considered as asserting the priority of the good over the right, thus inverting contemporary Rawlsian liberalism. The final section considers the political implications of Marx's approach to morality with regard to the debate between liberals and their communitarian critics. This has been one of the influential debates in recent times, especially in terms of evaluating the respective merits of individual freedom and socio-political bonds. In changing the register to individual needs and capacities within a conception of community and the good, Marx exposes the liberal emphasis upon rights to be misplaced. At the same time, the communitarian conception of 'community' and common interest is shown to be similarly vitiated by its failure to escape the abstract dualisms of individual and society characterising the liberal framework. One of the advantages of approaching Marx in terms of the modern polis democracy lies in the ability to avoid this debate by repudiating the liberal antithesis of individual and community. By such means, Marx incorporates aspects of both liberalism and communitarianism. But he does so by completely rupturing the liberal framework of rights and justice, exposing the state as an alienated social power and as an antagonistic form which imposes an abstract moral and legal code as it regulates and rationalises capitalist class relations."
Political Liberalism and Resentment: A Theological Rejoinder
Modern Theology, 2020
There are number of contemporary genealogical accounts of the "modern self" that trace its adverse cultural consequences. The Cartesian quest for pure autonomy remains a principal culprit, the origin, so to speak, of many of our Western ills: the anaemic psychology of loneliness, dys-functional individualism, and selfishness. Nominalism, too, draws attention in these accounts, especially in its Lutheran incarnation formulated in the wake of the Reformation (John Milbank, Charles Taylor, Brad Gregory, Rémi Brague, etc.). In these genealogies, a fundamental conclusion is drawn: the human condition is alienated from God and dissolves before the acid of a powerful and pervasive mathesis universalis. Mathematical efficiency, scientific rationality, and the technocratic economic progress of industrial capitalism, each reconfiguring the self wholly according to the logic of immanence. Well-worn genealogical stories urge us to move away from scientific reductionism to a more holistic understanding of the self, proposed as an anthropologi-cal salve. The self, it is argued, is spiritual and elusive, and is therefore impermeable to statistical analysis or objective measurement; obvious examples of holism would be Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences and Michel Henry's Barbarism (they both blame Galileo in particular for the emergence of a mathesis universalis), and more recently, Rémi Brague's several volumes on the cultural analysis, culminating in his The Kingdom of Man: Genesis and the Failure of the Modern Project. Other modes of scholarship recast the post-Cartesian narrative as a forlorn political tragedy, one underwritten by bare hubris. The underlying medium of selfish egoism remains consistent, but the spectacle of critique sets upon liberal democracy. The authors here are too many to name and the literature too diverse to capture. We can behold the mood of this critique, however, in two recent books, both penned by widely-read political commentators: Francis Fukuyama and Patrick Deneen. 1 Each book, prospective readers should know, communicate in accessible prose a freewheeling interpretation of the contemporary political landscape; both are designed for a more popular, crossover readership. Several movements in their respective narratives will take liberties with academic precision, though the footnotes are generally valuable, even if they could be