Autonomy, Diversity, and the Common Good: Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Conference 2020 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology, 126) 9783161618987, 9783161621994, 316161898X

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Religion in Philosophy and Theology Edited by Helen De Cruz (St. Louis, MO) · Asle Eikrem (Oslo) Hartmut von Sass (Berlin) · Heiko Schulz (Frankfurt a. M.) Judith Wolfe (St Andrews)

126

Autonomy, Diversity, and the Common Good Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Conference 2020 edited by

Ingolf U. Dalferth and Marlene A. Block

Mohr Siebeck

Ingolf U. Dalferth, born 1948; 1977 Promotion; 1982 Habilitation; Professor Emer‑ itus of Systematic Theology, Symbolism and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich; Danforth Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in California. Marlene A. Block, Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology), University of Toledo; Master of Arts (Anthropology), University of Chicago; Master of Arts (Religion), Claremont Grad‑ uate University; PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Claremont Graduate University.

ISBN 978‑3‑16‑161898‑7 / eISBN 978‑3‑16‑162199‑4 DOI  10.1628 / 978‑3‑16‑162199‑4 ISSN 1616‑346X / eISSN 2568‑7425 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbiblio­ graphie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http:// dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permit‑ ted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset and printed on non-aging paper by Laupp & Göbel in Gomaringen and bound by Buchbinderei Nädele in Nehren. Printed in Germany.

Preface The theme of the 41st Philosophy of Religion Conference in Claremont was Autonomy, Diversity and the Common Good. It was chosen to honor the phil‑ osophical and theological achievements of Anselm K. Min, who has helped shape this conference for many years and who sadly died shortly after the con‑ ference in August 2020. He was the heart and soul of the PRT (Philosophy of Religion and Theology) program at Claremont Graduate University. The volume is dedicated to the memories of Anselm Min and Joseph ­Prabhu. Joseph Prabhu has worked intensively for many years on the annual conference and has energetically supported its basic orientation of building bridges between the Western and Asian traditions in philosophy and theology. At the last con‑ ference he paid tribute to Anselm Min’s person and work. He too passed away a few months later. We are grateful to the Udo Keller Stiftung Forum Humanum (Hamburg), which has again generously provided ten conference grants to enable doctoral students and post-docs to take part in the conference and present their work on the theme of the conference. Five of those essays are published here along with the other contributions to the conference. We couldn’t have done what we did without its support. We gratefully acknowledge the support of Pomona College which sponsored the conference for the last time. We are indebted to those who contributed to this volume, and to Mohr Siebeck who has accepted the manuscript for publication. Marlene A. Block Ingolf U. Dalferth

Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Ingolf U. Dalferth Introduction: Autonomy, Diversity and the Common Good . . . . . . . .

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I. Autonomy and the Common Good Clare Carlisle The Virtue of Religion: Spinoza on Human Power and the Common Good . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Raymond Perrier The Question of Autonomy and the Common Good in Spinoza’s Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Yun Kwon Yoo Hegel on Autonomy, Diversity, and the Common Good: A Dialectical Perspective and Its Contemporary Anthropological Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Jörg Dierken Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Andrew Lee Bridges Hegel’s Law of the Heart and the Society of Singularities of the Future

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Graham Ward Religious Hope at the End of Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Trevor Kimball Who Are We Talking About? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Henry Omeike The Igbo Apprenticeship System (Imu-Ahia) and Anthropological Solidarity: Reimagining Common Good and Autonomy in Africa’s Economic Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Kevin McCabe Situating Autonomy in a Theology of Intellectual Disability . . . . . . . . 115

II. Diversity and the Common Good Elliot Wolfson Heeding the Law beyond the Law: Transgendering Alterity and the Hypernomian Perimeter of the Ethical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Josiah Solis Beyond (the common) Good and Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Nils Ole Oermann About Diversity, Freedom, the Open Society and its Enemies . . . . . . . 179 Robert Overy-Brown Questioning Values and Working for Freedom in a Time of Viruses and Bullets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Deborah Casewell On Decreation and Obligation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Tad DeLay When Forbidden to Think: Against Appeals to the Common Good . . 219 Will Mittendorf Reasonable Pluralism and the Procedure-Independent Standard in Epistemic Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Hartmut von Sass On Cosmopolitanism: Its Precarious Relation to Religious Belief . . . . 241 Marlene Block Cosmopolitanism: The Irony, the Tension, the Reductio in Mysterium . . 267 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

Introduction: Autonomy, Diversity and the Common Good Ingolf U. Dalferth 1. Diversity and Difference Diversity is different from difference. We are all different from each other because we are who we are and not somebody else. Diversity, on the other hand, is not about the identity of individuals, but about group identity and group membership. Groups of people can be distinguished from others by natural (biological), cultural (linguistic, religious), social, political, economic, or a host of other differences. Their members may belong to different groups, where the differences are not mutually exclusive. But groups are always defined by demarcation from other groups. In the social and political sphere, different groups compete for resources, influence, and power in society. And they create winners and losers in this struggle for influence, power, and recognition. Identity politics responds by designing political agendas based on diversity issues that focus on inequality, discrimination, and inclusion of those who are marginalized or feel excluded in society. The issue is no longer just the identity of the individual, but above all the status of the group in society. The shift from focusing on the individual to focusing on the group changes the whole debate. Autonomy is different when it comes to individuals or to groups. And the same is true for the common good. What individuals see as the common good that they seek or should seek is different from what competing groups strive for as the common goal or objective of their respective groups. In the first case, the common good is about something that is fundamentally the same for everyone and makes everyone equal; in the second case, it is rarely about anything other than the competitive struggle of groups to assert their own interests in society. In both cases, religion, faith, and recourse to God can play a central role. But they do so in very different ways. In the first case, they serve to bring to bear the fundamental difference between the individual and the universal in such a way as to make possible not only the distinction between ourselves and others, but above all a critically discriminating relationship to ourselves. We are

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enabled to see ourselves as another, as Paul Ricoeur put it.1 Otherness is not just a characteristic of others, but a constitutive feature of our own self. But it is so in a deeper sense than often seen. We are not just what we think we are and what others think we are, but who we are in relation to God. This relationship does not appear in real life as such, but as an ideal of humanity to which we never conform in such a way that we could not and should not conform to it even better. We are never as God sees us. God looks not only at what we are in fact, but also at what we could and should be in his presence, and thus judges us not only in the light of our reality, but also in the light of our possibilities. Therefore, we must always strive to become what we are before God, and this cannot be done without critically distinguishing ourselves from what we are and becoming what we are not but could and should be. The second case, on the other hand, is about the relative opposition between groups that have power and those that want to have power, and thus about how one group asserts its identity and enforces it against others. In such constellations, religion often functions not as a critical questioning of one’s own convictions, but as an amplifier of group identity and group certainties, and thus brings about the opposite of what it does in the first case: not the possibility of a critical difference to oneself, but the fundamentalist conviction that the world is only seen correctly as one sees it oneself. The double dialectic of individual and society and of different groups in society plays a crucial role in the philosophical and theological discussion about the meaning of religion, faith, and reference to God in the complex debate about autonomy, diversity and the common good. It deserves special attention today. That is what this volume is about.

2. The Precarious Status of a Shared Humanity We live in a time of growing social and cultural diversity and inequality. This has increased the traditional tensions between individual freedom and social responsibility to a point where the binding forces of our societies seem to be exhausted. We all know that ultimate diversity is a fact. We all belong to different groups, and groups define themselves by marking themselves off from others. And we are all different because no one is identical to another, and no one remains completely the same over time. However, we are not first individuals and then also social beings. On the contrary, we exist from the beginning as social beings who cannot survive for long if we do not succeed in creating a common human habitat and culture. Precisely because we are all different, we need common social conventions and moral, legal, and political rules and 1

  P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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institutions that allow us to live our diversity without endangering the life, freedom, and humanity of others. The precarious culture of a shared humanity has been in crisis for some time. Where previously the commonalities of nature, culture, religion and tradition that connect us before we become an individual self were emphasized, we have learned to deconstruct these commonalities and replace them with our own cultural constructions without being disturbed by the biological, cultural, moral or religious limitations of earlier times. However, instead of creating a society of equals, for which many have hoped, we have increased inequality and injustice in our societies to an unprecedented degree. We fight for our individual identities, rights, and claims, often without much concern for those of others, and we do so at both ends of the power divide in our societies by different means. Those in power act as if everyone in our democracies had equal access to the institutions of education and politics, even though this is obviously not the case. Those who fight for power demand that others respect their needs and rights, even if they themselves are not willing to do so. Those who are in power must help those who are not – for moral reasons. 150 years ago, Nietzsche analyzed the resentment mechanisms by which the weak gain power over the strong by morally exploiting their role as victims. He clearly saw that social conflicts are not about questions of truth, the good or justice, but a power struggle waged under a moral guise. Most of our social debates over the last 50 years have been conducted in this way: liberation activists, feminists, critics of colonialism and nationalism, proponents of universalism and cosmopolitanism and their opponents have all practiced the mechanisms analyzed by Nietzsche, and they have been pretty successful in doing so.

3. Identity Politics In order to create more just conditions for everybody, democratic countries around the globe pursue and implement policies that promote greater self-determination, cultural participation and political power for marginalized groups in order to help them assert their distinctiveness and gain recognition in contexts of inequality or injustice. But they often do it without due regard for the interests and potentials of society at large, or the different needs of others, or the commonalities we must share for our society to work. Identity politics that seek to overcome structures of inequality and injustice for marginalized groups in society thus often create new injustices and inequalities. Like the sorcerer’s apprentice, we have inaugurated a global process of social change but cannot control the forces that drive us apart or prevent the weakening of the forces that bind us together. As Fukuyama has recently shown, if we take identity politics to the extreme, we end up in a destructive individualism and group

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egoism that undermine the structures and procedures of democratic societies, social welfare and republican representationalism.2 The tensions between centripetal and centrifugal forces in society can be observed everywhere, and they have been fueled by the global spread of capitalism and consumerism. For some, freedom, independence, and autonomy are the highest values in our society that must not be compromised by any social commitments, legal restrictions, or political obligations. Others emphasize justice, equity and equality and insist that we must practice solidarity with those who need it and assume responsibility even for that for which we are not responsible. But why play off one against the other? Is it true that insistence on autonomy and diversity weakens social cohesion, or that striving for justice, equity and equality undermines individual freedom? How much individuality and which kinds of diversity are we ready to accept? Where do we want draw a line, if we do, and for which reasons? How much autonomy and diversity are possible without destroying social cohesion and human solidarity? And how much social commonality is necessary to be able to live an autonomous life and do justice to diversity? We all know that the Enlightenment’s call to overcome traditional dependencies and prejudices through self-determined autonomy has been understood very differently. Some see it as a license to make their individual interests and desires the yardstick of their lives, and not always for bad reasons. Others follow a more Kantian line by focusing on an autonomy that does not center on one’s own desires, wishes and dreams, but on the duty to universalize the maxim of the good will. They believe that the only way to make the world a better place is to better oneself; and the only way to better oneself is to will nothing that cannot be willed by everyone in the given situation, and to create legal and political institutions that allow people of different moral, political and religious persuasions to live together peacefully. This goes beyond the Hegelian idea that we must recognize and acknowledge ourselves in the other, or the Levinasian insight that it is the other who, by her mere presence, demands our moral solidarity. All this remains dangerously vague and indeterminate if it is not transformed into legal and political institutions which, by defining the rights and duties of every person, guarantee equal treatment of others as others. It is not because we are ultimately all equal that we must strive for something common. Instead, it is because we are all unequal and different that we need common, binding structures and institutions that enable us to live together in peace. 2   M. Lilla, “Identitätspolitik ist keine Politik,” NZZ, November 26 (2016) (https:// www. nzz.ch / feuilleton / mark-lilla-ueber-die-krise-des-linksliberalismus-identitaetspolitik-ist-kei ne-politik-ld.130695?reduced=true) (7 / 13 / 2022); F. Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Girouxd, 2018).

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4. The Importance of the Common In order not to fall from autonomous subjectivity into egoistic subjectivism and essentialist tribalism3 that makes our diversity and individuality a plague for all, we must constantly search for commonalities that enable us to live together without denying our differences and diversity – as people, as citizens, as parents and children, as students and teachers. Without at least a minimal consensus on common orientations in our different spheres of life, we cannot even fight for an improvement of the asymmetrical distribution of goods in our world or develop a common mind about the social and cultural distortions that need to be overcome. If everyone only represents their own interests, soon no one will be able to do so, and we are in the state which Hobbes described as “the war of all against all” (bellum omnium against omnes) “when every man is enemy to every man” that comes with “continual fear and danger of violent death” and makes “the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”4 It is important to be aware of what is at stake here. If we believe that “‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are names that [only] signify our desires and aversions, which are different in men who differ in their characters, customs, and beliefs”,5 then we are on the direct path to social self-destruction. What is good – good for me, for you, for them – must not separate us from one other but must make us better together. Only what can be freely shared by others is truly a common good, and only standing up for a good that implies the same duties and rights for all is true autonomy, true self-determination for the good, and not just a selfish struggle for a greater share of power. We are not free when we are driven by our interests, wants and desires. We are not free when we oppose those who oppose us. We merely fall prey to the dialectics of power and remain determined by what we oppose. In order to be free, we must move beyond this opposition, and we do so when we freely bind ourselves to the good that we share with others. But we must do it voluntarily, not because we are forced to do it or because we are classified as members of a group, tradition, nation, or religion on the basis of external characteristics beyond our control. We all have multiple identities, and not all of them apply in all situations. We all belong in larger con3  Cf. S. Hanson-Easey, M. Augoustoinos and G. Molony, “‘They’re All Tribals:’ Essentialism, Context and the Discursive Representation of Sudanese Refugees,” Discourse & Society 25 (2016): 362 – 382 (https:// journals.sagepub.com / doi / 10.1177 / 0957926513519536) (7 / 13 / 2022); K. Mashininga, “Is the university quota system discriminatory?” (https:// www. universityworldnews.com / post.php?story=20191203045249423) (7 / 13 / 2022). 4   T. Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. 1, chap. 12 (https:// www.earlymoderntexts.com / assets / pdfs /  hobbes1651part1.pdf ) (7 / 13 / 2022). 5   Ibid., chap. 15 (https:// www.earlymoderntexts.com / assets / pdfs / hobbes1651part1.pdf ) (7 / 13 / 2022).

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texts defined by gender, race, culture or religion. But to regard a person not as an inviolable bearer of human dignity and autonomy but merely or primarily as a member of a group, and to define membership in that group racially, religiously or gender specifically, can itself be a form of racism, religious bias, and sexism. What matters is not this belonging, but how we and others relate to it, whether we make it a question of our identity or not. We don’t have to. If we do so, we will soon realize that we are thereby reinforcing the divisions that we want to overcome.6 To see others as mere representatives of an ideologically defined group, without considering how they see themselves or how they want to be seen by us, poisons the way we treat each other, undermines social cohesion, and leads to the struggle of all against all.

5. Not Only a Token of a Type The problem is currently particularly acute at universities in the USA.7 If you want to get an academic job at a university like Claremont Graduate University (CGU), you must show yourself to be “committed to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, both in the classroom and in larger contexts,” by writing a diversity statement that demonstrates your “commitment to embracing diversity and supporting inclusion and equity in education,” teaching and research.8 Open6  Cf. S. Kostner, “Wer sich als Opfer darstellt, hat es auf Macht abgesehen. Und wer sich schuldig bekennt, will moralische Läuterung: So funktioniert die neue gesellschaftliche Dynamik,” NZZ, September 30 (2019); Identitätslinke Läuterungsagenda. Eine Debatte zu ihren Folgen für Migrationsgesellschaften (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2019); R. Scheu, “Interview,” NZZ, November 24 (2020) (https:// www.nzz.ch / feuilleton / wir-gegen-die-mentalitaet-opferansprue che-und-schuldbekenntnisse-ld.1511319) (7 / 13 / 2022). 7   S. Ben-Porath, “Free Speech at the University: A Way Forward,” University World News, November 2 (2019) (https:// www.universityworldnews.com / post.php?story=201910291045 13847) (7 / 13 / 2022); F. Coulmas, “Wozu sind Universitäten  da?  – Für Erkenntnis und Wissen und nicht für den Kult der Diversity,” NZZ, June 26 (2019) (https:// www.nzz.ch /  meinung / wozu-sind-universitaeten-da-nicht-fuer-den-kult-der-diversity-ld.1489464) (7 / 13 / 2022); I. U. Dalferth, “Orientierungslos im Meer der Ideologien,” FAZ, Nr. 169, July 23 (2020): 6 (https:// www.faz.net / aktuell / karriere-hochschule / hoersaal / lage-der-geistes wissenschaften"-orientierungslos-im-meer-der-ideologien-16872082.html) (7 / 13 / 2022); “Großprojekt Gegendiskriminierung. Kritische Anmerkungen zur Entwicklung der Universitäten in den USA in Sachen Identitätspolitik,” Zeitzeichen 22 (2021): 8 – 11 (https:// zeitzeichen. net / node / 8764) (7 / 13 / 2022); “Kaninchen hervorgezaubert. Eine Replik auf ‘Fetisch Gegen­ diskriminierung’,” Zeitzeichen 22 (2021) (https:// zeitzeichen.net / node / 8918) (7 / 13 / 2022); H. Pluckrose and J. Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020). 8   To provide just one example from an invitation to a Preparing Future Faculty Webinar about the “Basics of Diversity Statements” on June 30, 2022 at CGU: “A diversity statement is a valuable tool when you practice teaching, research, leadership, and most other endeavors.

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ness to diversity is the new key competence,9 and the ability to write a diversity statement is an essential requirement for anyone applying for a position at the university. Of course, universities need to address the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country in which it is located. There are glaring injustices that are deeply rooted in history and experienced by many on a daily basis. These must be named, exposed, and remedied wherever possible. But there is no representative justice for individuals. No woman is better off if another woman gets a job, and no minority student is better off if another student of that group gets a place at university. Moreover, academia is not politics, and the duties and responsibilities of universities are not those of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. It’s one thing to uncover problems, back them up with facts, work on models for solutions, and critically discuss the values that guide them. It is quite another thing when values are not only propagated but made binding and cast by administrations into rules that cannot be followed without discriminating against entire arbitrarily defined groups of people.10 In many places in the US universities and curricula are being purged of people, words, ideas, and issues that represent everything that is Writing a diversity statement is an opportunity to narrate your journey as a teacher, scholar, and leader and articulate your values, beliefs, goals, and methods as an educator committed to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, both in the classroom and in larger contexts. This session will highlight important considerations in writing your diversity statement no matter what stage you are in. During this webinar, you will learn: 1. What to include in your Diversity Statements. 2. How to integrate Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in your statement. 3. How to communicate your experiences and commitment to embracing diversity and supporting inclusion and equity in education. 4. How to get more help developing your own Diversity Statements.”  9   “CGU locates diversity as an essential component of its institutional mission. To attract the best and the brightest, to solve humanity’s most pressing problems, to foster a community of life-long learners who make a difference in the world, Claremont Graduate University is committed to the inherent value of diversity. CGU is advancing diversity and equity in higher education, and with a higher representation of domestic students of color than the national average, our student body affirms it.” (https:// www.cgu.edu / student-life / diversity / ) (7 / 13 / 2022). 10   One does not shrink from self-contradictory formulations, because they allow the administration to decide at will: “CGU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, or physical disability in its employment practice and in admission of students to educational programs and activities in accordance with the requirement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and other applicable laws. CGU is committed to affirmative action in employment practices regarding ethnic minorities, the physically challenged, Vietnamera veterans, and women” (https:// www.cgu.edu / employment-opportunities / ) (7 / 13 / 2022). The tension between the dual commitment to nondiscrimination and affirmative action for some and against other groups is either not noticed or intentionally ignored. The fight against discrimination at universities has long since become a major project of counter-discrimination through affirmative action, quota regulations and diversity management. It is considered morally justified to discriminate against the discriminators, because it is about good discrimination. Cf. I. X. Kendi, How to Be An Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019).

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white, male, and heterosexual.11 Those who do not make a diversity statement that meets the expectations the university has defined will not even be considered for application. Historically significant works of the European traditions are removed from the teaching canon because they were written by “white heterosexual men.” Critical questioning of different positions is challenged as Western thinking and as an academic perpetuation of colonialism and replaced by a declaration of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The motivation is understandable, the goal may be well-intentioned, but the means are ineffective, and the result is devastating. To quote just one observer of recent developments at universities: Isn’t it also racist or sexist to exclude ‘whiteness and heterosexuality’? Diversity supporters say: No. Because the majority, or the group that represents power, cannot be discriminated against. But is that true? No. To discriminate means to discriminate to the disadvantage of a group – whether that group is in the majority or in the minority is irrelevant. Today, diversity is enforced by systematically excluding what has long since ceased to be the majority power at Ivy League institutions: the white, fearfully respected professor who constantly glances at young female students or embarrasses them with lewd remarks. Thus, diversity becomes a conformism of mind aimed at the male. And a doctrine that enables racism and sexism all the more, simply in the other direction. For the group that is to be excluded is no longer named at all – only those who must not be discriminated against under any circumstances are named. Does power become more bearable when it comes in the guise of diversity? [. . .] Where is the error in thinking? In the fact that in the final analysis it is not about tolerance, nor only about racism or sexism in rainbow garb. It is about the claim to want to be minority and majority at the same time, subject and sovereign of power at the same time. It is about the lie of not identifying with the power that belongs to the adherents of a rigid but ultimately inconsistent identity politics.12

Where identity issues take over, the pursuit of insight and truth is reduced to a power struggle between groups. But for universities, this is self-destructive. They must undoubtedly meet the challenges of society’s growing ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. And they must be sensitive to the historical injustices that still affect members of certain groups today. But favoring some members of one group does not create justice for the others. And it is not a viable path to consider all groups and orientations equally. Each semester, all faculty at CGU are informed of the Interfaith Calendar, which lists all religious festivals and holidays that may be relevant to students and should be considered when planning courses and exams. There is 11

 Cf. R. DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (London: Penguin, 2019). 12   S. Pines, “Diversity an US‑Universitäten: Wenn Antirassismus zu Rassismus wird,” NZZ, April 4 (2019) (https:// www.nzz.ch / feuilleton / diversity-an-us-unis-wenn-antirassis mus-zu-rassismus-wird-ld.1472150) (7 / 13 / 2022).

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hardly a day in the semester that is not affected. The list includes not only religions such as “Judaism, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Baha’i, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Shinto, Jain, Confucian, Daoist, Native American, Materialism, Secular Humanism,” but also Mandaeans, Yezidi, Kemetic Federation, Wicca, Scientology, Caodai, Society of Humankind, Eckankar, Theosophy, New Age, Temple Zagduku, Qigong / T’ai chi, Raelian Church, Asatru, Hellenismos, Yoruba, Rastafari, Unitarian Universalist. And recently, the Church of Satan and the Pastafarians (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) have also been legally included in the “family of religions.” The university’s effort to give equal weight to all is obviously becoming a farce. One hopes that the problem will not arise in practice. The appeal to reasons of equity, equality and justice only conceals the fact that one does not know what to do. The effort to do justice to all raises more than just organizational problems. Universities should not only not discriminate against anyone, but also take into account the concerns of different identity groups in research and teaching. This is increasingly leading to a move away from the universalizing Western culture of scholarship and science. The simplest solution is to stop engaging with it. European thinking and white men’s science should no longer define the field; the culturally and socially marginalized claim the right to do scholarship and science as they wish in their own name. This opens up interesting perspectives that raise new and important questions. But taken by itself, it is not a path that leads beyond the differences of the various groups, but rather one that reinforces them. No one knows how to deal constructively with the ever-increasing diversity of methods, content, and group interests. If there were infinite resources, it might be possible to avoid conflicts. But there are not. Therefore, there is a struggle for the available resources, funds, and positions, and academia becomes the battleground of groups and their ideologies. What is often deliberately overlooked is that, despite all the necessary criticism, it is precisely the European tradition with its emphasis on freedom, equality, justice, and solidarity that has found a way out of the religious, cultural, and national group conflicts in Europe. A better solution has not yet been proposed anywhere.13 Therefore, in this volume we will link the debate about diversity to the debates about autonomy and the common good. One must go back into history to understand the present. And a central point in this history is the attempt of Enlightenment thinkers in Europe to find a way out of the group dependencies and the resulting conflicts that had brought Europe 13

  One can and must read the point of Alexander Pope’s “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, // The proper study of mankind is Man” also in that way. A. Pope, An Essay On Man: Being the First Book of Ethic Epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke (London: John Wright, 1734), Epistle  II, 1 – 2 (https:// www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org / works / o3676-w0010.shtml) (7 / 13 / 2022).

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to the brink of the abyss in the 16th and 17th centuries. The often-criticized European individualism and universalism, rightly understood, is not the problem, but the solution to the problems of diversity, group conflict and the struggle for recognition.

6. The Difficulty of Becoming a Self Kant – to name only him – saw the decisive step toward liberation from attachment to traditional opinions, groups, and identities in becoming a responsible self or subject through critical self-thinking and moral self-determination. His concern is misunderstood if it is understood as an “expansion of the subject zone, i. e., the demand for self-disposal and self-determination as a characteristic of,” and if “the promise of modernity” is seen in the right “to make use not only of one’s own intellect, but also of one’s own body.”14 To make oneself the means of one’s own arbitrariness is the opposite of the autonomy of which Kant speaks, and to interpret this as a subject’s free self-disposal over itself, to which no one else would have the right to object, turns Kant’s concept of the self-responsible subject into a romanticizing arbitrary subjectivism, which is the opposite of what Kant was concerned with. To be able to act in this way, one would first have to be a subject, and if one is a subject in Kant’s sense, aligning oneself with the maxim of the good, thinking for oneself, judging rationally, and acting responsibly, then one no longer acts in this arbitrary and selfish way. But how do we become subjects who think and judge for themselves? Not by turning away from others and doing only what we want. We are not abstract individuals who have no obligations to others, but we are concrete individuals with identities that we share to varying degrees with others – not all with all others, but many with some, and not always equally, but each in a certain way. Being a human being is a fact that no one can deny, becoming a self is a task and a duty that everyone can avoid. We are all born as human beings without having contributed anything. We are there without being the cause of it ourselves. We all have a lot in common that comes with our intersecting identities. But while we are all human beings from birth and thus share in the rights and duties that we associate with the dignity of being human, no one is therefore already a self, but must first become one in the course of his or her life. This happens by not only being what we are, but by relating to it in a distinctive way by living it concretely. Since everyone does this in his or her own way, 14   P.‑I. Villa Braslavsky, “Trans* Personen nehmen das Versprechen der Moderne ernst,” Die Zeit Online, June 25, 2022 (https:// www.zeit.de / kultur / 2022-06 / paula-irene-villa-braslav sky-trans-gender-soziologie) (26 / 06 / 2022) (my translation).

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everyone is not just a token of a type, an individual case of the human being like everyone else, but a concrete human individual different from all others. In short, every human being is a human being from birth, but every human being must first become a responsible self. One becomes it by relating to one’s Dasein and humanity by living here and now in a unique and concrete way shared with nobody else. Everyone lives their own life and no other, and in each life it becomes apparent whether and how one goes from being a human being like everyone else to a self that is none other than oneself. Self-becoming is always a process and never a fait accompli; one is a self only by becoming it, and one becomes it only by moving from the humanity that one shares with others to a way of living one’s humanity that one doesn’t share with anyone.

7. Idem-Identity and Ipse-Identity This makes it necessary to differentiate the concept of identity. ‘Identity’ comes from the Latin word idem and that means: the same. But this sameness is seen differently by others than by myself. Paul Ricoeur speaks of idem-identity in the first sense, but ipse-identity in the second.15 I am the same in the sense of idem because of the characteristics by which I can be identified as the same by others in different situations. I am the same in the sense of ipse because of the way I see and identify myself. The two ways of seeing my identity are not to be confused. The first says who I am to others, the second who I am to myself. But I see myself as different from others, even though I refer to the same characteristics. Other-identification as idem on the basis of characteristics that I exhibit and that are attributed to me is one thing; self-identification as ipse is another, because it always involves a self-relation to the characteristics of idem-identifications. Only by choosing oneself does one become an ipse. Only by being an idem can one become an ipse. But no one becomes an ipse just because one is an idem. Only those who exist can be identified as idem and identify themselves as ipse. Idem-identifications are oriented to features that are also accessible to others, i. e., can be specified in the third-person perspective; ipse-identity, on the other hand, is  tied to the first-person perspective and always involves a distancing from the idem-identity ascribed to me: I am different from what you think, and not only as you see me. Why is this distinction important? Because it is based on experience-based simplifications that we need in potentially dangerous situations to be able to decide quickly. We need to pay attention to salient features with high sensory discriminatory power (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) in order to orient ourselves quickly and behave appropriately. And we must distinguish ourselves 15

  Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 2, 118. passim.

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from the situation and all its features in order to remain capable of acting within it. The first requirement leads to the formation of idem-identities, the second to the formation of ipse-identities. The ipse-identity cannot be derived in any way from an idem-identity. It is not a sum of traits or data that defines us, but a result of how we relate to those traits and data by concretely existing and living in certain ways. We need both identities in order to be human beings not only in the third-person perspective (i. e., the sum of the qualities we associate with the term ‘human’), but to become a responsibly acting self in the first-person perspective (i. e., a reality to which these qualities can not only be truthfully ascribed, but which makes these qualities its own in a distinctive choice and manner): We are human beings (and nothing else) by birth, but we become a self (this person and no other) by the way we concretely live and exist. Idem-identities are constructed by externally recognizable characteristics that define us and others as cases of something general: people, women, men, migrants, police officers, students, etc. The assignment of people to these generalities is not rigid and can go wrong, but this does not absolve us from the need to work with such assignments in social interaction.16 In every society and culture, however, this everyday orientation practice leads to a phenomenon that is currently being discussed particularly intensively: Orienting distinctions based on external characteristics become cultural stereotypes that function in a completely different way. Skin color, gender, language, appearance, etc. no longer serve merely to provide quick orientation in social situations on the basis of easily recognizable external features, but become identity ascriptions that link two processes: They assign people to groups whose characteristic identity is solidified into stereotypes, and they create fictional identities or “Lies That Bind” (Appiah) through this, because they ascribe the stereotypical identity characteristics of the group to everyone who belongs to that group. One is then no longer dealing with José, but with a Mexican, and because Mexicans are macho, this is also imputed to José. Kwame Anthony Appiah has described these processes in a differentiated way in his studies on the problem of identity, focusing primarily on the stereotyping of creed, country, color, class, and culture.17 In all these cases, two problems arise. On the one hand, there are processes of abstraction from the concrete situations of interaction and thus the perceptible characteristics become signs of group membership. Concrete people are no longer perceived on the basis of certain characteristics, but as members of a group – as Jews, Muslims or Christians, as Iraqis, Nigerians or Chinese, as Blacks, Caucasians or 16  See I. U. Dalferth, “Alle nur ‘Copien von Andern’? Plädoyer für eine differenziertere Identitätsdebatte im Demokratiediskurs” (in print). 17   K. A. Appiah, The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (New York: Liveright, 2018).

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Asians, as Westerners or Africans, Native Americans or colonialists, as women or men, as both or neither. The stereotypical characteristics of these groups are blanketly applied to every member of the group. One is no longer this or that person, but Muslim or Christian, Asian or African, indigenous or colonialist, woman or man. The focus is not on the individual, but on his or her group membership. And as one characterizes the respective group, one also judges those who are assigned to it. Chinese are hard-working, Africans lazy, women oppressed and men macho. On the other hand, it lays the foundation for never-ending social and political conflicts. Groups always define themselves by demarcation from other groups. Belonging to one group therefore usually excludes belonging to other groups against which one’s own group demarcates itself. It is true that because of one’s complex identity, one can be assigned to different groups at the same time and accordingly be stereotypically judged and condemned not only once but several times. The debate around intersectionality, that is, the intersection of different categories of discrimination against one person, has made this particularly concrete for victim and perpetrator groups. Black lesbian women are triply discriminated against, and old white men are perpetrators in more than one way. But this does not call into question that the groups to which one is so assigned are each distinctly different from others. Blacks are not whites, Muslims are not Christians, women are not men. And because these distinctions that are often binary always lead to difficulties with regard to concrete individual cases – not everyone is clearly either one or the other, but some are more one thing and less the other – there is often a fierce dispute about these group stereotypings. At the level of stereotypical group identities, things often look clearer than at the level of individual people. While on the level of individuals everyone is equal in that they are different from everyone else, and on the level of society as a whole everyone is equal in that everyone belongs to it just as much as everyone else, on the complex intermediate level of groups and groupings it is not equality but difference that dominates. Group identity is always constituted by demarcation, belonging to one group is always constituted by not belonging to other groups. The boundaries may be sharper or less sharply drawn. But they are there, and they cannot be dissolved. This is a core problem of identity politics.

8. Against Thinking in Collectives Identity politics is political action oriented toward the needs of a particular group of people and aimed at strengthening their social recognition and political influence. In democratic systems, individuals can achieve little politically.

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Politics needs majorities, and majorities do not exist without group formation. This is clearly evident in the struggle for recognition and participation. Groupings in identity politics are usually based on idem-identities, even if the actors themselves act according to their own ipse-identities. They have identified with certain aspects of their identity in such a way that they make them the guiding principles of their politics for all those who also exhibit these aspects – whether they identify with them or not. It is of crucial importance whether the idem-identity or the ipse-identity is central in identity formation. In the first case, one is assigned to groups one has not chosen oneself on the basis of one’s external characteristics; in the second case, one chooses groups with which one identifies. The second is an important step on the way to becoming a responsible and self-determined self or an ipse. But no one is just an individual self, everyone is also a case of often multiple generalities: a human being, a family member, a citizen, an opera lover, etc. This results in complex identities to which one must consciously relate in order not to be unconsciously determined by them. This is an art that has to be learned and practiced, because otherwise the Enlightenment project of becoming a self stalls and one does not become an ipse, but remains an idem. The former, on the other hand, leads to structures in which all are only “copies of others,” as Kant said, because one’s own identity is based on the characteristics that define the group. But this is the opposite of becoming a self, the opposite of self-determination, without which there is no becoming a self, and the opposite of the Enlightenment project that one pretends to continue. One does not show people the way to maturity if one does not treat them as self-responsible selves but as immature members of collectives, i. e., if one identifies them only as the same (idem) in different situations and does not take them seriously as selves (ipse) in every situation. Identity politics pretends to do so, but it fails to do so precisely because it shifts the focus from individuals to groups or collectives. The fundamental rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state are turned into their opposite when they are redefined as rights of groups vis-à-vis other groups. This forces people to identify with their group and thus implicitly or explicitly differentiate themselves from other groups. And it no longer allows for the freedom to think, talk and act differently from the group. The idea that the party is always right is well known from authoritarian regimes. It doesn’t get any better if you assume that the group is always right. The problematic of individual and collective identity formations, the demarcation against others, the exclusion of others and the pathologization of the non-identical, has been known for a long time. But in recent years, the dream of a colorful and relaxed multiculturalism under the rainbow flag has disintegrated into an increasingly sharp opposition between left and right identity politics and left and right racism. Along the lines of gender, postcolonial-

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ism, diversity, and racism, people argue with increasing aggressiveness about sexual, gender, ethnic, and cultural identities without even asking, let alone answering, the question of a minimal basis of commonality. The mere attempt to ask this question is considered sufficient reason to be outraged by disrespect and non-respect.18 But the dream of a peaceful coexistence of the various identity groups fails in the face of reality. The world is as it is, not as we would like it to be. As long as we do not have unlimited resources, the effort to participate is always a struggle for participation. In this struggle, as in every struggle, there are winners and losers. When resources are scarce, the struggle for participation is never just a struggle of those who do not have against those who do have, but always also a struggle against others who struggle for participation. If everyone is fighting for the same thing, but not everyone can have it in the same way, then everyone is always fighting against each other. If the only common thing is the struggle for one’s own identity, then there are no more defensible differences, but only competing group interests. This is one of the self-destructive mechanisms of identity-political power struggles, which amount to the struggle of all against all if reason does not reassert itself in time.

9. The Destruction of the Enlightenment Project The past decades have made it abundantly clear that the enlightenment project of becoming oneself is not promoted but hindered by the identity-guided change of focus from the individual to groups. Where the struggle of identities is primarily or only about group identities, which all define themselves against each other, a society atomizes and disintegrates into groups and small groups. One no longer strives for the general, the common, the normal, the average, but for one’s own, the deviant, the non-normal, the incomparable. Since this can only be done by constantly making it an issue, the result is a never-ending competition for attention, recognition, and support. Everyone fights for themselves, their own group, and their identity. But where everyone is only concerned with their own identity, being radically different is the only thing one shares with others. No reasonably stable order can be established on this basis. A society of mutually exclusive identity groups can turn into a mob at any time, as the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington D. C. showed. The path of becoming a self by becoming absorbed in group identities is therefore an erroneous path. But what could it look like then? The answer can only be: It cannot succeed on the way of an ever more precise determination of one’s idem-identity, but only on the way of strengthening 18

  M. Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal. After Identity Politics (London: Harper, 2017).

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one’s ipse-identity. But the core of ipse-identity is not that one shares a certain set of characteristics with a group, but that one is able to distance oneself from all the characteristics one shares with others. It is not the detailed extension of the third-person idem-perspective as a complex intersectional group membership that continues the Enlightenment project of becoming a self, but rather the decisive turn to the first-person ipse-perspective. One does not become a self by acknowledging one’s multiple group memberships, but by being critical and discriminating about those memberships, saying yes to some of them and no to others. Becoming a self depends on how one relates to oneself, accepting some characteristics one shares with others and rejecting others. It is a matter of becoming a self in the first person, not a judgment of others about me in the third person. I become an ipse only by concretely existing my identity in real life, even though this may appear to others to be only a specification of my idem-identity. Thus, the ipse always has an existential surplus over the idem. It is an existential reality and not only an experiential phenomenon for others. No intersectional determination of an idem-identity, no matter how differentiated, can make it an ipse-identity.

10. From Copies of Others to Selves But how can this be built up? Here the theological tradition offers resources that deserve to be taken much more seriously than is often the case. Just think of what Kierkegaard had emphasized in the 19th century in his argument with Hegel. He pointed out that becoming a self can be conceived neither as an autonomous self-creation nor as participation in a conceptually increasingly well-defined set of shared characteristics. These are, according to Kierkegaard, only conceptual movements in the mode of the possible, but not realities in the mode of the actual. No one can bring oneself into existence, but only someone who is not only possible but actually exists can become a self. Every becoming of a self must therefore do justice to the deep passivity that characterizes every existence. Any attempt to think of the becoming of a self through something common, in which all participate in their own way, fails because what is understood as common is always shaped and determined by the interests of those who formulate it. One does not become the self by copying others. Those who think that we must all agree on a common understanding of what it means to be human in order to live in a truly human way are mistaken, for such an understanding is always contaminated by the interests of those who propose it and manifests the asymmetrical power relations in a society and culture. And those who think we must all aspire to a particular group identity in order to become a distinct self are also mistaken, for that will never take us beyond the differences of our respective groups.

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If you want to get beyond that, you have to become an individual, and you only become an individual when you switch from the idem mode to the ipse mode and become a you in the same sense as everybody else. Idem-determinations are built on demarcations from others because nothing can be determined without distinguishing it from something else (omnis determinatio est negatio, as Leibniz said). Ipse-determinations, on the other hand, do not describe, but localize or anchor in real life. They do not say ‘x is F,’ but ‘I am F,’ and ‘I’ here does not function like a name or a concept, but like an index term that locates or anchors a particular state of affairs in the here and now of actual life. It is from this concrete anchoring in a concrete life that the ipse-identity and thus the self develops. If this takes place in the mode of the first person (I vs. others), the result is an egoistic self, if takes place in the mode of a radically understood second person (you vs. you), a true self can develop. What does this mean? Whoever refers to others only as I, constructs them and himself always only from his own perspective, thus does not perceive the others in their otherness and strangeness. On the other hand, the one who relates as you to another I perceives himself as he is addressed or treated by the other. This only ever leads to a sameness that is limited by deeper differences between me and the others. This is different only where one is related as a you to another you, because then no one has anything ahead of the other and cannot position his identity against the identity of the other. In order to be related as you to a you, however, a third party is needed, from which I and the other are constituted as you, before we mutually determine ourselves as I and other. Only through this third party, through which I and the other become you in the same way, true sameness or equality is given; in all our processes of determination and behavior, on the other hand, difference will dominate. Whoever really wants to become an individual and not only remain a particular case of something general among others, must therefore understand themselves as a you from this third. Kierkegaard calls this third the “middle term,” which never appears in experience, but without which nothing could appear and no one could act as you or I or we or you. Only those who understand themselves from this third as a you, become really a self, that is to say, someone who is not only a “copy of others,” but also does not only determine others from his own perspective or thinks that he can bring himself into existence, but is the neighbor of the third who also makes every other human being his neighbor and thus all human beings neighbors of his neighbors. In this sense, true ipse identity consists in being a you and treating all others also as you in the same sense – as you of the one who makes everyone his neighbor, me no different from anyone else, thus creating radical, unqualified sameness and equality. Everyone is different from everyone else, but all are completely equal before God. Thus, fundamental sameness or equality is grounded in God alone, while radical diversity characterizes creation. In it, sameness always exists only for

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some who are demarcated against others. Any attempt to establish equality and justice in the idem-perspective will therefore only create other inequalities. Only in the ipse-perspective can there be radical sameness in creation, when everyone is able to distance themselves from their own identities, because they can understand, recognize, and accept themselves as God’s neighbor like everyone else, and hence relate to everybody as God’s neighbor to a neighbor of God.19

11. The Common Good in Pluralistic Societies None of our societies is as just as we would like it to be. Each is poisoned and distorted by the effects of past failures, faults, and crimes. There are always social, geographical and historical inequalities, injuries, and frustrations between people that need to be overcome. A society has to find ways to cope with them. But there is much that we cannot undo, and it is a fine line that separates the right from the wrong way to deal with this troublesome legacy. Everyone can learn from history that fighting evil through evil has never done any good. Attempts to overcome inequality, injustice or discrimination through reverse discrimination, inequality or injustice reinforce what they seek to overcome. We undermine the moral legitimacy of the goals we fight for when we do so with means that contradict the desired goal. Orienting oneself towards the common good therefore does not only mean being clear about the goals that one wants to achieve together, but also trying to find ways to achieve these goals that do not contradict what one is trying to achieve. A long tradition has seen the common good as the social order in which individuals and groups can best strive for perfection. Liberal societies insist that this perfecting must not be done at the cost of others or by restricting the right to such a striving only to some and not granting it also to others. But what does ‘perfection’ mean today? And what has become of the common good in our time? Is the orientation towards a commonality that is defined by some (by those in power, by Westerners, Europeans, old white men, #communities, self-appointed cultural avantgards) really something to strive for? Can something be a common good for us if we are not among those who define it? There are significant differences between conceptions of the common good in the West and East, between those in power and those striving for power, and between secular and religious interpretations of the human pursuit of happiness and fulfilled life.20 Nothing here is obvious, and nothing is non-controversial. 19  See I. U. Dalferth, Die Krise der öffentlichen Vernunft. Über Demokratie, Urteilskraft und Gott (Leipzig: EVA, 2022), chap. 5. 20   M. J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit. What’s Become of the Common Good? (London: Penguin, 2020).

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But can we do without orientation towards the common good in one form or another, or do we not at least have to have a debate about it? And can we have such a debate without a language that is not constrained by political and moral guidelines? As Žižek pointed out 20 years ago: In Western liberal democracies, you can “[s]ay and write whatever you like – on condition that you do not actually question or disturb the prevailing political consensus.”21 If you do that, you have to bear the consequences. This is no less true today than it was then, and it highlights the difficulty of determining the common good in pluralistic societies. Even the debate about it is full of pitfalls and a battlefield of interests. One does not only fight about the issue, but already about the language in which one could argue about this issue.

12. Challenges to the Idea of the Common Good All this must be kept in mind in discussions of the common good today. Let me highlight three problems in particular. First, it is clearly not enough to formulate the idea of a common good only in negative terms by pointing out what we do not have in common with others: If all we share is that we all want to be different from the others, our society will become dysfunctional. Second, it is also not enough to define the common good positively as a set of moral values to which all must subscribe. To expect everyone to follow the same values is not very realistic, and it contradicts our autonomy in matters of life orientation if we are asked to subscribe to a list of values that we ourselves have not freely chosen. On the contrary, what we need is a framework of legal rights and duties that enable people with different value orientations to live together peacefully. One must have the right to be different. Only conceptions of the common good that take this into account will be acceptable. Third, however, there is a further problem, perhaps the most difficult of all. Our ideas of the common good express what our societies care about. But these concerns are different in different societies, not just superficially, but deep down. There is no society in which – for good historical reasons – there are no taboos that define boundaries that must not be crossed. The wound of the Shoah in Germany, the shame of racism in the US, the fear of universalist ideas in China or the legacy of colonialism in the Latin Americas permeate every formulation of the common good in these countries. These taboos define what can be said and what cannot be said, but they define different boundaries in each case. 21   S. Žižek, “Afterword. Lenin’s Choice,” in Revolution at the Gates. A Selection of Writings of Lenin from February to October 1917, ed. S. Žižek (London: Verso, 2002), 167.

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This is the source of much misunderstanding. We all expect others to respect our taboos as well. This is often experienced by others as moral imperialism because their moral sensibilities are not ours and vice versa. But if a concept of the common good can only be convincing if it reflects the taboos of a society, and if different societies have different taboos for historical reasons, a global consensus on what is good for everyone seems to be a chimera. Can we even discuss the problem meaningfully without taking cultural, religious, historical differences into account? Wouldn’t it often be better to focus on defensible differences rather than fighting about the common good? How can we create an atmosphere in which the differences, deficiencies and deficits of our societies can be discussed openly, concretely, fairly, and accurately? Can religious traditions contribute to this? How do they configure the ideas of autonomy, diversity, and the common good? Do they have anything to offer that goes beyond secular conceptions? If so, is what they offer compatible with secular views? Or must we depart from the idea of the common good and seek alternatives that would allow us to better hold together the diverging forces of autonomy, individuality, and diversity on the one hand and the binding forces of social justice, equality, solidarity, and responsibility on the other? There is no straightforward positive or negative answer to most of those questions, as we shall see. Autonomy and diversity have always been controversial issues, and so have been the views about what we should, must or do share in order to live a good human life together with others – other human beings and other fellow creatures.

13. The Structure of the Volume The volume is organized in two parts. Part I discusses contributions to the theme of autonomy and the common good from a variety of philosophical and theological perspectives that address fundamental questions to be considered in discussions of these issues. Part II explores key ethical and political issues that arise in the pursuit of diversity, equality, and justice in various theological traditions. The contemporary situation is inescapably plural and diverse, which cannot be ignored when discussing issues of diversity. Thus, both parts take up issues from different cultural perspectives, without whose consideration the problems discussed today cannot be adequately addressed. Overall, the volume explores the controversial issues of autonomy and diversity in a way that attempts to engage with those who hold different views, rather than just talking about them. This makes the examination of the issue concrete and interesting, but also shows how open and unresolved it is.

I. Autonomy and the Common Good

The Virtue of Religion Spinoza on Human Power and the Common Good Clare Carlisle

1. Introduction In the Ethics (1677) Spinoza argues that “we can never bring ourselves to a state in which we should want nothing external in order to preserve our existence, or so live as to have no commerce with things outside ourselves.” Two hundred years later, Spinoza’s first English translator, George Eliot, echoed this thought in Middlemarch (1872), writing in the novel’s “Finale” that “There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.” As George Eliot saw, if Spinoza is a thinker of autonomy, he is equally a thinker of dependence and inter-dependence. He interrogated human power within a social context deeply formed by religious difference, and in this essay I hope to show how his philosophy offers rich resources for thinking the relations between autonomy, diversity, and the common good. In our secular age, ‘religion’ is both objectified and privatised; the common good is located in a neutral, disembedded space that is opposed to this conception of religion. Secularism has been criticised from different perspectives: Charles Taylor and John Milbank argue, in different ways, that secular culture is impoverished, while Talal Asad highlights the Christian heritage of the concept of the secular, and argues that this concept denies the conditions for full practice of non-Christian religion. While Spinoza is often interpreted as a secularising thinker, notably by Jonathan Israel, I  want to contest this interpretation. Instead, I will argue that Spinoza’s philosophy offers a religious conception of the common good that can accommodate diverse beliefs and practices – not by espousing relativism or perennialism about religious doctrines, but by resisting the modern conception of religion as characterised by belief and practice, by orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I will show that for Spinoza, religion is a matter not of belief or practice, but of virtue, and that virtue is a form of human power that involves dependence. This allows for a vision of religious freedom or autonomy grounded in a common good – a grounding that is both illuminated and demanded by the mutual dependence of diverse individuals and communities, which are interconnected parts of a larger whole.

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The question of freedom and dependence is embedded in the basic building-blocks of Spinoza’s metaphysics: the concepts of substance and mode. While substance signifies self-sufficiency, modes are essentially dependent. Substance is “in itself [in se est]” whereas a mode is “in another [in alio est].” Spinoza insists that only God is substance, and that “whatever is, is in God.” Thus he argued, against Descartes, that human beings are not finite, created substances, but modes: constitutionally dependent beings. More than this, modes are dependent not only on God, but also on one another, as parts of nature, conceived as a complex, ever-shifting network, or ecosystem, of finite causes and conditions, governed by natural laws. Spinoza’s conception of individuals emphasises that both bodies and minds are impressionable, plastic, susceptible to influence, formed not just superficially but essentially through their encounters and relationships. (This coheres with Charles Taylor’s notion of the “porous self,” which contrasts with the bounded, “buffered self ” of the modern secular age.) Given this account of individuals, the notion of human free will makes little sense. For Spinoza, freedom is not the precondition of ethics, as it was for Kant, but its goal. Our freedom consists not in emancipation from external influence – this Spinoza sees as impossible – but in a more empowering interdependence, accomplished by greater understanding of self and others, and facilitated by mutually beneficial relationships. This view of human beings as irreducibly social led Spinoza to emphasise the transmission of virtue and knowledge through friendship, education, role models, philosophical community, and religion. My aim here is not simply to expound Spinoza’s vision of the common good. Setting Spinoza’s philosophy in its time and place, I want to explore both the relationship between the concepts of autonomy and religion, and the understanding of human being that lies within these concepts and their histories. In the seventeenth century Spinoza was thinking through human autonomy at its inception: this moral ideal emerged from a profound shift in metaphysical thinking during the early modern period, accompanied by a new vision of human being-in-the-world. These deep philosophical and cosmological changes ushered in a new conception of religion, which took shape alongside the ideal of autonomy. These tectonic shifts in our thinking, and our being, produced the moral landscape we still inhabit. When we view them through the lens of Spinoza’s thought, we see how his critical response to the new conception of religion reflected not a stubborn resistance to modernity but, on the contrary, a bold new thinking of religious difference in a pluralist age.

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2. From Virtue to Law In the medieval period individual things were animated by inner principles, powers, and potencies, which had a teleological orientation to the good, and to God. Virtus, the Latinised concept of Greek arete (excellence or virtue) had connotations of strength and power as well as goodness. The early modern period is distinguished in part by a movement away from the Aristotelian physics and metaphysics that had shaped this worldview. Suárez, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes and Spinoza all questioned the teleological conception of nature, and sought to expel scholastic notions of telos, virtus, habitus, and dispositio from their accounts of natural processes. Refusing to invoke final causes, these natural philosophers argued that bodies are moved not by intrinsic powers and principles, but by forces – and according to laws – external to themselves. This new vision of nature extended to human beings, and was paralleled by a new vision of moral life. As the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbert Voetius argued, Descartes’s refusal to recognise inherent powers throughout nature undermined appeals to an inner habitus as the cause or explanation for moral action. And sure enough, as the modern picture of a mechanistic, law-governed universe took shape, conceptions of moral law and divine command replaced the Aristotelian doctrine of virtue, teleologically oriented to the good, as the organising principle of moral thinking. Once morality comes to be considered according to the concept of law (and the associated concepts of duty and obligation), the ideal of autonomy emerges. This ideal is grounded on the distinction between laws imposed on us from the outside – whether by religious authorities, rulers of states, or unspoken customs and traditions – and laws we impose freely, rationally, on ourselves. The insistence on autonomy, in this latter sense, is the hallmark of Enlightenment thinking, exemplified above all by Kant’s moral philosophy. This is partly a narrative about the intertwined rise of modern philosophy and science, but scholastic accounts of human virtue had also come under attack for distinctively theological reasons. Luther denounced the view of pagan thinkers, such as Aristotle and Cicero, that a virtuous habitus could be cultivated by human effort; he argued that our all-pervading sinfulness meant that we could only be justified by divine grace. He also, more fundamentally, rejected the idea that righteousness is a condition of a person’s inner being, whether acquired by practice or infused by grace. For Luther, righteousness, or justification, was not a consequence of good works facilitated by a divinely-infused virtue but, rather, a matter of standing in the right relation to God. In other words, Luther ceased to think about righteousness, and faith, in terms

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of the concepts of virtue and habit.1 Moreover, religious life was not mediated through other human beings and social institutions: each individual was spiritually dependent only on God. Luther’s polemic against the scholastic and humanist conception of virtue suppressed the very notion of human power, whether individual or collective. And perhaps – despite an Enlightenment “ideal of mastery” being a cliché of modern humanities scholarship – this suppression continued in the new natural philosophies of the seventeenth century, in which nature was conceived mechanistically, and human freedom was posited as a power apart from nature, rather than as a channelling, cultivation, and refinement of natural powers. Spinoza resisted these theological and philosophical shifts, insofar as the concept of virtue is at the heart of his ethical theory. In the Ethics he elucidates a series of interlinked core concepts – virtue, conatus, desire – which assert that each singular thing is animated by a dynamic inner power, constituting its very essence. While Spinoza joined Descartes, Bacon, and Hobbes in rejecting a teleological metaphysics of nature that expelled final causes from scientific enquiry, his assertion that everything strives to persevere in its being retains the medieval conception of virtus as both inward power and outward expression. Spinoza’s streamlined approach to virtus – virtue or power is quite different from the elaborate psychology of the scholastics, who attributed all sorts of powers, faculties, virtues and tendencies to natural things. Yet it is also fundamentally different from the mechanistic philosophies of nature advanced by those seventeenth-century thinkers who argued that bodies are moved not by intrinsic powers and principles, but by forces external to themselves, in accordance with mechanistic laws.2 1  See C. Carlisle, “The Question of Habit in Philosophy and Theology: From Hexis to Plasticity,” Body & Society 19, no. 2 – 3 (2013): 30 – 57; On Habit (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). See also P. Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 85 – 86. 2   Despite Spinoza’s rejection not only of final causes in nature, but also of the very concept of divine purposes – even inscrutable ones, which Descartes had vaguely accommodated – his analysis of human activity affirms a distinctively immanent teleology, which shapes his conception of virtue. Concluding Part Two of the Ethics by denouncing those people “who expect to be decorated by God with the highest rewards for their virtue and good actions,” Spinoza challenges the distinction between means and ends that tends to structure our thinking about human action, and its teleology. Here he identifies “happiness and the highest liberty” – which might naturally be identified as the goal of ethical life – with what we are more accustomed to regard as the means to this goal: “virtue and the service of God” (E2p49s). Spinoza returns to this idea in Part Four, where he writes that “virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and not for the sake of something else, there being nothing better, or more useful to us, on account of which virtue should be sought” (E4p18s), and again in the very last proposition of the Ethics: “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself ” (E5p42). This conflation of means and ends suggests a more immanent, more intrinsic teleology than we usually find in accounts of volition and practical reason. Virtue as conceived in the Ethics has no extrinsic goal, no re-

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Spinoza did insist that human beings, like everything else, are subject to laws of nature. He refused to carve out a separate domain for spontaneous action, or free will. He argued that our consciousness, our feelings, our moral activity, and our philosophical thinking are as much a part of nature as our embodied life – a thought that was revived by his post-Kantian readers, the German idealists. While Kant thought that autonomy, and thus morality itself, is incommensurable with our subjection to laws of nature, Spinoza refused to recognise anything outside or beyond natural laws: human power, and liberty, and virtue, have to be achieved within nature. In the Ethics he introduces his account of human affect and activity by disagreeing with those who wrote on these subjects “as if they were not treating of natural things which follow from the common laws of nature, but of things which lie beyond the domain of nature; they appear, indeed, to regard man in nature as an imperium in imperio – a state within a state. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined by nothing besides himself.”3 Here he is particularly addressing the notion of free will espoused by Descartes. When Spinoza defines virtue, he makes it clear that this signifies human power, and connects it closely with the concept of natural law: “By virtue and power I understand the same thing: i. e. virtue is the very essence or nature of man, in so far as he has the power of doing certain things which can be understood by the laws of his nature alone.”4 This Spinozist conception of autonomy is not a matter of willing, or choosing, but of understanding. “To act absolutely from virtue is nothing else than to act according to the laws of our own nature,” he explains, “but we act thus only so far as we understand [intelligimus] [. . .] Therefore to act from virtue is nothing else in us than to act, and to preserve our being, according to the guidance of reason.”5

ward beyond itself; analogously, Spinoza asserts that “no one strives to preserve his being for the sake of any end outside himself ” (E4p52s). He seems to transfer to human beings Aquinas’s argument that God cannot have ends outside himself, accomplishing an inversion of anthropomorphic thinking: instead of projecting an extrinsic notion of human teleology onto God, we should model our own activity and desire on God’s intrinsic, immanent teleology. (Passages from Spinoza’s Ethics are cited by part [1 – 5], definition [D], proposition [p], demonstration [dem], scholium [s], so ‘E2p49s’ refers to Ethics, Part 2, Proposition 49, scholium.) 3   E3, Preface. 4  E4D8. 5  E4p24dem.

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3. The Concept of “Religion” and “Religions” In his 2011 Gifford Lectures, published in 2015 under the title The Territories of Science and Religion, the historian Peter Harrison argued persuasively that the philosophical and theological shifts following the Reformation refashioned the very concept of religion. For Aquinas, as for other medieval thinkers, religio was a moral virtue. Aquinas discusses it within his “Treatise on Justice and Prudence” in the Summa Theologiae. Religio, he explains here, is the virtue of paying due honour to God, and is thus connected with the classical concept of justice as giving to each person his or her due.6 Aquinas declares that “religion excels among the moral virtues,” since its actions “are directly and immediately ordered to the honour of God.”7 Following Aristotle’s analysis of virtue as a mean between deficiency and excess, he identifies both “irreligion” and “superstition” as vices contrary to religion.8 While religio, like other virtues, has both an inward and an outward aspect, it is constituted chiefly by internal acts (of devotion and prayer).9 For Aquinas, religio had little to do with beliefs or metaphysical doctrines. “Religion,” he states, “denotes properly a relation to God.”10 While medieval theologians like Aquinas regarded religio as an inward disposition towards God, which could be cultivated and expressed in outward acts of worship, during the seventeenth century religio was increasingly objectified. This objectification was twofold: religion came to be conceived as a system of propositional beliefs, inculcated by printed creeds and pedagogic practices of catechism; and as an empirical social reality, so that one might speak of “the Christian religion” or “the Jewish religion.” Explaining this shift, Harrison does not mention Spinoza at all, perhaps because Spinoza does not objectify religion in either of these ways, and thus he does not obviously fit Harrison’s analysis. Yet in a sense, Spinoza’s writings confirm Harrison’s argument, since Spinoza actively, explicitly resisted the objectification of religion that came increasingly to characterise European thought during his own lifetime. This modern conception of religion emerged from the upheavals, conflicts and persecutions of the Protestant reformations – and from efforts to resolve them. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg identified two religions, Roman Catholicism (“the old religion”) and Lutheranism, defined in terms of the Augsburg Confession’s twenty-eight articles. “For the first time,” writes Harrison, “‘reli 6

  ST2:2q81a2, responsio.   ST2:2q81a6  8   Aquinas clarifies that superstition deviates from the virtue of religion “not because it offers more of the divine worship than true religion, but because it offers divine worship either to whom it ought not, or in a manner it ought not” – ST2:2q92a1.  9   ST2:2q81a7 10   ST2:2 q81a1, responsio.  7

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gion’ could be understood as a political and legal construct.”11 While many preachers and theologians continued to emphasise the interior aspects of their own religion, they identified “other” religion(s) by more observable features such as doctrines and rituals.12 Analysing the “remarkable change in the understanding of religion [. . .] that can be traced back to the early modern period,” Harrison explains that As a consequence of challenges to Aristotelian understandings of virtues both natural and human, religio took on a new meaning, and was increasingly associated with systems of thought and belief in the familiar modern sense [. . .] The philosophical exercises and bodies of knowledge employed in the inculcation of the interior virtue [of] religio came to stand in for the thing itself in its entirety. The content of catechisms that had once been understood as techniques for instilling an interior piety now came to be thought of as encapsulating the essence of some objective thing – religion. Religion was vested in creeds rather than in the hearts of the faithful.13

This modern conception of religion allows us to identify plural “religions,” distinguished chiefly by their different scriptures, creeds and practices – in other words, by both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. While the virtue of religio, in the medieval sense, can only be properly understood from the inside, modern religion – and its diversity – may become an object of study for historians, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers.14 One of the first works of compar11

  Harrison, The Territories, 97.   Calvin, for example, associated religio with pietas, and emphasized “sincerity of heart”: “pure and genuine religion [. . .] consists in faith, united with a serious fear of God, comprehending a voluntary reverence, and producing legitimate worship agreeable to the injunctions of the law. And this requires to be the more carefully remarked, because men in general render to God a formal worship, but very few truly reverence him; while great ostentation in ceremonies is universally displayed, but sincerity of heart is rarely to be found.” J. Calvin, Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 2, § 2. Harrison suggests that one indicator of this new way of understanding religion is “the changing grammar of ‘religion’ in the early modern period.” Since the Latin language has no articles, translators of Latin works must choose whether to render religio as “religion,” “a religion,” or “the religion.” These translation choices changed dramatically during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. In 1632 – when Spinoza was born – the phrase “Christian religion” (without an article) occurred in English books roughly twice as often as “the Christian religion,” while by 1660, when Spinoza began to compose his philosophical works, this proportion had been inverted, and “the Christian religion” occurred twice as often as “Christian religion.” The conceptual significance of this grammatical shift is illustrated by different translations of the title of Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis: this was first rendered into English, in 1561, as The Institution of Christian Religion, whereas a 1762 edition was titled The Institution of the Christian Religion. 13   Harrison, The Territories, 84, 92. 14   See, for example, T. Asad’s essay “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category” in his book Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 1993). This essay seeks to “problematize the idea of an anthropological definition of religion by assigning that endeavour to a particular history of knowledge and power” (54). Asad criticizes Clifford Geertz’s “universal” definition of religion, applicable to different traditions, as “(1) a system 12

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ative religion was published in London at the end of the seventeenth century by William Turner, a Sussex vicar. The History of all Religions in the World: From the Creation down to this Present Time was divided into two parts, “the First containing their THEORY, and the other relating to their PRACTICES; Each divided into Chapters, by the several Heads, or Common Places of Divinity, viz. The Object of Religious Worship, the Place, the Time, the Persons Officiating, the Manner, and the Parts of Worship, & c.” Turner’s lengthy book included a “Table of Heresies” and a “Geographical Map, Showing in what Country Each Religion is Practised.” Its title page thus offers a prototype of the modern conception of religion, and proudly declares it to be “Written in a different Method from anything yet published on this Subject.”15 It was this objectified form of religion, characterised by belief and belonging and studied by new empiricist methods, which would eventually be “privatised,” as a matter of personal opinion and choice, within liberal secular societies which promoted values of “religious freedom” and “religious toleration.”16 Having emerged alongside the ideal of autonomy, this conception of religion remained intertwined with it. We see this in John Stuart Mill’s 1859 essay On Liberty, a blueprint for modern liberalism in which “individuality” stands in for “autonomy.” Reflecting on the religious diversity that characterised European society following the Reformation, Mill writes: Those who first broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church, were in general as little willing to permit difference of religious opinion as that church itself. But when the heat of the conflict was over, without giving a complete victory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced to limit its hopes to retaining possession of the ground it already occupied; minorities, seeing that they had no chance of becoming majorities, were under the necessity of pleading to those whom they could not convert, for permission to differ. It is accordingly on this battle-field, almost solely, that the rights of the individual against society have been asserted on broad grounds of principle, and the claim of society

of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (29 – 30; see C. Geertz’s 1966 article “Religion as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Fontana Press, 1993), 87 – 125). Asad argues that the concept of religion “is itself the historical product of discursive processes” (29) emerging from the Christian tradition, and traces the attempt to produce a universal definition of religion to seventeenth-century Christianity (see 40 – 43). While he argues, against Geertz, that “religious belief ” is “a constituting activity in the world,” rather than “a state of mind,” Asad accepts the category of belief, along with authority, as a defining feature of religion – and rather ana­ chronistically projects this modern concept of religion onto the medieval period (see 37 – 39). 15   W. Turner, The History of All Religions of the World (London: John Dunton, 1695), title page; see Harrison, The Territories, 99 – 101. 16   Theories of secularization abound: see, for example, C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); J. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

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to exercise authority over dissentients, openly controverted. The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised.17

In the face of this religious “intolerance,” Mill argues that “individuality” – the freedom to form and express one’s own opinions – is “one of the elements of well-being,” “one of the principal ingredients of human happiness.” He links this normative conception of individuality to diversity: As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself.18

Mill conceives human freedom in terms of “permission” to select one’s opinions from a range of acceptable views, and to follow a certain lifestyle. It is not clear how this philosophy of freedom, turning on concepts of permissiveness and choice, affirms or articulates human power, in the sense of the capacity to act, to cultivate and express one’s nature, which is embedded in the concepts of virtue and habitus. In our own contemporary experience, choice – such as exercising our preferences as consumers, or voting in an election – often turns out to be a mere simulacrum of power; we sense our impotence, but we don’t understand it, because having confused free choice with empowerment, we do not know our own power. The continuing dominance of Mill’s liberal, individualistic model of liberty may explain why Spinoza’s ethical philosophy, which foregrounds the question of human power, making virtue inseparable from our empowerment, has become so popular in recent years. It is empowering to discover a moral philosophy of power – in contrast to an amoral philosophy of power, such as Nietzsche’s, which turns out to offer a hollow kind of empowerment.

4. Spinoza’s Concept of Religio Throughout the three centuries from the Augsburg Confession to On Liberty, the older concept of religio, with its close associations with virtue, piety and devotion, and its emphasis on the inner life, continued to be reasserted – often by those who recognised the intellectual and social reification of religion, and 17   J. S. Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3 (https:// archive.org / details / onlibertyxero00milluoft) (7 / 12 /  2022). 18  Ibid.

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sought to resist it. Seventeenth-century Quakers and Christian “Enthusiasts” emphasised personal experience, while Lutheran “pietists” revived pre-reformation devotional and mystical works. Johann Arndt’s True Christianity, a guide to the holy life published in over a hundred editions between 1605 and 1740, drew on medieval writers like Thomas à Kempis and Johannes Tauler to locate religion in the heart, while emphasising charitable works. German Romanticism grew out of Lutheran pietism, with its emphasis on inner feeling: Schleiermacher, who was educated at a Moravian school, famously described religion as “a feeling of absolute dependence.” Søren Kierkegaard, the greatest religious thinker of the nineteenth century, channelled both pietism and Romanticism into his searing critiques of objectified religion and the Enlightenment ideal of human autonomy. Kierkegaard’s contemporaries described him not as an existentialist, but as a philosopher of the heart, and his emphasis on inwardness, subjectivity, and spiritual “upbuilding” directly challenged the modern idea that religion can be understood through propositional knowledge or empirical facts. His refusal of autonomy not only as an attainable goal but also as an unattainable ideal is perhaps most explicit in his 1844 discourse “To Need God is the Human Being’s Highest Perfection.” Spinoza did not, of course, belong to the Christian tradition which produced these successive efforts to draw religion back into the human heart. Nevertheless, situating his concepts of virtue in general, and of religio in particular, within this broader milieu helps us to appreciate how he confronted the objectification and intellectualisation of religion that took shape following the Reformation – and how he offered philosophical resistance to it. Two of Spinoza’s letters show him vigorously defending his own non-sectarian understanding of religio as an ethical virtue. A 1671 letter responds to Lambert van Velthuysen’s charge that “to avoid being faulted for superstition, [Spinoza] cast off all religion” by challenging Velthuysen’s conception of “religion”: What he understands by Religion, and what by Superstition, I don’t know. Has someone who maintains that God must be recognized as the highest good, and that he should be freely loved as such, cast off all religion? Is someone who holds that our greatest happiness and freedom consist only in this [love of God] irreligious? Or that the reward of virtue is virtue itself, whereas the punishment of folly and weakness is folly itself? And finally, that each person ought to love his neighbour and obey the commands of the supreme power? Not only have I explicitly said these things, I have also proven them by the strongest arguments.19

A letter written to Albert Burgh in 1675 – following news of Burgh’s conversion to Roman Catholicism – shows Spinoza’s awareness of different religious 19   B. Spinoza, Letter 76 (February 1675), in The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. E. Curley, vol. II, 108 – 110 (https:// www.earlymoderntexts.com / assets / pdfs / spinoza1661.pdf ) (7 / 12 /  2022).

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traditions as well as different Christian sects. Here the word “religion” is used in the modern sense identified by Harrison, yet Spinoza immediately calls this conception of religion into question: “you [. . .] presume you have at last discovered the best Religion, or rather the best men, to whom you have abandoned your credulity.” How does Burgh know, he asks, that his new-found Catholic teachers “are the best among all those who have ever taught other Religions, still teach them, or will teach them in the future? have you examined all those religions, both ancient and modern, which are taught here, and in India, and everywhere throughout the globe? And even if you had examined them properly, how do you know you have chosen the best?”20 Spinoza was not actually advising Burgh to undertake studies in comparative religion. Rather, he challenged not only Burgh’s claim to have found the true religion, but also the sectarianism underpinning this claim. He identified a virtue of religio that is “common to all”: in every Church there are many very honourable men, who worship God with justice and loving-kindness. We know many men of this kind among the Lutherans, the Reformed, the Mennonites, and the Enthusiasts. And, not to mention others, you know your own ancestors, who in the time of the Duke of Alva, with equal constancy and freedom of mind, suffered all kinds of torture for the sake of Religion. So you ought to concede that holiness of life [vitae sanctitatem] is not peculiar to the Roman Church, but is common to all. And because we know by this – to speak with the Apostle John – that we remain in God, and God remains in us, it follows that whatever distinguishes the Roman Church from the others is completely superfluous, and so has been established only by superstition. For as I have said, with John, justice and loving-kindness are the unique and most certain sign of true Catholic faith [verae fidei Catholicae].21

Here Spinoza reminds Burgh of the destructive consequences of sectarianism: the Duke of Alva had brutally repressed the Reformation in the Netherlands, on behalf of the Spanish King, Philip II, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Spinoza resists Burgh’s own sectarianism by invoking the First letter of John, and by using the word “Catholic” in its original, non-sectarian sense – in distinction from “the Roman Church” – to denote a universal, inclusive faith. When we turn to the Ethics we see that Spinoza, like Aquinas, situates religio among the virtues. In a sense, this is not surprising. Spinoza did not share the motivations which led other philosophers and theologians to critique and even abandon the scholastic notion of religio as a virtue. Since he rejected Christian teachings about sin, he was untroubled by the idea that the highest good could be attained by human effort. Indeed, his concept of conatus, or striving, placed this effort centre-stage. More profoundly, his critique of human free will, sit20

  Ibid., 109.   Ibid., 108 (translation modified); Curley’s translation reads “[. . .] sign of the true universal faith.” 21

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uated in his metaphysics of substance and mode, signalled his refusal to draw the distinction between divine and human agency, between grace and nature, which underpinned and structured much of the Christian debate about free will. Spinoza’s most significant remarks about religion in the Ethics lie within a series of propositions about knowing God. “The highest good of the mind is knowledge of God, and the highest virtue of the mind is to know God,” he asserts, explaining that “The highest object the mind can understand is God, i. e. the absolutely infinite being, without whom nothing can exist or be conceived. And therefore the highest good of the mind [. . .] is the knowledge of God. Further, so far as the mind understands, so far only does it act, and so far only can it be absolutely said to act from virtue. Hence the absolute virtue of the mind is to understand. But the highest object that the mind can understand is God.”22 For Spinoza, understanding a thing means understanding its causes. Since God is the cause of all things, every effort of understanding reaches towards God. This constitutes the common good, which everyone can enjoy at no cost to others.23 Indeed, the greater our understanding, the more we wish others to share this good.24 Having argued that “the greater the knowledge of God which the essence of the mind involves, the greater will be the desire of him who follows virtue that the good which he seeks for himself should be shared by all,”25 Spinoza immediately offers a succinct definition of religion: “Whatever we desire or do, or cause to be done, in virtue of our having the idea of God, or of knowing God [quatenus Dei habemus ideam, sive quatenus Deum cognoscimus], I refer to religion.”26 This is followed by further remarks about virtue that emphasise intellectual autonomy: The desire of acting rightly which is dependent on our living according to reason, I call piety. The desire by which the man who lives according to reason is actuated, of uniting other men to him in friendship I call honour [Honestatem]; that which is approved by those who live according to reason, I call honourable; and on the contrary I call that dishonourable which is opposed to friendship. I have also shown what are the foundations of social life. Moreover, the difference between true virtue (or power) and weakness is easily perceived from what has been said above: namely, that true virtue (or power) is nothing else than to live solely according to reason; and therefore weakness consists solely in this, that man allows himself to be led by things external to him, and is determined by them to actions which depend on the common constitution of external things and not on his own nature considered solely in itself.27 22

  E4p28 and dem.   See E4p36. 24   See E4p37. 25  E4p37dem. 26  E4p37schol.1. 27  E4p37schol.1. 23

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For Spinoza, religion comprises “whatever we desire or do, or cause to be done, in virtue of our having the idea of God, or of knowing God.” Just as Aquinas recognised in the virtue of religio both an internal and an external aspect, so Spinoza’s definition includes both desire and action.28 This definition of religion is expressed in the first-person plural: whatever we desire and do, quicquid cupimus, et agimus. Even as Spinoza affirms an ideal of autonomy grounded in reason and knowledge, he also affirms that we are social beings. Understanding our relationality and interdependence is part of what our knowledge of God – and of ourselves as beings-in-God – must entail. We do not strive for virtue alone; we seek like-minded companions, and the more we taste the rewards of conscious being-in-God, the more we wish to share these joys with others. Spinoza is sometimes described as a rationalist, and he is certainly committed to the intelligibility of being. Yet he offers a conception of knowledge that seems much broader than the epistemologies of many contemporary philosophers. He understands human cognition to be intimately tied to our embodiment, our experience, our duration. His use of the verb cognoscere throughout the passages in the Ethics dealing with our knowledge of God suggests a process of getting to know God, which requires sustained attention. Similarly, he chooses the verb noscere – to recognise, to become acquainted – to describe a process of getting to know ourselves, in order to cultivate our affects in life-enhancing ways: “it is necessary to know [noscere] both the power and the weakness of our nature.”29 When he defines religion as desire and activity grounded in knowing God or “having the idea of God,” his conception of knowing God becomes even more capacious. “Knowing God or having the idea of God” can be understood in light of his very subtle argument, made in the TheologicoPolitical Treatise, that we may apprehend God either through faith, i. e.  via scriptures and church teachings, or through philosophy. Either form of apprehension can be the ground of the virtue of religio, giving due honour to God. 28

  Another echo of Aquinas’s analysis of religio can be discerned in the way Spinoza often couples religio and pietas, as he does in E4p37s1. For Aquinas, religio concerns a relationship to God, while pietas concerns a relation to other human beings; religio means giving due honour to God, while pietas means honouring one’s parents and one’s country (see ST II, II q.101a.1, a. 3); Aquinas considers these two virtues consecutively in the Summa Theologica. In E4p37s1 Spinoza’s definition of religio is followed by a definition of pietas: “whatever we desire or do, or cause to be done, in virtue of our having the idea of God, or of knowing God, I refer to religion. The desire of acting rightly which is dependent on our living according to reason, I call piety.” Calvin offers an interesting discussion of the relationship between religio and inter-personal, social morality (to which he assigns the virtue of charitas, or love of neighbour) in Institutes, Book II, Chapter 8, § 11. It is interesting to compare this discussion with Spinoza’s account of faith in the Theologico-Political Treatise, which refuses to separate charitas from religion or faith. 29  E4p17s.

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At the end of Part Four of the Ethics, Spinoza states that “All the painful emotions which men feel towards each other are directly opposed to justice, equity, honour, piety and religion.”30 The penultimate proposition of Part Five asserts that “Even if we did not know our mind to be eternal, still piety and religion, and every thing we have shown in the Fourth Part to belong to courage and generosity, would be the primary objects of life.”31 Here Spinoza associates “piety and religion” with “everything which belongs to strength of mind [animi fortitudinem].”32 For Spinoza, “strength of mind” or “fortitude” is a broad virtue associated with the core affect of desire, based on true understanding, and conducive to our “true freedom”; fortitude encompasses the various forms of courage, defined as “the desire by which everyone strives to persevere in his existence according to the dictate of reason,” and generosity, “the desire by which every one strives to aid other people and unite with them in friendship.”33 Summing up the “characteristics” of this virtue, Spinoza concludes that I do not think it worthwhile to demonstrate all the properties of fortitude separately, and much less to show that the brave man hates no one, is angry with no one, is neither envious, vindictive, contemptuous nor supercilious. For these and all other points which relate to true life and religion [ad veram vitam, et religionem] are easily deduced from E4p37 and E4p46; namely, that hatred is to be vanquished by love and that every one who is led by reason desires that the good which he seeks for himself may be possessed by others.34

This passage shows religion to be a virtue among other virtues, closely linked with piety, justice, honour, and fortitude. This matrix of virtues points simultaneously toward the expression of individual power, and toward our inevitable dependence upon and obligations to others (including those who don’t see things the way we do). Autonomy and diversity must go together to form a common good.

5. Conclusion Spinoza approaches the question of religion neither in terms of orthodoxy, nor in terms of orthopraxy. Both these alternatives belong to the modern objectification of religion, which he sought to resist. Perhaps the religious ambiguity of the Ethics reflects this resistance: it is possible to read the text so that the concept of God becomes a theoretical vanishing-point, evacuated of recognisably religious significance. It is remarkable that Spinoza’s philosophy 30

 E4App§24.  E5p41. 32  E5p41s. 33  E3p59s. 34  E4p73s. 31

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accommodates twenty-first century atheism along with the simple piety of his Lutheran landlady, which he encouraged, telling her “Your religion is a good one, you need not look for another, nor doubt that you may be saved in it, provided, whilst you apply yourself to Piety, you live at the same time a peaceable and quiet Life.”35 This inclusivity remains as important today – when there are deep sectarian divisions not only between different “religions,” but between what we have become accustomed to call “religious” and “secular” perspectives – as it was in the seventeenth century. Unlike most other religious and theological philosophies, the Ethics does not alienate non-religious readers. At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned George Eliot, who not only produced the first English translator of the Ethics, but was the first woman to translate Spinoza into any language. I quoted from Middlemarch: “There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it,” an insight that is dramatized over the course of the novel. While Spinoza engaged with the concept of autonomy in the moment of its inception, as it emerged entangled with a new understanding of religion amidst increasingly visible religious diversity, George Eliot was, of course, a post-Kantian thinker, writing in the wake of the fully-developed ideal of autonomy that structures Kant’s moral philosophy – and at a time when questions about religious pluralism were being confronted and, provisionally, settled. Like John Stuart Mill, George Eliot was a liberal thinker (she succeeded him as editor of the progressive London journal, the Westminster Review), and deeply resistant to dogmatic orthodoxy and orthopraxy. She defied moral conventions in her personal life; within her own family she had to fight, as a young woman, for freedom of enquiry on religious questions. Drawing on Spinoza’s Ethics, she thought through these ideals in terms of a kind of empowerment and virtue that affirms human interdependence. The philosophical vision she articulates, dramatizes, performs and cultivates through her novels depicts human beings messily, imperfectly living ethical and spiritual questions. Her chosen literary medium allows a rich, complex exploration of the possibility of a common good, grounded in deeper understanding, shared by porous selves, transmitted through characters who deeply shape one another’s inner lives and worldly destinies. This porosity permits the flow of what George Eliot calls “sympathy”: fellow-feeling or neighbour-love. As readers of her novels, we not only observe this in the mutually empowering friendships between diverse “centres of self ” – characters like Dorothea and Lydgate – but we feel it within ourselves, as we are made more receptive, more porous, by the affective work of George Eliot’s writing. What if we took her Spinozist novel Middlemarch, rather than Mill’s On Liberty, as our philosophical blueprint for thinking through the intertwined questions of human autonomy, religious diversity, and the common good? 35

  J. Colerus, The Life of Benedict de Spinosa (London: D. L., 1706), 39 – 42.

The Question of Autonomy and the Common Good in Spinoza’s Ethics Raymond E. Perrier 1. Introduction Can the idea of autonomy be tethered to that of the common good? If so, then how would this be accomplished? These questions are particularly important for understanding Spinoza’s Ethics. The answer to these questions is largely dependent upon a thesis that represents an important departure from conventional readings of Spinoza where God is treated as a theoretical vanishing point. Clare Carlisle, however, advocates for a reading of Spinoza that is not often discussed, and which was originally articulated by George Eliot. That reading is one where religion is understood as an openness to sympathy for the neighbor. I found this thesis to be both compelling and insightful. Carlisle begins her interpretation of Spinoza by pointing out that he is typically seen as a purveyor of secularism, where the term ‘religion’ is defined as something both private and objectified. This sectarian idea of religion is antecedent to the common good, which is consequently described as being “located in a neutral, disembedded space that is opposed to this conception of religion.”1 To combat this conventional interpretation of religion and the conventional narrative of Spinoza as a purveyor of the secular, Carlisle argues that religion is not missing from Spinoza just misrepresented. Religion is a virtue for Spinoza not a means of segregating ‘faiths’ into privatized groups and factions of belief and practice (i. e. sectarianism). Religion is a virtue in the sense that Spinoza sees it as a “form of human power, which involves dependence.”2 So how does this connect to the themes of autonomy and the common good? Spinoza’s idea of autonomy and the common good are inseparable from his ideas of religion and God, and by understanding religion it provides a better understanding of this relationship in Spinoza’s thinking. Autonomy, the common good, and God come together as “interconnected parts of a larger whole.”3 The ‘whole’ 1   C. Carlisle, “The Virtue of Religion: Spinoza on Human Power and The Common Good,” in this volume. 2  Ibid. 3   Carlisle, “The Virtue of Religion.”

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to which Carlisle is referring is the reading of Spinoza where his philosophy is open to “a bold new thinking of religious difference in a pluralist age.”4

2. The Mutual Conditioning Relationship Between Autonomy and the Common Good When put into a conceptual relationship with each other, autonomy and the common good make for an intellectually substantial groundwork to lay out a pluralist approach to religion. On the surface, the idea of autonomy might bring to mind subordinate ideas like individual and self-legislating, and these descriptors tend to be distinct from subordinate ideas that would normally be used to describe what is ‘common’ – the plural. Now consider the ‘common good’ at its foundation, beginning first by dividing the noun ‘common good’ into its base components. First, there is the adjective ‘common’ – of or relating to a community. Then there is the noun ‘good,’ which is either when something or someone conforms to a moral order of the universe, or when someone seeks to advance prosperity and well-being. In the first sense, the ‘common good’ does create a notable tension between the autonomous person and the common good, where conformity to a moral order is the requirement. Whereas the second meaning allows for a greater sense of alignment between an autonomous person and the respective goal of advancing well-being. Ethically speaking, autonomy is the building block of a philosophical perspective where human beings have a fundamental dignity that is the result of adopting a self-legislating attitude, which in turn demands our respect and feeling of responsibility for our actions in relation to others. This is actually quite different from individualism, I will add, which is defined, in the extreme, by a person’s ability to individuate, separate, and isolate themselves or others. It proposes a perspective of existence that does not readily recognize human relationships as something that is grounded in a mutually conditioning interdependence. Autonomy must be defined in distinction to hyper-individualism. Yes, an autonomous person is an individual, and can be individuated in some respects. But it is equally true that the interest of autonomous individuals, and the standard ethical principles associated with the orientation – namely, respect for dignity and responsibility to others – runs hand-in-hand with the common good, insofar as the common good presupposes some concrete sense of interdependence in the task of advancing well-being for oneself and for others. In fact, one could make the argument that respect for the fundamental dignity 4

 Ibid.

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of life, generally speaking, should be a major precursor to an authentic concept of the common good. It seems to me, therefore, that presupposing the relationship between these themes is not worth discussing further, at least not at the moment.

3. Spinoza and the ‘Blessed Life’ Spinoza’s understanding of autonomy and the common good are readily expressed in what is called the blessed life. First, I want to get a little nitpicky about Spinoza’s concept of autonomy, specifically the relationship between ‘reason’ and ‘will’. Second, I want to ask an adjacent question about the value of this overall approach to religion. I understand, of course, the ethical value of a pluralistic approach to religion, but I want to get a sense of why religion is important for Spinoza. Specifically, what is the importance of religion, as it is connected to and in some sense inseparable from autonomy and the common good. My initial reading of Spinoza on this matter is that his understanding of religion has less value today than it did back in the modern era, at least without expanding its scope and making some modifications. So, essentially what I want to ask are two simple questions about his idea of religion: why believe in God at all? Why affirm that God is the highest good? More important to this conference discussion, can we have autonomy without God in Spinoza’s philosophy? (I say this as a Kantian who has argued in many places that autonomy is deeply tied to religion for many enlightenment thinkers.) Carlisle discusses some of the attributes of Spinoza’s autonomy in more detail, and in comparison with Descartes and Kant, which I appreciate and take to heart as a modern scholar myself. Carlisle says that “The Spinozist conception of autonomy is not a matter of willing, or choosing, but of understanding.”5 This is a very straightforward and concise claim about Spinoza’s concept of autonomy, so naturally I have many questions, but I will wait until I give all of the pertinent context before asking them. The claim that autonomy is a matter of understanding is suggestive of a rationalist idea of autonomy, which makes perfect sense for Spinoza. Carlisle quotes Spinoza saying that “to act absolutely from virtue is nothing else than to act according to the laws of our own nature. But we act thus only so far as we understand [intelligimus] . . . Therefore to act from virtue is nothing else in us than to act, and to preserve our being, according to the guidance of reason.”6 Carlisle also quotes Spinoza’s famous saying that “the highest good of the mind is knowledge of God, and the highest virtue of the mind is to know 5

 Ibid.   Spinoza, Ethics, 4p24, dem.

6

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God.”7 Carlisle explains that “understanding our relationality and interdependence is part of what our knowledge of God – and ourselves as being-inGod – must entail.”8 Hence, autonomy is made concrete by knowing God, and also knowing God and our being-in-God establishes our interdependence as human beings, which covers both power and dependence as the virtue of religion requires. So now for my questions. First, the terms ‘understanding’ and ‘reason’ describe Spinoza’s intellectual autonomy – but is there a distinction between these terms that would give us any more insight into Spinoza’s position on religion and autonomy? Or are they interchangeable terms? Or by ‘understanding’ does Carlisle only mean the simple act of ‘knowing’ something? Second, Carlisle presents a very clear position on Spinoza’s autonomy that draws a strong distinction between willing, choice, and understanding. I understand why a reader of Spinoza would exclude choice from autonomy, since it is typically indicative of a ‘free will’ and Spinoza quickly dispenses with free will at the beginning of the Ethics. Is it possible, however, to discuss Spinoza’s claim in the second part of the Ethics that the will and the intellect are one and the same thing.9 Spinoza, in this section, defines the will as the ‘faculty’ of affirming and denying that something is true or false, and is distinct from desire which is defined by ‘wanting’ or ‘avoiding’ things. Ultimately, Spinoza reduces the will back to a mode of reason – of affirmation and denial – which suggests that willing is a matter of virtue and autonomy. In fact, this is an important aspect of Spinoza’s thinking since he describes ‘the will’ as something that is necessitated by something other than itself. So, willing is a matter of autonomy because autonomy presupposes that ‘the will’ is subsumed under the rule of reason, by which a person affirms or denies that, for example, the highest good of the mind is knowledge of God, and the highest virtue of the mind is to know God. A person must affirm, through the disposition of the will and decide by the power of reason, that knowing God is in fact a virtue and that this knowledge somehow makes it possible for me to share in the common good. But if a person by virtue of the power of reason and disposition of the will denies this claim, that which is commonly good to all and religion, then are they still autonomous? Furthermore, this idea of subsuming will under reason brings into light the idea of freedom. Carlisle points out that our “true freedom” is a matter of “strength of mind” or “fortitude” for Spinoza. I will add that, in part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza lays freedom out as a postulate of reason, by which a person is free through the power to moderate affects and appetites. This freedom from affects / appetites is what lays the groundwork for a blessed life, where 7

  Carlisle, “The Virtue of Religion.”  Ibid. 9   Spinoza, Ethics, 2p49c. 8

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the mind has power over the affects by knowing their causes. Essentially, Spinoza’s idea of freedom is to be free from affects determining my actions from outside of my own power of reason and will. In other words, a free existence is solely based on reason. Freeing yourself is no more than knowing a cause and its geometrically proportioned affects. As a person accumulates knowledge in greater amounts and with greater clarity and distinctness, then that person becomes more able to determine themselves through reason instead of being determined by causes external to themselves. Knowledge is power for Spinoza. (This description is lacking for a post-modern mentality since it fails to realize that knowing the cause of suffering is not always enough to alleviate or take power over it.) My final question then is does Spinoza need knowledge of God at all? If autonomy is a matter of reason, will, and freedom from something, then why do we need to know God at all? From what affect does knowledge of God free us? We do not gain power over God by knowing God as the first cause. Is it simply because knowing God reveals our dependence? And if this is correct then do we really need God for this? I will posit some ideas for answering these questions. At the end of the Ethics, Spinoza famously reveals the ‘blessed life’ of a wise person. The blessed life conclusion is a fairly brief end to an otherwise exhaustive investigation of philosophical anthropology. But Spinoza suggests here that the blessed life is achieving an empowerment of the mind, whereby the more one understands the causes and affects determining human action the more power it gains over existence, at least in theory and only to a certain extent. Yet if the virtue of religion includes an awareness of dependence, then the idea of a ‘blessed life’ draws closely to later authors like Kierkegaard, who had a deep sense of the psychological maladies of human existence like despair and anxiety. Or Schleier­ macher, who presents the famous idea: absolute dependence. Perhaps, Spinoza is thinking of religion as a means of allaying diseases like anxiety or despair. The conclusion for Spinoza is to turn towards a more existential discourse. If this is the direction taken from here, then the religious aspect of Spinoza’s thinking does take a different tone than a secularist mode of reading him. The result of investigating the relation of autonomy and the common good results in the concern for achieving the blessed life – the good life. But for Spinoza this leads to a subtle type of irony in the Ethics. The whole time Spinoza leads the reader to consider the ways in which one might find empowerment through knowledge (autonomy) much of which is realized in considering the ethical (the common good), only to discover that the blessed life holds a deep tension (religion). To understand the causes and affects determining human action eventually leads an honest thinker to acknowledge a deep awareness of dependence on some other ‘power’. The tension is palpable. The irony is overwhelming.

Hegel on Autonomy, Diversity, and the Common Good A Dialectical Perspective and Its Contemporary Anthropological Relevance Yun Kwon Yoo

Can we genuinely advocate the ideas of diversity and the common good without compromising the integrity of autonomy? Can an autonomous person truly work together with other people from diverse backgrounds to achieve the common good? Can the apparently individual realms of autonomy and diversity be compatible and harmonious with the communal or social realm of the common good without difficulty, without opposition? The ordinary answers to these questions may be negative; for, in general, people believe that the notions of “autonomy,” “diversity,” and “the common good,” each for its optimum performance and maximum realization, must be mutually independent and exclusive. Indeed, this presumed conceptual tendency of mutual independence and exclusion among the three notions seems to have been manifested and demonstrated in the history of Western philosophy (Zeitgeist); that is to say, very roughly speaking, the pre-modern period could be characterized by its exclusive emphasis on the common good, the modern period on autonomy, and the post-modern period on diversity. More importantly, this philosophical or conceptual absolutization, reification, or abstraction of one to the exclusion of the other two has had some ideological implications and practical (ethical and political) consequences – such as pre-modern collectivism and totalitarianism, modern individualism and imperialism, post-modern pluralism and nihilism, and so forth. In this context, I believe, we should now ask the following question: Is the contemporary, post-modern obsession with “diversity,” having no bearing on “autonomy” and “the common good,” namely, its excessive preoccupation with sheer otherness and difference something insignificant and harmless to humanity, individual and collective, living in an age of globalization that brings together all different groups of people into one common space? With this question in mind, this essay explores the Hegelian view on autonomy, diversity, and the common good in their interdependence and intermediation. For Hegel, every concept always and already – whether explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly – involves within itself something else, in

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principle, all other concepts as the condition of its own possibility; in other words, it is a result of dialectical mediations. This principle unmistakably holds true for the above three terms as well. How could Hegel then possibly relate “autonomy,” “diversity,” and “the common good” to one another? What relevant insights can we gain from this Hegelian undertaking, particularly in this postmodern age of capitalist globalization? The following two sections will address these two questions respectively.

1. The Hegelian Dialectical Conceptions of Autonomy, Diversity, and the Common Good As far as I know, Hegel does not treat either of these three concepts as a separate topic. In my view, however, it is not impossible to thematize each of them in a properly Hegelian way. This, I believe, can be carried out by synthesizing Hegel’s own direct mentions of it, though sparse and scattered, and our educated conjecture about how Hegel may have spoken of it, which should be based on a comprehensive knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy as a whole. As will be seen, these three concepts of “autonomy,” “diversity,” and “the common good” in their authentic Hegelian meanings are internally and thus dialectically interrelated;1 that is to say, the Hegelian meaning of “autonomy” can fully be conceived (begreifen) in its dialectical relations to “diversity” and “the common good,” and the same goes for the other two. Let me explore the Hegelian definition of each term, unfolding its constitutive relations to the other two. 1.1 Autonomy Generally, “autonomy” refers to “an individual’s capacity for self-determination or selfgovernance.”2 More specifically, as a philosophical term, autonomy implies that I (the human individual) can be free only when I submit myself to self-prescribed, self-imposed laws, and thus that any existing normative authority which has been purely given and coercively imposed from without should have no binding force on me as law.3 For this reason, the term autonomy usually entails the idea according to which the realization of human 1   A Hegelian dialectical movement is made possible only when things involved are internally related. 2   J. Dryden, “Autonomy,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 11 / 19 / 2019 (https://  www.iep.utm.edu / autonomy). 3   Admittedly, autonomy is by definition something more than what is called “negative freedom,” i. e., “the right or ability to do as one pleases, unimpeded by the interference of others,” precisely because autonomy essentially involves “law (nomos).” F. Neuhouser, “JeanJacques Rousseau and the Origins of Autonomy,” Inquiry 54, no. 5 (2011): 479 and 481.

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freedom depends on self-legislation. The problem, however, is that this approach to autonomy based on the principle of the formal act of self-legislation could easily be equated with our common, uncritical understanding of freedom, which regards the expression or execution of arbitrariness (Willkür) as the very condition of the realization of freedom;4 for in terms of content, those alleged self-legislated laws are indeed posited without normative grounds, and in that way do not differ much from the products of mere arbitrariness. Kant’s philosophy of morality can be understood as an attempt to resolve this problem. Kantian autonomy is, of course, grounded in the idea of self-legislation that I ought to submit myself only to the law of which I see myself as the author. However, to prevent the possibility of this being understood to be equivalent to the act of one’s own pure arbitrariness, Kant devises the categorical imperative (a priori command of reason) as the regulative principle for self-legislation (autonomy): “So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving of universal law.”5 In other words, this categorical imperative renders the idea of self-legislation irrelevant to the claim that I myself have the right to make any law binding me. In short, Kant clarifies and enriches the concept of autonomy by taking self-legislation as a self-reflexive act of moral judgment or evaluation, regulated by the categorical imperative (the principle of universalizability) inherent in all rational human subjects – that is, examining whether my subjective maxims can be applied universally without logical contradiction. According to Hegel, however, even this Kantian conception of autonomy as a moralistic modification of self-legislation cannot escape completely from the confine of arbitrariness or merely subjective freedom. For Hegel, there are largely two interrelated problems with Kantian autonomy. First, the formal procedure of Kant’s self-legislation based on the principle of universalizability and non-contradiction is nothing more than giving the status of law to the specific content of subjective maxim that one has already conceived arbitrarily: Kant [. . .] recognizes full well that practical reason totally renounces the content of law and can do nothing beyond making the form of fitness of the will’s (Willkühr) maxim into supreme law. The maxim of the arbitrary will (Willkühr) in choosing has a content and includes a specific action [. . .] The absolute law of practical reason is to elevate that specification into the form of pure unity, and the expression of this specification taken up into this form is the law [. . .] But the content of the maxim remains what it is, a specifi4

  “The commonest idea [Vorstellung] we have of freedom is that of arbitrariness.” G. W. F.  Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 48; § 15, which is henceforth abbreviated as PR, cited by page number followed by paragraph number (§) and as needed with the suffix ‘A’ for Remark (Anmerkung) or ‘Z’ for Addition (Zusatz). 5   I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. M. J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 164.

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cation or singularity, and the universality conferred on it by its reception into the form is thus a merely analytic unity [. . .] And the production of tautologies is in truth what the sublime lawgiving power of pure practical reason’s autonomy in legislating consists of.6

This then naturally leads to the second problem, that it may approve equally as valid and lawful the opposing subjective maxims that different subjects have, insofar as each of them is free from formal-logical contradiction within itself: “For the form [. . .] one of the opposed specifics is just as valid as the other; each can be conceived as a quality, and this conception can be expressed as a law.”7 Such being the case, Kant’s conception of self-legislation is not even sufficient to realize his own vision of an ideal moral community called a “kingdom of ends,” that is, “a systematic union of various rational beings through common laws.”8 In this context, Hegel’s concept of autonomy can be understood as an attempt to transform Kantian moral autonomy, which is still circumscribed within the sphere of self-sufficient individuality, into ethical (sittlich) autonomy. From the outset the Hegelian conception of autonomy presupposes both “diversity” and “the common good” as the very conditions of its own possibility. According to Hegel, the human subject is not just a self-identical, self-sufficient rational individual that is the simple identity with itself, but essentially a spirit, i. e., a dialectical – socio-relational and teleological – movement, in which its identity is constitutively mediated by its relations to things other than itself. In  the same vein, human autonomy in its proper sense can be exerted only in the context of diversity, namely, in a social, objective world that is always and already shared with diverse others. In this way, Hegel identifies the subject of autonomy in its authenticity not with the individual who just follows one’s a priori reason (moral autonomy), but with the member of society – as Dasein in its being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) and being-with (Mitsein), to use Heidegger’s words – who nurtures one’s autonomous subjectivity, along with diverse others, in the soil of shared objective norms existing and operating in the community to which one belongs (ethical autonomy). And these objective norms (i. e., custom, values, mores, laws, and so forth) 6

  G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Law, trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 75 – 76. See also G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) 256 – 57; § 429, which is henceforth abbreviated as PS. 7   Hegel, Natural Law, 77. See also PS, 257 – 59; § 430 – 31, where Hegel gives an example that both property (Eigentum) and non-property, insofar as they are thought of as simple abstractions, are equally justifiable without formal self-contradiction; though in the concrete world, where they are taken in relation to some other factors and considerations, both involve plenty of contradictions. 8   I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, 83 (emphasis mine).

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of the community (family, civil society, and the state) are inherently oriented toward the common good, inasmuch as they are, in principle, to be shared by all members of the community. Furthermore, Hegel seems to argue that the subject of ethical autonomy not only subjectively internalizes or appropriates those given objective ethical norms, which certainly reflect some degree of the common good, as one’s “second or spiritual nature” through “education,”9 but also ceaselessly reforms and transforms those existing ones toward an evergreater common good as concrete universality in which all members can find themselves and find one another, and in which therefore they can ultimately be aware of “the I that is We and the We that is I.”10 In short, Hegel’s “autonomy” is neither subjective arbitrariness nor individual self-legislation, formally regulated by a  priori command of reason, but one’s self-determining, self-transcending ethical movement that proceeds in dialectical relation to, and in solidarity with, others (“diversity”) toward Sittlichkeit as concrete universality (“the common good”) in which one can both retain one’s own individuality and find oneself inseparably and internally related to every other. 1.2 Diversity In general, diversity is considered an antonym of identity or unity. In other words, diversity is a term that highlights and even celebrates differences among things or elements which do not presuppose any identity that they share. We can find this conception of diversity in its extremity in the postmodern ethos. Most postmodern thinkers are very hostile to any discourse on identity – be it a scientific view of the single, objective world, a foundationalist understanding of existence with a unitary ontological ground, a representational theory of language, a teleological account of society and history, or an idea of self-identical subjectivity. This is so because they believe it has been strategically exploited to suppress, totalize, domesticate, or colonize the otherness, difference, or diversity of others. Derrida’s deconstructionism is a great exemplar of this postmodern project, namely, “the death of identity” and “the vitalization and glorification of diversity,” so to speak. With différance (his own neologism) that involves both “differing” and “deferring,”11 Derrida seeks to subvert the logocentric attempt to impose fixed identical meanings on the flux  9

  PR, 195; § 151Z. According to Hegel, the “second nature” refers to that which “takes the place of the original and purely natural will and is the all-pervading soul, significance, and actuality of individual existence [Dasein]” (PR, 195; § 151). 10   PS, 110; § 177. 11   For Derrida’s own semantic analysis of différance as the interplay of differing and deferring, see J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1 – 27.

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of reality and experience with fullness of diversity, multiplicity, and fragmentation, and then expands this overriding function of différance in grammatology (the science of writing) to all realms of human life.12 In Hegel’s view, however, such an understanding of diversity as a sheer dichotomous opposition to identity does not suffice to illuminate its true meaning. And this inadequacy is due primarily to the inability to go beyond the level of the “understanding (Verstand),” or “reflective understanding,” in Hegel’s technical use of the term. According to Hegel, the peculiarity of the understanding as a natural, instinctive, immediate, representational way of thinking is that it “determines, and holds the determinations fixed,”13 turning things into self-same, self-sufficient substances, and thereby looks at their relations only in terms of pure externality and stark opposition, without seeing any internal relationship among them. For Hegel, to grasp the true meaning of a thing or term, the true meaning of “diversity” in this case, “conceptual thinking (begreifendes Denken)” is absolutely required because it alone can enter into the true essence of the thing, i. e., its intrinsic structure as a dialectical movement. Simply put, the conceptual thinking of reason, as opposed to the representational or reflective thinking of the understanding, means conceiving things concretely,14 that is, holding together (be‑greifen) those elements that remain disparate in the realm of the understanding, which then implies that every entity should be seen not only in its own individual distinctiveness and particularity but also, and more importantly, in its internal, constitutive relations to things other than itself. More specifically, conceptual thinking looks at things dialectically – as a dialectical movement of “the identity of identity and non-identity” (difference / otherness), of the unification of being-for-itself and being-for-others. By “dialectical movement” Hegel precisely means a thing’s movement in which an immediate, indeterminate wholeness or unity differentiates itself into particular moments that are distinct and different from each other but, at the same time, internally related to each other and thereby contradictory with each other, and this contradiction requires some kind of resolution or reconciliation in accordance with the thing’s intrinsic demand to overcome that contradiction. And this whole process – from the immediate, indeterminate unity through the differentiation into particular, distinctive moments in their internal relations and thus struggling contradictions to the mediated unity and reconciliation in compliance with the immanent demand to overcome those contradictions – constantly repeats itself in such a way that the thing is becoming more and more enriched and closer to what it truly is. Thus, thinking conceptually, which is also synon12  See J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 92 – 93. 13   G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 28. 14   ‘Concrete (concretus)’ in its Latin origin literally means ‘growing together.’

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ymous with thinking rationally, concretely, dialectically, or speculatively, means conceiving of every entity precisely as a spiraling movement, a teleological process to achieve an authentic identity in the middle of identity and diversity. In this way, for Hegel, diversity or difference is certainly valorized, even celebrated, but only to a certain extent, i. e., not without mediation. From a more socio-practical point of view, it is unquestionably true that any human community in a social world is not something purely identical and static, composed of self-same atomistic individuals, but rather something essentially differentiating and dynamic, made up of diverse individuals with diverse desires and needs; however, this does not necessarily mean that the diversity of individuals has no bearing whatsoever on some sort of identity that binds them together. Indeed, I argue, Hegel’s diversity as a dialectical concept does require identity as the very condition of its own possibility in at least two respects. First, in respect of logic (ontology), the idea of diverse individuals (diversity) as such is made possible only insofar as and to the extent that those individuals participate in and share the same universal essence called individuality that is intimately connected with the concept of “autonomy”; that is, individuals are diverse precisely as equally autonomous human beings, as self-differentiated, particularized, diversified instantiations of the universal (i. e., autonomous individuality).15 Second, in respect of phenomenology (teleology), Hegel’s diversity, as discussed above, is not simply a diversity for diversity’s sake, but rather an essential moment in the dialectical movement of “the identity of identity and diversity,” namely, the teleological movement toward a greater – more mediated, inclusive, and universal – identity, solidarity, and community, viz., “the common good.” In short, for Hegel, diversity does not stand in stark opposition to identity; instead, it is best understood only in the light of a dialectical unification of identity and diversity. Along these lines, Hegel’s “diversity” can possibly be defined as a movement of others, who exist in their distinctive otherness and difference as equally self-determining, self-transcending individuals (“autonomy”), toward an ever-greater solidarity and community as concrete universality (“the common good”). 1.3 The Common Good The common good is an important concept especially in political philosophy, referring both to the interests that members of a political community have in common and to the facilities, natural and human-made, that serve those com15   Conversely, for Hegel, the universal (“individuality”) without its self-differentiation into particular moments (“diverse individuals”) is merely the abstract universal; in other words, the true universal is always the concrete universal that contains distinctions or differences within itself and manifests itself in and through them.

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mon interests.16 And most philosophical conceptions of the common good are grounded upon the communal and solidaristic, not the liberal and utilitarian principle that all members of a community exist in an authentic – neither accidental nor contractual – social relationship with one another and thus think and act in ways that serve the common / public interest, in contrast with the individual / private self-interest. Certainly, Hegel has been known as one of the prominent advocates for this common good tradition, even under unjust suspicion of being associated with totalitarian statism. Yet, at the same time, Hegel has also been hailed as a defender of a free market-based liberal society, and this characterization is based primarily on his appreciation of “civil society (bürgerliche Gesellschaft)” as a sphere of individual, subjective freedom. As disclosed in these seemingly incompatible assessments, Hegel’s concept of the common good as such involves a much deeper dynamic complexity, and thus, I argue, this requires a Hegelian dialectical or conceptual thinking to grasp the full meaning of it, and particularly in its intrinsic relations to the concepts of autonomy and diversity. According to Hegel’s social and political philosophy, “civil society,” a form of community characteristic of the modern capitalist economy as “the system of needs” through the mediation of the market,17 is a formal association of autonomous and diverse individuals as “private persons who have their own interest as their end.”18 Certainly, civil society is superior in terms of individual autonomy and diversity to traditional societies in which personal identity was immediately fused with one’s naturally-imposed social statuses and roles. However, Hegel observes, civil society is not the final, ultimate, or ideal form of social community, for it operates based on a false dichotomy and hence only on an external relationship between universality (common good) and particularity (private needs or interests), and with an exclusive focus on the latter as its primary principle.19 Indeed, civil society, whose fundamental operating principle is a sort of universal egoism,20 would inevitably result in the Hobbes16  See W. Hussain, “The Common Good,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 12 / 2 / 2019 (https:// plato.stanford.edu / entries / common-good). 17  See PR, 227 – 39; § 189 – 208. 18   PR, 224; § 187. 19   It is in this sense that Hegel calls civil society “the external state” or “the state of the understanding”; see PR, 220 – 22; § 182 – 84. 20   Adam Smith remarks in his Wealth of Nations (1776) that capitalist market society, which represents civil society for Hegel, is grounded upon the principle of universal egoism: “Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages” (Book I, ch. 2). In fact, Hegel’s model of civil society owes much to the theory of the British economists including Adam Smith; see C. Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 432.

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ian “conflict in which the private interest of each individual comes up against that of everyone else.”21 This, then, is necessarily followed by the tyranny of particular desires or contingent whims, as well as the bipolarization between a few rich people who are getting more benefits from the growing economy and what Hegel calls “the Pöbel (rabble)” who are becoming poorer and more excluded from its profits and thus losing their own “feeling of right, integrity, and honor” as free human beings.22 Hence, according to Hegel, it is essential that civil society as the realm of economic life needs to be sublated23 into a more ideal or higher form of social community called the “state (Staat)” as a rationally-structured, organic political community whose end is “both the universal interest as such and the conservation of particular interests within the universal interest.”24 In the state, therefore, individual citizens experience the dialectical unity of private needs and the common good in a more authentic way.25 In order to comprehend the Hegelian dialectical definition of the common good, we should take note here of the Hegelian meaning of the “sublation” of civil society into the state. What Hegel means by this is not simply denouncing civil society in its entirety in favor of the state, but rather taking it to be a necessary “moment” of the state. In other words the state is something transcending civil society, both negating its purely natural and atomistic conceptions of human beings, individual and collective, based solely on the universal egoism of economic society as opposed to the ethical and political pursuit of the common good, and preserving its discovery and relative sensibility of individual autonomy and diversity. Therefore, although Hegel supports a capitalist economic system to the extent that it awakens and liberates the sense of free individuality or subjectivity (autonomy and diversity), he recognizes that it must be integrated into a more encompassing social context which he calls Sittlichkeit whose fulfillment is the state, the realm of the common good. Accordingly, just as the state is internally related to civil society, the common good is constitutively related to individual autonomy and diversity; to be more precise, the former contains within itself the latter as sublated moments. In short, the Hegelian concept of “the common good” denotes neither a totalitarian ideal at the expense of self-interest nor a mere aggregate of individual goods, but it is best understood as a teleological fulfilment of reconciliation 21

  PR, 329; § 289A.   PR, 266 – 67; § 243 – 44. 23   For Hegel, “sublation (Aufhebung)” involves three inseparable moments of negation, trans­ cendence, and preservation. 24   PR, 290; § 270 (emphasis mine). For Hegel’s remarks on the unity of universality and particularity within the state, see also PR, 282 – 85; § 260 – 61. 25   In civil society too, in fact, individuals (private persons) relate themselves with others and work for the interests of all by means of labor and exchange in the market; however, this is done essentially for the sake of self-interest. In other words, social relations (universality) in civil society are only instrumental in and contingent upon satisfying the end of private needs (particularity); see PR, 220; § 182Z and 233; § 199. 22

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or unification of individuality and community, of economy and politics, in their dialectical and socio-historical movement, in which therefore “autonomy” and “diversity” can also find themselves fulfilled as constitutive moments of the common good.

2. Contemporary Anthropological Relevance Thus far, we have discussed the Hegelian conceptions of “autonomy,” “diversity,” and “the common good” in their internal, dialectical relations and intermediation – that is, each concept in its own true definition contains within itself the other two concepts as sublated moments. Now, as I conclude this essay, let me come back to the second question raised at the beginning: “What relevant insights can we gain from this Hegelian undertaking, particularly in this postmodern age of capitalist globalization?” I would like to argue that the Hegelian perspective on the co‑constitutive dialectical relationship among the three concepts can provide an anthropological conceptual framework for our proper response to the challenges posed by capitalist globalization today. We are living in a globalizing world. The phenomenon of globalization and its attendant problems – for instance, the ever-widening, ever-deepening processes of economic bipolarization, political instability, cultural imperialism and nihilism, religious conflict, ecological crisis, technological domination, and so forth – are certainly not something entirely new nor exclusively contemporary. However, it is surely true that the term “globalization” has recently become a real buzzword describing our Sitz im Leben (i. e.,  the word that currently defines our epoch) since the 1980s and 90s, particularly with the full-scale emergence of “neoliberalism” as the dominant ideology of global capitalism, and that those problems of globalization have since been becoming greater and greater in terms of their extensity, intensity, velocity, and impact. To resolve, or at least alleviate these problems and to orient contemporary globalization to a direction more conducive to advancing a global community of co‑existence and co‑prosperity for all, rather than increasingly reinforcing the prerogatives and interests of the privileged few (the economically, politically, culturally, religiously, ecologically, and / or technologically powerful) and thus exacerbating chronic divisions and alienations among the peoples of the globe, I believe that we are in dire need of a new anthropological vision of humanity that is equipped with a more mature and universal ethico-political intelligence, sensibility, and volition to change the current course of globalization. Indeed, as Stiglitz aptly points out, the real problem lies not with globalization as such, but with “how it has been managed” by us humans.26 26

  J. E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 214.

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However, the current process of neoliberal capitalist globalization strenuously advocates and produces humans who, without self-determining, self-reflecting, and self-transcending subjectivity, simply succumb to the imperialism of a globalizing market. In other words the human being today is reduced to a mere homo consumens, who is purely subjected to one’s sensuous, instinctive, contingent, particular desires, who is easily attracted to the external appearances and images of commodities released onto the market, and who thus is always ready to buy them both online and offline. In this way, neoliberal capitalist globalization is turning the human individual into a hedonistic consumer and the human society into an anonymous crowd of atomistic, individualistic consumers. After all, this deformation or degradation of humanity indeed serves as the most effective way to promote de‑ethicalization and de‑politicization and thereby to maximize the unbridled power of global capitalism without much difficulty and resistance. To make matters worse, contemporary philosophical anthropology is popularly represented by the postmodernist thesis of “the death of the subject,” which claims that human subjectivity is neither something self-identical, self-sufficient, autonomous nor something spiritual, teleological, but rather something exclusively constructed by sheer otherness, difference, multiplicity, and diversity. And this, unfortunately enough, may function as a theoretical and ideological justification for the neoliberal-capitalist anthropology of globalization described above, that is, the global consumer with no subjective capacity for self-determination, self-reflection, and self-transcendence, who is being cultivated by the extrinsic logic of capitalistic excesses, combined with ongoing techno-digital developments in global mass media and information-communications. In this regard, I argue that the contemporary postmodern context of globalization imperatively calls for a new philosophical vision of humanity that overcomes and transcends postmodern subjectlessness (the death of the subject) in its exclusive preoccupation with otherness and diversity. In my view, we can find that vision in a Hegelian anthropology that is constituted by three moments of “autonomy,” “diversity,” and “the common good” in their intermediation. For Hegel, the human being is a spirit, that is, a dialectical movement of beingfor-itself (autonomy; the subjective moment of the I) and being-for-others (diversity; the relational moment of the You, (S)he, or They) toward absolute universality (the common good; the teleological moment of the We). Indeed, to orient its process toward building a global community of peaceful co‑existence and co‑prosperity, globalization requires people to have the sensibilities of autonomy, diversity, and the common good in their mutual inclusiveness. People who only want to enjoy autonomy without regard to its internal relations to diversity and the common good will lead globalization to the frenzy of self-interested individuals and groups with arbitrary wills and opinions, and in turn to the tranny or imperialism of a few powerful hands. People who

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only celebrate diversity without regard to its intrinsic relations to autonomy and the common good will reduce globalization to a mere bundle of others, each in fact prioritizing and promoting the concerns and interests most relevant to one’s own particular and distinctive otherness (e. g., identity politics), which will eventually turn into a chaotic, nihilistic agora of fragmented voices and desires. People who only pursue the common good without regard to its constitutive relations to autonomy and diversity will make globalization into a totalitarian empire, whose presumed common good will turn out to be nothing but particular, private interests of some individuals or some groups that happen to take power. In short, today’s globalization, whose processes are mainly driven by capitalist materialism or materialistic capitalism with the neoliberal conception of human beings as mere global consumers, crucially needs people who think and practice autonomy, diversity, and the common good in their dynamically unified interpenetration – namely, cosmopolitan or global citizens who are constantly universalizing or broadening themselves in and through their autonomous ethico-political actions in solidarity with diverse others toward the common good in which they can both find themselves as individuality and find one another as community. It is for this very reason that I have argued in this essay how the Hegelian dialectical conceptions of autonomy, diversity, and the common good may play an important role in conceiving a philosophical anthropology relevant and necessary to the contemporary, postmodern context of globalization.

Between Participation and Respect Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common: A German Perspective 30 Years after Reunification Jörg Dierken 1. Survey of a Contemporary Diagnosis Liberal democracy has come under pressure. Authoritarian and populist forces are gaining considerable ground worldwide. However, their agendas are quite different. Presidents Trump and Bolsonaro represent an aggressive style that puts their own country first. Industries in sectors such as steel, energy and agribusiness, which are feeling the pressure of progress, are being pushed ahead despite severe damage to the environment, climate, and international trade. Putin’s Russia, which declares the liberal idea obsolete, is economically weak, but internally presents itself as neo-Byzantine Caesarian papalism while externally aiming to score points as a military power. In Turkey, Islamic extremism and nationalism have entered into an alliance under the leadership of Erdogan, whose party rewards subservience with key economic positions. China, which shifts the world’s balance of power with its geopolitical-economic presence, shows a highly effective combination of turbo-capitalism and communism, in which the rule of one party is ensured by the most sophisticated surveillance techniques. And in Europe, not only are tendencies against political integration within the EU emerging, but also those in favor of exit strategies, along with the objections to principles such as the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Criticism of elites is widespread, the will of the people is identified by its self-appointed tribunes, and people agitate against those who are different. The style of the actors against liberal democracy can be very considerably, from dazzling rhetoric, erratic vanity and fomenting anger and hatred, to coolheaded, cunning provocation. The principles of compromise, multilateralism and the universalism of humanity fall by the wayside. They belong to the political idea of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is inconceivable without regular procedures of political decision-making being open to the participation of everyone, without the rule of law and the protection of minorities. It is based on the fact that citizens are recognized in their fundamental equality and freedom. This applies without prejudice to essential differentiations, for example, on the basis of nationality or a limited scope for action.

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With the end of the Cold War, the Western model of liberal democracy seemed to be expanding triumphantly worldwide.1 In any case, the socialist counter-model had imploded. Only liberal democracies seemed to be able to fulfil the expectations of freedom and prosperity. At the latest, this Western model would prove to have universal appeal on the paths of trade, which increased massively with the last wave of globalization after the disappearance of the Iron Curtain. This wave of globalization was accompanied by technical progress in transport and communications, the transport of goods by air and sea became considerably less expensive, and the exchange of electronic information became possible in real time. However, the chances of excelling in areas of economics and intellectual discourse through globalization and the risks of losing against cheaper competitors in a global competition tended to be distributed unequally. In conjunction with the neo-liberal offensives of the 1990s and 2000s, this led to an enormous increase in wealth being matched by an increase in precarious employment conditions – despite strong economic growth and a worldwide reduction in extreme poverty. For many in the West, the danger of economic decline seemed to be real, but even more sensed as occasion of pressure to self-optimize under competitive conditions. In addition, institutions of public interest, right down to the state supporting them, were subjected to market logic, even in the welfare state regions of Europe. These and other factors have further widened the gap between the elites who think, live, and move around globally, and those who lag behind. There is mobility, money and a ‘hip’ lifestyle in urban centers on the one hand, and fear of losing one’s homeland, a shortage of doctors and a decaying transport infrastructure in rural areas on the other. Lines of demarcation are determined by political correctness, contrary language and an atomized sorting of the world according to lifestyle, nutritional preferences and sexual orientation. Another side of globalization was shown by the financial crisis of 2007 / 08, when the state suddenly mobilized enormous sums of money to rescue banks. When profits are privatized but debts are socialized, when states themselves become the object of hazardous economic games and lose their protective function for the less powerful, the credibility of an order – one that legitimizes inequality with the promise of career opportunities – erodes. Added to this was the partial loss of state control in Europe’s refugee crisis, which reached its culminating point in 2015.2 Migration, including mass flight from war and poverty, is ultimately a reverse side of globalization. Behind the conflict-laden causes of 1   See the classic book by F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Simon & Schuster USA, 2006). 2   This became a catalyst for a lengthy internal crisis of German conservatism, which became increasingly entangled in internal struggles and opened up room for the rise of rightwing populism. See T. Biebricher, Geistig-moralische Wende. Die Erschöpfung des deutschen Konservativismus (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, 2018).

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flight, especially in the Islamic world, there are, of course, developments that were connected with the older colonial history in the Near and Middle East, which came to a head in the Islamic revolutions of 1979.3 Religion wrote politics – and not for the first time. In Germany the authoritarian populist forces did not take power, but they were massively strengthened. This applies in particular to the East – at a time when the economic situation is better than ever before. However, there is still a clear gap in socio-economic data along the former border between East and West. But the massive unemployment in the East has disappeared, the infrastructure is much more modern than in the West and the cities have been largely redeveloped. Admittedly, there has been a high exodus of well-educated, young people – especially women, resulting in demographic depletion, especially in rural regions, while the immobility rate among those who have remained has risen. Civil virtues and education as a prerequisite for a self-determined way of life were almost completely eroded by the GDR. And the leading positions in politics and business were often occupied by West Germans. Not least for this reason, right-wing populist forces with hollow slogans are very popular at a time when the vast majority of people consider their own economic situation to be good. Envy toward asylum seekers becomes a media catalyst for portraying the political elites of the past as conspirators against their own people. In a largely irreligious society, the Christian West is to be defended against Islamization by those who themselves form mobs in protest against the Christian churches and their refugee-friendly rhetoric of welcome. The slogan of the peaceful revolution: “We are the people” [Wir sind das Volk] is used by those who distanced themselves from the milieu in which the GDR regime’s opposition circles originated, many of which were Christian churches. They want to “complete the turnaround” [Wende] by sweeping away the forces supporting liberal democracy. This simple agenda, which was developed by the West Germans themselves who had a leading role in the new right-wing party, distracts from the fact that no program is being offered to solve the problems that have become more complicated with globalization. It is more about the illusion of reducing the overburdening complexity of reality, combined with respect for one’s own existence in one’s cultural identity and one’s biography, which are insufficiently appreciated by elites. Sensitivities are in the foreground; the soul wants to be caressed. This goes for all sides. These highlights alone show that liberal democracy is approached under the banner of ideas that belong to its own periphery. For this reason, the first thing we need to do is to look more closely at its principles. Then efforts to make one’s own identity and culture the anchor of political action will be discussed. Finally, with regard to liberalism and culturalism, one should consider where 3

  F. Bösch, Zeitenwende 1979. Als die Welt von heute begann (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2019).

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both concepts have their blind spots and whether there is a common good – and what challenges for religion, Christianity and churches this involves.

2. Liberalism: Between Freedom and Equality The basic principles of political liberalism gravitate around freedom and equality.4 Highly constructive assumptions about humans in their natural state and socialization through a contract should lead to a balancing of the opposing poles. Here, an emphasis can be placed on freedom, which can be thought of more as a quantitative in terms of economic increase, or more qualitatively, as a basis for real participation opportunities.5 But the balance can also come more strongly from the pole of equality, be it in the sense of a common good6 or in the sense of participatory social relations.7 In typological abstraction, the first variant can be attributed more to John Locke and the latter more to JeanJacques Rousseau. As the many variations show, the two lines are not easily separable. This applies to the more recent debates on liberalism – in the narrower sense – and communitarianism, both of which belong to the spectrum of liberal ideas – in the broader sense. Major figures such as John Rawls or Charles Taylor even use this typological pattern.8 The philosophers from the age of Enlightenment expounded the natural or rational legal background of liberal convictions in the anthropological images of creation. According to them, man has the right to self-preservation in the original state in which creation and nature are the same.9 It is the source of the 4   D. Langewiesche, et al., “Liberalismus,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th ed., Vol. 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 315 – 323. 5   C. Dierksmeier, Qualitative Freiheit. Selbstbestimmung in weltbürgerlicher Verantwortung (Bielefeld: transcript, 2016), esp. ch. 3 (201 ff ) and 4 (277 ff ). 6   This concept is traceable back to antiquity, which influenced a wide spectrum of social philosophies between Utilitarianism and Catholic social teachings in modernity, H.‑H. Schrey, “Gemeinnutz / Gemeinwohl,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. XII (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1984), 339 – 346. 7   Cf. in a consistently liberal perspective: V. Gerhardt, Partizipation. Das Prinzip der Politik (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006). 8   Cf. the exemplary J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) (hereinafter quoted as PL), 4; C. Taylor, Wieviel Gemeinschaft braucht die Demokratie? Aufsätze zur politischen Philosophie (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2002), containing the eponymous essay 11 – 29; esp. 13 ff. 9   J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690), Essay Two: Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government, Chapter II: Of the State of Nature, The Works of John Locke, Vol. V (London: Thomas Tegg; W. Sharpe and Son, 1823), 106 – 112 (quoted as TG); J.‑J. Rousseau, The Social Contract (Du Contract Social; Ou Principes du Droit Politique, Paris 1762) in The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses, ed. S. Dunn (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002), Book 1, chapter 1 – 9, 156 – 169 (quoted as SC).

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rights of liberty. The two basic meanings of the concept of freedom, self-conformity and spontaneity, can be combined based on this. In a negative sense, it is about defense against interventions that impair the integrity of the self and in a positive sense, activity to strengthen it, especially through the appropriation of natural goods for consumption or exchange. The category of property has its origins here. Freedom can only be lived in a social relationship in which the relationship to things is embedded. This leads to the other liberal basic idea: equality. For as much as freedom aims at one’s own self-preservation, it also has a significant effect on that of others. Everyone is equal in their freedom. This can be developed under the banner of competition or cooperation. From this comes the construct of the social contract, which geneticizes the common under private law. In Locke’s case, equality is established alongside freedom in the anthropological state of creation and allows the pursuit of one’s own competing interests.10 With Rousseau, the state of nature is seen in cooperation among families, which promote the self-preservation of their members to the best of their ability.11 Thomas Hobbes had already linked equality in a stark form with the fact that the state of nature of self-preservation is distinguished by the war of free-for-all.12 This is to be fended off by the social contract, which for this purpose monopolizes violence through the power of the sovereign. Here equality is thought of in negative terms with regard to the war that unites everyone together, while Locke and Rousseau, in contrast, think positively of cooperation and trade. Finally, Kant considers the motif of equality from the rational side of man as a moral being. Reason as the capacity of the general balances the arbitrary dimension of freedom through the formal rule of evaluating the moral law, according to which only what is suitable for the general law can ever be wanted.13 Autonomy is thus always a social category that is based on a comparison with all the others. To the extent that, according to fundamental liberal convictions, the community stems from a social contract for the protection of their respective self-preservation, a private law that is economic in character extends into its constitution. This is accompanied by various social-philosophical patterns. For Rousseau, the contract that the members enter into out of their own interest to defend themselves against war and enslavement results in a common will that is ultimately free of error, encompassing all, even if not explicitly of: the volonté génerále.14 The bonum commune is articulated in this, and becomes manifest in the legislative sovereign. From this, the various forms of government 10

  TG, 106.   SC, chap. 2. 12   T. Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), 76 ff. 13   I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), A 59, trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), 80. 14   SC, chaps. 2 ff. 11

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are to be derived and critically assessed. It also had the authority to represent itself and the principles of the community in the faith of the citizens, through a simple civil religion.15 In contrast, Locke focuses on the protection of individuals and their property.16 In particular, the contractualist constitution of the community was based on the fact that in its natural state there is no arranged form of judicial sanctioning of excessive violence against self-determination and property. The freedom of all can only be secured by a bourgeois society with a state monopoly on the use of force, originating from paternal violence, whereby this violence in turn is divided into the basic forms of legislative, executive, and federal power.17 The exercise of the state’s monopoly on the use of force is immediately about limiting division. Instead of the strong common will with incontestable sovereignty and the authority to establish the bonum commune, Locke’s state is weak in terms of content, but also acts with procedural checks and balances, protecting the freedom of the citizens in their respective pursuit of happiness. In particular, this is conceived in economic patterns of property acquisition for use and trade. Property is a social category of the asymmetrical distribution of the power of disposition over things, whose inequality at the same time urges exchange through trade. The ownership relationship is constituted by an original acquisition of the unclaimed goods in a quasi pre-societal state. This is close to arbitrary appropriation, which cannot be called arbitrariness and violence only because there is still no bourgeois society. For Locke, this arbitrariness is, so to speak, the opposite of the non-negotiable, binding common will of Rousseau. That is condensed with the sovereign. What the liberal positions have in common is that the main task of the state is to banish violence through monopolization and legal coercion, while being bound to the constitution of the citizens it represents. Which form the constitution takes and which forms are chosen for representation, as well as the design of the separation of powers and political procedures, are subject to considerable variation. In the sense of a mediating position Kant can summarize that a state is the “union of a multitude of humans under laws of right,” that law is the “sum of the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the choice of the another in accordance with a universal law of freedom,” and that the attributes of its citizens include “lawful freedom,” “civil equality,” and “civil independence” of subsistence and legal representation.18 In addition, national constitutional law corresponds to international law, and territorial citizen15

  SC Book 4, chapter 8: Civic Religion.   TG, 106 ff. 17   TG, 142 ff; 162 ff; 167 ff. 18   I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), transl. M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 99, 27, 100. 16

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ship demonstrates connections to universal world citizenship law. Freedom to exchange and trade is also part of this. In the political thinking of the 20th century, the background assumptions of liberal social theories were to be translated into procedures of liberal democracy in order to uncouple them from metaphysical conditions.19 One of the most important concepts is John Rawls’ theory of justice.20 It aims to reduce the rationality preconditions of Kant’s concept of autonomy in such a way that its consequences become generally acceptable.21 To this end, it operates with the fictitious construction of an all-encompassing original state of society. Through two irrevocable principles for procedural justice, this construction is intended to function as a means of representing social welfare.22 These principles emphasize on the one hand the “same right for everyone to the most extensive system of equal fundamental freedoms [. . .], which is compatible with the same system for all others”; on the other hand “social and economic inequalities are to be shaped in such a way” that an advantage is expectable for all and “positions and offices [. . .] are open to everyone.”23 This combination of Kantian and utilitarian principles could at any time be claimed for all evidence, because a “veil of ignorance” was placed over everyone, so that nobody would know where he would stand in the distribution of inequality.24 The principle of equality associated with freedom is, through this operational negation, to become effective as a counterfactual regulation in the respective social negotiation procedures for resources and participation.25 The minimalism of content associated with this makes possible a well-ordered society of free citizens, one which is capable of overlapping consensus, and whose religious, ideological and political orientations remain highly plural. Only these 19   In addition to the American liberal John Rawls, who will be addressed in this section, this also applies to the German thinker Jürgen Habermas, who certainly only belongs to political liberalism in the broader sense of the word, to the extent that he is an advocate of democracy of the social-liberal understanding. He initially attempted to locate the metaphysical preconditions and counterfactual intuitions of older liberal conceptions in the procedural idea of a deliberative discourse based on the consensus of all participants. However, Habermas contends the counterfactual preconditions of these discourses are permanently endangered by the asymmetrical power relations of capitalist societies, which is why it is essential to find support for commonly shared give and take in the realm of living – and ultimately in culture and religion as well. Cf. J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I and II (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); Between Facts and Norms (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). 20   J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) (quoted as TJ). 21   J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 99 ff (quoted as PL). 22   Rawls, TJ, 17 ff; PL, 22 ff; 257 ff. 23   TJ, 60. 24   TG, §§ 4; 24: “Veil of ignorance,” PL, 23. 25   PL, 133 ff.

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principles could stand for common goods in a society centered around each individual’s separate and equal freedom. This minimalism consistently results in a primacy of the right over the good.26 However, this minimalism does not prevent tying the use of freedom to the pursuit of economic advantage. In view of capitalist developments toward overpowering large corporations with cartel power, the effectiveness of justice regulation has in any case remained limited. This has often been countered with the proceduralist wing of liberal democracy, not least by its communitarian strand. It is more concerned with common goods, and tends to side with Rousseau – even if an escalation of the volonté génerále into socialist ideals, or the establishment of the common will by self-proclaimed know-it-all actors (e. g. socialist leaders) is rejected. According to Charles Taylor, freedom and welfare for all, participation in the political process, recognition of diverse lifestyles, and solidarity across milieu boundaries – i. e., central factors of proceduralism  – should be explicated as fundamental goods.27 They could be understood as elements of a bonum commune that guide the actions of the society members in their own, and thus quite plural value orientations. Moreover, they could be found in the civic culture of modern Western societies despite internal conflicts. They would therefore not have to be introduced via counterfactual constructs with negation operators.28 In fact, the liberal basic ideas of freedom and equality are also conveyed historically and culturally. At least their genesis is contingent and culturally relative in the context of Western Enlightenment, even if their validity aims to be universal, as the construct of the original state allegedly demonstrates.29 Thus, such validity is based on complex preconditions with counterfactual moments. They can be based on creation anthropology, explicated transcendental philosophically or be realized procedurally. Even Rawls is not unfamiliar with the idea that values such as the public use of reason with a tendency towards the general and the limitation of mere self-interest were found in the horizon of God’s transcendence, even if they were detachable from it.30 26

 Cf. PL, 173 ff.  Cf. C. Taylor, “Wieviel Gemeinschaft braucht die Demokratie;” “Der Begriff der ‘bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’ im politischen Denken des Westens,” in Gemeinschaft und Gerechtigkeit, ed. M. Brumlik and H. Brunkhorst (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1993), 117 – 146. 28  Cf. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), esp. Part One: Theory (3 – 192); Part Five, 25: The Conflicts of Modernity, 495 – 521. 29  Cf. J. Habermas, “Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism,” in Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2008), 271 – 311. 30   J. Rawls, “On my Religion” (1997), in John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, ed. T. Nagel et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 259 – 270. Of interest regarding the meaning of religion in the life of John Rawls is the epilogue to the volume of the German edition, written by J. Habermas, “Das ‘gute Leben’ eine ‘abscheuliche Phrase’. Welche Bedeutung hat die religiöse Ethik des jungen Rawls für dessen Politische 27

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The communitarian critique31 that accompanies hard liberalism not only appropriates the fact that the conditions are in fact by no means as liberal and egalitarian as claimed, but also focuses on the factual dominance of an economic functionalism over all rationality. Although correctives against the natural and unequal distribution of opportunities for freedom can also be conceived of based on liberal principles, such as in the figure of equal opportunity justice,32 according to communitarian diagnoses the mental sources for a culture of social integration are undermined by the primacy of economics. For Charles Taylor, these include, in particular, subjectively perceived values and assumptions of meaning.33 These were brought into the plural society of the present by various strands of tradition and are to be promoted. This also applies to religion, but only as an option in an age in which for the first time it is possible to live completely without religion.34 But charity and solidarity can enter into alliances, and the recognition of man by God can be combined with inner-worldly recognition, as it is explicated in the idea of human rights. Taylor sees modern culture as a fertile ground for a bonum commune that gravitates around freedom and equality. According to Taylor, however, less should be thought of the minimalist liberal ideas of the Enlightenment than of their romantic corrective.35 This idea understands humans as holistic beings at home in circles of life that have become historical and overlap each other. Admittedly, Romanticism has also given rise to impulses that drift away from the general balance of freedom and equality. Taylor sees them especially in the forces of an expressive individualism and a striving for authenticity centered around the respective self-experience.36 These phenomena belong to Theorie?,” 315 – 336. Habermas elaborates on Rawls early theological bachelor’s thesis, drawing the conclusion that the meaning and validity of deontological principles linking freedom and equality are, according to Rawls’ view at the time, on God’s horizon. 31   Michael Walzer’s thesis is that communitarian criticism accompanies liberalism like a shadow and does not simply oppose it. M. Walzer, “Die kommunitaristische Kritik am Libe­ralismus,” in Kommunitarismus. Eine Debatte über die Grundlagen moderner Gesellschaften, ed. A. Honneth (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994), 157 – 180. 32  Cf. T. Pogge, Weltarmut und Menschenrechte. Kosmopolitische Verantwortung und Reformen (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2011); Gerechtigkeit in der Einen Welt (Essen: Klartext, 2009). 33   C. Taylor, Sources of the Self; “Ursprünge des neuzeitlichen Selbst,” in Wieviel Gemeinschaft braucht die Demokratie, 11 – 29. 34   C. Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), esp. 505 ff; Varieties of Religion Today (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); A Catholic Modernity, Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award lecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); “Why We Need a Radical Redefinition of Secularism,” in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, ed. M. Eduardo and J. Van Antwerpen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 34 – 59 (the volume also contains an essay by J. Habermas, “‘The Political’: The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology,” 15 – 33 and the dialogue between Habermas and Taylor, 60 – 70. 35   C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 855 ff; A Secular Age, 505 ff. 36  See C. Taylor, A Secular Age; Varieties of Religion Today.

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modernity as well. Nevertheless, for Taylor, the circle of motifs that goes back to Romanticism does not simply stand in opposition to the one that owes its existence to the Enlightenment. That seems to be changing at the moment.

3. Culturalism: Between Singularity and Universality If at the core of the liberal circle of ideas is the notion that everyone should be able to develop his or her freedom, then this applies equally to everyone – regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. The plurality in the development of freedom is combined with an abstraction of unique characteristics. On the other hand, there are currently strong tendencies to focus on unique identity characteristics and demand respect for the development of a freedom that is based on these characteristics.37 This can certainly go hand in hand with forced pluralism. The buzzword ‘diversity’ stands for the social recognition of individuals and groups with different identities. They should receive respect from society. If society is not understood as a commonality across identities, the unifying goals of politics fall away. According to Mark Lilla, this leads to a situation in which the mere addition of identity-based expectations of respect prevents the whole democratic political program, and opens space for populist politics that are in favor of other particular forces,38 such as that of ‘old white men’ and their traditional identity. Identity is non-negotiable, cannot be exchanged – even though it appears in plurals. To some extent, it appears to be a given, such as gender or sexual orientation, skin color or ethnic affiliation, and to some extent appears to be constructed, like piercings and jewelry, aesthetic posing with clothing, and lifestyle or nutritional preferences. In many cases, that which is given and that which is constructed merge together. Examples may be transsexuality and gender adaptation, the promotion of sexual orientation through the creation of a social environment, physiological or ecological motivations for food preferences, the marking of ethnical group affiliations through slang and habits, and so on. Within the space between the given and the constructed also lie the historical and social backgrounds of individual lives: their cultural imprints in the broad spectrum of larger factors, such as language exposure, thought patterns and religion, average determinants, such as regional customs and dialects, up to determinations by specific elements, 37

 Cf. F. Fukuyama, Identity. The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2018). Fukuyama emphasizes the importance of the affective dimension of the pursuit of recognition, the loss of which – even if only perceived to be the case – can transform into hate and rage. 38   This corresponds to the criticism by Mark Lilla of the supposedly left-wing, liberal program of adding the interests of identity politics. Cf. M. Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal. After Identity Politics (London: Hurst & Company, 2018).

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such as family traditions, education and occupation. Nobody can escape the imprint of these multiple entanglements of the general and the particular, and yet they can be changed through action – from small shifts in milieu boundaries to major cultural changes. This is illustrated by migration. The idea-based political arsenal of identity politics and diversity normatively forces the latter, but justifies it with empirical cultural features that aim to undermine the dialectic of the general and the particular in the liminal region between the given and the constructed. Identity politics exists on almost all sides of the social spectrum. It can be carried out in the name of solidarity with a homeland and the preservation of traditions, but also in the name of LGBTQ identities, or in favor of the social practices of ethnic or religious groups. Such identity politics are often articulated from the perspective of minorities. Normative claims to future privileges are to emerge from historical-empirical oppression. It is also about respect and recognition. The degrees are felt with sensitivity, an incorrect tempering can quickly turn into anger. Identity politics is not just a matter for actual minorities. This is ironically demonstrated by the insurrection of a moral majority that believes itself to be pushed into a minority position. The distinction between the truth and the fake falls away. Identity and individuality are themes that arose particularly in the Romantic milieu, as are the natural and historical-cultural imprints of life. However, as can be seen with Friedrich Schleiermacher as a pioneer of the individual, this should not be played off against the communal.39 Rather, for Schleiermacher, the whole becomes manifest in the individual, namely through the fact that the identity of the individual is constituted by differences to that of others and has its own mixing ratio of the general and the particular. Thus, the others virtually belong to the peculiarity of the individual. Nor can identity be gained without natural-bodily and historical-cultural elements. They form the framework for the communicative interaction of identity through individual differences. Identity, consequently, always knows to relate to something collective. This is already different with the expressive individualism described by Taylor. It has gained social significance because the economic dynamics of the 20th century turned the cultivation of a lifestyle formerly reserved for the elites into a mass phenomenon. This is overshadowed by the cultivation of 39

 Cf. F. D. E. Schleiermacher, On Religion. Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), ed. and trans. J. Crouter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Second Speech: On  the Essence of Religion, 22 – 74 / 18 – 54; Cf. Schleiermacher’s Soliloquies. ed. and trans. H. L. Friess (Chicago: Kessinger Publishing, 1926). On this point cf. J. Dierken, “Individua­li­ tät und Identität. Schleiermacher über metaphysische, religiöse und sozialtheoretische Dimensionen eines Schlüsselthemas der Moderne,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 15 (2008): 183 – 207.

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one’s own authenticity. It applies even more to recent developments for which Andreas Reckwitz has coined the multifaceted phrase “The Society of Singularities,” which, paradoxically reproduces the unique.40 Romantic developments surpassed the old Romanticism.41 This posits differences to liberal communitarianism. From a sociological perspective, Reckwitz describes processes of ‘culturalization’ of large areas of life, through which the affectively experienced, value-laden practices and expressions are stylized into ‘uniqueness’. Against the background of the technological accelerations of post-industrial capitalism, it is possible that life energy will increasingly focus on the sphere of the cultural-creative rather than on that of economic production.42 The latter would lead to a “logic of the general,” determined by the processes of standardization, generalization and rationalization of industrial modernity, which will now be replaced by a “logic of the particular.”43 In the end, there are no mediating patterns of order between the two. Rather, they are dominated by harsh differences between ‘singularities’ within a competing diversity. This refers to productions, practices and objects that are manufactured for highly competitive markets that are designed to attract and are intended to provoke as much attention as possible.44 This spectrum ranges from travel, housing and food to the body, education, politics and religion. The prerequisite for such singularization is, in particular, the digital revolution. Electronic communication organizes the markets for attention; media presence is crucial. These markets lead less to an exchange of the most diverse commodities or to the satisfaction of a certain requirement, than to the dominance of the supposedly unique according to the logic of ‘winner takes all.’45 It is hard to achieve the first 10,000 likes for a video, a blog, a picture or a product by influencers, whereas catapulting to millions upon millions is no longer impossible for the few successful ones. This applies not only to sports and pop stars, but also to political activists. One German example is Youtuber Rezo, who shortly before the European elections called for the destruction of the CDU, the center-right majority party, in the interests of climate protection. Germany’s largest political party reacted helplessly to his rather simple message. For Greta Thunberg, who wants to provoke panic among her listeners so that they unconditionally submit to the maximum demands of climate research, the trip to the USA on a high-tech racing yacht became a global media event. Her ritualized welcome by Obama or her glare towards Trump will attract far more attention than sober analyses 40

  A. Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne (quoted as GS) (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018). 41   GS, 18; 285 ff et seq. 42   GS, 111 ff. 43   GS, 11. 44   GS, 147 ff; 225 ff. 45   GS, 155 ff.

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for a viable agenda for carbon reduction. Complex issues such as the socially acceptable restructuring of the economy towards climate compatibility are not really discussed, there are substitute actions such as debates – launched by Greta’s trip across the Atlantic – about the volume of additional air travel the trip across the Atlantic caused, or simple friend-enemy dualities such as in Rezo’s blame game. There is no room for ambivalence in the society of singularities. The same applies to the culturalization of society and the economy of the creative classes, who due to the explosion of education constitute the new upper social strata, as well as to the decoupled layers of a new precariat class, which is polarized toward a muddling through.46 Here, singularization can be observed with trash TV and in the vulgarities on display, which populist politicians like to make more socially acceptable. Reckwitz’s description of the society of singularities succinctly captures several phenomena of contemporary Western societies. One may discuss whether singularization is in fact something entirely new in comparison to individualization stemming from Romanticism, and one may ask whether particular perspectives, such as those of the new creative classes, are not favored here.47 Despite the plausibility of the phenomenon description, it cannot be overlooked that the society of singularities contains serious tensions. A culture of authenticity that focuses on attention turns the authentic into a means of success. If creative types make up the new upper class – with global distribution – their way of life is ubiquitous rather than singular. The digital communication of the singular works with extreme standardizations, culminating in the binary logic of 1 and 0. The algorithms generated by their complex combinations actually reproduce the behavioral patterns of society and follow its probabilities.48 Even the ‘winner takes all’ logic is an ordering structure with implicit normative content. And if identity politics follow from the society of singularities, then the fact whether they are pursued by right-wing or left-wing groups, by nationalists who think ethnically, or by diverse minorities, does not justify a normative primacy of homogeneity or multiculturalism. Culturalism, which makes use of identity-political patterns, goes hand in hand with normative relativism. This translates empirically into social claims to power, and also applies to highly normative or morally-charged identity politics, such as those of fundamentalist religious groups that push for a final battle between good and evil, or the staging of violence and terror.49 Even if they themselves may 46

  Cf. ibid., 350 ff.   Both points could also be addressed directly to Reckwitz: it  should be questioned whether his description of the ‘singularities’ itself claims the status of singularity, and whether he pushes the perspective of the creative, not just describing it. 48   This is the thesis of A. Nassehi, Muster: Theorie der digitalen Gesellschaft (Munich: C. H.  Beck, 2019). 49   GS, 409 ff. 47

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only take one side, their search for attention and respect – even for money – already shows that there is something general at play. The dimension of the universal cannot be forgotten by the program of singularities either. Instead, it has a subliminal effect. This needs to be clarified.

4. Closing Remarks: Liberalism and Culturalism, Bonum Commune, and its Transcendence Liberalist and culturalist programs reveal internal tensions and blind spots. The liberal motive of freedom cannot guarantee a balance with equality; particular interests often dominate against the background of a natural, asymmetrical distribution of opportunities. And the culturalist motif of a society of singularities already shows a contradiction with its pluralization. Without balance with the universal, singularities mutate into claims to power that often conceal self-assertion. Even the enlightening or romantic contexts of both motif complexes are not free of tension. That freedom and equality and not their opposite can claim social plausibility is a historically-contingent cultural development. It can also become different, as we are currently experiencing. The empirical-historical contingency of Enlightenment ideas is to be countered by their normative validity, which was formerly based on creation theology and natural law. If their place becomes hollowed out by increasing secularization, there is a problem in the visualization of the normative validity anchored in the transcendent, of those liberal paradigms whose mode is the counterfactual. The romantic principles of individuality and identity also provoke a dialectical counter-calculation. The self of individuals or groups may intuitively open up and articulate itself through its expectations. But without resonance in manifold social references which would in turn enrich it, it becomes empty and languishes in disappointments. Striving for power then becomes a means of compensation. Such resonances are often contingent as well. They become more probable when individuality and identity are experienced as formative with a social aspect.50 The individual reaches out to a whole in which it wants to be embedded and which manifests itself in it. This basic romantic motif is indispensable. Ideally, it can contribute to resilience in the face of disappointing resonance. To this end, the implicit holistic dimension in the perception of individuality and identity must be updated. And the experience of the social side of individuality and identity requires a universality superseding the empirical in order to stabilize institutional norms. In this respect, the blind spots of both configurations, liberalism and culturalism, as well as Enlightenment and 50

 Cf. H. Rosa, Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung (Munich: Suhrkamp, 2016).

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Romanticism as frames of reference, belong together complementarily – even if the pressure for plausibility is currently likely to be greater on the liberal side. Both refer to a dimension of the transcendent, to which not only the respective figures of the whole and the counterfactual are attached, but with which the bonum commune is also connected. Dealing wisely with this transcendent dimension is a central challenge for religion and its church institutions. First of all, this means gaining crucial distance from the temptations to just associate religion with the simplication of one of the configurations. This applies, for example, to the Gospel of Welfare and Prosperity that follows liberalist figures, especially in Pentecostal circles. Contrary to this are temptations to incorporate civil religion51 into the church or to transform church Christianity into a better party for the public enforcement of the good. As Christian groups and churches can easily connect to identitarian programs, their positions seem to be sufficiently distinguished by their mere appearance. In this there is the temptation of being able to dispense with the challenges of communicating an explanation of this position across borders. Thus, the prudent handling of the transcendent dimension involves understanding the basic distinction between transcendence and immanence as an archetype for further differentiations among the immanent. This allows not only for the perception and recognition of differences, but also for contradictions and ambivalences. In contrast to the tendency of a society of singularities to push aside ambivalences, it is rather a matter of processing them. To put it in technical terms, religion can help to manage ambivalence and thus promote a realism in the perception of contradictions. It can also remind us that there is always an alternative for action, for example in view of the constraints imposed by the factual primacy of the economic or ‘winner-takes-all’ logic. Religion can contribute to practice in the finite by differentiating between it and the infinite, in such a way that the unconditionality of freedom or the creativity of the cultural are at the same time forms in which the infinite is present in the finite. Thus, the basic figure of differentiation is already in play with basic liberalist or culturalist concepts. This helps to understand that the differentiations of reality, for example, between society and state or between cultures of life and communication, are not a loss, but a gain. In light of the liberal and the culturalist paradigm, the distinction between transcendence and immanence continues to mean lightening up the respective blind spots by contrasting the motifs of wholeness and contrafacticity, each of which accompanies but is underexposed. Religion can be a form of communicating this socially through 51   In Germany, celebrations of the anniversary of the Reformation were often associated with the message that the current democracy was a direct consequence of the Reformation, which is why the Church’s memory of it has a function of supporting the state.

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symbols. The liberal idea of human dignity has a strong religious counterpart in God’s likeness, the culturalist idea of creativity reminds one of the creator. The post-empirical universality of equality makes it clear that salvation is for all. Finally, the prudent treatment of the transcendent dimension also includes the insight that the bonum commune is reduced to a particular position if it is conceived of as immanent. Since it itself translates the main points of liberal proceduralism, such as freedom and participation, into the communitarian idiom, and since communitarian good manifests itself in a liberal order where everything is exchanged in a decentralized system, its significance lies rather in functioning as a corrective regulator for both social-philosophical patterns. For this reason, it cannot be fixed within the immanent. This is already shown in the constant dispute about what the common good can be. This dispute cannot be turned off, rather, it is a mode of presence in the negative for the bonum commune. In this dispute, possibilities balancing the general and the particular must be sought out, as well as for compromising different interests. This is the primary task of politics. It is always pragmatic and subject to moral temptation. Religion can help to deal with this tension if it locates the good in its transcendence with God – and publicly articulates this along with the consequences for the immanent.

Hegel’s Law of the Heart and the Society of Singularities of the Future Andrew Lee Bridges After much reflection on the work “Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common (A German Perspective 30 years After Reunification)” by Jörg Dierken, I am appreciative of the insights offered concerning the current situation of liberal democracies, the (possibly) intrinsic tensions within the principles they are based on, and the future complications they will face during the ongoing effects of late modernity. Although many points and subjects within this essay are fascinating and deserve great attention, two interrelated subjects in this work continue to absorb my thoughts when I reflect on how this work suggests the common and the common good are to be understood. Much of this response, therefore, will be devoted to these two matters I will now explain in greater detail. The first matter is Dierken’s placement of Culturalism between Singularity and Universality (which is essentially the title of the third section of his work). I agree with Dierken concerning this conceptualization and placement of culturalism, but I feel quite uncertain about the future of the singularity in the context of the society of singularities (as Reckwitz describes). I suspect that the society of singularities as it has existed in late modernity for the past 40 years is only in its infancy. What we have observed so far of the singularity I imagine, can be compared with respect to the amount of development remaining to that of the state that a larva, a tadpole, or a caterpillar are in. Having never seen this before we may lack the imagination to envision what a fully developed society of singularities becomes. Will it be a society (if that word would still apply) that would relevantly comprehend notions of the transcendent, the universal, or liberal democracy? I explore the placement and conceptualization of culturalism between singularity and universality, which Dierken explains, with this uncertainty of the future of the singularity in mind. The second matter which greatly occupied my thoughts is Dierken’s appeal to the transcendent, somewhat in section two of the essay, but mostly in the concluding section. I explore how both the current actualization of the singularity and the possible future of the singularity might complicate this idea as well as the idea of the universal. I also consider what appeals to common reason and value mean when the suggestion is made that they are to be grounded in the transcendent,

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as well as when efforts are made to ground appeals to the common good in the immanent situations of the particular circumstances of civic life. In his essay Jörg Dierken acknowledges that “Liberal democracy has come under pressure.”1 He then explores reasons for this occurrence in relation to concepts of the common good. The idea of the common good suggests both implicit and explicit support of liberal democracies by its citizens, which makes the fact that liberal democracies have come under pressure, all the more puzzling in this respect. At least in part, we might consider either the citizens’ implicit or explicit consent to or allowance for this pressure under a structure designed to support their common good – and we might ask, why?2 Before proceeding into the tensions that exist in these structures of liberal democracies, particularly between freedom and equality, Dierken explains that, “liberal democracy is approached under the banner of ideas that belong to its own periphery,”3 and this provides insight – though not yet motive – for why the citizens of liberal democracy have allowed this pressure to be maintained. This may in part be due to how one understands their identity being influenced either positively or negatively by the mechanisms of liberal democracy, which attempts to actualize in its policies an environment most amenable to the common good. Dierken correctly notes that the environments of liberal democracies are based on the principles of freedom and equality – but that many tensions result from the implementation of both these principles. This is particularly the case regarding the economic situations of individuals as well as their understanding of what is best for their own self-preservation, which Dierken notes, “has a significant effect on that of others.”4 Diversity among a state’s population, among their understanding of self and among their exercise of liberty does 1   J. Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common (A German Perspective 30 years After Reunification),” in this volume. 2   Habermas, for example, presents another related type of pressure (and / or limit) that liberal democracies find themselves under, which he describes as the “cognitive dissonances” of its members. In “Equal Treatment of Cultures and the Limits of Postmodern Liberalism” he explains, “Liberal” systems of equality” have of course, hitherto covered up the flagrant injustices of social inequality. The impoverished districts of our cities and other desolate areas are populated by outcasts and “superfluous” persons for whom equal rights do not have “equal value.” Under the pretense of equality, they suffer the misery of insecurity and unemployment, the humiliation of poverty and inadequate social provision, the isolation of a life on the margins of society, the wounding feeling of not being needed, the despair over the loss of (and denial of access to) all the means required to change their oppressive condition through their own initiative. However, these facts do not reflect a paradox in the normativity of the idea of equality itself. Rather, the contradiction between the normative claim that these conditions prompt and the morally obscene sight that they actually present gives rise to cognitive dissonances.” J. Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 291. 3   J. Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common (A German Perspective 30 years After Reunification),” in this volume. 4  Ibid.

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not render overlapping consensus impossible, but it does make for a complicated situation – particularly, in moments when overlapping consensus cannot be reached. In moments like these, it appears Dierken suggests that the more general overlapping consensus in a liberal democracy should be the principles themselves as opposed to the particular moments in which the principles were understood as not fully realized from a particular perspective within the society.5 On the one hand, Dierken presents the tension of classical liberalism in his explanation of their principles which are presented by Locke, Rousseau and Kant; on the other hand, he confronts the situation of postmodern liberalism in the work of Taylor, Rawls and Habermas. Dierken explains that “[. . .] the liberal basic ideas of freedom and equality are also conveyed historically and culturally . . . they can be based on creation anthropology, explicated transcendental philosophically or be realized procedurally [. . . and] found in the horizon of God’s transcendence, even if they were detachable from it.”6 This idea of detaching our general reason which grasps the good of freedom and equality from the horizon of God’s transcendence, Dierken finds, I believe, in the example John Rawls provides in “On My Religion.” In this essay Rawls contrasts his view with that of Jean Bodin. Rawls describes Bodin’s position by saying, “It is clear that atheism is the one view Bodin cannot abide. He understands it not only as the view that God does not exist but also as rejecting the principles of right and justice. To deny the existence of God, he thinks, is to reject those principles.”7 Whereas, Rawls articulates his own view as the idea that “God’s will serves only a subordinate role of sanctioning the divine intention now seen as grounded on reason. In this case the denial of God’s existence leads only to the denial of the divine sanctions but not to the denial of values.”8 We might ask – indeed we must ask – what holds our values in place once they are detached from the horizon of God’s transcendence in the way in which Rawls describes? The general answer became our common reason, but this is something that both the situation of postmodern liberalism and the society of singularities changes. I think it is fair to say that whatever deconstruction has not irreconcilably complicated with respect to notions of a common reason, the society of singularities will. This situation naturally brings us to the discussion of “Culturalism: Between Singularity and Universality,” in which Dierken utilizes the concept of Sin5   This suggestion, I find is similar to the point Habermas makes when explaining that “The egalitarian project of making equal ethical liberties possible assumes the form of a process in the shape of a civic solidarity produced, renewed, and deepened through the democratic process.” J. Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2008), 275. 6   Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect.” 7   J. Rawls, “On My Religion,” in A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, ed. T. Nagel et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 267. 8   Ibid., 267.

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gularity as developed by Andreas Reckwitz, who defines singularity as “[. . .] exceptionality or uniqueness . . . that which seems to be nonexchangeable and incomparable [. . .]”9 i. e. the particular, as opposed to the general.10 If there are irreconcilable complications between approaches, understandings, and implements of the common good, based on universality on the one hand, and on the other hand, based on culturalism – then the concept of singularity only makes this lack of reconciliation, this lack of possibility for reaching overlapping consensus more apparent. The concept of the singularity in the context of a society populated by singularities makes the very concept of “the common” inappropriate. Although Reckwitz contrasts the singularity / particular with the general, its more extreme contrast is with the universal, in which Reckwitz explains that, “In modernity, the social logic of the general ultimately tends toward the ideal of the universal, toward that which is valid for everyone at all times. Even if this universalism is not achieved everywhere – on account of the restrictions of national states, for instance – it remains the ultimate goal of generalization.”11 What makes matters even more fascinating is the paradoxical nature of the society of singularities itself, which as Reckwitz points out, leaves us with the possibility “[. . .] to analyze general practices and structures, which themselves revolve around the production of singularities [which] is not a logical contradiction but rather a genuine paradox.”12 Given the phenomenon of this production of singularities it is somewhat unclear how to conceptualize – as opposed to actualize – the common good. One may consider how the idea of the common good could relate to the society of singularities. Dierken begins this section (“Culturalism: Between Singularity and Universality”) by stating that, “If at the core of the liberal circle of ideas is the notion that everyone should be able to develop his or her freedom, then this applies to everyone – regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, etc.”13 All of these concepts – gender, ethnicity, religion – although actualized in particular individuals have the ability to be understood in a general way. If we take religion, for example, and now ponder an uninhibited actualization of it within a society of singularities – I am reminded of a famous inspirational quote by Gandhi, which speaks to the (prescribed) unity between all religions. Gandhi explains that, “In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals.”14  9

  A. Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020), 4.   It is fascinating to consider the possibility that the true contrast in a liberal democracy is not between the particular and the general, but rather between the singularity and what Habermas refers to as the “superfluous” person (see footnote 2). 11  Ibid., 25. 12  Ibid., 5. 13   Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect.” 14   Here Gandhi explains, “Religions are different roads converging on the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads as long as we reach the same goal? In reality, 10

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What makes this quote inspirational – what makes it understandable even – is that it is not literally true; at least not currently. Given enough time would this quote be literally true in the society of singularities? If so, what would this mean for the understanding of law? Let us continue to explore the example of religion further. Habermas explores this idea in relation to cultures – but again we might wonder how laws / rules might work for singularities. With respect to the context of cultures, Habermas writes, “Recent court decisions in Western countries contain numerous examples of correctives to unreasonable asymmetrical effects of general laws: Sikhs are permitted to wear their turbans on motorcycles and to carry their ritual daggers in public; Muslim women and girls may wear their “headscarves” in the workplace and in school; Jewish butchers are permitted to slaughter livestock and poultry according to Kosher methods; and so forth.”15 Habermas is correct for not seeing these cases as exceptions to a general rule, but rather as “the logical consequences of the fact that Sikhs, Muslims, and Jews enjoy the same religious freedom as the Christian majority. They are not a matter of a mysterious ‘inversion of the universal into the particular’, only trivial instances of basic rights taking priority over ordinary laws or public safety regulations.”16 Perhaps the idea of a singularity actualizing their own religion is a bit more metaphorical, in that it serves to help us imagine a future in which every person’s convictions enjoyed the same actualized freedom as religious convictions do in relation to the law, but if every person in a society was a singularity and actualized their own religion, then would there be “ordinary laws” in the way we understand them as going hand in hand with the idea of a majority – religious or otherwise? Reckwitz’s idea of the singularity (in the society of singularities) does not apply simply to persons but equally to “singular objects, subjects, places, events and collectives.”17 Religion is one such way of making an object, subject, place, or event, into a singularity – of “turning a space into a place,” as Reckwitz explains. If we imagine a society of singularities fully developed, individuals’ relationships to laws, to objects, events, places, etc., what we imagine might be quite different from our current situations in societies. In this fully developed society of singularities an object might be trivial to one person, there are as many religions as there are individuals; but those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one another’s religion. If they do, they are not fit to be considered a nation. If the Hindus believe that India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dream-land. The Hindus, the Mahomedans, the Parsis and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow-countrymen, and they will have to live in unity, if only for their own interest. In no part of the world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms; nor has it ever been so in India.” M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (Ahmedabad, India: Jitendra T. Desai Navajivan Publishing Home, 1933), 45. 15   Habermas, Between Naturalism and Religion, 292. 16   Ibid., 292. 17   Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities, 52.

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significant to another, holy to a third, while a fourth might feel it belongs in a museum (although such a situation might also describe aspects of contemporary society, we might imagine such dynamics as increased exponentially). In a fully developed society of singularities would every object have the significance of the objects we currently place in museums? Summarizing Reckwitz, Dierken explains that “[. . .] the latter [i. e. economic production] would lead to a “logic of the general,” determined by the process of standardization and rationalization of industrial modernity, which will now be replaced by a “logic of the particular.”18 Would the effects of the “logic of the particular” be as extreme as the effects of the “logic of the general?” Reckwitz, for example, describes the “downsides” to the particular in “organized modernity,” explaining, “the particular or the unique was tendentially regarded as the insignificant, undesirable, or even repulsive “other” that had to be overcome (with violence, if necessary) because it did not fit into the generally valid functional order of society. Such things were treated as vestiges of the premodern, retrograde, and decadent past or – at best – as unintended and riskily peculiar marginal phenomena of modernity.”19 Will a similar attitude be taken against the general, as decades pass in the society of singularities – and an even more extreme attitude against the idea of universality? Reckwitz explains that his “theory of late modernity, and of modernity in general, thus hinges on the distinction between the general and the particular.”20 Reckwitz also explains that “[. . .] the general and the particular do not simply exist. They are both social fabrications.”21 Given this distinction and its social quality, I wonder if the terms “a general” and “a particular” would be the more appropriate conceptualization of the phenomenon – this conceptualization, I find has implications for Dierken’s conclusion regarding “balance with the universal.” When considering the concept of a general and a particular, I am reminded of Hegel’s description of “The law of the heart and the frenzy of self-conceit.”22 This is the individual who attempts to make the convictions of their 18

  Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect.”   Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities, 31. 20  Ibid., 4 21  Ibid. 22   Although Hegel does not provide particular details concerning how such an achievement occurs, he explains, “The individual, then, carries out the law of his heart. This becomes a universal ordinance, and pleasure becomes a reality which absolutely conforms to law.” [Paragraph 372] Here it appears that the individual has succeeded in changing the “authoritative divine and human ordinances,” into the law of its particular heart – and it has furthermore convinced itself that it does this for the benefit of humanity. It is at this point that Hegel explains that this form of consciousness begins to break down because it has designed for itself a contradictory situation. Particularly, Hegel states, “His deed, qua actuality, belongs to the universal; but its content is his own individuality which, as this particular individuality wants to 19

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own particular heart the general rule of society. In  one sense, this general rule is “the general” rule; in another sense – I would suggest a more accurate sense – it is merely “a general” rule. If this law of the heart individual were to ever truly succeed, their general rule would become “a universal.” Now I wonder how many individuals subjected to this universal would not see it as a universal, but rather as the universal? To a certain extent Dierken describes what I think of as precursors to this scenario – but perhaps he describes it more from the context of the general vis-à-vis the particular. In his closing remarks he states, “without balance with the universal, singularities mutate into claims to power that often conceal self-assertation.”23 Given the universal, this statement appears warranted, but if we simply conceptualize the situation with the indefinite article, imagining it as “a universal,” can it also appear as though it is merely a power struggle between the law of the heart and a variety of competing singularities? I wonder if the persistence of the society of singularities into the future decades and perhaps centuries from now may reinforce the tendency to view such power struggles more as between a universal enforced by the power of a singularity, and the desires of other singularities to experience tantamount universality in the society. The way in which Dierken describes the disparity in the amount of likes various YouTubers receive seems closer to the idea of the universalization of a particular, than anything which we might imagine resembles a concrete universal. Finally, with respect to the relationship between the transcendent and the counterfactual – I wonder how precisely we should understand negation in relation to the immanent. When Dierken writes, “Dealing wisely with this transcendent dimension is a central challenge for religion and its church institutions. First of all, this means gaining crucial distance from the temptation to just associate religion with the simplification of one of the configurations;”24 this “gaining crucial distance,” I associate with the attempt to balance culturalism and the phenomenon of the singularity with the universal. In the here preserve itself in opposition to the universal.” [Paragraph 373] We must wonder whether such a situation and outcome must necessarily be the case. What Hegel has shown is that a particular individual can (at least for a brief time) universalize their will in their particular milieu (or perhaps they cannot succeed in universalizing their will but they nevertheless attempt to do just that). Hegel then proceeds to argue that such a universalization is unstable, because in its realization it manifests a contradiction. It remains, however, not thoroughly demonstrated why such a situation could not persist – or to what extent (duration), such a situation could persist. Put another way, if the individual sincerely believes that the law of its heart is the law of all hearts, and that actualizing such a law would be of great benefit to humanity, then it seems unclear why in actualizing such a law, the situation would necessarily “turn against him.” It may seem that “the world” would reject such an individual, but only if they remained unconvinced by him. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 223. 23   Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect.” 24  Ibid.

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and now, however, this is a difficult balancing act, and it is unclear how much should be encouraged and how much should be inhibited with respect to the individual citizen’s expression of their particularity in relation to their personal understanding of the universal. If we take again, for example, Hegel’s individual portrayed as the Law of the Heart, it is clear that society may want to voice concern and to inhibit this individual from having their heart’s law become a universal – regardless of whether this individual portrays their heart’s law as a cause that is secular or religious. What is less clear is how we should understand a particular heart’s law in relation to the idea of the universal. Some dimensions of the singularity actualized in the individual – let us say in the celebrity25 – allow the particular law of the heart of a particular person to be known by a wider, more general audience. When the general audience then ponders the universal as it relates to their particular immanent situation, they ponder it with an added dimension of complication, i. e. the particular heart’s law they are now aware of. There is a significant difference between attempting to enforce a law of a heart, and making society aware of all the various laws of various hearts that there are – and most likely of the grave incompatibility among such laws. Technology – particularly technologies involving the internet and social media (many of the technologies that Reckwitz explains facilitate the society of singularities) – appear to be, among other things, making the laws of individual hearts known to a wider audience. It is unclear as the awareness of disparate laws of hearts gain general recognition (through various social media) whether this will complicate the balancing of particular claims with the universal. But what does seem required – and this is where I find Dierken’s appeal to the transcendent has much merit (though further distinction from the transcendental would add greater clarity for me) – is the cataloging of the hearts’ laws of each singularity and the awareness and acknowledgement of every individual as individual before any authentic balancing can ever take place. Ironically, much balancing must already take place to allow for the awareness of the desires of individuals to be known and comprehended by society. A society cannot grasp the universal in any meaningful way if that society has allowed some of its members to be deemed by other members to be “superfluous” persons.

25   I am reminded of the comparison which Andreas Reckwitz makes between the singularity and the star (celebrity) explaining that, “All typecasting aside, it remains true that if a star wanted to have any power of attraction, he or she would have to be regarded as unique. In a sense, the star thus inherited the role of the artistic subject. Both cases involve the social recognition and glorification of subjective singularity, though now it was not a matter of a unique work of art but rather the performance and glamour of subjects themselves. Throughout organized modernity the star remained an exclusive and inimitable figure who stood outside the reality of the leveled middle-class society. Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities, 72.

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Dierken explains that “the prudent treatment of the transcendent dimension also includes the insight that the bonum commune is reduced to a particular position if it is conceived of as immanent.”26 I find this is the most perplexing and fascinating aspect of Dierken’s recommendation for a prudent handling of the transcendent. Can this recommendation be understood in the context of the society of singularities – one that is fully developed? If we take for a moment the idea of a “point of no return,” we understand what this concept means, for example, with the problem of climate change. So, for example, if carbon emission levels rise to a particular level, the world that we know will no longer be possible – and the consequences will be collectively understood as negative. It might be advantageous to ponder whether a similar point of no return is conceptually plausible when we consider the increasing prominence of the society of singularities. If this trend increases, I ponder whether the idea of the universal, or even the general will be possible; perhaps we will not be able to return to a way of understanding the world and ourselves such that the universal or the general makes sense – in which it exists or can exist. In Reckwitz’s conclusion to The Society of Singularities, which he entitles “Conclusion: The Crisis of the General?” he appears to hint at this real possibility in his concluding sentence when he explains, “The social asymmetries and cultural heterogeneities that it [the society of singularities / the logic of the particular] produces, its unpredictable dynamics of valorizations and devaluations, and its liberation of positive and negative affects will show notions of a rational order, an egalitarian society, homogeneous culture, and a balanced personality structure – ideas still nurtured by some – for what they are: pure nostalgia.”27 Here I wonder if we are already past the point of no return for us to consider approaches which appeal to the transcendent and the universal to help us in recognizing the common good or in structuring our societal interaction with the common good in mind. If we are not yet past the point of no return, it appears as though we are approaching that horizon rapidly. But unlike fathoming such a point of no return with respect to climate change, which is understood as negative, my imagination fails when attempting to assess the cost and benefits of a society of singularities which is fully realized  – one in which the universal or the general becomes impossible. It could be tantamount to hell on earth or to salvation. The only certainty I have concerning this possible future is that it is unfathomable to the current structure of my mind. Reckwitz also seems to hint that the unfathomability of this in the idea of late modernity passing away and changing into something else – something yet to be imagined. If this is truly what is on the horizon, 26   J. Dierken, “Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common (A German Perspective 30 years After Reunification),” in this volume. 27   A. Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020), 319.

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perhaps this is one reason why liberal democracies have come under pressure. Liberal democracies make much less sense if there is not some shared rationality among the members of the society. The only sense they would make is that they were in place to prevent a worse form of government and societal structure from coming into being in their absence and during the lack of unity among the members of society. Reckwitz describes the situation in which the possible passing (or surpassing) of late modernity could occur in the following way by suggesting, “It is worth asking whether the society of singularities is actually still a part of modernity or whether it is not on its way to becoming something entirely different – some sort of successor formation [. . .] After all, modernity is not monolithic or universal. Instead, it is itself a historical process with its own beginning and development. And, at some point, it will also enter the time of its disappearance and transformation into different and subsequent social formations.”28 These are essentially the matters that continue to occupy my attention as I reflect on Dierken’s work “Between Participation and Respect: Liberalism, Culturalism and the Common (A German Perspective 30 Years after Reunification).” If this reflection was reduced to a single question it might be whether “dealing wisely with the transcendent dimension” can bring about a positive outcome akin to a common good in our uncertain future – particularly with respect to our uncertainty over what a society of singularities will develop into. I do not know if it can, but I do subscribe to the idea that our future is not necessarily an inevitable necessitated result of the past events, which led to our present moment, i. e. an unbreakable deterministic chain of events. Rather, I find that our future is determined by how we understand our past, how we understand the inadequacies of our past, relating to the future we want to see actualized – and how we react to our understanding of the past and desires for the future in our present moment. It is in this context that I am most appreciative of Dierken’s appeal to dealing wisely with the transcendent dimension, as the society of singularities continues to develop.

28

  Ibid., 311.

Religious Hope and the End of Humanism Graham Ward I wish to begin by characterizing a newly emerging form of the dispossessed; those not entirely captured by liberation theology. I then wish to subject this characterization to a theological approach owing much to liberation theology; that is, theological reflection from the perspective of the poor and marginalized with attention to praxis. In liberation theology, the people are not just the object of theological engagement, they are also the first subjects being addressed as the often nameless ones within and beyond the ecclesial community. They are, to employ a term used by Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuría, the “crucified people,”1 making manifesting like Christ on the Cross, the sin of the world; its politics, its economics, the systemic injustice of its governments. And this would go for the marginalized, the homeless, the street-workers, the enslaved in our urban landscapes as well as those who, through an identity politics of the 1970s and 80s, bore witness to their social oppression and persecution (women, gays, queers and certain colours and races). The people I am drawing attention to bear some of these characteristics – they are forced often to be migratory, like many of the crucified people, and they are frequently poor. But they are also different because the causes of their oppression are only indirectly social and political. The causes of their oppression come from the very conditions that they have lived close to, in which they have lived subsistently, but through decades and even centuries of learning to adapt have forged a relationship of total dependence on what is at hand, even in hardship, that have enabled them to survive. With subsistence living (whether hunting moose in Alaska or fishing off the Western Cape in South Africa), a family’s or a community’s needs are met. Traditionally, subsistence is defined as self-supporting living on a minimal level. Where it is successful, the family or community thrive (at that minimum level), learn to respect and be grateful for what the land or sea provides and bear the responsibility of tending and maintaining the well-being of what which maintains theirs. I make these the subject of this theological reflection because, by all accounts of climate change, they will 1  See R. Lassalle-Klein, “Jesus of Galilee and the Crucified People: the Contextual Christology of Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuría,” Theological Studies 70, no. 2 (2009): 347 – 376. For a Black South Africa reception of this concept see T. Mofokeng, The Crucified Among the Crossbearers: Towards a Black Christology (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1983).

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vastly increase in number. And any number of people are joining them, as the pandemic has shown us,2 from those on social credit, working for a minimum wage and with zero hours contracts, to those getting by as illegal immigrants. So, what would theology sound like, articulate, if done not just from social margins but, instead, from those living subsistently; those exposed to drought or torrential downpour; those scratching a living who have to be deeply literate in reading the soil and sea, smelling the wind and its direction, scanning the sky? Or theology that is done where the environment is just as implacable (from a war-zone to a trailer park)? These people I am referring to, a  growing majority, inhabit places and situations where life is precariously balanced between the barely manageable and the unbearable; where dependency is deeply written into their very existence and every practice that follows from it; where livelihood and the ability to remain alive are intimately connected; where the soul inhabits contours of the flesh continually and is not shriveled away as a private thing to be pampered and toned; where prayer (in various forms from cries for help to cursing appeals) is a relentless and ongoing petition for grace – vying between protest and abjection? For it is these classes of people, their animals, their subsistent crop growing, their cultivation of roots, cereals, their fishing and locating of clean water who are or will become most deeply affected by climate chaos. It is these classes of people, the partners, children, education, and social opportunities that will be increasingly impacted with unemployment or enslaved employment. All of them fall among those who will also be most affected by the move towards renewable energies that will create economic chaos geopolitically as massive disinvestment takes place in carbon fuels and the prices of oil, coal and gas plummet. Governments in certain parts of the world will become radically destabilized. Millions upon millions will be affected; they will enter (and already are entering) war-zones. What then would theology sound like, articulate, when it is not done on a laptop, one set of intellectuals speaking to another, resourced by a library, composed in a well-lit office with a coffee machine down the corridor – even liberation theology? What would it be to do theology from a sense

2   The relationship between our ecological crisis and the pandemic has been highlighted by several ecologists and biologists. The relationship seems to be one involving a circular causality: breaks within the ecological system and the diminishment of biodiversity has forced certain animals and birds to inhabit human domains more closely and enable certain viruses to become transmissible from animals and birds to humans. COVID‑19 is only one among several virus recently transmitted across species, Zika, Hendra, Ebola, SARS, Middle East respiratory syndrome, and avian influenza are others. See A. Jenkins, S. D. Jupiter, A. Capon, P. Horwitz and J. Negin, “Nested ecology and emergence in pandemics,” The Lancet: Planetary Health 4, no. 8 (August 2020): 302 – 303. In turn, viruses within the human beings mutate, while also changing our behaviour with respect to the environment (more online learning, for example).

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of failure – personal failure as well as a recognition that theology too has failed, always fails? For many of these people do feel they have failed – failed to fulfill the expectations they have put upon themselves; failed to be as strong and resourceful as they believed themselves to be. What would a theology sound like, articulate, that was not driven by a desire for success, recognition from others in the professions, career development, driven by some sense of needing to make a name for ourselves? – a theology of and from the newly marginalized who are joining in their droves the wretched of the earth.3 The reasons I’m asking these questions are twofold and related. First, theology has to be real. It cannot cultivate the projections that are necessary for its articulation and that must always be under erasure and open to critique. If it merely cultivates the projections of sin, say, and salvation, of the common good (which is not immediately a Biblical notion) and beatific Trinitarian relations, then it is trading in placebos, nostalgias, however analytical, critically engaged, and logically argued. In short, it would be another stall in the market of Marx’s opium-dealers. Trickled down through sermons and exegetical guides to reading Scripture, for all its intellectual acuity, if theology is out of touch with what is real for the majority of people in the world, then it would still be offering consoling and accommodating fantasies. Theology is always, to cite Marilynne Robinson, “the map[ping] of what we know in very human ways that we can know it.”4 Robinson is acutely aware, with artists pursuing their intuitions of the real and religious people in their faithful commitment to God, we are always encroaching upon the unnameable; what is beyond all our thought and its articulations. But if theology maps onto so little of what we know, then its apophasis is spurious. To be, in St. Paul’s words, “ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1) means pointing and appealing to the hiddenness of God in the world. And there is no site where divine opacity is more evident than human misery or ecological devastation. In the face of these situations we are left asking what is the good life and where is God’s promise of a land of milk and honey. Mark’s Gospel (10:17 – 23): As Jesus started on his way [odon], a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher [didaskale agathe],” he asked, “what must I do [ti poiêsô] to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good [agathos] – except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.” Jesus looked at him and loved [êgapêsen] him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then 3   The reference is to Franz Fanon’s ground-breaking study of Black, colonised lives: Wretched of the Earth, trans. C. Farrington (London: Penguin, 1967). 4   M. Robinson, When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 35.

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come, follow [akolouthei] me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad [lupoumenos], because he had great wealth [ktêmata polla]. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”

This is a rich passage for understanding the good life and its relation to God. Unlike in Plato the ‘good’ is not “beyond being” [epekeina tês ousias].5 Such a perspective places the ‘good’ beyond all categories that we human beings have for grasping its nature. For the good is then uncreated as God is uncreated and we will be left knowing only the goods we create for ourselves. But Mark’s young man uses ‘good’ of the Teacher who walks His way [odon]. There is a recognition by the man of an analogical participation with Christ in God. The good is to be lived in this life among sinner and saints in and through the incarnation of God in Christ. The young man asks not how he should act (which would be prassô), but what creative activity [ti poiêsô] he should be engaged in. Perhaps it is this very recognition of the divine ecology of the good that Jesus responds to with love [êgapêsen]. There is a calling to discipleship that comes with this recognition: akolouthei involves both a hearing and following in obedience.6 It is the very dynamic of discipleship, and unlike others who ask to join Jesus’s disciples in Marks Gospel and are dissuaded, this young man is invited to become a disciple. But he turns it down and grieves [lupoumenos]. Following demands the sacrificial giving of “everything you have”; to  be “a  living sacrifice”, in Paul’s terms (Rom. 12:1) and the young man owns a lot of things [ktêmata polla]. It is the ownership that stalls his desire to act creatively and in accordance with the good. He reckons then as “his own,” but it is the God who created all things in and through Christ who comes “to his own [ta idia]” (John 1:11). The young man owns nothing really, so the dispossessed Jesus demands is only coming into an awareness of this. As Paul writes to the people in the church at Corinth, what do you have they you did not receive (1 Cor. 4:7). The divine dispossession in giving dilates the space in which more can be received. It is not property as such that matters, but the disposition towards it. For the disposition required has to prefer the giving and reception above the having and grasping on to. And this is the Christological basis for liberation theology’s “preferential option for the poor”: divine and liberal distribution. Meanwhile, the goodness that is the Fathers alone, while having material impact and witness in the world through following Christ, remains above and 5   Plato, Republic 509b8. This statement comes, of course, in Plato’s Sun analogy and debates are lengthy as to whether the divine Good plays a regulatory role with respect to all our language of the good, but a constitutive one in which all lesser goods participate in some manner in the divine Good. 6  See R. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following: Christology and the Ecstatic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

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beyond it. The ‘good’, then, can only remain (and abide) analogically: as a participation is what is hidden beyond the apophatic horizon of all human understanding.7 And for theology to forget that is dangerous and ideological, particularly so in cultures where diversity is valued highly. It betrays what is real. Too easily, we can get bogged down trying to answer the question of ‘what is real?’ when we return to those whose subsistent livelihoods are threatened or erased. Pluralism can often be a synonym for the free-market in lifestyle and opinion, and with the people and in situations I am talking about lifestyle choices are not available. Pluralism can often be a synonym for moral and aesthetic relativism, which can encourage forgetfulness, ostrich mentalities and indifference. With the people and situations I am talking about, there’s a drastic limitation put on pluralism. Other perspectives beyond the most immediate are not available. Real is not something you fashion or you buy among a range of options off the shelf. Real is what you can’t change. It’s what’s on offer, the brutality of which you want to but can’t avoid – like starvation or thirst or homelessness or infection or the existential insecurities of war. There’s a lot, the majority of people out there, living in this way; where avoidance of the real is a luxury left to dreams. Theology has to be about truth – another shibboleth that fractures into endless moral and metaphysical debates in pluralism. “Speak the truth to one another in love,” St. Paul advocates to the Ephesians  (4:25), and immediately, if you are at all like me, we fall into the habit made famous by Pontius Pilate: “What is the truth?” “Whose truth?” But one thing you learn as a man attracted to other men (while being spiritually nurtured in a religious community that views such an attraction as perverted and sinful) – the one thing you learn is: whatever cognitive dissonance in your mind, the way you read the Bible or what the elders praying over you tell you, your body doesn’t lie.8 What I’m getting it at here is that, at the level of the material and corporeal, there is a truth known and recognized at cellular, neural, hormonal and muscular levels of what makes us living. It is registered and responded to a full half second before we can even begin to articulate the question “What is truth?” and well before any will to act or refrain from acting can kick in. In fact, there 7   As that Christian master of the apophatic tells us: “the Cause of all things loves all things in the superabundance of his goodness, that because of this goodness he makes all things, brings all things to perfection, holds all together, returns all things. The divine yearning is Good seeking good for the sake of the Good,” Pseudo-Dionysius, “The Divine Names” (IV.10, 708B) in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. C. Luibheid and P. Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 81. 8   Corporate bodies can lie, as too much experience of them had shown us: they protect their own. But my statement refers to an individual’s physical body. It can be made to appear what it is not, of course – there would be no cosmetics industry without this possibility – but pain, sorrow, shame, joy, peace, desire the body cannot disguise: they will have physiological effects.

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is some evidence that the muscular trigger to act arrives prior to any cognitive decision; and the cognitive decision (the agency) is only responding and following through what the body has already begun to enact.9 And all of this goes on invisibly. Flesh, whether human or nonhuman, is deeply attentive to what is, for the most part, unseen motions, changes and chances. It is from sentience that we make sense. Which is to say: my body knows the created good (and the bad) well before my ideas start firing across those myriad synaptic gaps. For me, bringing these two reflections – those forced to live subsistently when the even their subsistence is under threat and a theological construal of the Good – together, is where the real and the truthful cohere: at the most primordial. That is: effecting what is innermost to all things – life. This is where the physiological (biology, chemistry and physics) and the environmental (cultural, economic, historical, geographical and meteorological) meets the ontological. The real and the true are not something we concoct for ourselves, however much mind and brain process all the ad extra sensation there is; however liquid the flows of signifiers and signifieds might be; whatever the various earlier idealisms of Descartes, Hume and Kant tell us. If God is good (agathos), and immanent too while also beyond being – where epekeina is an adverb related to distance: that is, far beyond being NOT otherwise than being – then any notion of the common good that is not just reducible to either ‘goods in common’ or ‘the promotion of general welfare’, has its theological roots here. Aquinas notes: “all things other than God are not their own existence, but share in existence [sed participant esse].”10 That participation is what is most common, most universal – on the level of life. Our being-in-theworld is what is most common and, in and through God, most good. Hence, I return to my opening question: what would theology sound like, articulate, if attending to the perspective of those living dependent upon the land or sea whose crops are washed away in cyclones (Mozambique) and fishing rights curtailed11; those exposed to drought and hunger; those scratching a living who have to be deeply literate in reading the soil and the currents, smelling the wind and its direction, scanning the sky; or those living with the anxieties of unemployment and shop closures in the wake of ecologically related pandemics? These are those “little ones” of Matthew 18, who I take more broadly to be the vulnerable, and Christ’s particular solicitude and advocacy of our solicitude for them. It is these vulnerable who are and will  9

  For a discussion of the issues here see M. S. Gazzaniga, Who’s In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (London: Robinson, 2012). 10   ST 1.q.44.a.1. 11  See L. Green, Rock | Water | Life: Ecology and Humanities for a Decolonial South Africa (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).

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continue to be the first and most exposed to major changes to their environments. And I include those caught up in war zones who have become dependent upon what they can scavenge – whose environment is being obliterated. These people and their animals live close to zero level, in that balance between existing and not existing where a sense of having failed is always present. And, as Aquinas reminds us: they participate in God at a fundamental level – as we do also. We, that is, who live wrangling over the supply and demand, the economics and politics of the goods we have in common and the promotion of general welfare. Now it would be perfectly reasonable at this point (and even necessary) for you to remind me that doing such a theology from such a perspective is highly problematic for me. I have job security (though the nature of the job and its demands are changing and chronically stressful). I have a pension (invested in I know not what and assumed to be future-proofed against failing). I have a comfortable office in a well-endowed College, in an equally well-endowed university. I could add I’m white, I’m male and I’m the inheritor of colonial exploitation that has greatly advantaged and even made possible the western culture I enjoy. How can I do theology attending to the common good at the level I believe necessary, given every notion of the common good arguments on offer are coloured by every advantage my situation affords?12 But given what I have been outlining about the real, the true and my existential participation in “all things [. . . that] are not their own existence” but a participation in the God who is good, then my theology is merely an exercise in wishful dreaming (however logically coherent) if I don’t try to appreciate that which is far beyond my privilege. That takes imagination – though I have some first-hand experience of the situation for black South Africans. And I carry also a dogging sense that I have failed, which may sound strange, but it is true. Nevertheless, imagination is powerful and can work beyond the given – not only in what it produces (for good and bad) but in what it conceives possible, and the transformation in practices and the habits of the heart that it can inculcate. Imagination is shot through with desire, emotion and inchoate beliefs that govern the relationship between the body, its responses, its practices, its beliefs.13 No doubt, the work of the imagination will encourage and require projection – as it does with every aspect of theological reflection. But imagination also – as has been recognized since the early years of eighteenth century – facilitates participation. It is the basis of empathy and 12

  For an account of common good arguments as read by a theologian, see P. Riordan, SJ, A Grammar of the Common Good (London: Continuum, 2008) and, more recently, Global Ethics and Global Common Goods (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 13  See G. Ward, Unimaginable: What We Can Imagine and What We Can’t (London: I. B. Tau­ ris, 2018).

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compassion – the transferal of emotion in one situation to another situation. The prefix of compassion is the relational conjunction ‘with’; it is a passion that accompanies. Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche communities that work with the severally disabled, speaks about the need to cultivate a disposition of accompanying.14 The transferals of pathos are assisted by mirror-neurons – first discovered in monkeys; it’s not just a human activity. It is an evolved means of social cohesion. I must, then, imagine myself into the ‘common’, participative perspective. For, as I recognize painfully, my perspective is too privileged to offer more than some reflections for those already belonging or wishing to belong to my class (whatever that is). But watching the news of what is going on in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Israel or watching the villages wiped away by floods in Indonesia, stormed by fires in Australia, and the numbers of hungry and dispossessed rapidly escalating as a result of a global pandemic; and hearing from Bank of England governor warnings of the market change and geopolitical repercussions not just of climate change, but the economic shift to renewable energies – I must register the world from where I see it and actively seek out those with greater access than mine to the situations affecting the “little ones.” I am, in my own way, also a “little one.” Then I need to reflect theologically upon the notion of the common good from a radically different perspective. If I don’t do this I’m just moving intellectual deckchairs on some well-heeled level of the Titanic. And that is neither good news nor salvific. In fact, it is dangerously delusionary. It will encourage those I am most immediately addressing in the church and academy in their pious passivity and its reflections become, at best, consoling placebos or nostalgic reverie or, at worse, ideology. Theology, as history and current experience witnesses, so easily slides into ideology. This possibility can never be erased, but theology can allow itself to be open to challenge and speak from elsewhere, and it must speak what is real and what is true because that is exactly where others can interrupt and say “not in my experience,” “not from where I’m standing.” No discourse is neutral. Secularism is much to be thanked for enabling theologians to recognize this. Discourse, even theological discourse, is produced from somewhere. If people are reading it, passing it around, recommending it, then it is implicated in all the dynamics of cultural production, salaries, pensions, careers, publishers’ profit margins etc. In short: governed by the spirit of capitalism. It is also part of legitimation processes and the constitution of authority. This means I have first to listen. Imagination has to be fuelled. Its creativity does not operate ex nihilo. It is responsive, so it has to attend. The verb ‘to tend’ and its related verbs ‘to portend’ and ‘to attend’ have become increas14

 See J. Vanier, Becoming Human (New York: Paulist Press, 1998).

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ingly important to me as I develop my theological account of ethical life.15 In Latin, tendo is to stretch or aim at and attendo is to stretch towards or give heed to. But in English to tend is also to care for and so to attend to and to pay attention to. Tending is a pastoral act – like tending sheep. I contend that the act of prayer is to attend to; attentiveness is its dominant mode. In this way I don’t think there is any difference between the act of prayer and the levels of attentiveness needed in any creative task, from making a table to painting a still life. Attentiveness is not the same as concentration. To attend is a disposition of the whole body – like prayer (does it differ at all?), it’s a mode of existence operative at levels closer to instinct and intuition; closer to the relays between sentience and sense making. It is fundamentally participative. As an artist friend once said to me: I am not painting what I see but what I sense. To attend is a silent knowing going on at deep levels of embodied mindfulness. This is what I mean by listening to and imaginatively aligning ourselves with the circumstances in which the “little ones” exist. I think, then, my notion of the common good will have less to do with human flourishing and wellbeing (the preoccupation of much religious thinking and Templeton grants at present in the western world) and much more to do with coping, getting by, riding the troughs and crests of circumstance. The western notion of human flourishing is shot through with mythic resonance most clearly expressed in Weber’s Protestant work ethic and the American dream – notions of the naturalised relationship (a moral relationship) between providence, prosperity and working hard, family cohesion and property ownership. Coping and getting by require deep corporeal indwelling in a situation in order for existence to gauge and manage what takes place and keep the balance between the inside and the outside, being alive and all the threats to its continuance. It is governed also by an ethical code based in a disciplined and embodied frugality (even abstinence), courage, hospitality and the extended family. ‘Coping’ is a good Middle English term from the Old French couper, which still means ‘to cut’. It came to mean to cover or to form curved arches that bridge two free-standing columns. It is metaphorically applied to the human condition in states of high existential instability. Life lies in a thin membrane between the internal body and the external body of the environment. Coping is about getting the balance right, and on it depends our ability to stay alive. Flourishing is several levels up; it’s the cathedrals that can be built around the coping-stones of its Norman and Romanesque arches. It is where the environment can be cultivated – where goods in common are shared, as the load is shared, across the whole social structure. So, what I’m trying to get at is the participative good upon which some qualified and disciplined flourishing 15  See G. Ward, How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) and Another Kind of Normal: Ethical Life II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press).

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might be possible; where the uncreated goodness of God meets that creative good we long for in participating in God. Theologically and biblically, reflection here has to begin with creation – that which God said repeatedly in being fashioned that it was good (Hebrew tov) and eventually “very good” [meov tov]. This is not just an aesthetic or even moral term; it is about wellbeing, the cultivation of life in peaceful reciprocation, and it leads directly into the J narrative about paradise. For Augustine, for Eriugena, for Aquinas, creation is a Trinitarian activity, and given the abstraction of Trinitarian theology it seems very far from a place to begin attempting to do theology from the perspective of the most vulnerable. But I take my cue from the 5th Century prayer in Old Irish believed to have been composed by St. Patrick. It’s most familiar as a Victorian translation for a hymn:      I bind unto myself today      the strong Name of the Trinity,      by invocation of the same,      the Three in One, and One in Three.16

But a stricter translation relates that binding of Three in One to creation:      I believe the Trinity in the Unity.      The Creator of the Universe.

I start here because in the 5th century western coast of Ireland and Scotland, Celtic Christians exposed themselves to all the austerities of the elemental. Life was hard even if you weren’t a saint in the making. People lived the land, belonged to the land, the give and take of its weather; that precarious balance I referred to as ‘coping’. They still do. And this lyric is not simply a credo, a doctrinal statement to be affirmed. It is also a performative prayer. “I bind” announces an incantation; the drawing down of Trinitarian protection, a calling upon the Creator by those who are created, those who need the strong name (literally the virtue, the power) of divine, uncreated Trinitarian grace. Nothing else will enable life to continue, persevere, and be sustained in this environment. The prayer is an act of resistance; the resistance of hope – hope born in desperation; hope that is as basic as life itself. Dum spiro spero as Theo­ critus and Cicero expressed it: “while I breathe, I continue to hope.” It’s a prayer of absolute dependency on the goodness of God, the Creator. It’s an invocation of the persistence of the invisible in the all too visible realities that are being faced, endured. It is as much the weaving of a protective spell as an appeal to the goodness of God out of sheer necessity. It’s a survival strategy.

16   J. R. Watson, An  Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 60.

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The second “binding,” like the next outer wall of a curtain castle, is the virtue of Christ’s ministry – incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, second coming. The third is where we all come in:      I bind to myself today      The virtue of the love of seraphim,      In the obedience of angels,      In the hope of resurrection unto reward,     In prayers of Patriarchs,     In predictions of Prophets,     In preaching of Apostles,     In faith of Confessors,      In purity of holy Virgins,      In deeds of righteous men.17

We can play around with the gendering here: the purity of Holy Virgins need not exclude the males who are virtuous, just as the deeds of the righteous need not exclude the women who are upright. What is central again is dependency. The protection is communal and trans-generational; the binding and the bonds here are sacred and part of the outflow of the Creator God’s goodness. It reaches back in time to those who, like the seraphim and angels, live on in a different temporality. But their presence remains strong; their power to protect those continuing in this world remains strong; and their power lies in their words, their disposition towards loving, obedience, and holiness, and their acts. These continue to affect; continue to have present consequences. Their words and deeds, the accounts of their holy disposition must be told and retold literally through time, like the memory and presence of the ancestors, because they are dynamically concerned with sustaining and inspiring the hope. It is, to cite St. Paul (Romans 1.17), the transposal of revelation “from faith to faith.” If the second binding is about Christ as ‘God with us’, then the third binding is about ‘us with each other’ and the divine virtue that accords with the binding of each to the other. We’re back with ‘accompanying’ again. Accompaniment is not an optional add-on; it’s a necessity because there are forces operating upon the land that are chthonic (for the Celtic monks demonic). ‘Saint-making’ is not used loosely. There is a spiritual formation that takes place in austere places. It would not escape the early Christian imaginary that the vulnerable are most exposed to the spiritual and most exposed to all that counters the spiritual and which runs contrary to accompaniment: looking after your own needs at the expense of others. A depth of human nature is revealed in those living on the edge, those coping that too much flourishing cossets. There is a receptivity here; a vast openness to receive. Accompaniment is necessary because the alternatives are wolverine. Kindness is sacrificial, but 17

 Ibid.

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without the commerce of kindness and the giving that may not be returned, everyone is open to vicious envies. So, I imagine a theology reflecting upon this situation, and albeit negatively upon the notion of the common good, needs to speak about sin, because it’s sin that vitiates accompaniment and compassion and empathy. There’s an interesting comment by the narrator in Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock on the villain, Pinkie, who, damaged himself, uses everyone to make his own living (which includes living with himself ) more controllable. The narrator is not shy in describing Pinkie’s nature theologically: Pinkie’s nature is evil, but the evil is compounded because, as the narrator tells us “The imagination hadn’t awoken. That was his strength. He couldn’t see through other people’s eyes or feel with their nerves.”18 In acute situations, where lives cope and sometimes hang in the balance, the presence, the temptations, of sin are as prominent as the opportunities for small acts of human kindness. Just as on the Cross, while Jesus is enacting the salvation of the world, sin is most exposed. Spiritual formation dramatically brings out the masked, reactive violence in people that refuse to or cannot accompany. In this context, though living is subsistent – a subsistence that accords with, one might even say is analogous to, our not belonging to ourselves. We return to Aquinas: creatures “are not their own existence.” We subsist and we subcreate. We have no right, human or otherwise, to take possession of ourselves; to claim something by virtue of being the kind of thing we are. We are, to use a term in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, “ta idia” – the Word came to what belonged to the Word in fashioning it (John 1:11). Our being is derived and sustained by participation. What does this mean for the good – the good that is which issues forth from the uncreated goodness of God in creation and therefore the common, universal good? This means, first, that to be is already to be participating in the good and that participation finds its meaning and telos in being good – bearing witness, enacting and returning all things to the good. Secondly, and as a corollary, the good, to be good, has to be shared through accompaniment. The bread from heaven gathered and hoarded overnight was mouldy and inedible the following morning, according to the Book of Exodus. In Matthew 6:34 we are told by Christ that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof ”; but that goes for the good as well. The good is good only in a dynamic economy of donation: its continual giving and passing on. If it is stashed away it will no longer be good. It will simply be a commodity, a reification to be owned, loaned, traded, owed and stolen. As such, the good gets caught up and betrayed in the webs and trafficking of self-orientating sinfulness. So, all living is subsistent and participatory, sharing. It is not an accidental property of what all creatures are – like relation, which is an accidental property. Let me be clear about this. I am using Aristotelian terminology. An 18

  G. Green, Brighton Rock (London: Heinemann, 1970), 52.

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accident is a property of something that has form. Having form, substance is brought into relation. It is does not have relation prior to form. Of course, participation and sharing are relational categories, but being-in-relation concerns formation not form. Relationships are accidental; while being-in-relation is potential to all substance. Creatures are beings-in-relation to. The relations are fashioned as the creature lives and moves; relationships are forged (or refused). What I am suggesting is that sharing and accompaniment inheres to the existence of all things such that relationality is a living expression of its nature. It  is an expression of the uncreated goodness of the Triune God, in and through its created capacity. It is this participation in the good that sustains hope in hopelessness. It is this participation that radically qualifies the hubris of humanism where God is, to use a term by Bruno Latour describing the condition of we moderns, debarred – ruled as off side.19 I say: to participate in the goodness of our subsistence; to accept it, to learn then from those who live this elsewhere and know its vulnerabilities – from the cocoa farmers in Ghana to the fisher-farmers living literally on the edge in western Ireland and Scotland – ‘qualifies’ humanism. Ah, you might be thinking, we have finally come to the title of his essay. If the divine good inheres in all things created, then, despite sin, it inheres in human beings also. It is not the vanquishing of humanism as such. Humanism has greatly helped us to see we are as a species, a humanum. But humanum doesn’t live in an ecological vacuum. The human body is situated not only in the world but towards the world; être au monde as Merleau-Ponty describes it.20 Being au monde also qualifies the anthropocentrism of humanism. Nevertheless, it is not the vanquishing of human rights, that I am advocating; but rather the reorientation towards another end: the uncreated goodness of God. Without that true end, which begins in recognizing we are created and we cannot fashion our own ends (according to the wishes and aspirations of our all too human ideologies) without falling into sin, then the common good, a sharing in the common existence and dependence of all things (human and nonhuman) just becomes, to cite Bruce Springsteen, “dancing in the dark,” and trailer-park desperation is replicated everywhere.      I get home in the evenin’      and I ain’t got nothing to say.      I come home in the mornin’,      I go to bed feelin’ just the same way.      I ain’t nothing but tired.      Man I’m just tired and bored with myself.

19   B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. C. Porter (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). 20   M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 2002).

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What this exercise of the theological imagination enables – trying to see things from the perspective of those radically disadvantaged and living close to the edge – is a reversal of the way we view charity in our urban environments, doing theology on our laptops, in our offices, in the libraries that are available (and open during a pandemic). For subsistence living, which is now a condition many millions are having to accept and which, simultaneously, is threatened world-wide by climate change, is a lesson to us who attend to it. Our charity to them is not a handout, endlessly required, creating dependencies that vitiate their own initiative to act. In the wake of the developing climate and ecological crisis, we need to learn from those who know their dependency upon the land. Learn from their living ethics; not just pity; not just thank God for our material securities. That living close to the land hones a humility; for nothing can be taken for granted.

Who Are We Talking About? Trevor W. Kimball

I am in broad agreement with what I take to be the primary emphasis of Professor Ward’s essay. I hope that the exhortation for theologians to take on the hard work of seeking out those in very different circumstances to our own and listening carefully to them does not fall on deaf ears. And I was challenged by his reframing of the problem of the common good in terms of that uncreated goodness, beyond being, which is indeed common to all. The few questions I would like to pose revolve around these themes. My first question is, who exactly are we talking about? Who are these “little ones” to whom Ward refers? He makes a distinction early in his essay between the marginalized upon whom liberation theologies focus and those unseen, nameless others scraping a subsistence living from the arid rock or the war zone or the disintegrating coast. This distinction rests on the cause of that oppression: those living under the condition of subsistence are only indirectly affected by the social and political. Ward calls these people “a newly emerging form of the dispossessed.” I wonder how “newly emerging” the phenomena of subsistence living really is. It seems to me that subsistence living was the norm for thousands (and thousands) of years and is now only an outlier relative to the more straightforwardly novel comfort of our contemporary lives in developed nations. Regardless of how novel the phenomenon of subsistence is, I also wonder how sharply we can draw this distinction between those marginalized and captured by liberation theology and those marginalized and not captured by liberation theology. The ones who live from and with the land may not be subsisting on the outskirts of our cities or in the spaces between our communities – they may not be on the literal margin of our field of vision, but surely today they exist on the margin of global awareness. Is there really such a qualitative difference between dependency on and attunement to these landscapes and the dependency on and attunement to urban landscapes, or, if you will, the urban jungle? The essay reserves an interesting place in its argument for the land itself and, in particular, for this special awareness of dependency, for those deeply and necessarily attuned to the small rhythms and faint heartbeat of desolate landscapes. Indeed, in each of the cases you mention, the environment is ravaged to the point where it can only barely

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be inhabited, and in this situation you seem to identify something of human nature that is both real and true, formed like a diamond under the immense, nearly intolerable pressure of survival. On the other hand, I believe there is a special kind of knowing embedded in our cities and those who inhabit them. This holds true across the wide spectrum of people who walk daily through, for example, downtown Los Angeles. Are those who struggle deeply to make a life in this environment less aware of the various networks of dependencies with which you are concerned? Are they more in control of their environment? Is this environment more plastic and thereby more distant from the inescapable real? Or, at least, that seems to be the wager: for if we know what we’ll find ahead of time, then what’s the point of listening? We can go further. If living close to the land is crucial for the argument, then does the person who is profoundly aware of its dynamics and our intimate, interwoven dependence upon it, does this person also need to be struggling with a subsistence existence? Now, of course, the experiences of these two people would be profoundly different, the one deeply aware but secure, the other desperately aware and insecure. But I ask because Ward argues that a depth of humanity is revealed in the experience of subsistence and also that this depth is closely related to dependence. Now I’m far from a utopian thinker, and this may seem like the impossible possibility, but imagine for a moment that human material needs are met and no one scratched a subsistence living any longer. Does Ward think we would lose something important, some witness to a unique depth of humanity? Would we lose what Ward calls a “receptivity [. . .] a  vast openness to receive,” a “depth of human nature that too much flourishing cossets”? Could we instead cultivate this receptivity through intentional practices designed to help us recognize our dependence and reorient our lives around the divine goodness in which we participate? Now I don’t think Ward is advocating for subsistence living. Rather, he issues an important warning: listen first. Truly listen. Don’t charge in with good intentions and poor understanding, which is to say, without listening. As he reminds us, coping supports flourishing, and not the other way around. But if all this is the case, then how is his theological program really different from the liberation theologies he distinguishes it from at the beginning of the essay? Or is it not a theological program at all, but rather an exhortation to go seek new theologians, like St. Patrick, at which whose feet we can sit, listen, and learn? I turn now to the second theme I mentioned at the top of this response, namely the role of divine goodness to which we all commonly inhere. This was a thought provoking extension of the topic of our common good. This distinction between uncreated divine goodness and our creaturely dependence

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upon it is a crucial distinction for Christian theology. But I do have a few questions about the work that this most common good, this inescapably common good helps us accomplish. If what we are looking at here is the distinction between Creator and creature, then this distinction is either true of everything or it is true of nothing. Creation is all encompassing, and as such the Creator / creature distinction does not really help us make further distinctions regarding individual creatures or created goods. It is, to use Professor Dalferth’s terminology, an orientation. And yes, I think it does qualify humanism – for those who accept it. It does provide meaning for action – for those who accept it. It does move us to the disposition of accompaniment – for those who accept it. And, of course, if you do accept it, then you accept that it’s true of everyone and everything. And if we accept it, it means that everything is equally dependent, though not everyone equally recognizes their dependency. Surely this places one ‘relation’ at the center of our creatureliness and not as an accidental property. So my question is this: How does dependence on the environment inform our ultimate dependence and participation in the divine? The distinction between Creator and creature is not a biological one. Can it really be felt by that bodily knowing of which Ward writes? Is coping with subsistence the best analogy for this all encompassing dependence? I guess that if we want to find out, we’ll have to listen and, hopefully, learn.

The Igbo Apprenticeship System (Imu-Ahia) and Anthropological Solidarity Reimagining Common Good and Autonomy in Africa’s Economic Context Henry Omeike 1. Introduction A couple of years ago while studying for a graduate degree at a school in the mid-west of the United States, I learned about a Foundation that provided grants for which a key requirement was for student-recipients to live in community while studying. I was new to the country and the thought of paying people to live together was incomprehensible to me, having come from an African country where individuality and sociality are enmeshed. I recall walking by this building meant for the “intentional living” community one summer evening and silently wondering what would have caused this type of “strange” venture. All my efforts to make sense of my experience failed. By this time though, I had noticed that in contrast to people in Nigeria, my country of origin, Americans lead an individualistic, private life. I had also learned that many U. S. individuals, families, and communities are dealing with unsettling health challenges, which I had surmised were not unrelated to the absence of communal support. Based on my observations, I concluded that a Foundation like the one I had mentioned earlier might be trying to remedy the harm that individualism has caused to society. This was the best answer I could give at that time – recall that I was a novice. Now, four years later, I feel that I can provide a more coherent response. Could it be that the Foundation’s support of intentional living was a way of responding to the anthropological question: Who are we? Could it be that by this act the Foundation tries to convey its notion of human beings as relational? Are humans essentially individual or social beings? If we accept, for the sake of argument, that humans are constituted by individuality, is it possible also to say that humans are social beings, with natural obligation to seek the good of others in the society? As far back as the fifth century BCE, Greek philosophers were divided along the lines of individuality and sociality. The Soph-

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ists’ rejection of the idea of a natural obligation to others or the society1 was opposed by Aristotle, who believes that citizens should keep civic laws for the sake of the common good.2 Thus, from inception, the notion of the common good opposed any claim to autonomy without social responsibility. Autonomy, derived from the Greek words autos (self ) and nomos (rule, governance, or law), translates “self-rule.”3 It is sometimes used as a principle or as a value. For instance, while the British philosopher John Stuart Mill views it as the autonomy of action and thought of an individual engaged in the social world, his compatriot, Immanuel Kant, relates autonomy to the will and to ethical value.4 Since the essay focuses on anthropology as it relates to autonomy and sociality, I will not go into detail about the two uses of autonomy illustrated by these philosophers. Suffice it to say that autonomy denotes the state of being “one’s own person or being able to act according to one’s beliefs or desires without interference.”5 By now it is obvious that autonomy, from the onset, has been used by some philosophers to oppose the idea of the common good. However, this seeming adversarial position seems absent among theologians who wrestle with the question, who are we? In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, theologians who grappled with this questions fall into two broad groups: those that prioritize individuality as constitutive of the human person, for example, German theologian, Karl Rahner, who views a person as a mystery that is open toward grace offered as God’s self-communication,6 and others who focus on relationality, for instance, Orthodox bishop, John Zizioulas, who claims that we are constituted in and by our relations with others, especially, with the Trinity.7 Although these theologians tend to emphasize one aspect of the human person, yet they do agree that humans are individual and social beings. That said, it may be plausible at this point to say that how one conceives the human person – as individuality or sociality – determines one’s commitment both to building and participating in community, and to the larger, common good. This brings us to the economic question. In a globalized world dominated by neoliberal economic ideals founded on an anthropology that is based on

1   W. P. Pomerleau, “Western Theories of Justice,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. J. Fieser and B. Dowden (https:// www.iep.utm.edu / eds / ) (6 / 22 / 2022). 2  Ibid. 3   G. J. Agich, “Key Concepts: Autonomy,” Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 1, no. 4 (1994): 287. 4  Ibid. 5  Ibid. 6   K. Rahner, Theological Investigations, vol. 4, trans. K. Smyth (Baltimore, OH: Helicon Press, 1966), 175. 7   J. D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, ed. P. McPartlan (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 112.

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individual freedom and market autonomy, is there still a place for the common good? Specifically, in the African context that has urgent need of anthropological and economic solidarity, how would neoliberal anthropology and economic practice support the common good? I recently stumbled on an article written about Ejiem, a 9‑year-old Kenyan boy who was mourning the death of his sheep, Merireng. What caught my attention was the picture of his unkempt body surrounded by the carcasses of animals rotted or rotting in the noonday sun – victims of drought. Ejiem tells the journalist: “When the goats die, we go hungry. When they die, we have nothing.”8 The figure of this hungry boy encapsulates the story of a continent whose people have been victims of economic injustice as a result of slavery, colonialism, and neoliberal economic-slavery in cahoots with African “Big man” politicians.9 It raises a question about why, despite billions of dollars in foreign aid as well as several billions of dollars more in developmental efforts in Africa, millions still die of hunger and disease?10 Given Africa’s link to a global economic system that, many persuasively argue, is rigged against it,11 how might neoliberalism’s stress on autonomy in the market impact Africa’s economic growth as well as its social cohesion? This essay explores the western concept of the common good along with its underlying anthropology and how it relates to autonomy and society. It seeks to understand whether there is a connection between neoliberal economic autonomy and Africa’s economic doldrums. It then examines the Catholic Christian principle of solidarity to understand how well it has succeeded or failed as a response to individualism in the market. Next, focusing on the example of the Igbo apprenticeship system, it gestures toward African anthropology and notion of community as resources that might expand Christian solidarity for a more robust response to effects of extreme economic individualism in Africa. Four central questions will move the discussion along. First, can we validly talk about the individual separate from society? Second, how adequately can solidarity maintain balance between personal freedom and social responsibility? Third, how can African anthropology and community illuminate Christian solidarity? Fourth, in what way can Imu-Ahia (Igbo12 apprenticeship system) be said to embody individuality and sociality, and what  8   Worldvision, “Facing famine: Battling hunger with hope in East Africa” (https:// www. worldvision.org / hunger-news-stories / facing-famine-hunger-hope-east-africa) (6 / 22 / 2022).  9   D. Leonard and S. Straus, Africa’s Stalled Development: International Causes and Cures (Boulder, CO / London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 1 – 8. 10   World Health Organization reports that Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia, account for more than 80 per cent of the 5.3 million under-five deaths in 2018 (https:// www. who.int / news-room / fact-sheets / detail / children-reducing-mortality) (6 / 22 / 2022). 11   Ibid., 104. 12   The Igbo people are an ethnic group native to the present-day south-central and southeastern Nigeria noted for their success in commerce and industry.

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might it offer for conceptualizing an alternative framework for understanding how Christianity should approach autonomy, solidarity and the common good, particularly in Africa? The essay argues that given Africa’s persistent economic downturn, Christian economic solidarity would derive much benefit from mining the African notion of community and the Igbo apprenticeship system for alternative ways to address the continent’s economic gap. I begin with autonomy, sociality and the common good.

2. Autonomy, Sociality, and the Common Good While some people deny the existence of the common good, there are others who affirm its existence, an indication of its long and contested history. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni describes it (also called “the public interest” or “public goods”) as “those goods that serve all members of a given community and its institutions, and, as such, includes both goods that serve no identifiable particular group, as well as those that serve members of generations not yet born.”13 Within Greco-Roman philosophy, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero agree there is a public good out there which when pursued promotes personal good. Plato defines “the good” as that which “every soul pursues, and for the sake of which it does everything.”14 He holds that the greatest social good is unity, which a society achieves by each person contributing to the common good.15 Aristotle on his part states that a polis “exists for the sake of a good life.”16 He avers that as political animals, human beings lead a good life by contributing to the common good.17 On his part, Cicero defines a “people” or “republic” as “not any collection of human beings brought together in any sort of way, but as an assemblage of people in large numbers associated in agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good.”18 By now it should be obvious that these philosophers are in agreement concerning the inseparability of individual good from public good. Among Christian theologians Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas offer important descriptions of the common Good. In City of God Augustine accepts Cicero’s definition of the common good and further specifies the content of 13   A. Etzioni, Common Good, 1. PDF file, December 31, 2019 (https:// icps.gwu.edu / sites /  g / files / zaxdzs1736 / f / downloads / Common%20Good.Etzioni.pdf ) (6 / 22 / 2022). 14   Plato, The Republic, 505e1 – 2, The Works of Plato, ed. H. Cary, H. Davis, and G. Burges (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852), Bk VI, XVII. 15   Ibid., 462a – e, Part II, XXVI. 16   Aristotle, Politics, 1252b27 – 30. 17   Ibid., 1253b18. 18   Cicero, De Re Publica, 1, XXV, 39, trans. C. W. Keyes, Loeb Classical Library, vol. CCXIII (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 64 – 65.

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that common good from a Christian perspective: God is the highest and truest common good, and to pursue the common good is to render unto God the love and worship that is God’s due.19 Aquinas shares Augustine’s Christian perspective on the common good as he argues that “God’s own goodness [. . .] is the good of the whole universe.”20 Besides theological treatment of the common good, Augustine and Aquinas also considered it politically. While both agree that human beings are sinful and look after their own selfish interest because of original sin, they differ on the purpose of government. Whereas Augustine believes that the government maintains order by keeping sinful people in check through the fear of punishment,21 Aquinas held that the government also exists to work for the common good (human flourishing).22 Etzioni, however, notices a tendency of these Christian theologians to conclude that “private interest is often associated with selfishness and sin, the antithesis of righteous action done in the service of God and the common good,”23 which he thinks creates a tension between private good and public good, contrary to the harmony posited by Plato, Aristotle and Cicero.24 Beginning in the modern period, owing to influence of enlightenment thinking, we started to see among humanistic thinkers a conflation of the common good with the well-being of the individual. Catholic economist Andrew Yuengert describes the enlightenment view of society as being an entity that exists “to further the goals of individuals, neither asking where the goals of individuals come from nor inquiring into the processes by which individuals are formed in society.”25 Such enlightenment individualism also entered the world of neoliberal economics. According to Etzioni, the neoliberal idea that the common good is not an objective goal to be discerned and pursued but rather the aggregation of individual goods,26 was introduced to economics by Adam Smith, who in his Wealth of Nations, argues that man, in pursuing his own personal profit, inadvertently “promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”27 Further work on political economy by John Stuart Mill in 1836 effectively introduced into economics the idea of the economic human (homo economicus) – an indi19

  Augustine, City of God, vol. I, ed. W. M. Green, et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), LCL 411: lxii – lxiii. 20   Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, IIae, q. 19, art. 10. 21   J. M. Mattox, “Augustine: Political and Social Philosophy,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2b (https:// iep.utm.edu / augustine-political-and-social-philosophy / ) (6 / 22 / 2022). 22   Aquinas, Commentary on the Politics, Book 1, Lesson 1 [31]. 23   Etzioni, Common Good, 2. 24   Ibid., 1 – 2. 25   A. Yuengert, “The Common Good for Economists,” Faith and Economics 38 (2009): 5. 26   Etzioni, Common Good, 2. 27   A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 5th ed., ed. E. Cannan (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd, 1904), Bk IV, ch. 2.

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vidual capable of making rational decisions based on utilitarian consideration. In his The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich A. Hayek distills the implications of this understanding of economics for the notion of the common good. Etzioni summarizes his argument thus: “the common good – the summation of all private goods – arises naturally from the market and no state efforts are needed to promote it. Indeed, attempts to guide the preferences of individuals toward a common goal are seen as, at best, paternalism, and at worst, the first step on the road to totalitarianism.”28 One way of mapping the contemporary debate about the common good is along the lines of economic liberals and communitarians. For liberals, there is no such thing as a community, rather, what we have is an individual. In her work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, philosopher Ayn Rand makes the extreme case for liberalism thus: “there is no such entity as “the tribe” or “the public”; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men. Nothing can be good for the tribe as such; “good” and “value” pertain only to a living organism – to an individual living organism – not to a disembodied aggregate of relationships.”29 Etzioni lists some of the reasons the liberals gave for opposing any notion of the common good: First, it threatens individual and minority rights. Second, government might be tempted to force people into involuntary service. Third, its call to serve the “fatherland” or “mother church” blinds the oppressed to the reality of economic and political inequality.30 Hence, liberals argue that the common good would diminish individual liberty, which for them should be the number one good. They instead want each person to decide for themselves “what constitutes the good and that society ought to then base its public policies on the aggregation of these individual choices.”31 Communitarians, on the other hand, disagree with liberals, stating that the common good does not simply amount to an addition of all private or personal goods in a society.32 Communitarian philosophers like Michael J. Sandel and Charles Taylor think that contemporary liberal and libertarian notion of the individual is incoherent because it presupposes an individual existing outside of society, which is an impossibility.33 According to Etzioni, the communitarian argument reads thus: “Because individual identity is partly constituted (or “constructed”) by culture and social relations, there is no coherent way of formulating individual rights or interests abstracted from their social con28

  Etzioni, Common Good, 2.   A. Rand and N. Branden, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Penguin, 1986),

29

20.

30

  Etzioni, Common Good, 6.  Ibid. 32   Etzioni, Common Good, 5. 33  Ibid., 6. 31

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text.”34 He also offers two strong reasons for why communitarians take community seriously. First, they believe that community is a major common good in itself, as well as a major source of other common goods because if community bonds become dysfunctional individuals suffer. Second, they believe that a community provides “informal social controls that reinforce the moral commitments of their members, that is, they promote the common good. This helps to make for a largely voluntary social order.”35 Based on these reasons, communitarians call for balancing of the community as a value while also protecting individual rights. It is obvious from the foregoing that both liberals and communitarians struggle to reach a consensus on what constitutes the common good because of their differing anthropologies. While liberals claim autonomy as the primary good for humans, communitarians assert that humans are inherently social. Now, the question is whether it is pragmatically possible for a person to exist without making a demand on society while also being capable of rebuffing society’s demands. Is it the case that the relationship between the individual and the society is like that of a man and his shadow? Are there insights from the Christian understanding of solidarity we might mobilize toward resolving this tension?

3. Christian Solidarity At first glance, one may be tempted to assume that Christian solidarity serves the common good alone with no interest in individual rights. But this is not the case, judging by Pope John Paul II’s words that solidarity “is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”36 Clearly, in this notion of solidarity as serving the common good, the pope includes the individual in his construal of solidarity’s object and obligations. In what follows, I wish to examine what Catholic ethicist Gerald Beyer has identified as the three aspects of solidarity in current Catholic social teaching. They are (1) solidarity as anthropological “datum,” (2) solidarity as an ethical imperative, and (3) solidarity as a principle concretized in legislative policies and institutions.37 He says that the first aspect “entails the recognition 34

  Ibid., 6 – 7.  Ibid., 7. 36   John Paul II, Encyclical letter Sollicitudo rei Socialis, 38 (http:// w2.vatican.va) (6 / 22 / 2022). 37   G. J. Beyer, “The Meaning of Solidarity in Catholic Social Teaching,” Political Theology 15, no. 1 (2014): 15. 35

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that human beings are by nature interdependent. The good of individuals is predicated on the development and good of the whole community.”38 The next aspect, he says, requires drawing ethical norms from the reality of interdependence. In other word, “The reality of interdependence should have ethical implications for all human interactions in the economic, cultural, political, and religious spheres of social life.”39 The third aspect, he says, involves actions that flow from understanding the causes of suffering, which elicits the participation of the sufferer / oppressed. This third aspect, he argues, involves “eliminating the causes of the suffering of the wounded and oppressed [which] requires advocating social change on the structural level, that is, institutionalizing solidarity. It requires embodying solidarity in social policies and institutions.”40 Although a valuable concept, solidarity is not without its critics. Global theorist Giles Gunn, for examples, calls for a move “beyond solidarity” because “virtually all of the terms in which the sense of human solidarity was once expressed have now either lost much of their credibility or become obsolete.”41 He rejects any notion of solidarity predicated upon a common human nature.42 Even though Gunn’s claim about solidarity’s obsoleteness needs serious attention due to loss of credibility, I would not agree that we should move beyond solidarity, rather, I suggest that what is needed is to strengthen the notion of solidarity. Are there resources available outside the west that might enrich solidarity? How can the African concept of community strengthen Christian solidarity?

4. Reclaiming Solidarity with African Notion of Community In the preceding presentation, Beyer anchors the starting point of Catholic solidarity on the “anthropological datum” which entails the recognition that human beings are by nature interdependent. By stressing the anthropological datum, it appears as though the anthropological starting point neglects sociality because it seems to imagine an “autonomous” individual who must “rationally” come to an awareness of human relationality. Though this may not reflect official Catholic position, for example, Pope John Paul II strongly stress relationality and interdependence,43 it perhaps speaks to the way some Ameri38

 Ibid.  Ibid., 15. 40  Ibid, 17. 41   G. B. Gunn, Beyond Solidarity: Pragmatism and Difference in a Globalized World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 47, 94 – 95, 171. 42   Beyer, “The Meaning of Solidarity,” 20. 43   Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo, 38. John Paul II urges a relationship of interdependence of peoples and nations, which he believes leads to the moral value of solidarity. 39

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can Christians understood autonomy. They tend to interpret it this way: “well I’m now an individual; now I am going to serve the common good.” The fact that this way of reading solidarity in the west is real calls for an African correction. Given these weaknesses, in what way might the African understanding of a human person in relation to the community shed light on the Catholic’s tendency to stress the anthropological in its teaching on solidarity? Like Catholic ethicists, African scholars recognize also that the basis of solidarity is the human person but not apart from her community. Malawian theologian, Harvey Sindima, surmises that Africans do not conceive of personal identity apart from life in its totality.44 Congolese theologian, Bénézet Bujo, states that Africans conceive “a network of relationships that includes the community of the ancestors in the process whereby one becomes a person.”45 Ghanaian philosopher, Kwame Gyekye, claims that “a society is a community of individuals, and individuals are individuals in society.”46 And Archbishop Desmond Tutu sums up this relationship with his famous proverb: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (I am because you are; we are because you are).47 Thus unlike the western tendency to radically affirm individuality before community, African worldview imagines an individual who is inseparable from her community that encompasses the living and the dead. This community extends beyond family to include the visible and the invisible with whom the individual is in “communion.” This is why Joseph-Therese Agbasiere states that the Igbo of Nigeria have a robust social anthropology rooted in a vision of the cosmos (uwa) as a place where all creatures are “interacting on a warm and intimate basis.”48 Another difference is that Africans always imagine the “mystique” as a point of departure. For instance, no African can envision his or her existence without a sense of connectedness to their gods and ancestors in a spiritual bond. To further illustrate, the Igbo of Nigeria have the concept of chi. Everyone possesses a chi, given them before birth. The chi is likened to the spark of God in every person. The chi is believed to be one’s spirit-double,49 which 44

  L. Magesa, African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life (Ossining, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 82. 45   B. Bujo, Foundations of an African Ethic: Beyond the Universal Claims of Western Morality (New York: Crossroad, 2001), 162. This network includes God, ancestors, deities, the living and the unborn. 46   K. Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 162. 47   J. Ogude, Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019), 2. 48   J.‑T. Agbasiere, Women in Igbo Life and Thought (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 49. 49   I. E. Metuh, God and Man in African Religion: A Case Study of the Igbo of Nigeria (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1981), 88. See also ibid., 86 for similar concept among the Yoruba of Nigeria with the ori, as well as the Akan of Ghana with the sunsum.

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strongly influences one’s success or failure or destiny, hence the common Igbo expression onye na chi ya (one with her god). Perhaps, this strong ontological solidarity (connecting individual with the living and the dead and even the natural world) might possibly clarify for western audience the real status of relationality in the Catholic notion of solidarity. The second aspect of Catholic teaching on solidarity entails “drawing ethical norms from the reality of interdependence.” This involves inquiring into the basis of these norms. Given its anthropological starting point, it seems that these norms are based on a purely human relational capacity, since it does not specify if within this interdependence is included the spiritual aspect of the human being. In other words, these norms are derived from natural law. Long before modern Catholic social teaching, Aquinas and many other thinkers have taught that natural law is inseparable from the divine law because God created nature (including human nature). Aquinas, for instance, argued that “Granted that the world is ruled by Divine Providence [. . .] the whole community of the universe is governed by Divine Reason.”50 Thus, this way of understanding natural law enabled them to claim that solidarity and solidary values we share with all humans exist because we are all children of God, the same creator, and are thus connected spiritually, morally, and humanly to every other person. But as the papal documents that announced the Catholic social teachings shifted from addressing only believers to also addressing “people of good will,” it became easy for people to regard these wider claims of Catholic social teaching (“to all people of good will”) as ‘separating’ the spiritual from the moral. Perhaps in a bid to accommodate a wider secular audience by stressing our common human nature, contemporary Catholic social teaching unwittingly encourages the diminution of the “spiritual” element of humankind. How then might we talk about the basis of solidarity in a way that would not marginalize the spiritual? As we saw earlier, since African solidarity is rooted both in community and religious “communion” with other life-forces, its ethics of solidarity also derives from these sources. Tanzanian theologian, Laurenti Magesa, in his African Religion: The Moral Traditions of Abundant Life, has argued that the ethical agenda in Africa is the attainment of life, and to achieve it, one must be at harmony with one’s ancestors who link one to the visible and invisible worlds.51 This explains the reason the Igbo tribe of Southeastern Nigeria do not define their ethics alone without the involvement of their chi as captured in the saying, onye kwere chi ya ekwere (when a man says yes his chi says yes also).52 As one who spent the first ten years of his life in a rural village in Southeastern Nige50

  Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I – II, q. 91, art. 1.   Magesa, African Religion, 77. 52   C. Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), 27. 51

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ria in the 1970s, I can authoritatively report that the community figures prominently in the definition of ethics. For instance, when a child behaved well or badly, people ask, nwa onye ka obu? (whose child is she?) Or they might ask, onye ebee ka obu? (what community does she belong?). Hence, Africa’s ethics of solidarity is embedded in community and strong religious sentiment. The final aspect of Catholic social teaching on solidarity involves the application of the norms of solidarity toward social change through institutionalizing solidarity by establishing social policies and structures. Traditionally, the Catholic church has done this through lobbying for policy changes, establishing organizations and networks that fight for social change. Despite these laudable initiatives, the church seems to struggle when it comes to designing alternative systems to the capitalist behemoth. Pope John II famously declared that “the church does not propose economic and political systems or programs nor does she show preference for one or the other, provided that human dignity is properly respected [. . .] Rather, it constitutes a category of its own.”53 My reading of this statement is that the weight of Catholic social teaching falls between capitalism and socialism and favors a compromise that selects features from each one that respects principles of human dignity. Since some structures that support solidarity are needed to integrate sociality and individuality, how might the Igbo Imu-Ahia (apprenticeship system) play this role?

5. Imu-Ahia (Apprenticeship System) Imu-Ahia is a business strategy whereby young Igbos are “inducted by a business / vocation mentor (Oga / Madam) into an entrepreneurial venture. This venture can be a trade, an enterprise or a vocation.”54 The process involves a gentleman’s agreement between the oga and the boy’s family with the understanding that the latter would serve the former for about seven years after which he would be given capital to start his own business. Just as with many things in Igbo culture, this practice is gendered, overwhelmingly favoring young male Igbos. However, the girls too leave home to live with a woman mentor where each is inducted into some vocation or craft. The period of the apprenticeship begins with a three-month probation to determine the suitability of the apprentice (boyi). Afterwards, the boyi is expected to spend the next six to seven years living, learning, and serving the master both in his business and his social and family life. The cosmological basis for this practice is the Igbo belief that Onye fee Eze, 53

  Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo, 655.   G. Chinweuba and E. Ezeugwu, “The Ontological Foundation of Igbo Entrepreneurship: An Analytical Investigation,” Journal of Philosophy, Culture and Religion 33 (2017): 21. 54

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Eze eruo ya aka (he who serves the King shall be King thereafter). At the expiration of the six or seven years of training, the mentor carries out the “settlement.” It involves giving the apprentice enough cash or a combination of cash and shop-space or goods to start up his own business. In some instances, the oga and the mentee engage in partnership, sharing the same shop and dividing the profit from their sales, according to agreed percentage. This is to help the newly freed mentee to get on his feet and become competitive in the business world. After the settlement is concluded, the apprentice is now independent. Indeed, this economic model has nurtured many young men into successful entrepreneurs and business actors.55 Key values of Imu-ahia include mutual trust, charity, skills transfer, networking, financial empowerment as well as anthropological solidarity that derives from a sense of ontological communion with ancestors, the living and the unborn, and manifested in the practical concept of onye-aghalanwanne-ya (let no one abandon his or her brother or sister). However, the Imu-ahia understanding of brother / sister seems too narrow because the system generally targets Igbo males while excluding Igbo females and non-Igbo persons, for reasons that space would not allow me to explain. Notwithstanding, in what ways might Imu-ahia support Catholic solidarity? I will answer, in two ways. First, the concept of Imu-ahia understood in the context of ontological or anthropological solidarity with the living and non-living as well as the unborn could strengthen Catholic solidarity or at the least help it to rediscover its mystical roots. Secondly, as a model that could and does redistribute wealth to younger members of the community, it has the capacity to, perhaps, model for Catholics how to translate solidarity from abstract concept to action. However, a Catholic sense of economic solidarity, which seems more extensive than the Igbo notion, could encourage the Igbo to open up Imu-ahia to their females and non-Igbos. With this mutual enrichment, then, how might Catholic solidarity and Igbo Imu-ahia begin to address neoliberal’s individualistic trade policies, a major cause of the continent’s economic lethargy? How might it function as a tool to integrate sociality and individuality? How might it serve as alternative lens for Christian reading of autonomy, solidarity and the common good in Africa?

55

 Ibid., 21.

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6. Imu-Ahia, Solidarity and Neoliberalism in Africa Although the goal of the apprenticeship training is to nurture the mentee to become economically free, the system expects the individual to submit him or herself to be socialized by it. If we accept that Africa offers a vision of personhood that inextricably ties the individual to her earthly community and “communion” with a host of other spirit-folks, then we must refine neoliberal individualistic economic doctrines to accommodate this reality. Indeed, the ability of the Igbo economic subject to embody individuality and sociality troubles the capitalist tendency to bifurcate and oppose the two. Thus, if we accept that in Igbo anthropology, autonomy and sociality are present in an individual, it then means that the neoliberal tendency to oppose the two becomes contestable. Although the Igbo value autonomy as much as the west, the difference is that while the west’s autonomy tended to lead to individuality, the Igbo autonomy is rooted in the community. Therefore, the western idea of autonomy of the market as practiced in Africa, leads to economic inequality because of its strong emphasis on individualism. Also, the western idea of economic sociality (globalization) as currently operating in Africa will not benefit its people due to the initially unequal playing field. Again, common good, understood in the western economic creed as an individual’s exercise of their freedom to contribute to the public good without social coercion, if applied to Africa, must be reframed to include solidarity of life or anthropological solidarity. Hence, the capacity of the Igbo apprenticeship system to relate individuality with sociality and to share solidarity in “communion” with other bodies, spiritual and physical, commends it as an alternative system to the western conception of diversity, sociality and the common good.

Situating Autonomy in a Theology of Intellectual Disability Kevin McCabe “Autonomy” has become something of a bad word in Christian theological reflection on intellectual disability. Beginning in the 1970’s critics such as Stanley Hauerwas argued that a commitment to personal autonomy represents everything that is wrong with the individualism of liberal modernity, and that its emphasis marginalizes – and perhaps even casts doubt on the humanity of – persons with impaired capacities for reason, will, and independent decision making. As an alternative, theologians concerned with speaking about and for persons with intellectual disabilities have emphasized a theology of “dependence.” According to this line of thought, persons with intellectual disabilities expose how human beings are not fundamentally autonomous but are only sustained through their relationships with others – and their relationship to God. In this essay I will argue that, although there was something valuable about the critique of an inordinate emphasis on autonomy, there are significant ethical and theological dangers that result from the critique of autonomy in theologies of intellectual disability. The critical component of the essay will argue that theologians misunderstand what it means to relate to others and what it means to relate to God when autonomy is strictly understood as a pernicious and anti-Christian value. The constructive aspect of my argument will look to the work of twentieth-century Catholic theologian Karl Rahner to find resources for thinking about creaturely autonomy that can contribute to the flourishing of persons with intellectual disabilities.1

1   The field informally known as “theology of intellectual disability” emerged to address persons with a wide range of impairments often included under the terms “cognitive” or “intellectual” disability. These include but are not limited to Down Syndrome and profound autism. What unites theologies of intellectual disability is a concern to think about persons with impaired intellectual and volitional capacities and what it means for Christian theology to place them at the center of theological reflection.

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1. Disability Theology and the Critique of Autonomy Stanley Hauerwas’ profound and challenging writings on theology and disability date to the 1970’s, when disability – and intellectual disability in particular – was still an issue confined to the periphery of theological concern.2 In these writings he casts critical light on the assumptions and fears of ableist society, and he attentively examines how the lives of persons with intellectual disabilities provide a witness that has urgent implications for Christian belief and practice. Although he deserves much credit for his series of groundbreaking essays, his work also initiates a trend of connecting theologies of disability with a critique of personal autonomy. Hauerwas’ writings on disability frequently highlight the themes that characterize his work on other topics in Christian ethics – the distinctiveness of the practices of the Christian community, especially in distinction from the values of liberal modernity; the importance of vulnerability and suffering in the Christian life; and the centrality of the Christian story in shaping the imagination of the Church. It is no accident that his writings on disability provide, in concentrated form, an encapsulation of his ethical vision. He recognizes the way in which several of his ethical and theological concerns coalesce around practical questions raised by persons with disabilities in modern society. Reflecting on his appeals to persons with disabilities and the role they have played within his work, he writes that “They were the crack I desperately needed to give concreteness to my critique of modernity. No group exposes the pretensions of the humanism that shapes the practices of modernity more thoroughly than the mentally handicapped.”3 In particular, the central position that he accords to persons with disabilities displaces the “modern subject” characterized by independence, autonomy, and self-representation, and complicates the tradition of thought on ethics and society that takes such a subject as its normative standard.

2   See especially Critical Reflections on Stanley Hauerwas’ Theology of Disability: Disabling Society, Enabling Theology, ed. J. Swinton (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004). Hauerwas’ writings on disability were written over several years in a variety of books and journals. This book complies his most important writings on the topic, along with responses from theologians and practitioners who work with persons with disabilities. The single volume most devoted to considerations of disability is S. Hauerwas, Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, Mental Handicap, and the Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986). 3   S. Hauerwas, “Timeful Friends: Living with the Handicapped,” in Critical Reflections, 14. Hauerwas is extremely careful about the way in which persons with disabilities figure in his work. In fact, he renounced writing about disability for a period of time because he did now want persons with disabilities to be trump cards in his theoretical agenda against modern society.

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Hauerwas opposes the subject of liberal individualism with a Christian account of persons as creatures whose lives are characterized above all by dependence: As Christians we know we have not been created to be ‘our own authors,’ to be autonomous. We are creatures. Dependency, not autonomy, is one of the ontological characteristics of our lives. That we are creatures, moreover, is but a reminder that we are created for and with one another. We are not just accidentally communal, but we are such by necessity. We were not created to be alone. We cannot but help but desire and delight in the reality of the other, even the other born with a difference we call mentally handicapped.4

Persons with intellectual disabilities exemplify mostly clearly what it means to be a creature of God, according to Hauerwas. He argues that a lack of agential capacities and independent decision making is not a defect of persons with intellectual disabilities but is revelatory of a basic truth about the human condition. “That the mentally handicapped are constituted by narratives they have not chosen simply reveals the character of our lives.”5 Here, the heteronomous character of our lives, as exemplified by persons with disabilities, is portrayed as an inevitability and a virtue. Therefore, if we take seriously the witness of persons with disabilities in our midst, it requires a revolution in ethical and theological thought. An anthropology of autonomy is opposed to an anthropology of dependence. The line of thought inaugurated in Hauerwas’ work has been expanded and amplified by several recent disability theologians. One particularly clear example can be found in Jason Reimer Greig’s Reconsidering Intellectual Disability: L’Arche, Medical Ethics, and Christian Friendship. In this work, he provides an account of a Christian “politics of dependence” which he opposes to the norms and values guiding what he diagnoses as the predominant biomedical mindset of liberal modernity. Like Hauerwas, he attends to persons with intellectual disabilities in order to expose and critique the emphasis on autonomy in contemporary biomedical debates. Yet here the opposition between competing values discussed in Hauerwas’ work calcifies into a drastic choice between two incommensurable ways of understanding, self, God, and other. He argues, “A  Christian response to the ‘power’ of technological biomedicine lies in beginning all moral discernment of the body not with the late modern autonomous self but with another body – the Body of Christ.” According to Greig, one must choose between a worldview that acknowledges human dependence as creatures of God and as members of the Body of Christ or a worldview that idolizes the independent, autonomous, self-possessing individual. In this moral

4

 Ibid., 16.  Ibid.

5

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framework, the opposition between a Christian understanding of dependence and the value of autonomy is clear as he lashes out against “a society that knows independence but not God.”6 He draws upon and intensifies Hauerwas’ language of stories, narratives, and authorship in order to criticize the ideals of liberal modernity and to elevate the witness of persons with intellectual disabilities as illustrative of an alternative way of existence that embraces dependence and vulnerability. “As fellow human creatures, Christians know themselves as ‘story formed’ selves, but their self-images contrast sharply with the ones idolized by someone committed to the Baconian project. Instead of the ‘self-made (wo)man’ of contemporary liberalism, Christians strive to emulate those who have humbly accepted their vulnerability and need for others [. . .].”7 The main force of the theological argument against autonomy is that human beings are creatures of God, and that a valorization of human autonomy is ultimately a rejection of our creatureliness. Greig and other theologians influence by Hauerwas argue that persons with disabilities reveal what it means to be a creature of God precisely because they cannot live autonomously.8 The conclusion to which his argument leads is that persons ought to embrace the givenness of their embodied condition and should abandon the idea that they have autonomy over themselves. He calls on Christians to renounce “absolute ownership of the body”9 and he argues that instead they must see themselves as persons who are part of and dependent upon the larger Body of Christ. In the thinkers I have examined thus far, there is a suggestion that persons with disabilities show most clearly what it means to be human. Their vulnerability and dependence reveal the character of human existence as creatures of God. This insight is taken even further by theologians who suggest that persons with disabilities do not just exemplify some essential creatureliness but that they possess an advantage over persons without disabilities precisely because of their impaired capacity for autonomy. In Peter Comensoli’s recent book, In God’s Image: Recognizing the Profoundly Impaired as Persons, he suggests that the “lack of choosing ability” can “actually be seen as a good for the pro-

6

  J. R. Greig, Reconsidering Intellectual Disability: L’Arche, Medical Ethics, and Christian Friendship (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 169. 7   Ibid., 160. 8   The most notable figure not discussed in this essay is Hans Reinders. In The Future of the Disabled in Liberal Society: an Ethical Analysis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000) and Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008) he provides an ethical and theological case against what he takes to be the central values of liberal modernity from a disability perspective Despite some disagreements with the figures discussed in this essay, and despite the erudition and scope of his work, I suggest that his critique of autonomy has the same inadequacies and one-sidedness as the positions analyzed here. 9   Greig, Reconsidering Intellectual Disability, 163.

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foundly impaired.”10 According to this argument, persons without disabilities face temptations and dangers that persons with disabilities do not face. Capacities for autonomous decision making open the door for persons without disabilities to use their agency in ways that separate themselves from God. It is the unimpaired, those who are most consciously able to take up the project of their lives, who are suddenly in the precarious position qua their humanity. This is because it is they, and not the profoundly impaired, who can be more active in the bringing about the loss in their lives. The profoundly impaired, precisely because of the condition under which they have their lives, are vastly less threatened by the possibility of nothingness.11

Because persons with disabilities do not have the ability to choose courses of actions that would compromise their standing before God, their disabilities provide them with a unique benefit. Comensoli is here suggesting that persons with disabilities are less sinful than persons without disabilities. Such theological moves create a constellation that connects the values of disability, dependence, and sinlessness and opposes them to the autonomous, sinful individual (or, more precisely, the individual who is sinful because autonomous). The cumulative effect of the theological positions examined above exalts disability and dependence and condemns autonomous agency. Persons with disabilities embody the vulnerable dependence that is the mark of creaturely existence, and their disabilities prevent them betraying that aspect of the human condition. Their disabilities open them up to receive God’s grace. On the other hand, persons without disabilities deny their creaturely dependence and rebel against God through the exercise of their autonomous decision making. This opposition between divine and human agency is made clear by scholars Jason Forbes and Lindsay Gale. In their discussion of intellectual disability they go so far as to approvingly quote David Black’s assertion that “The limitation of our human existence is the necessary presupposition for the operation of the power of God.”12 Autonomy is a capacity that brings about separation between humans and God, and in order for God to work in human lives, human capacities must be curtailed. God’s action comes at the expense of human action. 10   P. A. Comensoli, In God’s Image: Recognizing the Profoundly Impaired as Persons (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018), 104. Comensoli’s book makes an important contribution to Christian theologies of intellectual disability by bringing Catholic theological sources to bear on the discussion, most especially the work of Thomas Aquinas. Comensoli helpfully avoids the dichotomizing tendencies found in much of the existing literature that tends to pit nature against grace, and yet, as I argue here, he follows many other disability theologians in equating a lack of autonomy with an openness to grace. 11   Ibid., 169. 12   J. Forbes and L. Gale, “Disability in the Australian Church: Results from the 2011 Church Life Survey,” in Theology and the Experience of Disability: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Voices Down Under, ed. A. Picard and M. Habets (London: Routledge, 2016), 95 – 117. The quotation comes from D. Black, Paul: The Apostle of Weakness: Asthenia and its Cognates in the Pauline Literature, rev. edition (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 86.

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There is something right and important about the work of Hauerwas and the many theologians he has influenced. When autonomy and independence are taken as absolute values, they tend to obscure the countless ways in which all people, with and without disabilities, are dependent on others and subject to forces and powers that we cannot control. But Hauerwas’ influence has led to a rather one-sided assessment of the way disability theologians think about questions of autonomy and dependence, and this leads to both theological and ethical deficiencies. This position remains the status quo among leading theologians of disability, and there has been little sustained critique of their basic theological presumptions. The problem is when an antagonistic relationship is set up between human autonomy and God’s grace. When the forms of dependence that characterize the lives of many persons with intellectual disabilities are taken to be representative of essential human creatureliness, then dependence on God is straightforwardly conflated with human forms of dependence – and such dependence exhaustively determines our understanding of who people with intellectual disabilities are and can become. In the following sections of this essay I will examine the theological and ethical problems with the theologies I have discussed thus far.

2. Autonomy and Dependence on a “Non-Competitive” God It has been an accomplishment of theologians in the twentieth century to remind Christians that God’s grace and human agency are not rivals in a zerosum game but that dependence on God’s grace is what enables and empowers human action. This point has been made most forcefully and eloquently in the works of theologian Kathryn Tanner. Her early reflections on God’s relation to creation are important because she is responding to the precise set of difficulties that recent theologies of intellectual disability raise. She asks how God relates to human creatures, and how divine agency and freedom are related to human agency and freedom. In particular, she is concerned to respond to the idea that God’s agency is opposed to human agency. It is often taken as the commonsense view that if God acts on a human person, then it must overpower human action or take the place of human action by virtue of God’s greatness and human creaturely finitude. Correlatively, if human beings exercise agency, it must be apart from God’s, as though God withdraws divine agency so that human beings might exercise theirs. Tanner shows that a long tradition of thinking about God’s relation to creation defies the either / or dynamic between divine and human agency. Much disability theology either explicitly or implicitly relies on such an opposition between God’s action and human action, so Tanner’s reflections are especially pertinent here. These issues are explicitly addressed in God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? After establishing how a transcendent God can

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be directly involved in the affairs of the created world, Tanner turns to establishing how a God that is so involved with the world could produce creatures with their own free powers of agency. Her account of “non-contrastive” or “non-competitive” relations between God and humanity grounds her understanding of divine and human agency. God and human beings are not two entities on the same ontological continuum competing with each other for limited resources. The difference between God and creation allows for a radically different relationship between God and human beings. Divine action does not require human inaction, and human action does not imply any sort of independence from one’s relation to God. God is the very source of free human agency. “If power and efficacy are perfections, the principle of direct proportion requires that creatures be said to gain those qualities, not in the degree God’s agency is restricted, but in the degree God’s creative agency is extended to them.” 13 In a non-contrastive framework, God’s giving the human person free agency compromises neither the freedom of God nor the integrity of the creature. God is the God of infinite nearness, sustaining and empowering all that we are and do. The free agency of creatures, on this account, is not a capacity that distances creatures from their fundamental relationship to God. Rather, it is a gift that springs out of God’s nearness and vivifying presence. Tanner’s affirmation of the goodness and integrity of created agency raises questions about what it means to be dependent on God. If dependence does not require human inaction, then in what does it consist? In her exposition of the theology of Thomas Aquinas, she emphasizes what she terms the formal character of talk about our utter dependence on God. As part of her argument that an affirmation of God’s total creative influence on human beings is not incompatible with an affirmation of the free agency of those beings, she argues that we should not think that God’s agency is exercised exclusively or more easily through creatures that lack their own agency. Because of the a priori indeterminacy of the possible modes of God’s effects, God’s creative agency can be said to extend to non-divine beings of any empirical character – even those with their own power and efficacy within the created world. There is no reason to suppose that God’s creative powers are exercised more easily or more thoroughly for inert natures, constrained in total passivity by other created forces, than they are for creatures with their own powers of action14

Dependence on God is a formal qualification of our fundamental relationship to the God who creates and sustains us. Dependence on God cannot straightforwardly be identified with states of human passivity and vulnerability. Therefore it is not quite accurate to say that God’s grace works more easily through 13   K. Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 85. 14  Ibid., 89.

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persons who exhibit greater forms of dependence, or that human capacities such as agency and self-reflection must primarily be understood as obstacles to our dependence on God. This means that persons with intellectual disabilities do not embody a posture of dependence on God because and insofar as they are disabled, and correlatively persons who exercise autonomous agency are not thereby separating themselves from a fundamental dependence on God. Tanner’s insights challenge many of the predominant assumptions of disability theology, and she points towards a way of thinking about how human autonomy and dependence on God are not opposed to each other. But what does this mean for disability theology? What might autonomy look like for persons with impaired agential capacities? To begin to answer these questions I will look to the theology of twentieth-century Catholic theologian Karl Rahner. His work might be a surprising place to look for resources for a theology of intellectual disability as he is often taken to be the sort of modern liberal theologian criticized by many disability theologians. Yet a close reading of his account of freedom reveals that he offers a complex picture of the free human person that is not only congenial to a theology of intellectual disability but also overcomes some of the one-sided deficiencies present in existing theologies of disability.

3. Rahner on Autonomy and Creaturely Freedom Rahner develops his theology of freedom and autonomy in ways that are significant for a theology of intellectual disability in a series of essays collected in his multi-volume Theological Investigations.15 In “Being Open to God As Ever Greater” he specifically draws attention to the respect in which human freedom is shaped and conditioned by our status as creatures of God.16 Only the freedom which “recognizes that it is a creaturely freedom, i. e. a freedom sub15

  Due to the constraints of space I can only begin to suggest here the promise of Rahner’s complex theology of freedom holds for a theology of intellectual disability. A more sustained treatment of the topic can be found in chapter three of my dissertation Capacities and Capax Dei: Theological Anthropology and Intellectual Disability (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2015). 16   At this point I will continue my discussion of autonomy by looking to Rahner’s writings on freedom. The terms “freedom” and “autonomy” are not identical in all theological accounts of these terms, but for the purposes of this essay, Rahner’s reflections on freedom can be taken to provide resources for thinking about autonomy in the context of intellectual disability. For Rahner, freedom is a disposition of the human person before God. This involves making one’s freedom manifest through one’s choices, and a process of discernment on the life one lives. Rahner also frequently speaks about freedom in its relation to dependence (both human and divine) and human limits, which is crucial for my discussion of autonomy for persons with intellectual disabilities.

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ject to conditions superimposed from without, is a genuinely Christian freedom.”17 In  this essay he differentiates his view of freedom from an ableist sort of anthropology that elevates the abstract subject who exercises absolute mastery over the objects of their choosing. Contrary to such a position, he argues that our understanding of freedom must be indexed to the ineliminable anthropological constants that shape our lives as finite human beings. He explains, “Freedom in the creature is already subject to pre-existing conditions. Man’s freedom to act in history – and this applies to his strivings for salvation too – always takes the form of an obedient fitting in with situations which we can do nothing to alter. Indeed it always means accepting the fact that we have been made to fit in necessarily and inevitably with a given concrete situation.”18 Human beings can only ever exercise freedom in a particular time and place, in relationship with persons and through the exercise of powers and limitations that are largely not of our choosing. Instead of empowering us to break free from the shackles of our limitations in this life, freedom leads us to embrace these limitations and contingencies, and empowers us to think about how God might be calling us in the midst of our given situation. This affirmation mitigates against tendencies to read Rahner as advocating an anthropology so broad in its scope that it neglects the particularities of human life. Here he shows that what it means to exercise autonomous agency will look different according to the unpredictable and inevitable factors that form each human life. Freedom is a process of embracing and navigating the particular context and connections in which we find ourselves. The theological underpinnings of his account of human autonomy are further elaborated in his “Theology of Freedom” essay, where he develops a theocentric account of freedom that further differentiates his position from the individualist subject of liberal modernity. His description of the exercise of freedom includes an essential dimension of passivity on the part of the person before God. “In so far as freedom is always and in every act freedom directed towards the mystery of God himself (that mystery by which it is supported and empowered), the act of freedom is always essentially the act of man’s self-surrender to the uncontrollable providence of God and in this sense it is always essentially a trusting venture.”19 Rahner’s theocentric understanding of freedom explicitly rejects the picture of the isolated individual who exercises freedom through acts of boundless self-assertion. Freedom finds its fulfillment not 17   “Being Open to God As Ever Greater: On the Significance of the Aphorism Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam” in Theological Investigations, vol. 7: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 1, trans. D. Bourke (New York: Seabury Press, 1971), 37. 18  Ibid., 35. 19   K. Rahner, “Theology of Freedom,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 6, trans. B. Kruger (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1969), 195.

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through its own powers of self-certainty and satisfaction, but in its trusting embrace of the mystery of God. His descriptions of this embrace emphasize the passive and dependent character of human freedom in relation to God. The realization of freedom involves letting go of the persistent need for control and mastery, and giving oneself over to the mystery of God who unsettles and defies the aspirations of the isolated modern subject. Thus far, my rendering of Rahner’s account of the essential passivity of human freedom might unsettle those who view Rahner as the champion of the modern subject, and it might please those who view the modern emphasis on autonomy as a pernicious distortion of Christian anthropology. But it would be hasty on both counts to assume that Rahner has simply inverted the modern understanding of freedom, replacing heteronomy for autonomy. He does emphatically draw attention to the element of surrender, dependence, and passivity in the nature of freedom, but this serves to show the complex and intrinsic connection between God and authentic human freedom – it does not serve to eclipse human freedom via dependence on God (the mistake many disability theologians make, as Tanner’s work points out). Rahner would reject any understanding of the creator-creature relationship wherein the person’s relation to God compromises the integrity of the person as creature. Throughout his discussion of freedom, he consistently maintains a “non-contrastive” relationship between God and humanity, divine freedom and human freedom. “Its relationship to its divine origin must never be interpreted according to the notion of causal and formal relationships of dependence as operative in the categories of the realm of our experience in which the source keeps and binds and does not set free, and in which therefore independence and dependence grow in inverse and equal proportion.”20 Both proponents and opponents of human freedom too often tend to view freedom in contrastive terms; the more a person depends on God, the less that person is free – for good or for ill. In his theology of freedom, Rahner gets beyond the view that casts divine and human freedom as rivals. He reminds us: “the autonomy of the creature does not grow in inverse but in direct proportion to the degree of the creature’s dependence on, and belonging to, God.”21 Persons become more free insofar as they are fully dependent and trusting in the boundless grace of God. The account of freedom and autonomy that I am defending here aligns with what Peter Fritz has recently described as the attention to “exposed freedom” in Rahner’s theology. Against tendencies to read Rahner’s theological anthropology as immune to personal traumas and the catastrophes of history, Fritz directs attention to how, for Rahner, freedom manifests itself as an open20

  Ibid., 185.   K. Rahner, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Belief Today,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 5 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1966), 12. 21

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ness, a receptivity to the harms as well as the gentleness of embodied human life. “Human freedom begins as exposure, lives under conditions of exposure, becomes manifest in exposure. Human freedom is, by definition, exposed to being undone.”22 Fritz does not bring Rahner’s theology to bear on the experiences of persons with intellectual disabilities, but his reflections provide a promising way to think about what freedom and autonomy mean for such persons.23 This understanding of freedom-as-exposure, a freedom not at odds with human vulnerabilities or dependence on God, ought to challenge the tendency to align the terms “disability” and “unfreedom,” and it might encourage renewed thought with respect to the question of how persons with intellectual disabilities might be conceived as subjects of a complex and theocentric freedom. The contribution Rahner makes consists in how he holds together the emphasis on freedom and autonomy with an embrace of our limitations. He does not appeal to our limitations and contingencies in order to cast suspicion on the place of freedom in theological anthropology or to valorize human dependence and vulnerability. Instead, he seeks to navigate what it means to be free and open to God in the midst of the concrete circumstances in which we find ourselves. He shows us that theologies of intellectual disability need not fear a robust account of autonomy as central to what it means to be human. They ought rightly to oppose understandings of freedom that exalt the arbitrary will of the isolated subject, but my exposition of Rahner’s theology of freedom has shown that this is hardly the only understanding of freedom available to the Christian theologian. In Rahner we find a picture of freedom with sufficient complexity and breadth to embrace and shed light on the experience of disability and other forms of impaired agency.

4. Empowering Autonomy for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities In the final portion of this essay, I will offer some suggestions on the ethical urgency of thinking about autonomy for a theology of intellectual disability. There may seem to be good reason to get rid of talk about autonomy altogether. Indeed, the arguments offered by the disability theologians discussed above might appear to bear a certain resemblance to critiques of autonomy found in much critical theory today. But it would be a mistake to dismiss 22

  P. Fritz, Freedom Made Manifest: Rahner’s Fundamental Option and Theological Aesthetics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 182. 23   Fritz pays closest attention to freedom in the context of trauma and sexual violence, following Jennifer Beste’s discussion of Rahner in God and the Victim: Traumatic Intrusions on Grace and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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autonomy from a theology of intellectual disability for this reason. Broadly speaking, when theorists motivated by concerns for justice critique autonomy, they are taking aim at the individualizing power of the autonomous subject, as well as the violence that often attends the subject who aspires to be separate from and controlling of the others that surround them.24 The critique of autonomy serves a different purpose in disability theologies. It comes from a deeply conservative impulse to limit human choice and, at its worst, justify social arrangements where some persons have control over others.25 If it is true that an over-emphasis on autonomy has harmed persons with intellectual disabilities, there is an equal danger in assuming that there is no place for autonomy in the lives of persons with disabilities. It is precisely this assumption that guided the institutionalization movement that treated persons with intellectual disabilities as bereft of having any say in the leading of their lives. Although theologians who critique autonomy clearly intend to foster the well-being of persons with disabilities, their zeal tends to lead to adverse consequences. When heteronomy and dependence are valorized, there is a temptation to overlook the legitimate place of autonomy in the lives of persons with disabilities. Indeed, when one assumes that persons with disabilities possess no capacity for autonomy, one is liable to ignore the – often surprising – ways in which persons with disabilities are capable of exercising and expressing autonomy. One particularly clear example of this tendency is the discourse that has surrounded sexuality and disability. For much of recent history, the sexuality of persons with intellectual disabilities was either ignored or 24   The critique of the modern subject is a complex and diverse discourse that has been motivated by feminist, post-colonial, historicist, psycho-analytic, and philosophical concerns, among others. For classic works in this line of thought see S. de  Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. C. Borde (New York: Vintage, 2011) on sex and gender; F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. R. Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004) on race and post-colonialism; M. Foucault, History of Madness, ed. J. Khalfa, trans. J. Murphy and J. Khalfa (New York: Routledge, 2006) on reason and mental illness; and in a more phenomenological register, J. Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969). 25   It is telling to look at the larger theological and ethical projects with which theologians who write about intellectual disability are aligned. Stanley Hauerwas has a complex relationship with liberation theologies, and he has written or advised several projects that criticize and challenge central aspects of liberation theology, especially its focus on politics and agency. The locus classicus of his objection to liberation theologies is his essay “Some Theological Reflections on Gutierrez’s use of ‘Liberation’ as a Theological Concept,” Modern Theology 3, no. 1 (1986): 67 – 76. Other examples of this trend among disability theologians can be found in B. Wannenwetsch who is an outspoken critic of feminism and LGBT rights. See “Owning Our Bodies? The Politics of Self-Possession and the Body of Christ (Hobbes, Locke and Paul),” Studies in Christian Ethics 26, no. 1 (2013): 50 – 65. J. Bennet makes slightly spurious appeals to persons with disabilities in order to critique the values of secular feminism. See “Women, Disabled” in Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, ed. B. Brock and J. Swinton (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 427 – 466.

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pathologized. It was assumed that they did not have sexual desires or that their disabilities prevented them from making decisions regarding their sexual activity. It is only in recent decades that these misconceptions have been addressed and practitioners have begun to think about sexual education for persons with intellectual disabilities and to empower them as sexual subjects.26 In this case it was precisely a paternalistic assumption that persons with intellectual disabilities lack autonomy that led to their mistreatment and neglect. This essay has argued that a new approach is needed in theologies of intellectual disability. Too often, persons with intellectual disabilities have been valorized as perpetually dependent and vulnerable creatures, and aspirations to autonomy have been chastised as spuriously liberal and individualistic. Persons with disabilities are often well aware of their limits, and so a more challenging and ethically needful task is to think about ways to foster autonomy in the concrete situations in which persons with disabilities live their lives. Following the theological anthropology of Karl Rahner, we can say that human impairments and limits are not the points at which freedom ends. Rather, such aspects of human life provide the ground out of which creaturely autonomy emerges. This agenda holds much promise insofar as disability theology has implications for other minoritized communities. Groups who have historically been denied autonomy should not be told that the quest for autonomy separates them from God and their fundamental human creatureliness. Going beyond abstract debates “for” or “against” autonomy, we might instead ask what autonomy might look like given the concrete situatedness of human lives. Disability theology might lead the way, and help us think about creative ways to foster the autonomy of persons with and without disabilities and to recognize autonomy as a human good and a grace of God.

26   Much of this history and creative responses to the sexual education of persons with intellectual disabilities can be found in M. Gill, Already Doing It: Intellectual Disability and Sexual Agency (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

II. Diversity and the Common Good

Heeding the Law beyond the Law Transgendering Alterity and the Hypernomian Perimeter of the Ethical Elliot R. Wolfson R. Yose the Galilean used to say, “The one occupied with a religious duty is exempt from a religious duty.” Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 26a There is heresy that is confession and confession that is heresy. Abraham Isaac Kook, Shemonah Qevazim, 1:633 ˙ This excess with regard to the laws of nature, as well as to the laws of culture, is always an excess with regard to the whole, and I do not take the difficulty lightly. It is almost unthinkable, very close to impossible, precisely. [. . .] And can “declaring oneself Jewish,” in whatever mode (and there are so many), grant a privileged access to this justice, to this law beyond laws? Jacques Derrida, “Avowing – The Impossible: ‘Returns,’ Repentance, and Reconciliation”

This essay will examine the viability of a kabbalistic ethics from the vantage point of what I have identified in previously published studies as the hypernomian foundation of the nomos, the grounding of the law in the ground that exceeds the law of the ground. Contrary to the opinion of Gershom Scholem, who put the emphasis on an antinomian impulse that is potentially, and at times actually, in conflict with the tenets of the tradition, I have argued that the hallmark of religious nihilism is the promulgation of the belief that impiety is the gesture of supreme piety, that nullification of the law is the most pristine manifestation of compliance to the law.1 Extended more broadly, the goal of mystical experience is not the dissolution of all form, as Scholem argued, since there is no way to the formless but through the forms conserved in the suspension of their formation, no seeing of the face but through the veil that unveils the face that is veiled. There is thus no epistemological basis for Scholem’s further surmise 1   E. R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1186 – 285; Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), ˙ 161 – 199.

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that the extreme expression of mystical nihilism, as we find in the case of Paul in late antiquity or in the radical wing of the Sabbatian movement and in later Frankism in the early modern period, entails the unequivocal rejection of all authority and the creation of new forms that displace the older ones.2 The rabbinic slogan bittulah shel torah zehu qiyyumah, “the abrogation of the Torah is its fulfilment,”3˙˙epitomizes the hypernomian as opposed to the antinomian ideal as Scholem argued.4 2  See G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. R. Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1969), 11. Compare Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 27 – 28; idem, “Der Nihilismus als religiöses Phänomen,” in G. Scholem, Judaica 4, ed. R. Tiedemann (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhr­ kamp, 1984), 134 – 135. On the fundamentally amorphous nature of mystical experience, see Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 8. The formlessness underlying the mystical experience of ecstasy potentially threatens to transcend the more restrictive forms of the institutionalized religion that provide the matrix wherein it took shape. The success of a mystical tradition in any particular religious framework is thus commensurate to the capacity of the mystic to hold the potential anarchy of the ecstasy in check. From Scholem’s perspective, the efficacy of mysticism as a historical phenomenon is tied to the ability to restrain the latent lawlessness of the new impulses from breaking though the shell of the laws of the established religious system. The novel interpretation of the old values, as opposed to the engendering of new values, secures the viability of the experience buttressing the mystical revolution. See G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1956), 8 – 10. Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 7 – 11, formulated this aspect of the mystical as the dialectic of the conservative and the innovative. 3  b Menahot 99b. The formulation of the dictum attributed to Reish Laqish according to the received ˙text is pe‘amim she-bittulah shel torah zehu yesodah, “sometimes the abrogation of ˙˙ the Torah is its foundation.” However, the version cited by Scholem, bittulah shel torah zehu ˙˙ qiyyumah (see following note for references) is attested in several extant sources. For example, see Sefer Hasidim, ed. J. Wistinetzki, second edition (Frankfurt a. M.: M. A. Wahrmann, 1924), sec. 1313,˙ 324; E. Papo, Pele Yo‘ez (Jerusalem, 1986), 69 (s. v. halikhah), 112 (s. v. hesed), 113 ˙ ˙ 6 vols. (s. v. hasidut), 115 (s. v. heshbon); Z. E. Shapira, Benei Yissaskhar ha‑Shalem we‑ha-Mevu’ar, ˙ ˙ (Jerusalem: Oz we-Hadar, 2012 – 2014), 5:281; the commentary Ramatayim Zofim by Samuel ˙ of Sieniawa on Tanna de‑Vei Eliyahu (Jerusalem: Meqor ha‑Sefarim, 2012), ch. 4, 62 n 22. 4   Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 84. See also Scholem, Major Trends, 317 and 421 n 65; The Messianic Idea and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), 84. It behooves me to note that Scholem was not always consistent on this point. For the most part, he adopted dichotomous language according to which the mystical impulse, when not restrained by convention, is in conflict with the tenets of traditional religion and hence necessitates a transvaluation of all existing values. On occasion, however, Scholem seems to occupy the borderline where religion and nihilism, faith and heresy, lawfulness and anarchy, are not irresolvable antinomies but rather opposites identical in the identity of their opposition. The point is underscored in the title of Scholem’s lecture “Der Nihilismus als religiöses Phänomen,” delivered in Eranos in 1974 but not published until 1977. But even in that lecture nihilism is defined as emerging from the rejection of a reality whose value and meaning it considers worthy of destruction (Judaica 4, 131). For my interpretation of the talmudic dictum, which highlights the hypernomian implication of fulfilling the law by its annihilation, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 237 – 238. Finally, it is worth recalling the suggestion of P. B. Koch, Human Self-Perfection: A Re-Assessment of Kabbalistic Musar – Literature of Sixteenth-Century Safed (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2015), 203, that Scholem distinguished two ideal types in the Weberian sense, the “strictly nomian” zaddiq and the “hypernomian” hasid. It must be noted, however, that ˙ Scholem himself never˙ employed the terms “hypernomian” or “hypernomianism.”

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In the ensuing analysis, I will explore the subject of hypernomianism by a close analysis of what may be called in Derridean terms the law beyond the law, which he identified further as the nonjuridical ideal of justice, the gift of forgiveness, the aspect of pure mercy in relation to which it is no longer viable to distinguish guilt and innocence.5 The ideal elicited from kabbalistic sources has its conceptual basis in the rabbinic depiction of the suspension of the polarity of merit (zekhut) and demerit (hovah) in the messianic future,6 the axiological basis that upholds the system of˙ reward and punishment required by biblical law and the talmudic application thereof. I will once again consider the hypernomian as it impinges on the construction of the other both internally in the guise of the Jewish woman and externally in the guise of the non-Jew. The two sites of the confabulation of otherness mirror one another and thus one cannot appreciate the status of the feminine or the status of the Gentile without considering both of these vantagepoints. Can we elicit from kabbalistic material a genuine overcoming of gender dimorphism and cultural prejudice? Is the darkness on the left obliterated or restored to the light on the right? Are the shells of impurity decimated or refurbished as part of the sacred? In my mind, this is the litmus test of whether or not it is appropriate to speak of the mystical worldview that has informed the thinking and practice of kabbalists through the centuries as propagating an ethical sensibility.

1. Infinitivity and the Polyontology of the Metaontological Void In kabbalistic texts going back as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at the apex of the contemplative ladder one encounters the nothingness of infinity, the originary void that transcends all differentiation, the not-other of the other fluctuating between the potential actuality of nonbeing and the actual potentiality of being.7 By stating that the ground of the nonground exceeds all distinctions, even the distinction between distinction and nondistinction, I do not mean to imply that Ein Sof – the metaontological source of 5

  E. R. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 167, and references to Derrida cited on 411 n 86. 6   Midrash Wayyikra Rabbah, ed. M. Margulies (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993), 18:1, 391. 7  See E. R. Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming: Kabbalistically Envisioning Nothing Beyond Nothing,” Angelaki 17 (2012): 31 – 45, and in much greater detail in E. R. Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University of Press, 2019), 97 – 136. Needless to say, other scholars have written about the kabbalistic Ein Sof. Of special note is the work of S. Valabre­ gue-Perry, Concealed and Revealed: ‘Ein Sof’ in Theosophic Kabbalah (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2010 [Hebrew]; “The Concept of Infinity (Eyn-Sof ) and the Rise of Theosophical Kabbalah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 102 (2012): 405 – 430.

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all that exists, the nonessence of the essence whose essence consists of not having an essence – is an invisible substance positioned outside the periphery of visuality, a something that is innately hidden. What I intend, rather, is that Ein Sof is the “light that does not exist in the light” (nehora de‑lo qayyema bi‑nehora), according to the seemingly illogical formulation in a passage from one of the most enigmatic sections of the zoharic compilation, the unit that deals with the mystery of the line-of-the-measure (qaw ha‑middah).8 Although the precise terminology of Ein Sof is not used in this passage, the fuller context makes it clear that the author is speaking about the inscrutable origin that remains concealed in the inscrutability of the beginning: “The light that does not exist in the light engraved and issued the spark of all sparks, and it struck in the will of wills, and it was hidden therein and it is not known.” Lacking the appropriate language to name the nameless infinitivity that is neither something nor nothing, lo yesh we‑lo ayin, the medieval kabbalist speaks paradoxically about a light too luminous to be characterized as light, a light so incandescent it sheds the garment of light in which it is attired. This light that is not light radiates in the core of the invisibly visible spectrality glimpsed within but at the same time removed from the panoply of the visibly invisibles that constitute the immanent realities of the cosmological chain of the four worlds posited by kabbalists – emanation (azilut), creation (beri’ah), formation (yezirah), and ˙ beyond doing (asiyyah). The infinite˙ does not betoken a transcendent being being, a hyperousios, but rather the principle of falsification of any such being, the signifier of the absence of signification,9 the signifier that signifies neither presence of absence nor absence of presence but the presence that is absent in the absence of being present in the infinite number of actualities potentially contained in the nonbeing of the being beyond being and nonbeing.10 With respect to the infinite, therefore, actuality is the potential and potentiality is the actual; there is nothing more necessary than the pure contingency of necessity and nothing more contingent than the pure necessity of contingency. From this point of view, we could say that Ein Sof is concurrently metaontological and polyontological;11 that is, the beyondness of its being beyond being implies 8

  Zohar Hadash, ed. R. Margaliot (Jerusalem: Mossad ha‑Rav Kook, 1978), 57a. Concerning the ˙term qaw ha‑middah and this section of the zoharic anthology, see the remarks in E. R. Wolfson, “Letter Symbolism and Merkavah Imagery in the Zohar,” in Alei Shefer: Studies in the Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran, ed. M. Hallamish (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan Press, 1990) 231 – 232 n 132 (English section). 9   The apophatic implication of the expression Ein Sof is often emphasized by kabbalists. For example, see H. Vital, Adam Yashar (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1994), 1; J. Ergas, Tokha˙ ad˙Nahash (London, 1715), 3b – 4a. hat Megullah we‑ha-Z ˙ 10  I have taken the ˙ liberty ˙ to repeat the analysis in Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 62. See ibid., 66 – 67, 104, 109, 113 – 114, 138, 167 – 168, 212. 11   The expression polyontology is used by David G. Leahy and some of his interpreters to describe the thinking now occurring. See D. G. Leahy, “The Deep Epidermal Surface:

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a limitless and indeterminate multiplicity of limited and determinate beings. The infinite polyontology imparts the idea that difference is at the core of the same, which is to say, there is no core but the lack of a core, no essence but the essence beyond essence, the essence that is the exception to essence,12 or expressed in the hermeneutic rules concerning the particular (perat) and the ˙ there is universal (kelal) attributed to R. Ishmael, often invoked by kabbalists, nothing in the particular that is not in the universal and nothing in the universal that is not in the particular and hence the particular needs the general as the general needs the particular.13 Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly I will illustrate the point by reference to the argument of the Sabbatian Nehemiah Hiyya Hayon (c. 1655-c. 1730) that ˙ ˙ essence ˙ in the extreme of incomthe term Ein Sof connotes “an incomposite positeness [ezem ehad pashut be‑takhlit ha‑peshitut]”14 that relates to the emana˙ of˙ Attiqa Qaddisha, ˙ tion of the light the cause˙ of all things through the agency of its soul, the cause of causes (illat ha‑illot), to which are applied15 the zoharic expressions the “soul of everything living,” nishmeta de‑khol hayyei,16 and the ˙

The Cornerstone Construction Order, Minimum Order Tetrahedron Hypercube, & Absolute Dead Center Hypercube,” (dgleahy.net / p40.html), where the “absolute discontinuity of the continuum” is described as the “absolutely polyontological reality.” See L. McCullogh, “D. G. Leahy,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology, ed. C. D. Rodkey and J. E. Miller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 271: “Revelation occurs not in this or that selective event or moment; rather, the history of thinking reveals in due time that existence itself is universally and essentially revelatory. Matter, the Body itself – this absolutely particular, absolutely differentiated, infinitely finite poly-ontological existence – is holiness itself.” On polyontology, see also A. N. Feld, “Teilhard de Chardin and D. G. Leahy: Philosophical Foundations for Sustainable Living,” in Knowledge and Enchantment: A World without Mystery? The Twenty-fourth Ecumenical Theological and Interdisciplinary Symposium, December 3, 2016 (New York: The Romanian Institute of Orthodox Theolog and Spirituality, 2017), 40 – 41. 12   I am here indebted to the formulation of D. G. Leahy, Faith and Philosophy: The Historical Impact (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 115: “The essence beyond essence – the exception to essence that is essence – of a categorically new logic would be the essence of the new. For the first time the essence of logic would be novelty” (emphasis in original). 13   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 222 – 225, 241 n 119, 253 nn 212 – 213. 14   Nehemiah Hiyya Hayon, Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim (Berlin, 1713), 2a. ˙ ˙ ˙ 15  Ibid., 2d. 16   Zohar 3:141b (Idra Rabba): nishmeta de‑khol hayyei de‑‘eilla we‑tatta. Compare Hayon, ˙ ˙ See Oz le‑Elohim, 4a, 6b, 8b, 17a, 46c, 47c, 56c; Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, 5d, 23a, 51d, 52a. Nehemiah Hiyya Hayon, Raza de‑Yihuda (Venice, 1711), 17b, where the alef is said to allude ˙ three ˙knots of ˙ faith (Attiqa Qaddisha, ˙ to the Malka Qaddisha, and Shekhinah) and the soul of everything living is symbolized by the tittle (qoz) of the supernal yod of the alef. And see ibid., ˙ nishmatin), which spreads forth and unifies 20a, where the “soul of all souls” (nishmeta de‑khol all the potencies, is described as the “soul that has no partner” (nishmata de‑leit zug). In Hayon’s ˙ tripartite theosophical structure, Attiqa Qaddisha, which is beyond gender polarity, emanates the masculine Malka Qaddisha – the crown of lovingkindness (hesed) – and the feminine Shekhinah – the crown of power (gevurah). See Hayon, Raza de‑Yih˙ uda, 4b; Oz le‑Elohim, 59b. ˙ ˙

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“hardened spark,” bozina de‑qardinuta.17 We can retain the philosophical locu˙ essence if we appreciate that this essence bespeaks the tion of an incomposite abolition of essence, the essence whose essence consists of having no essence. Positively expressed, the term Ein Sof denotes the diffusion (hitpashshetut) of the infinite light from the source that can be analogized to the flame ˙of the candle, which is compared to the vessel that receives the emanation.18 Hayon thus summarizes his position: “Attiqa Qaddisha de‑khol Qaddishayya was˙ prior to everything, and his soul was within him, and he and his soul are one, for his soul was from within him [mineih u‑veih] [. . .] and this soul is called the soul of everything living [nishmeta de‑khol hayyei], and the light that disseminates from it is called the incomposite infinite˙ [ein sof ha‑pashut], for there is no end to its dissemination [de‑ein sof lehitpashtuto]. In that light˙ [. . .] there is no will at all ˙ 17   Zohar 1:15a, 18b, 86b, 172a; 2:133b, 177a, 233a, 244b, 260a; 3:48b, 49a, 138b, 139a, 292b, 295a, 295b; Zohar Hadash, 57a, 58a, 58d, 65c, 73b, 74b. Compare Hayon, Beit Qodesh ˙ 2d, and ibid., 59b: “You have already been informed ˙ ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, that Attiqa Qaddisha de‑khol Qaddishayya is also called Adam Qadmon, and this is the import of the verse ‘The candle of the Lord is the soul of man’ [ner yhwh nishmat adam] (Proverbs 20:27). That is to say, the one who illumines YHWH, which is the Malka Qaddisha, is the soul of Adam Qadmon. [. . .] Therefore, the soul is called bozina de‑qardinuta, for the word qardia in Greek is heart, and bozina is candle; that is, the candle˙ of the heart is the candle of YHWH, which is ˙ the heart of all hearts.” I have not found another source that traces the word Malka Qaddisha, qardinuta to the Greek καρδιά. 18   Hayon, Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, 34a: “And thus this is the truth for ˙ it is impossible for there to be emanation if there is not a vessel delegated to receive the portion from the emanator. An analogy to this is if there is no candle, there could not be a flame. It is necessary that before there will be a candle and afterward the flame descends upon it.” On the image of the flame and the candle, see the passage from Nehemiah Hiyya Hayon, ˙ ˙ is complete ˙ Nahash Nehoshet, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library 1900, 2a: “In the emanation there ˙ [ahdut ˙ gamur] like the image of the flame of the candle, for even though you see three unity colors of˙ lights in it, a person does not have the capacity to divide and to separate one color from another.” (I note, parenthetically, that on the first folio of the manuscript copy of Hayon’s ˙ oshet, treatise in Amsterdam, Ets Haim Bibliotheek, 47  B 8, the title is given as Nehash ha‑Neh ˙ which is closer to the scriptural idiom nehash nehoshet in Numbers 21:9.) See also Neh˙emiah ˙ 1714), ˙ 27a – b. The passage communicates H ˙ ayon’s Hiyya Hayon, Shalhevet Yah (Amsterdam, ˙ ˙ ˙ work willingness to respond to the criticisms levelled against him as we find in the polemical of Ergas. See reference below, n. 20. Hayon applies to Attiqa Qaddisha what was usually applied ˙ to Ein Sof, including the act of constriction (zimzum). The movement of constriction (tenu’at ˙ the ˙ aptitude for boundary within the boundha‑zimzum) can only be explained if we assume ˙ ˙ less, and this can only be assumed if we further posit the existence of both masculine mercies (hasadim) and feminine powers (gevurot) in the source of everything, the Attiqa Qaddisha de‑khol ˙ Qaddishayya; the delimitation of the limitless light occurs as a consequence of the arousal of the female potency contained therein. See Hayon, Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, ˙ appended to Hayon, Raza de‑Yihuda, 30b: “It is 2d, 5d. Compare the text entitled Keter Elyon ˙ beginningness ˙[le‑re’shitkha leit called Attiqa Qaddisha because there is no beginning to your reisha], for you existed before every existent, and when it arose in your will to bring forth your world, you constricted your light by means of your movement.” I hope to deal more extensively with Hayon’s interpretation of zimzum in a separate study. ˙ ˙ ˙

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because it is not the root but only a light that disseminates from the root like the light that disseminates from the candle.”19 Hayon’s perspective was notoriously criticized by Joseph Ergas,20 but, in my ˙assessment, the alleged heterodoxical interpretation in fact brings to light a conceptually nuanced understanding of infinitivity implicit in older sources.21 Ein Sof should not be treated as a reified substance, even if that substance is rendered in philosophical terms as the necessary of existence (mehuyav ha‑mezi’ut) ˙ ˙ that is an incomposite essence (ezem pashut) whose oneness cannot be treated ˙ ˙ 22 mathematically. The Sabbatian context of Hayon’s thought is irrelevant with ˙ 19

  Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 3b. ˙   Ergas, Tokhahat Megullah, 3b – 14a. ˙ 21   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 107 – 110. My interpretation of Hayon bears affinity to the claim that the revolutionary dimension of his kabbalah is centered˙ on his innovation regarding the inverse relationship of Ein Sof and Keter proffered by M. Fischheimer, “‘Anyone Who Looks at the Brass Serpent Shall Survive’ – A New Inquiry into the Thought of Nehemiah Hayon,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 24 (2011): 241 – 261 ˙ ˙ [Hebrew]. According to Fischheimer, op. cit., 245, Hayon distinguished between two triads: ˙ of Nishmeta de‑khol hayyei, Attiqa Qadthe first triad is within the First Cause, which consists disha de‑khol Qaddishin, and Ein Sof, and the second triad or the three knots˙ of faith (telat qishrei meheimanuta), which consists of Attiqa Qaddisha, Malka Qaddisha, and Shekhinah. It is also noteworthy to recall the contention of Y. Liebes, On Sabbateanism and Its Kabbalah: Collected Essays (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1995), 49 – 52 [Hebrew] that the controversy surrounding Hayon was related to the indiscriminate transmission and unfettered interpretation of secrets ˙ rather than to the substance of his teachings. See Y. Liebes, From Shabbetai Tsevi to the Gaon of Vilna: A Collection of Studies (Tel-Aviv: Idra, 2017), 374 [Hebrew]. Regarding Sabbatianism more generally and the breaking of the code of esotericism, see ibid., 81. On Hayon’s rejection ˙ of kabbalistic esotericism, see also Sabbatian Heresy: Writings on Mysticism, Messianism, and the Origins of Jewish Modernity, ed. P. Maciejko (Waltham; MA: Brandeis University Press, 2017), xxviii, 88 – 89, and the passage from Oz le‑Elohim translated, op. cit., 91 – 101. For an historical survey of the eruption and the expansion of the Hayon controversy, see E. Carlebach, The ˙ Controversies (New York: Columbia UniPursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian versity Press, 1990), 75 – 159. 22   Ergas, Tokhahat Megullah, 4b. The opening passage in Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 1a, ad˙ dresses this very characterization of the infinite: “The word Ein˙ Sof instructs that it is an incomposite essence [ezem pashut], and it is not comprehended [with respect to] how and why, ˙ and [it is] nothing.” ˙And compare Hayon, Nahash Nehoshet, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library ˙ to MS Amsterdam, ˙ ˙ Ets Haim Bibliotheek, 47 B 8, 1b): 1900, 2b (partially corrected according “Know that the rabbis, blessed be their memory, said that ‘he is his name and his name is he’ [hu shemo u‑shemo hu], and everything is one. The secret of the word hu [‫ ]הוא‬is an abbreviation for hu u‑shemo ehad. He and his name were prior to everything and he is the necessary of existence [mehuyav˙ ha‑mezi’ut].” The purpose of the zimzum was to disclose the name, but the ˙ ˙ the essence. Although the˙ appropriation ˙ name was coeternal with of philosophical terminology on the part of kabbalists has a long history, in the specific case of Hayon, it may reflect the approach of his teacher, Abraham Miguel Cardoso, to make use of the ˙intellect to expound the secrets of the divine. See Liebes, On Sabbateanism, 40 – 41. For the privileging of kabbalah over philosophy, see Hayon, Shalhevet Yah, 20b – 21a. On Hayon’s vengeful attitude to the philosophers who hated˙ him, see Fischheimer, “‘Anyone ˙Who Looks’,” 256 – 257. In contrast to Liebes’s surmise, On Sabbatianism, 152, 224, that Hayon followed the speculative path of Car˙ 20

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regard to this matter. He properly emphasized that the expression Ein Sof betokens the event of infinite emanation rather than the emanation of the infinite; that is, Ein Sof functions grammatically as a verbal noun that names a process rather than a substance. To paraphrase Hayon, infinitivity is not a thing (davar) to which the name Ein Sof is applied,23 ˙or as he puts it in another passage, “Ein Sof is not a thing [milta] that exists to be known by others, for there is no volition in it, since it is diffusion and not an essence [lefi she‑hu hitpashshetut we‑eino ˙ it does ezem] [. . .] it does not produce an end because it is not a beginning and ˙ not produce a beginning because it has no end, for Ein Sof is the diffusion, and the diffusion, which is Ein Sof, comes forth from the inception that is the wellspring [ha‑nevi’u].”24 On the face of it, the application of the term Ein Sof to the emanation of the essentiality (azmut) of the root seems both idiosyncratic and insubordinate. ˙ A careful examination of Hayon’s view, however, indicates that his assertion ˙ (raza de‑ein sof ) is the hiddenness (zeni‘u) that is that the mystery of the infinite ˙ souls (nishconcealed in the light that emanates therefrom,25 or the soul of all meta de‑khol nishmatin) that dwells within Attiqa Qaddisha de‑khol Qaddishin,26 are efforts to avoid ontologizing infinity. For Hayon, this is the apophatic import of the zoharic statement “the infinite has ˙no trace at all” (ein sof leit beih doso as opposed to the more mythical orientation of Nathan of Gaza, Fischheimer, “‘Anyone Who Looks’,” 254, discerned a definite influence on Hayon of Nathan’s central idea of the ˙ distinction within Ein Sof between the light that has thought (or she-yesh bo mahashavah) and ˙ the light that has no thought (or she-ein bo mahashavah). ˙ 23   Hayon, Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, 1d. 24 ˙   Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 3b. Hayon’s language is based partially on Zohar 2:239a, and ˙ ayon, Shalhevet Yah, 15b – 16a. parallel˙in Zohar 3:26b. Compare H ˙ ibid., 5c, where Hayon asserts that one should not attri25   Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 4a. See ˙ expression Ein Sof to the simple will, the hiddenness ˙ bute the that is prior to the contraction of the light. Compare N. H. Hayon, Sefer Ta‘azumot, MS London, Jews’ College 62, 28b: “For ˙ ˙ ˙ Ein Sof is the light that disseminates from the cause of all causes [or mitpashet me‑illat al kol illot]. [. . .] For Ein Sof is the place filled from the light of that hiddenness [zeni‘u] ˙that is within it, the ˙ that disseminates from it will of all wills in it. It is not a place filled from its light but the light is its place [or ha-mitpashet mimmennu hu meqomo], and that light is called Ein Sof because it does not dwell in a place but it˙ extends limitlessly [mitpashet she-ein lo sof]. Therefore, it is called Ein Sof, and that hiddenness is the mystery of the infinite ˙[raza de‑ein sof] because it is the root and the source of that light that is known. It was verily hidden in its ether whence there emanated the Malka Qaddisha and the Shekhinah.” See as well Hayon, Nahash Nehoshet, MS Oxford, ˙ ˙ Bodleian Library 1900, 4a, and 87b: “What is the difference between the˙ mystery of the infinite and the infinite [u‑mah bein raza de‑ein sof le‑ein sof] as it is brought in the Zohar? [. . .] There is a light that is more exalted, inner, hidden, concealed, secreted, and buried within the infinite, and it is the essence of divinity, and it is called the mystery of the infinite, and it is the hiddenness [zeni‘u] [. . .] and it withdrew itself above and left its place for the creation of the ˙ as the flame issues from Attiqa de‑khol Qaddishin, which is the raza de‑ein sof, worlds.” Insofar all our prayers are addressed to it. See Hayon, Nahash Nehoshet, MS Oxford, Bodleian Library ˙ ˙ Looks’,” ˙ 245 – 246, 251. 1900, 80a. Compare Fischheimer, “‘Anyone Who 26   Hayon, Oz le-Elohim, 4b – 5a. ˙

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rishuma kelal);27 it has no trace because it is nothing, literally, not a thing that can be said to exist autonomously.28 Consider Hayon’s summation of his position in Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim: “For the word˙ Ein Sof is the light that emanates [ha‑or ha‑ mitpashet], and thus you find that Ein Sof numerically equals ˙ 207], and he and his name were concealed within or [both have the sum of his ether that has no end [de‑awireih de‑ein lo sof],29 and through the movement of Attiqa Qaddisha within that light, the contraction came to be in that place whence it emerged, it issued from the concealed of the concealment, from the mystery of the infinite, and through its movement from place to place, one fissure broke through [baqa beqi’ah ahat], and it is the vacuum [halal] in which the ˙ ˙ many kabbalists worlds are created.”30 Hayon’s stance is not inconsistent with ˙ who lacked the suitable nomenclature to convey the notion that Ein Sof designates a being whose being consists of being without the pretense of being, the essence whose essence consists of not having an essence. The perspective I am proffering resonates as well with the metaontological understanding of Ein Sof found in the theosophic ruminations of the Lithuanian kabbalist Solomon ben Hayyim Eliashiv (1841 – 1926). Eliashiv distinguishes five levels of disclosure:˙ the first is called Ein Sof, and it is also designated the supernal emanator (ma’azil elyon) and the cause of all causes (illat al ˙ kol ha‑illot); the second is the contraction (zimzum) and the line (qaw), which ˙ ˙ or the primordial ether (awir is also called the supernal lustre (tehiru ila’ah) ˙ qadmon); the third is the primal human (adam qadmon), also called the supernal crown that is hidden and concealed (keter elyon satim we‑tamir); the fourth ˙ disclosure is YHWH, the essential name (shem ha‑ezem) in which the infinite ˙ emanator is revealed; the fifth disclosure is the name Elohim, the manifesta27

  Zohar 1:21a.   Hayon, Oz le-Elohim, 32b; Sefer Ta‘azumot, MS London, Jews’ College 62, 28b; Nahash ˙ MS Oxford, Bodleian Library 1900, ˙ 3b. In the last context, Hayon anchors his meta˙ Nehoshet, ˙ ˙ in all of the Zohar that ontological understanding of infinity in the claim that he has not found either the glory of the kingship (kevod ha‑malkhut) or divinity (ha‑elohut) is attributed to Ein Sof. For this reason, Hayon is opposed to the custom of kabbalists who refer to the infinite as Ein Sof barukh hu, and˙ he insists that his interpretation is a secret that will be fully revealed in the time of the messiah. Compare ibid., 79a, where Hayon interprets the apophatic statements ˙ about Ein Sof in the zoharic compilation as an indication that we cannot even speak figuratively about the infinite, whence he concludes that there is no passage in that compilation that suggests that Ein Sof should be designated theistically as the God of gods or the King of kings, or that we should say of Ein Sof “blessed be his name forever” or that “he was, he is, and he will be,” or that Ein Sof is the “essence of the faith” (iqqar ha‑emunah). Compare Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 61b, where the essence of the faith is identified with the soul of all souls ˙and the cause of all causes within the manifestation of Malka Qaddisha. Regarding the spiritual versus the political depiction of the messianic era according to Hayon, see Liebes, On Sabbateanism, ˙ 50, and the different view offered by Fischheimer, “‘Anyone Who Looks’,” 258 – 261. 29  Compare Hayon, Shalhevet Yah, 10a. ˙ Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, 6d. 30   Hayon, Beit ˙ 28

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tion of divinity in the worlds of creation, formation, and doing.31 For our immediate purpose, what is noteworthy is Eliashiv’s identifying the infinite as the first disclosure, which he depicts as well as the supernal emanator and the cause of all causes. Closer scrutiny of Eliashiv’s depiction of Ein Sof indicates that despite the use of such terminology, he does not view the infinite as an autonomous substance. The first three disclosures – the infinite and the worlds of the infinite (ein sof we‑ha-olamot de‑ein sof )32 – are denominated as the void (efes), the nothing (ayin), and the long suffering or the long faced (arikh anpin), which is also called Reisha de‑lo Ityeda Attiq, the head that is not known refers to the first three gradations and the ancient one to the lower seven gradations. The three supernal and universal radiances (zahzahot ha‑elyonim ha‑kelaliyim) ˙ ˙ hidden truth above them; can be considered disclosures only in relation ˙to˙ the in and of themselves, the thought (mahashavah) and the will (razon) of the ˙ are rather concealed in˙the utmost infinite are not disclosures in actuality but 33 concealment from all the lower worlds. In identifying the encompassing light of the infinite (or ein sof ha‑maqqif ) that is prior to the contraction as the first disclosure,34 Eliashiv did not have the proper language to communicate the incommunicable idea of a disclosure of the undisclosable, but we can infer from his words that he did not consider infinity a metaphysical substance. Explicating the passage in Idra Zuta, “When Attiqa Qaddisha, the concealed of ˙ all the concealed, desires to be adorned, everything was adorned in the man31   Solomon ben Hayyim Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim (Je˙ 2006), 4.5, 33. On the descent of˙ the name ˙ Elohim and the sin of rusalem: Aaron Barzanai, Adam in Eliyashiv, see J. Garb, “Shamanism and the Hidden History of Modern Kabbalah,” in Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, ed. A. D. DeConick and G. Adamson (Durham, NC: Acumen, 2013), 191 n 68. The designation of the Tetragrammaton as the essential name was appropriated by kabbalists from Jewish philosophers such as Abraham Ibn Ezra and Moses Maimonides. See, most recently, H. Hillel Ben-Sasson, YHWH: The Meaning and Significance of God’s Name in Biblical, Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish Thought (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2019), 126 – 129, 145, 158 – 162, 204, 214, 235 – 236 [Hebrew]. 32  See Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh ha‑Hayyim, ed. and ann. J. Lipschitz (Jerusalem, 2016), 4:10, 275: ˙“Moreover, the supernal root of˙ the holy Torah is in the supernal of the worlds that are all the worlds of the infinite [olamot ha‑ein sof], the secret of the hidden garment [sod ha‑malbush ha‑ne‘lam].” The allusion here is to the Saruqian doctrine of the garment, but what is of immediate interest to us is that reference is made to the worlds of the infinite. Concerning this passage from Nefesh ha‑Hayyim, and its reliance on Saruq, see Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo ˙ Haqdamah le‑Sha‘ar ha-Poneh Qadim, 124. On the worlds of we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, ˙ ˙ ibid., Sha‘ar ha‑Poneh Qadim, 30, 165. the infinite, see 33   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She’arim, 4.5, 33. Compare ibid., 7.1.1, ˙ 69, where the five disclosures are ˙said to correspond to the secret of the five configurations (parzufim) in every world, an inference based on the principle that whatever is found in the ˙ generality (kelalut) will be found as well in the particularity (peratut) and in the particulars of the ˙ particularity (peratei peratut). ˙ ˙ 34   Ibid., 7.1.2, 69.

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ner of male and female,”35 Eliashiv remarks that the characterization of Attiqa Qaddisha as the concealed of all the concealed (setima de‑khol setimin) alludes to the light of infinity that is garbed and unified in the head that is not known (or ein sof yitbarakh shemo ha‑mitlabbesh u‑meyuhad be‑reisha de‑lo ityeda).36 If we continue to speak of the nameless revealed in˙ the concealment of the name, then it is a nondual essence outside the parameters of an ontotheology.37 As I have argued in a previous study, kabbalists fluctuate between understanding this nonduality either as the identity of difference, which implies a nonopposition of opposites, or as the difference of identity, which presumes an oppositionality of nonopposites.38 The second option would safeguard the autonomy of the antinomical forces in the concurrence rather than the coincidence of contraries, and thus – following Laruelle – we could speak of unilateral duality in the infinite, the dual that precedes the bifacial duality of duality and nonduality; that is, the coupling of the two forces does not constitute a dyadic pair nor does the identity of the two constitute a synthetic unity of identity and nonidentity, the dialectical sublation of the bilateral difference in a totalizing aggregate.39 If we interpret the nondual in the former way, however, the unity within infinity would have to be construed precisely as the totality whereby and wherein alterity is subsumed in the homogeneity of the same such that the otherness of the other is reducible to the identity of the 35   Zohar 3:290a (Idra Zuta). For a more extended analysis of the gender implications of this ˙ Heidegger and Kabbalah, 219 – 220. zoharic passage, see Wolfson, 36   Solomon ben Hayyim Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah (Jerusalem: ˙ Aaron Barzanai, 2005),˙ pt. 1, 1.2.2, 16. 37   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 160 – 161. 38   E. R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 98 – 105. 39   F. Laruelle, “A Summary of Non-Philosophy,” Pli 8 (1999): 139 – 140, and esp. 143: “Of non-philosophy as unilateral duality. Non-philosophy is not a unitary system but a theoretical apparatus endowed with a twofold means of access or a twofold key, albeit radically heterogeneous ones since one of these keys is Identity. This is the ‘unilateral duality’. Because of its radical immanence, which refuses all positing or consistency for itself, the vision-in-One is never present or positive, given within representation or transcendence, and manipulable in the manner of a ‘key’. This duality is not one which has two sides: the Real does not constitute a side, only non-philosophy or philosophy’s relative autonomy does so. It is no longer a bifacial or bilateral apparatus like the philosophical one, but one that is unifacial or unilateral. A duality which is an identity but an identity which is not a synthesis: this is the very structure of Determination-in-the-last-instance. Non-philosophy thinks without constituting a system, without being unitary. For example, the subject in accordance with which it is produced (‘the Stranger’) is not something facing me, it is as a uniface and is for this reason a stranger to the World, a stranger to the law of bilaterality which is proper to philosophy and to the World, but not a stranger to the Real” (emphasis in original). Compare F. Laruelle, Dictionary of Non-Philosophy, trans. T. Adkins (Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2013), 55, and the succinct account of the concept of unilateral duality in R. Brassier, “Axiomatic Heresy: The Non-Philosophy of François Laruelle,” Radical Philosophy 121 (2003): 27.

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non-other in which the array of discrete beings are unified. For the purposes of this study, what is noteworthy is that both interpretations challenge the conventional nomian and moralistic framework insofar as we can no longer differentiate between right and wrong or between permissible and prohibited, whether we imagine a nonrelational dual that precedes duality (A + B) or a correlational nonduality in which duality is surmounted (A = B). Through the course of many centuries, kabbalists have contemplated the infinitivity of the One that is not one, the one, that  is, within which the henadological manifold is enfolded as the fractional generic of the fragmented whole, what Badiou would call the multiple of multiples, the pure multiple or the absolutely indeterminate that can never be specified as a determinate unity,40 or, in Peircean terms, the plural singularity constitutive of the singular plurality that is the potentiality of the abnumeral multitudes indeterminate in their determinability and determinable in their indeterminacy.41 Speculation on Ein Sof in this vein has fostered the messianic consciousness that propels the mind to the path that exceeds all paths, the path that is genuinely no‑path, the pathless path.42 Alternatively expressed, from a kabbalistic perspective, one must walk the path of Torah toward self-actualization whence one comprehends that the path leads to a hyper-lawfulness without the delineation of specific laws, a path that terminates in the breakdown of binary distinctions including the distinctions necessary to ratify both religious and moral order. Contra Scholem’s emphasis on antinomianism, and a host of other scholars who have followed his lead, I have availed myself of the term hypernomian to underscore that the release from law is not attained by discarding the law but by executing the law with an intensity that pushes past its limit even as that limit is preserved in the act of defiance. The encroachment of boundary demarcates the threshold of the boundary to be encroached.43 To get to the other side, as it were, requires the constant crossing of the border, indeed, a crossing that culminates with the crossing of the crossing, a process of overcoming that is seemingly endless in its undergoing.

40   A. Badiou, Being and Event, trans. O. Feltham (London: Continuum, 2005), 56, 59, 81, 265. 41   C. S. Peirce, “The Logic of Continuity,” in Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings, ed. M. E. Moore (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), 185 – 186. For a more elaborate discussion, see E. R. Wolfson, “Theosemiosis and the Void of Being: Kabbalistic Infinity through a Peircean Lens,” to appear in Signs of Salvation: A Festschrift in Honor of Peter Ochs, ed. M. James and R. Rashkover. 42   Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 232, 262 – 263, 285. 43   Ibid., 241 – 242, 268.

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2. Demarcating the Other Within and the Other Without In this section, I will consider once again the hypernomian measure of justice as the immeasurable excess of measure displayed in the othering of the other both externally and internally. Prima facie, one might presume that the obliteration of binaries would result both ideationally and practically in an egalitarian heterogeneity, a corrective to the gender inequality between male and female and the ethnic disparity between Jew and non-Jew. Lamentably, but not unpredictably, the situation is more complex. From kabbalistic literature, we may elicit the counterintuitive conclusion that eradication of difference can serve to fortify the very difference sought to be eradicated. Expressed in the celebrated language evoked by Paul in Galatians 3:28, when we proclaim that there is neither male nor female, it may be because the male incorporates the female, and when we profess that there is neither Jew nor Greek, it may be because the Jew is the ideal human that encompasses the Greek in the one body that is Christ Jesus. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I acknowledge that the baptismal formula can be read as an expression of a more genuinely democratic perspective, and this would include the elimination of the socio-economic difference that I left out, namely, the class distinction between slave and one who is free. The reading I have proposed, however, is equally plausible. More to the point, I invoke the text as a stratagem to shed light on the predominant – even if not exclusive – view that may be extracted from kabbalistic sources. Beholden to a hermeneutic that allows for such time inversions,44 I do not feel it is an anachronism to read the Pauline text through the prism of the kabbalistic tradition. If it is the case, as I believe it is, that historical analysis is inescapably circumscribed within the temporal paradox of the simultaneity of the nonsimultaneous – an instantiation of the larger neuroscientific paradigm of the enactive cognition of an embodied mind grounded in the groundlessness of the hermeneutic circularity endemic to the nature of life itself according to which organism and environment concomitantly, and not reciprocally, enfold into one another and unfold from one another45 – it is feasible to liberate oneself from the constraints of a monolithic linearity of time that can be read only unidirectionally, a conception of temporal irreversibility predicated on the spatial homogenization of time as a series of now points successively appearing and disappearing in a present strung between no longer now and not yet now.

44

  Wolfson, Language, xv – xxxi. For a more recent discussion of hermeneutic circularity and the depiction of tradition as the genuine repetition of futural past, see Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 29 – 60. 45   F. J. Varela, E. Thompson, E. Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, revised edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 217.

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I should add that I am aware, of course, that kabbalists endorse the containment of the masculine right in the feminine left as much as they subscribe to the containment of the feminine left in the masculine right. The mandate is to comprise the attribute of day in night and the attribute of night in day46 with the goal of attaining the state in which there is neither day nor night insofar as the day subsumes the nocturnality of the night in its diurnality.47 To mention one of many relevant zoharic passages, the union of Isaac and Rebecca is said to symbolize the unity of judgment (dina) and merit (zekhuta) so that there will be perfection. In the same passage, we read that the task allotted to the Sanhedrin was to join merit and judgment in order to prevent the force of the other side prevailing in the execution of the divine decree; this is also proffered 46

  Zohar 3:177b. The zoharic explanation is based on the comment of Rava on the wording of the liturgical blessing, derived from Isaiah 45:7, ‘who forms light and creates darkness,’ in b Berakhot 11b: “in order to mention the attribute of day in night and the attribute of night in day.” The dictum is attributed to Rabbah bar Ullah in b Berakhot 12a. The theme is repeated in a number of zoharic passages. See Zohar 1:12b, 120b; 2:162a; 3:260b, 264a. 47   My language echoes the mystifying meditation of M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. R. Rojcewicz and D. Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012) sec. 142, 207 [Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) [GA 65] (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989), 263]: “The appropriating event and its joining in the abyss of time-space form the net in which the last god is self-suspended in order to rend the net and let it end in its uniqueness, divine and rare and the strangest amid all beings. The sudden extinguishing of the great fire – this leaves behind something which is neither day nor night, which no one grasps, and in which humans, having come to the end, still bustle about so as to benumb themselves with the products of their machinations, pretending such products are made for all eternity, perhaps for that ‘and so forth’ which is neither day nor night.” My thanks to Roger Friedland for reminding me of this passage. Heidegger returned to this issue in the seminar in Le Thor on September 2, 1968. See M. Heidegger, Four Seminars Le Thor 1966, 1958, 1969 (Zähringen 1973), trans. A. Mitchell and F. Raffoul (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 19; M. Heidegger, Seminare [GA 15] (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1986), 301 – 302. In an effort to explain phenomenologically the experience (Erfahrung) of unity (Einheit) that is consequent to the disappearance of the power of conjoining (die Macht der Vereinigung), Heidegger proposed the following example: “‘Night falls, it is no longer day,’ and in this particular region where night brusquely succeeds the day, in such a way that the example directs us to the experience of a relation of strong opposition [starken Gegensatzbeziehung]. Where does the passage from day to night take place? ‘In what place’ does it take place? What is the unity whose splitting-in-two [Aufspaltung in Zwei] this transition [Übergang] presents? What is the Same [das Selbe] in which the day passes into the night? In such an experience, human beings stand in relation with something which is neither day nor night, even if not expressly thematized” (emphasis in original). Concerning this passage, see R. Capobianco, Engaging Heidegger, foreword by W. J. Richardson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 16, and on the theme of the nocturnal and the diurnal more generally, see S. Cavell, “Night and Day: Heidegger and Thoreau,” Revue française d’études américaines 91 (2002): 110 – 125. Heidegger’s words are carefully chosen: the site of the moment or the timespace in which day passes into night such that there is a transition to that which is neither day nor night is the Same, which in contrast to the Identical (das Gleiche), preserves the difference in the belonging-togetherness (Zusammengehörigkeit) of what is juxtaposed. Regarding this essential Heideggerian theme, see Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 9 – 13, 53 n 83, 265.

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as the mystical significance of Rosh ha‑Shanah.48 I chose this passage because, typically, the feminine is aligned with judgment, and it appears that in this case, Rebecca is connected to merit and Isaac to the left side. We should not be surprised, however, because the gender attribution is not necessarily correlated entirely with anatomical taxonomy.49 Hence, Rebecca is somatically female but symbolically depicts a masculine trait, whereas Isaac is somatically male but symbolically depicts a feminine trait. Assuredly, this passage, and many others that could have been cited, validates the idea that perfection of the mystery of faith (raza di‑meheimanuta) requires the pairing of the left in the right and of the right in the left. I contend nonetheless that there is an irreducible asymmetry between the two kinds of containment inasmuch as the ultimate goal is to ameliorate judgment by its inclusion in mercy and not to transform mercy into judgment – the former is unequivocally and consistently marked as the virtue of the righteous, the latter as the vice of the wicked.50 To illustrate the point I will cite a portion from a zoharic homily on Qorah: ˙ Whoever makes the right left or the left right, it is as if he destroyed the world. Come and see: Aaron is the right, the Levites are the left. Qorah wanted to change the right ˙ is contained always in the into the left, so he was punished. [. . .] R. Judah said, “Left right. Qorah wanted to change the arrayment [tiqquna] of above and below, and thus he ˙ from above and below.” [. . .] Whoever chases after something that is not was eradicated his, it escapes him; and furthermore, what is his is lost to him. Qorah pursued that which ˙ other.51 was not his, and that which was his was lost and he did not attain the

To transmute the left into the right, or the right into the left, is detrimental, whereas the ideal is for the left to be contained in the right. Note that the same value is not conferred upon the containment of the right in the left. The disputation of Qorah was that he wanted to reverse the order and turn the left into the ˙ right – alternatively, to upend the arrayment of above and below – by repossessing the authority of priesthood from Aaron. By pursuing what did not belong to him, he lost what was properly his own. The zoharic orientation is well summarized by Isaac Luria (1534 – 1572) in one of the few documents that he actually composed, a commentary on the zoharic text Sifra di‑Zeni’uta: “It was ˙ necessary for the supernal emanator to be arrayed as male and female so that all of the emanation will concatenate in this way and the judgments will be sweetened by mercy, for male is mercy and female is judgment as is known.”52 That 48

  Zohar 2:257a – b.   See my comments in Wolfson, Language, 459 n 250. 50   Zohar 2:178a: “If a person wants the holy king to illumine him in that world and to grant him a portion in the world to come, he should strive in this world to contain his actions in the right.” 51   Zohar 3:176a. 52   H. Vital, Sha‘ar Ma’amerei Rashbi, ed. M. Y. Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2017), ˙ ˙˙ 166. ˙ 49

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this matter is not merely of theoretical concern but impinged on the kabbalistic understanding of ritual is attested in the following instruction of Hayyim Vital ˙ dressed he ˙ (1543 – 1620): “When a person dons his clothing, every time he gets should be careful to take the two sides of the garment with his right hand on his right side, and afterward he should take the left side of the garment with his left hand by way of the back. Afterward he should put on the right side of the garment with his right hand and then he should put on the left side of the garment with his left hand, and he should always intend to comprise everything in the right, and consequently the right will give to the left.”53 The onus is thus to make the female male and not the male female, and this applies even, nay especially, to the images that depict the future as the ascent of the female from the bottom to the top of the head of the male. To avoid misinterpretation, although this seems unavoidable, I will emphasize again that not only am I not denying the possibility of kabbalists’ affirming the transgendering of the male into female but also I recognize that this is the eschatological telos that emerges from their theosophic speculation. The preference on the part of the male kabbalists, however, is the transgendering of the female as male so that judgment is ameliorated and converted into mercy rather than the transgendering of the male as female whereby mercy is denigrated and converted into judgment. Examination of the sources unfettered to identity politics and the need to anchor contemporary social change in a textual landscape produced in a vastly different environment – no matter how worthy that mission is – reveals that the empowering of the female is specularized from this vantagepoint. The feminine accorded agency is transvalued as masculine, a point unfortunately missed by the apologetic attempts to accord autonomy to the female persona, and this is so even when there is a reversal of the accepted hierarchy, either as the masculinization of the female or as the feminization of the male.54 In the end, as I have tirelessly pointed out in my publications, the female is restored to the position of the diadem atop the head of the male, based on the scriptural metaphor “the woman of valor is a crown for her husband” (eshet hayyil ateret ba’lah)55 as well as on the aggadic image of the righteous in the ˙world ˙to come sitting with their diadems on the their heads.56 To be sure, the transposal is also a transvaluation and thus the process of the elevation of the feminine is described variously as the elevation of the refined gold of Cain over the silver of Abel, as the restitution of the birthright to the 53

  H. Vital, Sha‘ar ha-Kawwanot, ed. M. Y. Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2019), 15. ˙ ˙   E. R. Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance and the Pleasure of No Pleasure,” in˙ ˙Talmudic Transgressions: Engaging the Work of Daniel Boyarin, eds. C. E. Fonrobert, I. Rosen-Zvi, A. Shemesh, and M. Vidas, in collaboration with J. A. Redfield (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 305 – 306. 55   Proverbs 12:4. 56   b Berakhot 17a. 54

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Levites on the left from the Priests on the right,57 and, perhaps most strikingly, as the attribution of the high priesthood to Qorah in the future when good will be purified of evil and the powers (gevurot) of˙ the feminine will be allocated a higher valence than the mercies (hasadim) of the masculine.58 ˙

3. Female Encircling Male: Ascent of Malkhut to Reisha de‑lo Ityeda The most startling representation of this eschatological reversal is the depiction of the ascent of Malkhut to Reisha de‑lo Ityeda, the return of the kingship at the base of the world of emanation to the head that is not known at the summit.59 At the conclusion of Vital’s exposition of the zoharic image of the three heads,60 we find an allusion ˙to this secret in language that he received from Luria: And this is what I heard from my teacher, blessed be his memory, in this matter, and know that it is as we have explained at first that there were nine original emanations together with the Reisha de‑lo Ityeda, and they are the original ten sefirot, the roots for all the emanation. The matter of the reality of the emanation of Malkhut, however, was 57

  H. Vital, Sefer ha‑Gilgulim, second, revised edition (Jerusalem: Qoren, 2018), ch. 23, ˙ ei Torah Nevi’im u‑Khetuvim (Jerusalem: Or ha-Zohar, 2014), Yehezqel, 155. 89 – 93;˙ Liqqut ˙ ˙ 58   Isaac Judah Yehiel Safrin of Komarno, Heikhal Berakhah: Bemidbar (Lemberg, 1869), ˙ 107b – 108a. The controversy of Qorah with Moses and his desire to reclaim the priesthood ˙ from Aaron are resolved in the future when the rectification will be completed and the judgment of the female will prevail over the lovingkindness of the male. The overturning of the hierarchy is explained by the fact that the root of the soul of Qorah is from the soul of Cain, ˙ soul of Abel. The future which is superior to the root of the souls of Moses and Aaron from the scenario is in diametric opposition to the zoharic explanation of Qorah’s rebellion. See reference above, n 51. On the connection between Qorah (related especially˙ to Psalms 48) and the ˙ umot, MS London, Jews’ College 62, primordial Edomite kings, see N. H. Hayon, Sefer Ta‘az ˙ ˙ ˙ 15a – b. 59 On the elevation of Malkhut, the fourth leg of the divine chariot represented symbolically by David, to the source of everything (shoresh ha‑kol), see Menahem Mendel of Shk˙ lov, Mayyim Adirim (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 1987), 112. 59   On the elevation of Malkhut, the fourth leg of the divine chariot represented symbolically by David, to the source of everything (shoresh ha‑kol), see Menahem Mendel of ˙ ­Shklov, Mayyim Adirim, 112. 60   Zohar 3:288a – b, 292b (Idra Zuta). Compare Luria’s commentary to Sifra di‑Zeni‘uta in Vital, Sha‘ar Ma’amerei Rashbi, 165 –˙  166. Combining the various relevant zoharic˙ passages, ˙ delineated the three heads of Attiqa Qadisha as the hidden wisdom that is not opened, Luria the ancient holy one, which is the supernal crown, and the head that is no head, which is not known and which is called Ein Sof. See Vital’s own elaboration on the image of the three heads in ˙ noteworthy is the comment on p. 201 that even Sha‘ar Ma’amerei Rashbi, 199 – 202. Especially though the name Attiqa Qaddisha comprises three heads, the intent is related to the essence found in all three. The third head is identified as “the hiding place of his might [Habakkuk 3:4] of the essence [hevyon uzzo shel ha‑azmut].” We can presume that the essence is both ˙ beyond and immanent within the three heads.˙

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not yet revealed. Nevertheless, we will explain that the beginning of everything is this Reisha de‑lo Ityeda, and through it you will understand the elevation of Malkhut, which is the “diadem on the head of the righteous,”61 and “it will be the chief cornerstone” (Psalms 118:22), and in the future its light will be greater than the sun.62

The process to which Vital refers is a technical elaboration of an idea attested ˙ in much older sources – a reworking of the mythos of the ascending crown63 – related to the restoration of the last gradation Malkhut to the first gradation Keter.64 The word atarah, as  Moses Cordovero noted, applies to Malkhut ˙ Keter.65 This designation thus signifies that the lowest because of its ascent to becomes the highest, an empowerment rooted in the assumption, as ludicrous as it might strike the ear, that the initial location of the feminine is in the corona of the phallus before there emerged an independent configuration that can be delineated as the female other, an othering that is closely linked with the death of the primordial kings of Edom, the source of impurity expunged from the economy of Ein Sof.66 The cathartic process67 is necessary for there 61

 b Megillah 15b.   H. Vital, Ez Hayyim (Jerusalem: Barzanai, 2013), 13:2, 60d. Compare the passage from ˙ ˙ cited below at n 90. See Isaac Judah Yehiel Safrin of Komarno, Vital’s ˙Mavo˙ She‘arim ˙ ˙ to the Reisha de‑lo Ityeda, Heikhal Berakhah: Bemidbar, 107b: “In the future, Malkhut will ascend and then all the desires and mercies will be nullified [. . .] for there is no bestowal of mercies, charity, or loaning and borrowing [. . .] but there is the governance of the gold in the extermination of all the shells and evil, and then there will be the governance of the gold and the empowerments of the kingship of heaven [gevurot malkhut shamayim], the diadem of her husband.” On the redemptive status of the elevation of Malkhut to the supernal Ayin, see Isaac Judah Yehiel Safrin of Komarno, Megillat Esther in Perush Ketem Ofir, ed. M. Safrin (Jerusalem: ˙ Or Penei Yizhaq, 2015), 254. ˙˙ 63   E. R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 226 – 227, and reference to other scholars cited on 226 n 156 and 264 n 322. See also A. Green, Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 64   On the ascent of the Shekhinah – symbolized as the crown – on the Sabbath as a prolepsis of the gender transformation of the endtime, see E. R. Wolfson, “Coronation of the Sabbath Bride: Kabbalistic Myth and the Ritual of Androgynisation,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6 (1997): 327 – 332. 65   See the text from Moshe Cordovero’s Elimah Rabbati cited in Wolfson, “Coronation,” 336 n 91. 66   See the passages from Vital cited and analyzed in E. R. Wolfson, Circle in the Square: ˙ Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), 116 – 119; and see Wolfson, Language, 310 – 311, 386 – 387. 67   I. Tishby, The Doctrine of Evil and the ‘Kelippah’ in Lurianic Kabbalism (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1942), 54 – 59 [Hebrew]; Scholem, Major Trends, 267; Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 110 – 111; Scholem, Kabbalah (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), 129 – 131; E. R. Wolfson, “Divine Suffering and the Hermeneutics of Reading: Philosophical Reflections on Lurianic Mythology,” in Suffering Religion, ed. R. Gibbs and E. R. Wolfson (New York: Routledge, 2002), 10 1 – 162, esp. 117 – 135. For an attempt to trace this motif to earlier kabbalistic sources, see M. Idel, “The Mud and the Water: Towards a History of a Simile in Kabbalah,” Zutot 14 (2017): 64 – 72. While I am sympathetic to Idel’s argument that the mythos in Lurianic mate62

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to be alterity vis-à-vis the infinite in relation to which there is no otherness, or as kabbalists going back to Azriel of Gerona expressed it, ein huz mimmennu, ˙ ˙ there is nothing outside of it. Translating the theosophic symbolism psychoanalytically, the ani of ego consciousness rises to and is integrated in the ayin of infinite nothingness.68 The incorporation of the tenth in the first effectuates the circularization of the linear edifice of the divine: the supernal crown (keter elyon) is identified as the crown of kingship (keter malkhut), a transformation supported textually by the verse “I foretell the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10).69 The matter can be cast as well in the terminological register of the capacity to receive and the potency to overflow; in the end, the former will rise higher than the latter, a supposition that goes beyond the claim that every attribute betrays the twofold nature of bestowing and receiving and therefore is androgynous.70 The point here is the more radical assertion that receiving will be valorized as superior to giving, a mystery often linked exegetically to the words neqevah tesovev gaver, “the female will encircle the male” (Jeremiah 31:21). These attempts to mark the eschatological transvaluation are the logical outcome of the assumption that in the beginning the female was comprised in the male as the diadem of the covenant and was not yet a distinct persona.71 This is not to say that the status assigned to the feminine is lacking in rial can be seen as an internal development of ideas expressed in older texts and not as a radical innovation, a methodology that I have adopted in my own scholarship, I do not think this diminishes the esoteric nature of the divine catharsis promulgated in the teaching of Luria, especially as it was explicated by disciples like Joseph Ibn Tabul. Just because there may be textual ˙ not preserve a profound secret and precedent for an idea, it does not mean that the idea does therefore should be treated esoterically. There is no reason to be skeptical about the marking of this matter as a profound mystery by the kabbalists themselves. 68   That is, the words ani and ayin, which are linked respectively to Malkhut and Keter, are made up of the same consonants, and hence they are transposable. See Scholem, Major Trends, 218. Compare Vital, Ez Hayyim, 3:2, 17a: “Hence, it is called ‘I’ [ani] and it is called ˙ nothing [ayin], and this is˙the kingship of the primordial human [malkhut de‑adam qadmon] and the crown of emanation [keter de‑azilut], and understand.” Concerning this passage and other related texts in the Lurianic corpus ˙dealing with the symbolic identification of ani and ayin, see Yosef Hayyim of Baghdad, Sod Yesharim, in Rav Pe‘alim: Heleq Hoshen Mishpat (Jerusalem: ˙ ˙ ˙ malkhut de‑adam ˙ Siah Yisra’el, 1994), pt. 4, sec. 1, 185 – 186, and more references to qadmon ˙ below, n. 76. The kabbalistic symbol of divine nothing has been addressed by a number cited of scholars. For a cogent explication, see the oft-cited study of D. C. Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, ed. R. K. C. Forman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 121 – 159. 69   Tiqqunei Zohar, ed. R. Margaliot (Jerusalem: Mossad ha‑Rav Kook, 1978), introduction, 17a. 70   See the extended comments on this matter in Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 248 –  249 n 170. 71   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 218 and references on 248 n 170 to other scholarly works of mine where this theme is elaborated. The androcentric implication of the kabbal-

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potency. On the contrary, in Lurianic kabbalah and in subsequent texts based thereon, including Sabbatian literature, the aspect of the female incorporated in the male, designated as malkhut de‑ein sof, signifies the demiurgic capacity for limit within the limitlessness, the very aptitude that facilitates the coming into being of entities indifferently differentiated from the differentiated indifference of infinitivity.72 Without this facet of the feminine lodged paradoxically in a world that is entirely masculine,73 there would be no contraction and thus no othering of the infinite to create the other of that which is not-other, that is, that which both is and is not other in relation to itself.74 To cite one of many texts that make this point, Joseph Ibn Tabul thus speculated on the status of Ein ˙ Sof antecedent to the emanation: Know and understand that [with respect to] the supernal emanator, blessed be his name, prior to having created the lower world [. . .] he was one and his name was one [hayah hu ehad u‑shemo ehad]; that is, “he” is his blessed self [azmo yitbarakh], and “his name” the ˙ [ha‑olamot]˙ [. . .] and all the worlds are called “his ˙ name,” for they all clothe him, worlds the one above the other. [. . .] In the manner that his name is called the worlds for it is garbed in them, and when the matter is contemplated it is found that the blessed one is called his name, the Tetragrammaton, as is known, for everything is unified in relation to the name YHWH [. . .] and Malkhut, which is the garment, became the soul of all the worlds [. . .]. And all the worlds were submerged in him; that is to say, only he, blessed be he, was discernible, and his name indicated a slight disclosure [me’at gilluy], and it is the aspect of judgment, but his essence is entirely mercy, and everything˙ was a complete unity, and everything was infinity [ha‑kol ein sof], blessed be his name.75

Prior to the emanation the infinite is marked by the scriptural idiom of God and his name being one (Zechariah 14:9). From the kabbalistic perspective, the prophetic description of the eschaton is applied to the primordial state in which the name – the Tetragrammaton – is coiled within the nameless. The name, moreover, is identified as Malkhut and as the delimitation of the worlds subsumed in the limitlessness of infinity. Paradoxically, the aspect of Malkhut is the quality of judgment in the domain of Ein Sof that is entirely merciful. Even though it is reasonable to presume that the infinite is beyond gender dimoristic symbolism is attested in a conspicuous way in the following remark of Luria recorded by H. Vital, Sha‘ar ha‑Mizwot, ed. M. Y. Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2018), 171: ˙ are ˙ three aspects of ˙Malkhut, the first is in the ateret ha‑yesod di‑ze‘eir˙anpin, ˙ “There the second ˙ Tif’eret that is within it or the aspect corresponds to Yesod itself, and the third corresponds to of the complete configuration [parzuf gamur].” The first two aspects of Malkhut clearly relate to the masculine, the corona of the˙ phallus of Ze‘eir Anpin or the phallus itself, but even the third aspect, which signals her status as an independent configuration, is described in relation to her male consort Tif’eret. 72   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 165, 272 – 274, 293 n 153, 294 n 165. 73   Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance,” 317 – 318. 74   Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 140, 197. 75   Joseph Ibn Tabul, Derush Hefzi Bah, in Masoud Elhadad, Simhat Kohen (Jerusalem: ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ Or ha‑Sefer, 1978), 1a.

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phism, as kabbalists themselves sometimes emphasize, given the ubiquitous correlation of mercy and masculinity, on the one hand, and judgment and femininity, on the other hand, we can infer from this passage that Malkhut is the female potential incorporated in the completely male deportment of Ein Sof. Eliashiv expresses a similar point in slightly varied language: “All of the disclosure and dissemination of the supernal knowledge, the intermediary line [qaw ha‑emza‘i] that issues from the mystery of infinity [me-raza de‑ein sof], ˙ scale [matqela], is only for the sake of the need of the kingship which is the of the primal human [malkhut de‑adam qadmon], to construct her and to make her into the complete world, which is the world of emanation.”76 The end is 76   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 2, 4.22.3, 259. It goes without ˙ saying that Eliashiv’s use of the expression malkhut de‑adam qadmon reflects earlier Lurianic material. Compare Vital, Ez Hayyim, 1:2, 12a; 1:5, 14d; 2:2, 15c; 3:1, 16c; 3:2, 16d-17a; ˙ 90 – 91, 136 (in the note of Ya’aqov Zemah). This is a topic 9:7, 46b; Vital, Adam ˙Yashar,˙ 12, ˙ ˙ that deserves˙ a separate treatment, and many more texts could have been mentioned, but I briefly note that an especially important channel of influence may have been N. Bachrach, Emeq ha‑Melekh (Jerusalem: Yerid ha‑Sefarim, 2003), 6:48, 255. According to Bachrach, the kingship of the primordial Adam, the “beginning of the emanation” (reisha de‑azilut) and the ˙ “ancient of days” (attiq yomin), is identified as the eighth of the Edomite kings, Hadar, the one whose partner, Mehetabel, is recorded, and the only one about whom it does not say that ˙ he perished (Genesis 36:39). Even though the reference is to the eighth king, the demiurgic capacity for rectification is related more specifically to the feminine aspect of Malkhut, which is linked to the name Elohim in the opening verse of Genesis (an association already made in Vital, Ez Hayyim, 3:2, 16d). See ibid., 8:10, 359, where Bachrach identifies the kingship of ˙ ˙ Adam with Attiq, or more specifically, with the wisdom of Attiq in which Ein the˙ primordial Sof dwells. And compare ibid., 8:11, 360 – 361: “And this is the secret of ‘[Such is the story of heaven and earth] when they were created’ [be‑hibar’am] (Genesis 2:4), with [the letter] he they were created, for all of the created beings were in the aspect of the five configurations [parzufim], whether in [the worlds of] emanation creation, formation, or doing, and they are ˙ [referred to in] the diminished he, for they all came forth from the diminished he of the kingship of the primordial Adam [. . .] And they are alluded to in ‘These are the kings who reigned [in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the Israelites]’ (ibid., 36:31), for they are all sons of kings, since all the configurations issued from the kingship of the primordial Adam, in the secret of ‘In the beginning God created’ (ibid., 1:1), which is the kingship of the primordial Adam that is called Elohim, and from her power the heaven and earth of emanation were created. From the beginning they were not rectified and the configurations were not made in the secret of the scale [be‑sod matqela] until there came forth the eighth king, which is the king Hadar, which is Yesod, and he took his portion and the portion of Malkhut. [. . .] Then the emanation was rectified as well as the kingship of the primordial Adam itself, which is the Attiq Yomin [. . ..] Therefore, it is called Ein Sof, and it is called Ayin and it is called Ani, for from the aspect of Binah she is called Ani, as she is disclosed to the world, since nothing is more revealed in the sefirot than Malkhut, and from the perspective that it is the crown of emanation [keter le‑azilut], it is called Ayin, and she is the kingship of the primordial Adam ˙ and the crown of emanation, understand this.” For the influence of Bachrach on Eliashiv, see references below, n. 86. I note, finally, that it would be worth comparing Eliashiv’s explanation of malkhut de‑adam qadmon and Hayon’s application of this technical term to the cause of causes positioned in the head of Arikh˙ Anpin, the hidden root of all being, the concealment of the will that precedes the primordial act of constriction. See Hayon, Oz le‑Elohim, 5c, 15b, 16b. ˙

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a reversion to the beginning, the state of conjunction (devequt) in the world to come, which is depicted more specifically by Eliashiv, based on a passage in the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Sifra di‑Zeni’uta,77 as the elevation of Malkhut as ateret ba’lah to the diadem of Binah;˙ the reunification of daughter and mother ˙is the mystical significance of the rabbinic description of the righteous sitting with their crowns on their heads, that is, the crowns of Malkhut and Binah.78 The seventh millennium, the period of desolation79 that succeeds the messianic rectification of the secret of generality (ha‑tiqqun de‑sod ha‑kelilut), is thus described by Eliashiv, “Then all [the worlds] will be contained in and will ascend to Malkhut of the [world of] emanation, and this is after the reign of the six extremities, which are the six thousand years. Indeed, when Malkhut itself is without the six extremities, she has no existence below at all, for her essence is from Keter, in the secret of ani and ayin,80 and her place and her reality are in Binah the mother, which is the potency and comportment of the feminine [koah u‑tekhunat ha‑nuqba] contained in Keter, and there is the place of Malkhut.”81 ˙ The existence of the three lower worlds is facilitated by the descent and constriction of Malkhut in the six extremities, which correspond to the sefirot from Hesed to Yesod. In this posture, she is called the corona of the phallus (ateret ˙ha‑yesod), which is the crown of kingship (keter ha‑malkhut), and she is ˙ disclosed below. After the sixth millennia – the time of the dominance of the six extremities – there is the time of the dominance of Malkhut in the seventh millennium. When Malkhut returns to the womb of Binah, she is in the secret of eshet hayyil ateret ba‘lah, the woman of valor who is a crown of her husband: ˙ ˙ 77   The Commentary of the Gaon Rabbi Elijah of Vilna to Sifra di‑Zeni’uta, ed. B. Naor (Jerusalem 1998), 38 [Hebrew]. Commenting on the words of the Sifra di‑Zeni‘uta, “Six thousand years are dependent on the first six ones [the six alluded to in the word ˙bere’shit decoded as bara shit, he created six], and the seventh is above them, fortified alone” (Zohar 2:176b) – a theosophical recasting of the teaching of Rav Qattina in b Sanhedrin 97a: “The world will exist ˙˙ desolate, as it is written ‘None but the Lord for six millennia and one [millennium] shall be shall be exalted on that day’ (Isaiah 2:11)” – the Vilna Gaon writes, “The seventh millennium is dependent on the word bere’shit, which is above them [. . .] and it is Binah [. . .] and she is the secret of the annulment of the world [hashvatat olam] in the secret of Saturn, which is the gradation of Binah as is known, and Binah is the secret of the end [aharit] for everything will ˙ thus the secret of one return to its root, which is the fire, as it is written in Sefer Yezirah, and shall be desolate. The matter is that the six millennia are the ˙six days that act through the six extremities and the seventh is Malkhut, and Malkhut is dependent on Binah and she returns to her root [. . .]. The world to come is in the secret of Atarah that returns to Binah, and she ˙ all return to Binah, the womb of is the eshet hayyil ateret ba‘lah, and then Binah rules and they ˙ ˙ their mother.” 78   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘’arim, 127. 79   See the teaching of Rav Qatt˙ina cited˙ above in n 77. ˙˙ 80   See above, n 68. 81

  Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 2, 3.7, 68. ˙

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“For in all of the sixth millennia she was a diadem in his end [atarah be‑sofo], which is the ateret ha‑yesod, but in the seventh millennium she will˙ be a diadem on his head [at˙ arah be‑ro’sho], and this is the secret of the diadem of the mother ˙ that crowns Ze’eir Anpin. [. . .] She returns immediately to the mother Binah, for there is her place, and this is because Malkhut does not have an autonomous existence or place at all [ein le‑ha-malkhut mezi’ut u‑maqom bifnei azmah ˙ himself, and her essence ˙ kelal], for she is the disclosure of the light of the king in Keter is revealed in Binah in her diadem.”82 Malkhut has no ontological autonomy; her potency is derived exclusively from the fact that she discloses the light of the king. The locus of her ascent is Binah, but the latter is itself identified as the potency and comportment of the feminine contained in Keter. Hence, the eschatological moment is a reinstating of the tenth gradation in her original place in the first as manifest in the third. We can ascribe primacy to the causal agency of malkhut de‑adam qadmon, the potential for femininity in the domain that lacks an autonomous female – the point of differentiation within the nondifferentiation of infinity – inasmuch as the will to overflow requires a vessel to receive the infinite beneficence.83 From this vantagepoint, the aspect of Malkhut above in Keter can be demarcated as the source of all the gradations.84 The ultimate empowerment of the feminine as the topographical latency within the world of the masculine is related to the fact that the trace (reshimu) of light that remained after the withdrawal and constriction of the light is identified as malkhut de‑malkhut, the kingship of the kingship, “for the essence of the light of Malkhut ascended and was withdrawn, and in the inner point of that Malkhut, which is malkhut de‑malkhut, there was revealed the aspect of place [sham nitgalleh li‑vehinat maqom] [. . .] It thus follows ˙ sof, and in the inner point of that the will [. . .] is the aspect of malkhut de‑ein that Malkhut, which is the malkhut de‑malkhut, there is the constriction and the place, which the trace of the light of the infinite that bears everything. [. . .] Thus is all of this constriction and the place, which is called by the name primal ether [awir ha‑qadmon] and supernal lustre [tehiru ila’ah], which is the ˙ de‑malkhut mentioned inner point of malkhut de‑ein sof, and this is the malkhut above. And all of this was revealed and came to be by means of the aspect of 82

 Ibid.   On the autoerotic mythos in kabbalistic theosophy and the engendering of the male androgyne, see Wolfson, “Phallic Jewissance,” 295 – 296, 313 – 325; idem, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 98 – 104. 84  Compare Elijah ben Solomon, Sefer Yezirah im Be’ur ha‑Gra (Jerusalem: Birkat Yizhaq, ˙ is from Hokhmah and not from Keter, which ˙˙ 2018), 1:4, 25c: “Do not say that their beginning ˙ is Malkhut of the world above it, and concerning this Elijah said keter malkhut [see reference above, n 69], such that there would only be nine. Furthermore, Keter, which is in Arikh, is divided into two, the skull [gulgalta] and the membrane [qeruma]. And the skull is Malkhut that is above and it is the source of the ten sefirot and the membrane is Keter below.” 83

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the delight [sha‘ashu ‘a] [. . .] and this delight is the aspect of movement that produces the constriction from himself to himself .”85 We willingly admit that the feminine plays a critical role in the drama of the sha‘ashu‘a – the jouissance of the erotic rhapsody and noetic bliss – that sets into motion the constriction of the infinite light to create the place wherein the worlds extrinsic to that regarding which there is nothing extrinsic will be engendered.86 Nevertheless, a careful assessment of the role assigned to the female in the aspect of malkhut de‑ein sof, or malkhut de‑malkhut, as the inner point, the primal ether, or the supernal lustre, only underscores that the autoeroticism implied in this psychosexual fantasy is concocted from an androcentric perspective.87 At the highest recesses of the divine, the stimulation of the male without a discernible arousal of a distinctly feminine persona (ha‑zakhar levado hayah mit‘orer me‑elaw el ha‑ ziwwug [. . .] ki lo yesh adayin hekker nuqba bi‑feratut), an impetus that is without the external provocation of the female waters ˙(gam she‑lo hayah mi she-ya‘aleh mayyin nuqvin), troped in the traditional idiom of when it arose in his will to create,88 must still be evaluated from the perspective of the phallic construction of gender. Indeed, the clutch of the phallogocentrism is made tighter by the depiction of the female as the potential for otherness comprised in the infinity that knows no other, the totality that is inclusive of even that which is excluded, indeed, the very principle of exclusivity included in the all-inclusive inclusivity of Ein Sof. The elevation of the feminine from the bottom to the top and the overturning of the order that it portends are still operating within the semiotic frame-

85

  Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 129. ˙ see Wolfson, Language, 182 – 183, 277 – 279,   On the kabbalistic myth of ˙sha‘ashu‘a, 281 – 282, 285, and references cited on 510 n 261. Eliashiv follows the Saruqian version of this motif transmitted through a number of channels including the Emeq ha‑Melekh of Naftali Bachrach. See L. Bar-Bettelheim, “The Concept of Zimzum in the Kabbalah of the Early Twentieth Century,” Ph. D. dissertation, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2012), 130 – 137 [Hebrew]; Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 99 – 103. 87   Wolfson, Language, 310 and 386 – 387. 88   H. Vital, Mavo She‘arim, ed. M. Y. Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2016), 2.3.9, ˙ ibid., 3.2.12, 203, where it is stated that the Malkhut of Keter ˙ ˙ is not revealed 127. Compare “because in Arikh Anpin the aspect of the feminine is not openly discernible [ein behinat nuqba ˙ supernal nikkeret bo be‑gilluy].” For a similar depiction of the exclusively male nature of the will without any discernment of an independent female, see Vital, Ez Hayyim, 39:2, 67d, ˙ And see the exand compare the texts cited and discussed in Wolfson, Language,˙ 181 –˙ 186. plication of the reference in Idra Zuta (Zohar 3:288a) to the three heads of Attiqa Qaddisha in ˙Elkoubi (Jerusalem: Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2018), Sha‘ar Attiq, H. Vital, Ozerot Hayyim, ed. M. Y.  ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ about the male that is 2, 131: “Know that this Attiqa Qaddisha mentioned here is not speaking made from the aspect of [the name whose numerical value is] forty-five, but rather about the feminine of Attiq and Arikh Anpin, which are made from the aspect of the emanation of Keter of the name of fifty-two of the points of the kings who died.” 86

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work of the phallus as the ultimate inscriptional space of signification.89 The diadem of the woman that is the crown of the husband is the repositioning of the feminine as the corona of the phallus, as we see in the following words of Vital: ˙

The aspect of Malkhut is revealed by itself and it is not found in Arikh Anpin itself except in the aspect of the corona of the phallus [ateret ha‑yesod] that is in it, for this is entirely ˙ actual feminine [nuqba mammash] is not masculine [ki kol zeh hu dekhura] [. . .] but the found. [. . .] Similarly, in Attiq Yomin, there is found no autonomous feminine, but rather the corona of the phallus of Attiq is the feminine like Arikh Anpin. Afterward, however, Malkhut is revealed from the secret of that head, supernal to all, that is not known, which is called Attiq Yomin, for it is above all the nine sefirot of Arikh Anpin, and this is the secret of “a woman of valor, diadem of her husband” (Proverbs 12:4), which in the future will be greater than the sun, and “it will be the chief cornerstone” (Psalms 118:22). When Malkhut is revealed below, it will be revealed from the secret of this Reisha de‑lo Ityeda.90

In the transvalued state of the end, the unity of the emanative scheme assumes the appositive form of keter malkhut, the crown of kingship, such that the first modifies and is thus subservient to the last. The grammatical construct illumines an altered ontic state – what was considered secondary becomes primary, the crown derives its potency from the attribute of kingship. At the same time, it must be kept in mind that the transposition at the end is a retrieval of the beginning wherein Malkhut was discernible in the Reisha de‑lo Ityeda as the secret of the corona of the phallic potency.91

89   The subtleties of the gender transvaluation that I have discussed in my scholarly publications are obscured in the lopsidedly polemical attacks by Moshe Idel. His arguments are not worthy of pointed rebuttal as they are based either on an inability to understand the theoretical presuppositions of my thinking or on textual nitpicking that obfuscates the conceptual import of my poetic prose, not to mention its aesthetic contribution. Idel has mislead the reader into believing he has offered a legitimate criticism when, in fact, his condemnations have little to do with my work. To write in a serious way on gender requires a philosophical sophistication into this mode of discourse and not simply marking every place in the texts where mention is made of male or female, a tendency that Idel shares with a number of other Israeli scholars. Paraphrasing N. H. Hayon, Beit Qodesh ha‑Qedoshim, in Oz le‑Elohim, 1d, I will not lift rejoinders to my lips so˙ as not to inconvenience the pen. In lieu of a detailed response, I remind the reader of the memorable wisdom of Rinzai Gigen, one cannot drive a nail into empty space. Alternatively, as Hakuin Zenji reportedly remarked, an adept Zen teacher does not peck, for the moment he does, all is lost. 90   Vital, Mavo She‘arim, 3.3.1, 137. 91   See˙ the passage from Menahem Azariah of Fano cited in Wolfson, Circle, 119 – 120. ˙

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4. Neither Israel nor Edom: Posthuman Repercussions of the Messianic Transvaluation The dynamic that applies to the other from within can be applied equally to the relation to the other from without. In spite of strict ontological barriers separating Jew and non-Jew, kabbalists have been cognizant of the theoretical and actual possibility of the boundaries being trespassed by conversion; the non-Jew becoming a Jew is a realignment of a Jewish soul with a new body, whereas the Jew becoming a non-Jew is a descent of the godly spark into the snare of the satanic.92 Interestingly, both processes stabilize rather than subvert the esoteric truths that may have served as a pathway for the potential convert to venture to the other side; the very secrets that impelled the individual to assume an ostensibly different identity are curiously sustained in their very subversion.93 The eschatological underpinning of the social practice of conversion portends the effacing of difference and a narrowing of the chasm separating Jew and non-Jew; the transmogrification is realized most theatrically in the soul of the Jew assuming the material garment of the non-Jew, as the descent is the means to achieve the ascent, the liberating of the sparks from the demonic and their restoration the divine. On a deeper register one understands that the descent is the ascent, and deeper still that the bridging of difference enhances the difference that is bridged, the esoteric import of the talmudic dictum that in the days of the messiah proselytes will not be received,94 that is, they will not be received because the surmounting of the boundary reinforces the boundary that is surmounted. Exemplifying the attitude cultivated and proclaimed by masters of Jewish esoteric lore for centuries, we read in Kaf ha‑Qetoret, a mystical-apocalyptic commentary on Psalms composed in the latter˙ decades of the fifteenth century, most likely in Salonika, by the Spanish kabbalist Joseph

92  See E. R. Wolfson, Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 265 – 271. On the repercussions of the zoharic depiction of conversion as the othering of the other in Sabbatianism, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 165 – 185. 93   My thoughts here cohere with the argument proposed – admittedly about an earlier historical period – by Shalom Sadik, “When Maimonideans and Kabbalists Convert to Christianity,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 24 (2017): 145 – 167. I have long maintained that appropriation of the other tradition is predicated on the assumption that the external resonates with something internal such that crossing the border – whether in the domain of thought or in the actual event of converting – is facilitated by the recognition of sameness in the divide of difference. See the discussion of setting the boundary and the proximity of the other in E. R. Wolfson, “Textual Flesh, Incarnation, and the Imaginal Body: Abraham Abulafia’s Polemic with Christianity,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History: Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan, ed. D. Engel, L. Schiffman, and E. R. Wolfson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 190 – 194. 94  b Avodah Zarah 3b; b Yevamot 24b. The exoteric explanation is that the sincerity of the motivation for the conversion can be doubted since it occurs at a time when Israel will be prosperous.

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ben Solomon Taitazaq,95 that the time for David to reveal the arcane matters ˙ ˙ has come because previously the “kingdom of heaven that have been ˙hidden was concealed in the mystery of mysteries on account of the external powers [ha‑kohot ha‑hizoniyyot], the goat demons and the like, they and their kingdoms ˙ profanation [sod ha‑hillul], which is the mundane [ha‑hol]. And are the˙ secret˙ of ˙ insomuch as the holiness, which is˙ Israel, who were imprisoned, subjugated beneath the angels and archons, when the time comes that the Lord ‘is roused from his holy habitation’ (Zechariah 2:17), then ‘the moon shall be ashamed, and the sun shall be abashed, for the Lord of hosts will reign [on Mount Zion and] in Jerusalem, and the glory [will be revealed] to his elders’ (Isaiah 24:23), and these are the two powers, the power of Edom and Ishmael.”96 On the one hand, the two rivals of Israel in the Heilsgeschichte, Christianity and Islam, designated respectively as Edom and Ishmael, will be defeated in the endtime, a point alluded to symbolically by the scriptural images of the humiliation of the sun and the embarrassment of the moon, but, on the other hand, the endtime is marked by the revelation of the divine glory to precisely these powers.97 The messianic future thus foreshadows both the Jews’ dominion over 95   On the time and place of the composition of Kaf ha‑Qetoret, see the discussion in Joseph ˙ on the Book of Psalms, critical ben Solomon Taitazak, Pan of Incense: Kabbalistic Commentary ˙ ˙ ˙ edition with introduction, notes, and sources by Aryeh Ne’eman Ben Zvi (Tel-Aviv: Idra, 2018), 13 – 26 [Hebrew]. Ben Zvi, p. 22, suggests a date of composition between 1485 – 1490. 96   Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 255. ˙ 97 ˙ ˙   The negative portrayal of both Edom and Ishmael is a recurrent theme in Kaf ha‑Qetoret; ˙ see, for instance, Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 216 – 217, 451. On the characterization of the Gentile ˙ ˙ ˙ nations (goyyim) as beasts, see ibid., 567. See M. Hallamish, “The Attitude toward Christianity and Islam in Kaf ha‑Ketoret,” Da‘at 43 (1999): 53 – 76 [Hebrew], and on the particularly harsh demonization of Christianity, see the analysis of Ben Zvi in Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 119 – 127. ˙ nation, the hidden light See, in particular, the dichotomy between the pure wine of˙the˙ holy of the secret of the supernal sun or the great fire, and the wine of Samael, the ‘foaming wine fully mixed,’ yayin hamar male mesekh (Psalms 75:9), which is the secret of darkness and the ˙ one from knowing the truth, in Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 162 – 163. That foreskin that prevents ˙ ˙ ˙ when the sins of Edom will be passage concludes with the description of the time of retribution avenged. Compare ibid., 432, where the end (qez) is described as a time of curse and affliction ˙ to be inflicted on the Gentiles by the agency of God’s attribute of judgment (middat ha‑din). On the contrast between the supernal wine of holiness and the physical wine of Samael, see ibid., 171 – 173. The ruthlessly punitive stance towards Edom and Ishmael was expressed in older kabbalistic sources that surely influenced Taitazak, and especially pertinent are passages in Tiqqunei ˙ ˙ ˙ Zohar and Ra ‘aya Meheimna. See A. Goldreich, “Clarifications in the Self-Perception of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar,” in Massu’ot: Studies in Kabbalistic Literature and Jewish Philosophy in Memory of Prof. Ephraim Gottlieb, ed. M. Oron and A. Goldreich (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994), 474 – 475 [Hebrew]. See also the zoharic attitudes towards Edom and Amaleq explored in O. Yisraeli, Temple Portals: Studies in Aggadah and Midrash on the Zohar, trans. L. Keren (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 134 – 156, 168 – 185. A related but separate issue is the portrayal by the author of Kaf ha‑Qetoret of philosophy – signified emblematically by the figure of Aristotle – ˙ as the wisdom of Samael, set in diametric opposition to the wisdom of Torah and kabbalah. See Hallamish, “Attitude,” 62 – 65, and Ben Zvi in Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 110 – 118. ˙ ˙ ˙

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Christians and Muslims and the prediction that these two Abrahamic faiths will acknowledge the theological supremacy of Judaism. Reading between the lines of Taitazaq’s comment, one discerns that the spanning of the gap between ˙ divine and the darkness of the demonic prolongs the distance the light˙ of˙ the of that which is made more proximate. According to an arresting image utilized in another passage from this work, in the middle of the moon, which is symbolic of the Shekhinah, there is the secret of darkness, also referred to as the secret of the deficiency of the moon or as the secret of the menstrual forces that are contiguous to the last of the sefirotic gradations. These forces are depicted as the leprous prostitute who penetrates the space of Malkhut and consumes the residual drops of her effluence.98 The drama, which is based on earlier kabbalistic texts, including the zoharic compilation, attests to the tension between the monistic and dualistic perspectives: the divine is the one source of vitality from which even the demonic must be nurtured, and hence darkness is described as being in the heart of the moon, but there is still an insurmountable fissure separating holy and unholy. In his characteristically lucid manner, Eliashiv explains this tension by noting that in the worlds below good and evil are in conflict based on the principle of zeh le’ummat zeh (Ecclesiastes 7:14), the one against the other, but above in the world of emanation there is no evil. Even so, the root of evil must be sought in that realm to avoid an ontological dualism. The root of evil is thus located in the attribute of power (gevurah) or judgment (din). “The root of evil from what is created is found above, and it is the aspect of the powers [gevurot], for the powers are the root of evil. [. . .] Thus, the disclosure of the powers and their dominion above, which are the root for the creation of evil below, is that they are made by the concealment of the face of the light of the infinite [hester panim me’or ein sof], for he conceals his light and removes his disclosures, and then there emanates from him the forces of the powers [. . .]. But when the light of the infinite is revealed and shines below ‘in the light of the face of the living king’ (Proverbs 16:15), then all the powers are ameliorated and they are transformed into flames of mercy.”99 The forces of judgment above that emerge from Binah, which are the source of evil below, are identified as the Edomite kings that reigned before the kings of Israel (Genesis 36:31 – 39).100 The first seven, who are mentioned without any female partners, are said to have died – the unbalanced forces of judgment also identified as the worlds  98   Taitazak, Pan of Incense, 188 – 189. On the use of the image of menstrual blood as sym˙ bolic of˙ the˙ demonic impurity of Christianity in zoharic literature, see Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 138 – 142; and compare S. F. Koren, Forsaken: The Menstruant in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 84 – 97, 144 – 171.  99   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 173 – 174. ˙ ˙ 100   Ibid., 175 – 176.

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that God created and destroyed101 – whereas the eighth, Hadar, does have a spouse, Mehetabel. Two points are significant for our purposes. First, Binah is ˙ land of Edom, the place where all judgments exist, the root identified as the for all multiplicity and discreteness.102 Second, the beginning of the rectification, the pairing of male and female, which is characteristic of the spiritual destiny of Israel, occurs in the last of the kings of Edom, which corresponds to the secret of the androgynous phallus, Yesod and Atarah.103 The obfuscation of the line separating Israel and˙Edom contains the mystery of the amplification of the light of holiness by means of transgression: This is the matter of the eighth king, which is the king Hadar, mentioned in the Torah, who was also from the Edomite kings, and he was also from the kings of impurity and the shell. [. . .] For he was from the aspect of the supplementary light [or ha‑nosaf] that was added to the shell by means of the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, and this corresponds to the light [of the] forty-five [numerical value of the name]104 of holiness. And thus what is written “and his wife’s name was Mehetabel” (Genesis 36:39), she corresponds to the good and evil of the fifty-two [numerical˙value of the name]105 of holiness. As we said above, the supplementary light of the shell, which was added by means of the sin, is from the light of the rectification [me‑ha‑or de‑ha-tiqqun]. Therefore, the name of his wife was mentioned in relation to him, which was not the case in all of the first seven kings, for all of the first seven kings were only from the aspect of the seven points of the shell that were prior to the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, and they were without any rectification at all. And this is from the aspect of the other god who is castrated and cannot produce fruit. Therefore, the name of a wife was not mentioned in any of them because they were without a partner. [. . .] But the king Hadar was from the light of the rectification

101   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 1, 1. The source for the image ˙ is Bere’shit Rabba, 3:7, 23. of God creating and destroying worlds 102   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 1, 1 – 2. The characterization of the land of Edom as the mystery of ˙the place in which judgments are bound is derived from Zohar 3:135a (Idra Rabba), but in that context, unlike Eliashiv, that place is not identified explicitly as Binah. 103   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 175. See Eliashiv, Leshem ˙ 2, 5.3.6, ˙ 381, where the eighth king is described, on Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt.  the basis of˙the Vilna Gaon, as “in the secret of Atarah and Malkhut upon whose unity all of the rectification depends.” The precise language in˙ The Commentary of the Gaon Rabbi Elijah of Vilna to Sifra di‑Zeni’uta, 35, is “The eighth king Hadar is the corona of the phallus [ateret ˙ yesod] of Malkhut di‑Ze‘eir Anpin and it is not the Malkhut of the ten sefirot, the Nuqba of Ze‘eir Anpin, because he is not included in the kings. And this is what is said that Yesod divides into two in the world of chaos [be‑olam ha‑tohu] and there reigned two kings. [. . .] If so, what is [the meaning] of ‘his wife’s name’ (Genesis 36:39)? This is Malkhut di‑Ze‘eir Anpin, the corona of his phallus [ateret ha‑yesod shelo].” The phallic nature of the last of the Edomite kings is underscored by the˙ assumption that Yesod divides into two, comprising itself and Malkhut as the ateret berit. See Eliashiv’s comment, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 177, ˙ there are these seven kings, who were eight, because ˙ Yesod divided ˙ “Thus into two [. . .] and we said that seven died and were broken and the eighth, which is Malkhut, was not broken.” 104   That is, the Tetragrammaton written as ‫( יו׳׳ד ה׳׳א וא׳׳ו ה׳׳א‬10 + 6 + 4 + 5 + 1 + 6 + 1 + 6 + 5 + 1). 105   That is, the Tetragrammaton written as ‫( יו׳׳ד ה׳׳ה ו׳׳ו ה׳׳ה‬10 + 6 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 5).

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in the shell after it was fixed by the sin, and this is the residue of the light of knowledge of holiness by means of which there is cohabitation. Therefore, the name of his wife is mentioned in relation to him.106

The eighth of the Edomite kings symbolizes the beginning of the rectification of the amalgamation of the holy and unholy that arose as a consequence of the sin of Adam and Eve eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. According to a tradition reported by Vital, the rabbinic interpretation ˙ are men,’ we‑atten z’oni z’on of Ezekiel 34:31, ‘For you, my flock, that I tend ˙ called ˙ mar‘iti adam attem, as ‘You are called human, but the idolaters are not 107 human,’ implies that originally all the souls comprised within Adam were the souls of Israel and had Adam not sinned the nations of the world would have never been created.108 Extrapolating from this tradition, Eliashiv presumes that the first seven Edomite kings, the emasculated males that had no female counterpart, are aligned with the seven demonic forces that were prior to the sin. By contrast, Hadar was from the aspect of the supplementary light that was added to the shell as a consequence of the transgression, the residue of the light of knowledge from the side of holiness, and thus he had a counterpart Mehetabel. The rectification, however, will be complete only in the future when ˙there will be no more distinction between Jew and non-Jew because the latter will be reincorporated into the posthuman form that like the prelapsarian Adam is neither Edom nor Israel insofar as there is no autonomous evil in opposition to the good.

5. Law beyond Law and the Metaethical Ground of the Ethical In this last section, I will discuss the ethical implications of the disposition of the messianic Torah as the law that surpasses the demarcation of the law. I commence by citing a crucial passage wherein Eliashiv distinguishes the two manifestations of the Torah: Thus, all the Torah is also in accord with these two general disclosures. The first is his disclosures in the [world of] emanation, which is in the light of the principle of the name YHWH, blessed be he, and it is called the Torah of Emanation [torat ha‑azilut]. And the ˙ they are the other is his disclosures in the worlds of creation, formation, and doing, for light and manifestation of the name Elohim, and it is called the Torah of Creation [torat ha‑beri’ah]. If not for the sin of the Tree of Knowledge, the primal Adam would have merited the Torah of Emanation. For all the Torah in its entirety would have been given 106

  Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 2, 1.7.3, 24 – 25. ˙ Venturing Beyond, 42 n 107, 43 – 44, 46, 52 n 151, 53,   For references, see Wolfson, 63, 89, 112, 160. 108   H. Vital, Sefer ha‑Liqqutim (Jerusalem: Sitrei Hayyim, 2015), Psalms, 32, 476. Compare ˙ ˙ ha‑Pesuqim, ed. M. Y. Elkoubi ˙ ˙ Sha‘arei Yizhaq, 2017), 19 – 20. Vital, Sha‘ar (Jerusalem: ˙ ˙˙ 107

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to him [. . .] and this is the Torah of Emanation whose essence concerns the unity of the supernal lights, which are the inwardness of the entire Torah and the commandments. Concerning this they said in Avodah Zarah, fol. 3,109 that the blessed holy One is occupied with the Torah, for the light of the interiority of the Torah is the power of all the creation in its entirety, in general [bi‑khelal], in particular [u‑vi-ferat], and in the particularities of ˙ the particularity [u‑vi-feratei peratut]. All the realities that alternate and are created in each ˙ ˙ moment and all their contingencies that are in each second, it all issues forth from the disclosures of the light of the interiority of the Torah that is disclosed in each moment in novel disclosures from the occupation of the blessed holy One with it each day. This is the matter of the Torah that would have been given to primal Adam had he not sinned. And it also would have been given to us had we merited the first tablets, as it is written, “I have said you are divine” [ani amarti elohim attem] (Psalms 82:6). [. . .] The Torah of Emanation is the Torah of the holy blessed One that is illumined and revealed by means of the disclosures of the light of the name YHWH, blessed be he, as has been mentioned.110

The textual foundation of Eliashiv’s musings is the well-known distinction made by the anonymous author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Meheimna between the Torah of Emanation and the Torah of Creation.111 According to Eliashiv’s interpretation, the first Torah is the disclosure of YHWH in the 109

  The precise reference is b Avodah Zarah 3b.   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 34. In preparation of this study, I have also utilized Solomon˙ ben H˙ayyim Eliashiv, Sefer Haqdamot u‑She‘arim im ˙ (Jerusalem, 2014), 75. Discrepancies between Liqqut Me’ir ha‑Leshem, ed. and ann. Y. Lipschitz ˙ my translation and the Barzanai text indicate my decision to accept the emendations of Lipschitz. 111   Zohar 3:124b (Ra‘aya Meheimna); Tiqqunei Zohar, introduction, 4b – 5a; sec. 22, 64a. Compare Scholem, Major Trends, 211; Scholem, On the Kabbalah, 66 – 70; Scholem, Sabbatai Zevi: The Mystical Messiah 1626 – 1676 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 319 – ˙324, 809 – 810; E. Gottlieb, Studies in the Kabbala Literature, ed. J. Hacker (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press, 1976), 545 – 550 [Hebrew]; I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, trans. D. Goldstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), vol. 3, 1101 – 1108; P. Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine: Symbolization and Theurgy in the Later Strata of the Zohar (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 59 – 63, 126 – 127; I. C. Malka, On the Paths of the Kabbalah: Mystical Dimensions of Jewish Law in the Ra‘aya Meheimna (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2004), 108 – 109 [Hebrew]; Y. Liebes, “Zohar and Tiqqunei Zohar: From Renaissance to Revolution,” Te‘uda 21 – 22 (2007): 270 – 279 [Hebrew]; and more recently, H. Pely, “The Conception of Halakhah in the Writings of the Author of Tiqqunei Zohar,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 34 (2016): 253 – 296 [Hebrew]. I concur with the author’s reassessment of the role of law in the worldview of this kabbalist, which is the reason I have argued that it is better to replace Scholem’s use of the term antinomianism with hypernomianism. The latter, as opposed to the former, proffers that exceeding the law requires one to uphold the law that is exceeded. Unfortunately, Pely, “The Conception of Halakhah,” 256 n 9, thinks the two words are synonymous and hence I am erroneously accused of following Scholem. For a review of the question of antinomianism in these strata of zoharic literature, see B. Roi, Love of the Shekhina: Mysticism and Poetics in Tiqqunei Zohar (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2017), 28 – 29 [Hebrew]. On the messianic implications of the distinction between the types of Torah according to the anonymous author of Tiqqunei Zohar and Ra‘aya Meheimna, see Goldreich, “Clarifications,” 475 – 477; Liebes, “Zohar and the Tiqqunim,” 292 – 294; Roi, Love of the Shekhina, 234 – 235. 110

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world of emanation and the second Torah is the disclosure of the name Elohim manifest in the worlds of creation, formation, and doing. Had Adam not sinned by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, he would have received the Torah of Emanation in its entirety, the essence of which consists of the unity of the ten sefirotic gradations. The inwardness of the Torah and the commandments is thus constituted by the luminal darkness of the truth of his hidden essence (amittat azmuto ha‑ne‘elemah), the univocity of being fracturing through the zimzum into ˙the plurivocality of beings in the same manner that the essen˙ ˙ YHWH partitions into a multiplicity of names.112 This is the mystical tial name import of the longstanding identification in kabbalistic literature – with roots in older Jewish mystical sources – of the Tetragrammaton and the Torah. From various zoharic texts where this identification is made explicitly, Eliashiv elicits the conclusion that the one who is meritorious with respect to the Torah is meritorious with respect to the name, since he and his name are one and the same.113 This is the meaning as well of the aggadic tradition that God is occupied with the Torah before creation; that is, all that will unfold through the course of time is a disclosure of the light of the interiority of the Torah. One detects here the temporal paradox that undergirds Eliashiv’s phenomenology and ontology – two branches of thought that cannot be disentangled – the novel disclosure of the light that unfolds in each present is an iteration of what has been enfolded in that light from the eternal past, forging thereby a future from the sense of difference through repetition of the same in which the same is the replication of difference.114 In every moment, therefore, to borrow Merleau-Ponty’s formulation, the flesh of the world is simultaneously toujours neuf and toujours la même115 – always new precisely because always the same and always the same precisely because always new. I have discussed this topic in a number of previous publications116 and thus instead of going over familiar territory, I will return to the main point con112

  Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 10. ˙ ˙  Ibid., 34. 114   The reader will undoubtedly detect the influence of Deleuze in my depiction of repetition as the return of the same that is conceived on the basis of the different. See G. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. H. Tomlinson (London: Athlone Press, 1983), 48; Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 23 – 24, 41, 90 – 91, 242 – 243. 115   M. Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible suivi de Notes de travail, text edited by C. Lefort, accompanied with a foreword and afterword (Paris: Gallimard,1964), 315; Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible Followed by Working Notes, ed. C. Lefort, trans. A. Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 267. 116   E. R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 59 – 87; Wolfson, “Retroactive Not Yet: Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality,” in Time and Eternity in Jewish Mysticism: That Which is Before and That Which is After, ed. B. Ogren (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 15 – 50, esp. 30 – 37; Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 35 – 40, 261 – 262. 113

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cerning the characterization of the materiality of being as the incarnation of the immaterial light, an incarnation that takes the form of the dual Torah, one that corresponds to YHWH and the world of emanation and the other that corresponds to Elohim and the worlds of creation, formation, and doing. The interplay between the dissimulation of the light of Ein Sof in the guise of YHWH, on the one hand, and the dissimulation of YHWH in the guise of Elohim, on the other hand, sets up the dialetheic paradox of concealment and disclosure117 that characterizes the nature of reality: the dynamic of nothing becoming being in the being that is nothing advances through the dual process of progression (hitpashshetut) and egression (histallequt); insofar as every act of ˙ gives boundary to the boundless, it follows that zimzum is a concealing that ˙every ˙ bestowal perforce is a withdrawal, every act of giving a withholding, everything manifest is a manifestation of the nonmanifest and hence a nonmanifestation of the manifest.118 The profoundest concealment of godliness is not to know that the concealment is concealed in the worldly garments in which it is disclosed; true gnosis consists, therefore, of knowing that the disclosure is a concealment of the concealment.119 Through the occlusion of 117   In contrast to the dialectic, at least understood in a Hegelian sense, which entails a sublation of the difference between antinomies and their resolution in a higher synthesis, the neologism dialetheia, in defiance of the logical principle of noncontradiction and the law of the excluded middle, signifies that there are true contradictions and thus a statement can be both true and false at the same time and in the same relation, the contradictory nature of which is syllogistically diagrammed in the form of ‘α and it is not the case that  α.’ See G. Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3; Priest, in Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3 – 6. For an extended discussion of dialetheism and the problem of truth and falsity, see ibid., 53 – 72. On the shift from dialectic to dialetheic to explicate the paradox in kabbalistic lore, see Wolfson, Heidegger and Kabbalah, 31, 48 – 49 n 10, 66 – 67, 160. 118   Solomon ben Hayyim Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑Kelalim (Jerusa˙ ˙ lem: Aaron Barzanai, 2010), 112 – 113. On zimzum in Eliashiv’s writings, see M. Pachter, ˙ of˙ Kabbalistic Ideas (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, Roots of Faith and Devequt: Studies in the History 2004), 136 – 144; Pachter, “The Gaon’s Kabbalah from the Perspective of Two Traditions,” in The Vilna Gaon and His Disciples, ed. M. Hallamish, Y. Rivlin, and R. Shuchat (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003), 124 – 134 [Hebrew]; Bar-Bettelheim, “The Concept of Zimzum,” 97 – 174; R. Shuchat, “Zimzum Taken Literally – An Investigation into the Thinking ˙ ˙ of Emanuel Hai Ricci and R. Solomon Eliasov,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical ˙ 271 – 301 [Hebrew]; Y. Vilk, Sefer ha‑Zimzum we‑ha-Mezi’ut: Berur Hadash Texts 37 (2017): ˙ be‑Inyenei ha‑Zimzum u‑Mezi’ut ha‑Sefirot (Beit Shemesh,˙ 2018), 120 – 136.˙ See also the˙ refer˙ ˙ ˙ ence to Baumgarten and Wacks cited below in n 121. 119   The wisdom of the kabbalah, expressed by many voices through the centuries, was well captured in the teaching reported in the name of Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba‘al Shem Tov, ˙ by Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (Korzec: Tzvi Hirsch and Shmuel Yissaskhar Ber Segal, 1780), 7a: “It is written in the Tiqqunim [Tiqqunei Zohar, sec. 26, 71b], ‘I am the Lord, I have not changed’ (Malachi 3:6), but with respect to the wicked the blessed holy One does change and he is occluded, for there are several garments, several coverings, and several shells, which are the formlessness, the void, and the darkness etc. And this is what

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the nameless, the nameless is revealed in the ineffable name, and the latter is revealed in the cloak of Elohim. The immaterial light is thus furtively manifest in the façade of the material. The dynamic implied by this relational nexus leads to the conclusion that the imageless can be seen only through the veil of the image, and if this is so, then there is no fleeing from the intractable snare of metaphoricity. Not only do human beings have no experience of the immaterial except through the vestment of the material, but that vestment is the manner in which the immaterial materializes, whence it follows that truth is inherently parabolic and, as such, the expression thereof of necessity embraces what is untrue.120 Despite Eliashiv admonition against interpreting Lurianic concepts metaphorically, a view that he attributes to Moses Hayyim Luzzatto,121 he is led ˙ is written ‘I will hide my countenance from them’ (Deuteronomy 32:20) [. . .] thus there are several garments and coverings in which the blessed holy One is occluded. I have heard, however, from my teacher, may his memory be a blessing in the life of the world to come, that if a person knows that the blessed holy One is occluded there, this is not an occlusion [. . .]. And this is what is written ‘Yet I will keep my countenance hidden on that day’ [we‑anokhi haster astir panay ba‑yom ha‑hu] (Deuteronomy 31:18), that is to say, he will hide from them and they will not know that the blessed holy One is there in this occlusion.” The text is found as well in Keter Shem Tov, ed. and ann. J. I. Schochet (Brooklyn: Kehot, 2004), sec. 85, 49. Compare Jacob Joseph ˙of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef (Korzec: Avraham Dov of Melnyk, 1781), 55a, 88a. The homiletical exegesis is inspired by the rhetorical repetition haster astir: when one does not know that the divine is concealed, there ensues a double concealment, a concealment of the concealment, but when one knows that the divine is concealed, then the concealment is revealed as concealment and hence there is no concealment. Alternatively expressed, the occlusion of the occlusion is a pneumatic state of diminution (qatnut) in which one is so diminished that one is not cognizant of being diminished. See Jacob˙ Joseph of Polonnoye, Zofnat ˙ the Pa‘aneah, critical edition with introduction and notes by G. Nigal (Jerusalem: Institute for ˙ Study of Hasidic Literature, 1989), 1, 162. The state of mindlessness or the lack of knowledge is on occasion marked as forgetfulness and slumber. See ibid., 177, and Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ketonet Passim, critical edition with introduction and notes by G. Nigal (Jerusalem: Peri ha‑Arez, 1985), 239. Compare Keter Shem Tov, sec. 184, 101 – 102. Jacob Joseph of Polon˙ ˙ therapeutically, the one who is ignorant of noye also reports having heard from the Besht that, ˙ one’s malady is submerged in the double concealment and hence there is no hope for recovery. See Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef, 21d. For a similar approach to the concealment of concealment in Nahman of Bratslav, see Wolfson, Open Secret, 325 – 326 n 174. ˙ analysis, framed in less controversial terms, in Y. M. Hillel, 120   My thesis concurs with the Ad ha‑Gal ha‑Zeh (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 2005), 97 – 131; Hillel, Petah Sha‘ar ha‑Shamayim: ha‑Derekh we‑ha-Mavo le‑Hokhmat ha‑Qabbalah (Jerusalem: Ahavat ˙Shalom, 2008), ˙ to which I allude is explored in great philosophical depth 59 – 62. The hermeneutical problem in E. Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. J. R. Betz and D. Bentley Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2014). 121   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 1, 5.8, 162 – 163. This perspective was also enunciated by Ergas,˙Tokhahat Megullah, 6a, who argued that not only is the ˙ secret of zimzum not to be taken literally (ki‑feshut o), but all of the wisdom of Luria must be ˙ figuratively ˙ interpreted (derekh mashal we‑dimyon). ˙Eliashiv’s complex relationship to Luzzatto, including the question of whether to interpret zimzum literally or figuratively, is explored in ˙ ˙ in the Teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Eldetail by E. Baumgarten, “History and Historiosophy

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inevitably to precisely this position: not only is the emanator annulled (meshullal) of all attribution in the utmost nullification (be‑takhlit ha‑shelilah), but even with respect to the world of emanation these attributions are posited by way of analogy (erekh), since this world is superior to the worlds of creation, formation, and doing.122 No one in these worlds can comprehend the world of emanation and certainly not the emanator. Adopting a nominalist perspective, Eliashiv goes so far as to say that it is only with respect to the name that there is any equivalency between the first world and the lower three worlds in the cosmological chain of being. Hence, matters in the world of emanation “are only by way of metaphor [be- derekh mashal]. The import is in accord with our apprehension of these matters, for certainly there is no analogy or likeness [erekh we‑dimyon] at all between the true reality that is in them and our comprehension and apprehension of the matter.”123 Just as we analogize the substance of the soul that inhabits the body in bodily images even though the soul is an incomposite light, so we cannot comprehend the light of emanation, except through metaphorical language that reveals by concealing and conceals by revealing. All the sefirotic configurations (parzufim) are in relation to us only by way of metaphor, “for the entirety of the ˙emanation in relation to us is in the aspect of naught and nothing [efes wa‑ayin]. [. . .] In all of these matters themselves, there is no metaphor at all, but rather they are truly everything that is said and repeated with respect to them, everything in actuality [ha‑kol mammash] without any figurative speech [melizah] or another elocution [lashon], and without another intention [kawwanah].”˙124 Pedagogically, the secrets must be revealed as a concurrent disclosure and concealment; that is, they are revealed in a language that keeps them hidden,125 not only in relation to the unworthy but for the worthy as well. There is no unmasking of the secret that is not at the same time a masking of the unmasking, no disclosure of truth that is not concomitantly a concealment of truth in the mantle of untruth.

yashov,” M. A. thesis, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, 2006, 25 – 88 [Hebrew]. See also R. Wacks, “Chapters of the Kabbalistic Doctrine of Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv,” M. A. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995, 11 – 27 [Hebrew], and other references cited above, n 118. 122   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 1, 5.7, 161. ˙ 123   Ibid., pt. 1, 5.7, 162. 124   Ibid. I concur with the remark of A. Brill, “The Mystical Path of the Vilna Gaon,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3 (1993): 134 n 10, “R. Eliashiv acknowledges that even though zimzum is literal, it is impossible to grasp God’s essence, therefore it is only an analogy (mashal) for us.” See below, n 131. Compare the lengthy discussion of the use of bodily metaphors to describe the incorporeal sefirotic emanations in the anonymous Taharat ˙ ha‑Qodesh (Jerusalem: Meoroth, 1989), 146 – 160. 125   The more typical attitude is expressed in both critical scholarship and devout literature. See, for instance, Y. M. Hillel, Petah Sha‘ar ha‑Shamayim, 54 – 55, 62 – 63. ˙

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In a letter to Naftali Herz Halevi, Eliashiv insists that when it comes to the wisdom of truth (hokhmat ha‑emet) we cannot rely on human intellect alone – ˙ an idea that has been invoked by kabbalists through the centuries – but we must base our speculation on ideas derived from sources infused with the holy spirit, to wit, the Zohar, the Tiqqunim, Luria, and the Vilna Gaon.126 I have no doubt that Eliashiv sincerely believed that the words of Luria and the Vilna Gaon were a result of the inspired commentary on zoharic literature. The task of critical scholarship, however, is to inquire about the soundness of this opinion, not simply to codify it as if it were a truth beyond reproach. With respect to the question at hand, can we really say that anyone – even if privy to divine inspiration – is afforded direct knowledge of the divine realities? Can speaking about the unspeakable be anything but metaphorical approximation? Is it possible to flee from the predicament that the imageless can be seen only through the veil of the image? The radical shattering of all idolatry, including icons of the aniconic, does not preclude the necessity of the formless donning the form of formlessness. Eliashiv emphatically rejects the classification of the experience of the sefirotic emanations as a prophetic vision (mar’ot ha‑nevu’ah), since this would challenge the premise that the wisdom of truth must apply to what is above in parallelism to what is below, and cannot simply apply to a vision that has no ontic standing outside the imagination. Following a much older tradition, Eliashiv does locate the agency of prophecy in the attribute of Malkhut because through her all the visions, forms, and images of the supernal being are seen below. What he objects to is interpreting these images strictly as prophetic in nature because that would diminish the ontic status (mezi’ut mammash) of the spiritual lights (orot ruhaniyyim). But he readily grants ˙that ˙ epistemologically the supernal beings cannot be apprehended except through the intermediary of the image. With this in mind, we can circle back to the notion of the Torah of Emanation. For Eliashiv, even this Torah must be garbed in the Tetragrammaton by which Ein Sof, the infinite beyond all names, is arrayed. There is no access to the light but through the garment of light and this is true even in the future when the light will be revealed without any obstacles or barriers. The matter of his will, blessed be his name, is the existence of his light itself, and therefore we said that the one who is conjoined to his will is verily conjoined to him. However, we have already said that the entire Torah is also verily the light of his will, and it is the light of his holiness that is within it, but only through knowledge [bi‑yedi‘ah] and not through comprehension [be-hassagah]. And we do not comprehend it except by means of our comprehension in every aspect of the will, which is the will and not the reality

126   M. Schatz, Ma‘yan Moshe: Mavo Kelali le‑Torat ha‑Sod (Jerusalem, 2011), 244. On Elia­ shiv’s relationship to and communication with Naftali Herz Halevi, see Baumgarten, “History and Historiosophy,” 9 n 9; Bar-Bettelheim, “The Concept of Zimzum,” 97.

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[mezi’ut], even though in truth the light of his holiness itself was in his will. [. . .] When ˙ contamination will be destroyed and all the viscosity and the barriers that separate all the us from the essential light of his holiness that is above in [the world of] emanation will be purified, then the light of his holiness itself will also spread forth below, and the glory of the Lord will be revealed to all the flesh (Isaiah 40:5), and as it is written “Your master will no longer be covered and your eyes will see your master” (ibid., 30:20). For now, it is only a residue of the illumination, and on account of the viscosity and the contamination, a wall of iron separates Israel and their Father in heaven. We do not comprehend the light of the holiness of his will but only the comprehension of the will. In the future, however, when all the barriers will be destroyed, then all of the will in the light of his holiness that is within it will also be verily revealed and will be seen, and this is the truth of his will as he is. It follows that all of the disclosure of him that we have now, there is no value to it in quantity or in quality compared to the essential and true will that will be disclosed then. This is [the import of] what they said127 that all of the Torah that a person learns in this world is worthless in front of the Torah in the world to come.128

When compared to the present, the future revelation of the Torah promises to be more disclosive. We should not lose sight of the fact, however, that even that disclosure is through the veil of the will, which is the name. There is no way to the nameless and concealed truth of the infinite but through the name that is the disclosure of that essence in the will that is manifest in the Torah and its commandments, and thus by fulfilling the Torah one is conjoined to and unified with the will as it is concretized in the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.129 Eliashiv would have concurred with the characterization of the Torah, the embodiment of the divine wisdom, on the part of the Habad-Lubavitch masters as the primordial parable (meshal qadmoni) that ˙ what cannot be revealed except in language that is other than what is reveals revealed. As parable, the Torah conceals what it reveals in the revelation of what it conceals.130 This is not the place to enter into the complex historical question of Eliashiv’s relation to Hasidism in general or to Habad in particular. Bezalel ˙ an exchange of letters written ˙ Naor has argued that in by Eliashiv and Pinhas ha‑Kohen Lintop, two divergent perspectives emerge: Lintop viewed the theistic orientation of Eliashiv as heresy or as atheism, whereas Eliashiv viewed

127   Qohelet Rabbah 2:1, in Midrash Rabbah im Kol ha‑Mefarshim, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Wagshell, 2001), Megillah Qohelet, 33. 128   Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Haqdamot u‑She‘arim, 13. ˙ ˙ 129  Ibid. 130   On the image of the Torah as the primordial parable in Habad thought, see Wolfson, ˙ Menahem Mendel SchneerOpen Secret, 58 – 65, 97 – 98; Wolfson, “Revealing and Re / veiling ˙ son’s Messianic Secret,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 26 (2012): 56 – 63; Wolfson, “Nequddat ha‑Reshimu – The Trace of Transcendence and the Transcendence of the Trace: The Paradox of Zimzum in the RaShaB’s Hemshekh Ayin Beit,” Kabbalah: Journal for the ˙ ˙ (2013): 98 – 99. Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 30

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Lintop’s pantheism as a mistake approximating idolatry.131 The epistolic record is surely not insignificant, but in my estimation, the proximity of Eliashiv and Habad is a matter worthy of closer inspection.132 In a letter written to Naf˙ Herz Halevi, Eliashiv proclaims that he understands zimzum as well as the tali ˙ vacuum (halal) created thereby literally and he defends his˙ affirming that in the ˙ world of emanation one can find the root for all the specificity that exists in the other worlds, while at the same time denying that there is any comparison or similitude between what is found in the world of emanation and in the lower words; any resemblance is due solely to language.133 Other kabbalists who accepted the literal interpretation are named, but the question that needs to be asked is post-textual: what does it mean to speak of zimzum as literal? Is the literalness here not, ipso facto, figurative? Do we not ˙have˙ to claim the middle excluded by the logic of the excluded middle and see therein that the literal can be nothing but figurative and the figurative, nothing but literal? The contraction is the means by which the light is hidden and bounded, and the measure of the expansion of this power is called the vacuum, the place of the worlds, in which the light is concealed and it is seen as if it were not seen. The thickness that remains from the withdrawal is the aspect of the contraction and the aspect of the vessels – both can be viewed as expressions of the secret of divine judgment. But we still face a paradox that demands an imaginal leap to a space where the thing both is and is not, or in Eliashiv’s words, 131   Kana’uteh de‑Pinhas (The Zeal of Pinhas): Letter from Rabbi Pinhas Hakohen Lintop of Birzh to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook of Jaffa Critiquing the Recently Published Work of Rabbi Solomon Elyashev of Shavel, Hakdamot u‑She‘arim (1909), transcribed, edited, and annotated by B. Naor (Spring Valley: Orot, Inc., 2013), 20. On Eliashiv’s critique against pantheism, see in more detail, 68 – 70. Naor, Kana’uteh de‑Pinhas, 20, notes that Lintop objected to the Eliashiv’s following the school of the Vilna Gaon by interpreting the act of zimzum literally against the ˙ to ˙ Naor was offered by figurative interpretation of Luzzatto and Habad. A partial rejoinder ˙ Elyashiv, Author of Leshem Shevo v‑Achloma: J. Rosenfeld, “A Tribute to Rav Shlomo On His Ninetieth Yahrzeit,” in (https:// seforimblog.com / tag / joey-rosenfeld / ?print=printsearch) (March 10, 2016). Challenging Naor on the question of the literal versus the figurative interpretation of zimzum in Eliashiv’s thought, Rosenfeld, utilizing my language to describe ˙ ˙ inherent to truth, applies a third way such that the contraction of the the nature of nontruth infinite light is “literally figurative because figuratively real.” Rosenfeld’s citation of my words as well as the source are not given accurately and I have corrected both in accord with the text in E. R. Wolfson, A Dream Interpreted within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (New York: Zone Books, 2009), 202. More pertinent would have been a reference to my discussion of the literal versus the figurative interpretation of zimzum in Habad sources in ˙ language ˙ ˙in Lurianic kabWolfson, “Nequddat ha‑Reshimu,” 77 – 81. On the use of nonliteral balah, at times even going against what is considered to be the truth, see the survey of relevant sources in Hillel, Petah Sha‘ar ha‑Shamayim, 59 – 61. 132   See the letter of˙Eliashiv to Naftali Herz Halevi, written in 1883, cited in Kana’uteh de‑Pinhas, 120 n 68, who considered his views aligned with Habad. 133   The letter of Eliashiv is produced in Schatz, Ma‘yan˙ Moshe, 244 – 245. The same defense is offered in another letter, op. cit., 253 – 254.

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the light is seen as it if did not exist. How is this phenomenologically possible? To see the invisible as visible or the visible as invisible is one thing, but this is not the same as seeing a phenomenon as if it did not exist. How does one see something as if it were not? We have moved to a place – topologically and logically – where the image is real because what is real is the image. In this place, as Heidegger emphasized in Sein und Zeit, self-showing coincides with a presence that does not show itself. Appearance, on this score, means that what does not show itself announces itself through something that does show itself, and hence appearing is a not showing itself.134 Toppling the epistemological bias that informed centuries of Western philosophical speculation, Heidegger asserts in his youthful masterpiece that in its self-showing, appearing “indicates the nonmanifest [Nichtoffenbare] – as what comes to the fore in the nonmanifest itself, and radiates from it in such a way that what is nonmanifest is thought of as what is essentially never manifest.”135 As Menahem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh master of the Habad-Luba­ vitch lineage,˙ put it, basing himself on dozens of texts penned or ˙voiced by his predecessors, beyond the name there is the “interiority of the name” (penimiyyut de‑yhwh), the hiddenness that is the “interior and essential drawing forth from the interiority and essentiality of the infinite verily [hamshakhah penimit we‑azmit mi‑penimiyyut we‑azmiyyut ein sof mammash].”136 This interiority, ˙ ˙ repentance, the hypernomian principle par which Schneerson identifies with excellence insofar as it transcends in its immeasurability and limitlessness the polarity of guilt and innocence demanded by the strictures of law,137 can only be signposted allusively by a hint (remez) that the depth of intellect cannot garb in letters.138 Is it possible to venture beyond this investiture? Can the mind dispense of the sign of the lack that signifies the lack of the sign? Can the Torah be divested of all garments and remain a Torah? Is there a way to the nameless but through the name? Eliashiv suggests that the first tablets that Israel would have merited had they not worshipped the Golden Calf instantiate this interval between the name and the nameless: “Thus he gave them the Torah, for the Torah is from the founda134

  M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Stambaugh, revised and with a foreword by D. J. Schmidt (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2010), § 7, 28 (emphasis in original); Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), 29. 135   Heidegger, Being and Time, § 7, 28 – 29; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 30. 136   Menahem Mendel Schneerson, Torat Menahem: Sefer ha‑Ma’amarim 5731 (Brooklyn, ˙ ˙ NY: Kehot, 2018), 306. 137   Wolfson, Open Secret, 55 – 56, 166 – 171, 180 – 182, 274, 279 – 281; Wolfson, “Revealing,” 27 – 28, 67. That redemption is dependent on repentance, according to the rabbinic dictum (b Sanhedrin 97b), also implies that it is outside of the normal temporal demarcation, since repentance happens “in one moment and in one second,” that is, inside time as that which is outside time. See Wolfson, “Revealing,” 84. 138   Schneerson, Torat Menahem: Sefer ha‑Ma’amarim 5731, 306. ˙

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tion of the father [yesod de‑abba] that split and it went outward . . . and the tablets are the two crowns of knowledge [itrin de‑da‘at] that were hidden within it. [. . .] Therefore, those who merited the˙ first tablets aroused high above to draw down the concealed light so that it is disclosed below. And this is the mystery of the scale [ha‑raza de‑matqela] that unified everything.”139 The first tablets are the two crowns of knowledge hidden within the phallic potency of the father, the divine wisdom that embodies the concealed light of Ein Sof and as such the tablets were expressive of a law that cannot be constricted within the confines of the law that distinguishes permissible and forbidden. The Torah revealed at Sinai is a prolepsis of the messianic Torah that similarly will be a law that is beyond the law to the extent that the binaries essential to the structure and application of lawfulness will no longer be viable. That this hypernomian perspective was not only promulgated by radical Sabbatians, but found its way into other sources, is testimony to the fact that it is one of the more consistent themes that informed kabbalistic spirituality. I will conclude the essay with several examples from Hasidic texts that have not been considered in this light. Rather than focusing˙ on the blatantly antinomian potential of the idea of pious transgression,140 I will concentrate on the hypernomian ideal of the messianic Torah as the law that divests itself of the serpentine garb of lawfulness. My first example is from Menahem Nahum ˙ ˙ of Chernobyl:

139

  Eliashiv, Leshem Shevo we‑Ahlamah: Sefer ha‑De‘ah, pt. 2, 5.3.6, 381.   For discussion of this theme, ˙see S. Magid, Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica / Radzin Hasidism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 207 – 216. In the same work, 216 – 225, Magid uses the term “soft antinomianism” to characterize the tension between the experience of spiritual illumination and the authority of halakhah in the teaching of the leaders of this dynasty, Mordecai Joseph Leiner and his grandson Gershon Henoch. On 220, Magid equates the expression “soft antinomian” with “hypernomian” and characterizes the former in terms that bear an affinity to my own account of the latter: “In order to be antinomian inside Judaism, one must be a pietist. To live outside the law one also has to live beyond the letter of the law.” Magid then quotes the same line from Bob Dylan’s “Absolutely Sweet Marie” that served as the epigraph to my Venturing Beyond, “To live outside the law you must be honest.” I would argue that the hypernomian ideal presumes not only that one live beyond the letter of the law but, more paradoxically, that surpassing the law demands of one to preserve the law that is surpassed. My coinage of the term hypernomian is acknowledged by Magid, op. cit., 352 n 20. The example that he provides, which he says that I do not mention, concerning the Lurianic custom of wearing two types of phylacteries (Rashi and Rabbenu Tam) does not illustrate the phenomenon of hypernomianism that I have discussed and it is for this reason that it does not figure as part of my analysis. Hypernomianism does not refer to amplifying halakhic stringency by adopting additional rituals but rather defying ritual practices as a means to obeying them. For a more recent study of this theme, see B. Brown, “Theoretical Antinomianism and the Conservative Function of Utopia: Rabbi Mordekhai Yosef of Izbica as a Case Study,” Journal of Religion 99 (2019): 312 – 340. 140

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It is true that the Torah was in the days of Abraham our patriarch, peace be upon him, but it was garbed in the garments of the skin of the serpent [melubeshet be‑khotnot or ha‑nahash], as it says “And [the Lord God] made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, ˙ and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). Adam and Eve are the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. For prior to his transgression Adam was not a material entity, and so it is with every human being. And the essence of receiving the Torah was that the pollution [of the serpent] ceased and the [or with an ayin] became or with an alef [that is the garments of skin became garments of light], and they saw the light and the interiority of the Torah, “and the Torah is light” (Proverbs 6:23). This is what must be received every Pentecost, to comprehend the vitality and interiority of the Torah, as it says “Open my eyes that I may perceive the wonders [of your Torah]” (Psalms 119:18), for one must comprehend every day the new vitality from our holy Torah.141

Bracketing the underlying conception of time as the constant renewal of that which never was at play here and the reworking of an older aggadic motif regarding the original state of human corporeality connected to the expression kotnot or, read either with an ayin or with an alef,142 I want to focus on the far-reaching description of the Torah in the time of Abraham being garbed in the garments of the serpent’s skin. Based on the rabbinic tradition that at Sinai the serpentine pollution with which Eve was inseminated will cease,143 Menahem Nahum presents the transformation of the Torah itself from being ˙ garbed˙ in garments of skin to garments of light, a transformation that reflects the change in the status of human body from base materiality to refined corporeality. The hypernomian Torah was revealed proleptically at Sinai together with the nomian Torah, which is appropriate for an exilic state wherein the forces of light and dark are in competition. The radical implications of the passage from Me’or Einayim are made explicit in Zadoq ha‑Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin: ˙

It appears to me that the root of the souls of converts in the Torah is in this section of Yitro, for he caused the covering of the eyes of Israel [kissuy einayim de‑yisra’el]. [. . .] Thus, the giving of the Torah was written in the section that is called by his name, and the name Yitro refers to the surplus [yittur] of the section that is external to the Torah [huz la‑torah]. The giving of the Torah is the essence of the Torah, but the matter of the ˙ ˙ scroll written with ink on parchment is also from the perspective of this world, Torah which conceals and hides the true light [ha‑ma‘alim u‑mastir or ha‑amitti]. With respect to the future to come it says “I will inscribe them on the tablet of their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33), and hence there will be no need for a teacher. In this world, wherein the [the word] or [with an ayin] was exchanged for [the word] or [with an alef], as in the garments of skin [kotnot or] of the primal Adam, which replaced the garments of light that he possessed before the transgression, so the Torah of this world is from the side of the Tree

141   Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Me’or Einayim (Benei-Beraq: Ma‘ayenot ha‑Besht, ˙ ˙ 2015), 259. ˙ 142   Bere’shit Rabbah, ed. J. Theodor and C. Albeck (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965), 20:12, 96. 143  b Shabbat 146a.

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of Knowledge of Good and Evil, impure and pure, admissible and invalid, it is garbed in the garments of skin and parchment. And so all the commandments are garbed in the matters of the actions of this corporeal world, and this is the essence of the Torah and the eternal life he implanted within us. Even though this is only a garment for the interior, nevertheless in this world the garment becomes for a person a garment from the side of the Torah, and this is from the side of the shell that surrounds the fruit in this world.144

Noteworthy is the incredibly daring claim that the very section of the Torah in which the narrative of the revelation of the Torah is recorded is characterized as something that is extrinsic to or the surplus of the Torah. To appreciate the boldness of speaking of a section of the Torah, indeed the section in which the Torah is revealed, as being outside the Torah, consider the more expected use of this locution in the statement of Joseph ibn Shushan cited by Samuel ben Isaac di Uceda: “There is nothing outside the Torah but deceit [she-ein huz la‑torah ella sheqer].”145 According to R. Zadoq, the paradoxical demar˙cation ˙ ˙ of a portion of the Torah as being outside the Torah is explained by appeal to the older kabbalistic idea, which was also instrumental for Sabbatian ideology, that the Torah that prevails in this world – the material Torah scroll written with ink on parchment – is from the Tree of Knowledge and thus it embodies the binaries of good and evil, pure and impure, permissible and forbidden. The interiority of the Torah, the Torah to be etched on the heart in the messianic future, is beyond those polarities and thus no longer dons the garment of the shell. Lest the insurgent repercussion of this hasidic master’s ˙ words be overlooked, let me reiterate the claim that the nomian character of the Torah – represented in both positive and negative commandments – is explained by the fact that the Torah in this world is clothed in the serpentine shell, an image that resonates with the gnostic myth of the exile of spirit in matter. Describing the Sinaitic revelation in another passage,146 R. Zadoq explains ˙ that when the Israelites heard the command “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2), the obligation to study Torah was fixed in their hearts, and when they heard “You shall have no other gods beside me” (Exodus 20:2), the evil inclination was removed from their hearts. As a consequence, the words of Torah were engraved on their hearts in anticipation of what would be in the future, an ideasupported exegetically by “I will put my teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33) and “write them on the 144   Zadoq ha‑Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin, Taqqanat ha‑Shavin (Beit‑El: Yeshivat Beit‑El,˙ 1988), 6:54, 66. 145   Samuel ben Isaac di Uceda, Midrash Shmu’el (Benei-Beraq: Me’orei Or, 1989), 49 (ad Avot 1:12). 146   Zadoq ha‑Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin, Peri Zaddiq, 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Mesamhei ˙ 4:47 (le‑hag ha‑shevu‘ot, sec. 6). ˙ ˙ Lev, 1999), ˙

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tablet of your heart” (Proverbs 3:3). Perhaps recoiling from the hypernomian implications of his own exegesis, R. Zadoq emphasizes in the continuation of ˙ the passage that at the time of the giving of the Torah the two tablets were placed in the hearts of everyone from the Israelite nation, one tablet in the right heart corresponding to the positive commandments, whose root is “I the Lord am your God,” and the other tablet in the left heart corresponding to the negative commandments, whose root is “You shall have no other gods.” We can discern an attempt to retain the nomian nature of the Torah inscribed in the heart, thereby circumventing a dichotomy between the exteriority of the law and the interiority of the spirit, a strategy that would be consistent with the time-honored rabbinic response to the polemic condemnation of Christian thinkers. Nevertheless, one could make a strong case that a dichotomy along these lines is indeed implied in R. Zadoq’s words, a suggestion enhanced by the passage that we discussed above, ˙which explicitly refers to the Torah comprised of prohibitions and prescriptions originating from the Tree of Knowledge and garbed in the shell of the demonic. The future Torah will shed this shroud and will consist of the true light that is no longer subject to the dichotomy of holy and unholy. This Torah embodies the hypernomian margin that demarcates the center of the nomian, the limit beyond the law that is the foundation of the law, the metaethical destabilization that grounds the possibility of an ethical imperative. Just as the female is incorporated in the male that is both and neither male nor female, and the non-Jew is incorporated in the Jew that is both and neither Jew nor non-Jew, so the unholy is incorporated in the holy that is both and neither holy nor unholy, and evil is incorporated in the good that is both and neither good nor evil.

Beyond (the common) Good and Evil Josiah Solis My response to Elliot Wolfson’s essay will unfold as follows: first, I seek to place what I see as the heart of Wolfson’s essay, the hypernomian perimeter of the ethical, in the context of Wolfson’s own larger project regarding law and morality in Kabbalistic mysticism; second, I will raise a couple of questions about Wolfson’s early, but singular, reference to Derrida’s idea of the “law beyond the law,” a locution also found in the essay’s title; finally, I will place this essay in dialogue with the larger conference theme considering ideas of “the common good.” I offer the following remarks not to critique – there is not much, if anything, that I disagree with in Wolfson’s essay – but to read alongside with both previously published remarks by Wolfson and the larger theme of this conference. Wolfson’s essay examines the viability of Kabbalistic ethics. Though it is happening with more regularity in philosophical and religious scholarship, it is still somewhat atypical to take seriously a correlation between mysticism and morality. Delineating precise meanings of what is categorized independently as “mystical” or “ethical” has a well-trodden history of challenges, with many wanting to keep the two demarcated. Medieval mystics, for example, are often cast in terms of purely meditative pursuits, emphasizing the vita contemplativa as opposed to the vita activa. Wolfson, seemingly following in part the trajectory laid forth by Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, will have none of this. By mining with rigor the texts and history of medieval Jewish esoteric lore and practice – kabbalah – Wolfson offers an alternative ressourcement with an eye towards mobilizing these texts in order to reimagine the (non)space, a ground that is groundless, between the ethical and the mystical. This is both, as Wolfson says in his 2006 text Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism, an exercise in historiographical scholarship, and, more importantly, an attempt to “pierce beneath the veil of an admittedly seductive symbolism to determine the ultimate ethical meaning of a particular mystical path.”1 The heart of Wolfson’s essay, though, is not simply to consider the relationship between Kabbalah and ethics, but to specifically consider that relationship 1   E. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 16.

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from the vantage point of what he identifies as the “hypernomian foundation of the nomos, the grounding of the law in the ground that exceeds the law of the ground.”2 A nomian framework is one that is predicated on a clear distinction between that which is permissible and that which is forbidden; there is good and there is evil. Again, going back to at least Wolfson’s Venturing Beyond, this nominan framework is contested by proposing a hypernomian – also called ‘transmoral’ as opposed to ‘immoral’ – framework that aspires to rupture the duality of good and evil.3 The convergence of mysticism and morality entails an inversion of values that places one above that dichotomy of the permissible and forbidden, and places them in a state of non-duality where deception and truth become indistinguishable.4 Through various ritual practices, the Kabbalist walks a path that does not abrogate the categories of good and evil but carries her beyond them. Contra Gershom Scholem – Wolfson correctly points out that Scholem places an emphasizes on the antinomian impulse – in this particular essay, the hypernomian impinges on the construction of the other both internally in the guise of the Jewish woman and externally in the guise of the non-Jew.5 As he asks early in the essay: can a genuine overcoming of gender dimorphism and cultural prejudice be elicited from Kabbalistic material? This is the litmus test that Wolfson identifies to ask whether it is appropriate to speak of the mystical worldview that has informed Kabbalists who propagate an ethical sensibility.6 Ultimately, Wolfson concludes, it is the future Torah that embodies the hypernomian, where just as the female is incorporated in the male that is neither male nor female, the non-Jew is incorporated in the Jew that is neither Jew nor non-Jew.7 This is not a move that, to invoke Nietzsche, simply moves beyond good and evil8, but that sees them as opposites that are one: a coincidence of opposites that allows opposites to remain opposite in coincidence. A daring thesis, no doubt, that leads to my first question regarding the Derridian idiom of “the law beyond the law.”9 Derrida’s relationship to mysticism is not as clear cut as many want it to be. It is even more textually problematic to take a view, such as John Caputo’s, that 2

  E. R. Wolfson, “Heeding the Law beyond the Law: Transgendering Alterity and the Hypernomian Perimeter of the Ethical,” in this volume. 3   Wolfson, Venturing Beyond, 186. 4   Ibid., 199. 5   Wolfson, “Heeding the Law.” 6  Ibid. 7  Ibid. 8   Wolfson never engages Nietzsche in this essay, and from what I can tell he is also an uncommon source in Wolfson’s other work. Given the similarity in assessing morality, it would be curious to further place Wolfson and Nietzsche in dialogue. 9   J. Derrida, Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, in Acts of Religion, ed. G. Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002).

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insists on there being a religious import to deconstruction related to a messianic concern for justice.10 Said concern aside, Wolfson has argued elsewhere in his book Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania, that Derrida’s own position on the law is consistent with Kabbalistic hypernomianism.11 Derrida writes about the nonjuridical dimension of the gift of forgiveness as the “law beyond the law,” a phrase found in his essay’s title. While Wolfson notes that Derrida is both proximate to yet still quite distant from a Kabbalistic worldview, it is clear enough that the law beyond the law points to an excess of the law where the hypernomian foundation of the nomos is found.12 My broad question simply seeks more illumination on Wolfson’s brief but central import of Derrida into this paper. More specifically, I would be curious to probe this idea with what, from what I can tell, is Derrida’s most sustained engagement with the idea of the law in his essay “Force of Law.” Here, Derrida describes the law as that which is never exercised without a decision that cuts, that divides. This decision, though, is always an experience of the undecidable, that which is not merely the oscillation between two decisions, but the very experience of that which is still obliged to give itself up to the impossible decision.13 But the law still requires a decision, and that decision is one of division. The hypernomian perimeter of the ethical is that which is found within the law beyond the law, but the law beyond the law is still, for Derrida, a force of law that divides, not that necessarily overcomes. Are these ideas distinctions without a difference? Or there something more here to explicate? Without too simplistically proposing the often useless and rather dull practical question – “what do we do with this?” – considering the larger conference theme I do feel the need to at least consider the role of the individual subject in this paradigm which, interestingly enough, also raises questions concerning the role of the State. Implicit in the hypernomian is a critique of liberalism and of the subject’s relationship to the State through the law. Now Wolfson does make clear that, from a Kabbalistic perspective, one does have to walk the path toward self-actualization where the path leads to a “hyper-lawfulness without the delineation of specific laws, a path that terminates in the breakdown of binary distinctions including the distinctions necessary to ratify both religious and moral order.”14 The release from the law is not attained by discarding, but

10

 See J. D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997). 11   E. Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and the Overcoming of Theomania (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 167. 12   Wolfson, Giving Beyond the Gift, 168. 13   Derrida, Force of Law, 24. 14   Wolfson, “Heeding the Law.”

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by executing with an intensity that pushes beyond the limits of the law. Similarly, Derrida agrees that justice exceeds law and calculation, but that this does not serve as an alibi for staying out of juridico-political battles, for incalculable justice requires us to calculate.15 This constant tension, this process of overcoming, appears seemingly endless in its undergoing, to the point that the subject is pushed almost to the point of ethical madness. I think States are aware well of this, which is why it may be interesting to ask whether this calculation / decision is actually one that someone like Carl Schmitt, in his understanding of the State, sees as necessary to the hypernomian; the State as a response to the hypernomian.16 I am in no way accusing of Wolfson of being Schmittian in a negative sense here, but simply want to raise the practical question concerning the State when the subject, through Kabbalah or another path, heeds the law beyond the law. Is the very existence of the State a response to that excess? There is obviously much more in this response that could and should be discussed. From the polyontology of the metaontological void, to Wolfson’s brilliant reading of Ein Sof, to the posthuman repercussions of the messianic transvaluation, this essay opens a space for almost endless discussion. I have chosen to only focus on what I see as the core of the essay, the hypernominan, to just raise a few connections and questions concerning the nature of good and evil in relation to the law. After all, this is a conference that is examining idea of the “common good.” If we take Derrida and Wolfson (and Nietzsche?) seriously, though, we should approach the idea of the common good with some fear and trembling. As Derrida says, “left to itself, the incalculable and giving idea of justice is always very close to the bad.”17 Or as Wolfson concludes, as “evil is incorporated in the good that is both and neither good nor evil.”18 If we are to take the hypernomian seriously, heeding some sort of ethic in the excess of the law beyond the law, perhaps we would be better to speak of the common good, the common evil, the common that is both and neither good nor evil.

15

  Derrida, Force of Law, 28.   I credit my friend and student of Wolfson, Lucas Wright, for first making this point. 17   Derrida, Force of Law, 28. 18   Wolfson, “Heeding the Law.” 16

About Diversity, Freedom, the Open Society and Its Enemies Nils Ole Oerman 1. Civil Liberties and Tolerance I assume that I was invited to this conference because of my specifically German background and my particular perspective as a theological ethicist and legal scholar. It is through these three lenses that I will try to focus on the interrelations between individual liberties and individual values, and current developments in the field of diversity politics. As regards my German background: The “breach of civilization” inflicted on the world by Germans and the German Reich between 1933 and 1945 has left a deep mark on how the Federal Republic of Germany and the German public approach issues of free speech. Let me give but two examples: Paragraph 130 of the Federal Penal Law Code stipulates that whoever “approves, denies or downplays” the Nazi genocides (on Sinti and Roma as well as on the Jews) and the Holocaust in a way that is likely to disturb the public peace or is considered to incite public hatred faces a prison sentence of three months to five years. This norm is interesting because it prohibits and sanctions not only the denial of historic facts, but also the expression of certain opinions regarding those facts. It is not illegal to hold such opinions privately, but it is expressly prohibited to give voice to them publicly. The legislative message is clear. Regarding the Holocaust, Germans value truth and decency higher than freedom of speech, and they protect their sense of a common bond holding society together by a normative proscription. At the same time, the lessons of the bitter past have moved freedom of expression and the academic freedom of science and research right into the centre of our constitutional order. They are strongly protected by the Grund­ rechte, our code of basic rights and the boundaries of these basic rights have been constantly pushed outward in discussions that prove our democratic public really is “alive and kicking.” The latest example of that never-ending dispute about what should and what must be “sayable” in public is about immigration policies and the formation of a new, rightist political party called Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Paradoxically, this party trumpets that it is no longer possible to safely criticize unrestricted immigration, let alone to propose “Germany first” policies,

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because whoever does so, the new party complains, is immediately suspected of being a Nazi – which fortunately is about the worst accusation one can suffer from one’s compatriots in Germany. The left, of course, eagerly denies these charges, while insisting that true humanism demands borders be open for all oppressed and endangered peoples. The debate heated up so much that in 2019 the German President FrankWalter Steinmeier and Chancellor Angela Merkel each felt compelled to point out that the freedom of expression in Germany is not threatened in the slightest. Steinmeier explicitly returned to this point when speaking to a conference of university presidents in November 2019, as he attempted to counter the impression that in Germany one is not able to freely express one’s opinion on some topics. This impression was an “old worn-out and reactionary cliché.” The right of one person to express their opinion is mirrored by the right of another not to share that opinion. Each accusatory “Assuming I’m still allowed to say that” can and must be met with an “And I assume I’m still allowed to disagree with you.” This is not a terror regime of mainstream virtue; this is democracy. However, this statement needs to be specified rather than corrected. Nobody in his right mind could claim that in Germany there is active legal or executive intervention in the right of the individual to express their opinions freely. But the truth is also that those who express radical minority opinions on politically or otherwise sensitive issues should not only expect they will be contradicted. On the contrary, they must also expect and be prepared to be socially sanctioned for such opinions in their community or in their workplace. Those of a different opinion might not only ostracize him or her, but also question their continued employment. Accepting disadvantages for one’s opinion is what the term “social sanctions” means. In other words, no one disputes a person’s right to express themselves freely in Germany – as long as you are prepared to accept the possibility you will face social sanctions for those opinions. So much for my simplistic legal commentary on this civil right, which is influenced by my German background. But as an ethicist I also come from a theological, religious, and philosophical background. There, on the subject of freedom of expression, the biblical verse of a “But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’” (Matthew 5:37) – often connected with the commandment of love and the duty to seek dialogue, admittedly for many Christians connected with the duty to missionize – seems as popular is it is very simplified. This duty to enter into a dialogue is also derived from Luther’s coining of the term “tolerance” from the concept of toleratio dei, in contrast to “acceptance” with its connotations of relativism and indifference.1 1   M. Luther, WA.B. 9, 441 – 2. This relates to Luther’s exchange with Johann und Georg von Anhalt (1541).

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But why, Luther asked himself, should I “endure” (the literal meaning of the Latin tolerare, as tolus means “burden”) the positions of another, even if they diametrically contradict my convictions and opinions? Because God in his infinite goodness endures and tolerates us human beings, “old maggot sacks” that we are. This warrants and even requires us to show tolerance towards others. For how could he who is in such need of toleratio dei – and experiences it repeatedly – not tolerate others? He must. (How well Luther himself succeeded in this, for example with regard to the Jews, is another matter.) For Luther, it follows that we must first tolerate others and their opinions. It is true that we must work hard to persuade others, but in hindsight we have come a long way, peacefully. But it is also true that on this path there are no shortcuts by imposing what we consider to be right on others, by fiat or by force.

2. The Ambiguity of Values After this somewhat simplistic juxtaposition, what do these two observations, the legal one on civil liberties and the theological one on tolerance, have to do with the lively debate – in particular at American universities – on diversity, equity and inclusion; a debate that is making waves as far away as Rhodes House, Oxford and Berlin, Germany? First of all, I would like to say that, despite the theme set for this conference, I will be unable to enter more deeply into the American debate because I do not understand enough about its positions and terms, nor about the legal situation here. But I would like to try to contribute something to this debate, and do this by making some use of the ideas that the German theologian Eberhard Jüngel has developed on the concept of values. He has shown that such debates about values – way before the one about diversity – are largely based on personal claims about values. In his critical reflection on the concept of values, he questions whether competing individual values are entitled to collective normativity. He comes to the conclusion that they are not. Jüngel is convinced that anyone who, for example, calls for freedom, diversity, equity, or inclusion in the public sphere, or who, like Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies2 as well as in the title I have chosen, speaks of an “open society,” is ultimately speaking of values, which usually means they are speaking of goods and goals that are particularly important to them and which should therefore take precedence over other goods and goals.

2

  K. Popper, The Open Society and its enemies, revised edition (London: Routledge, 2011).

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In his book The Genesis of Values, Hans Joas writes: “Strictly speaking, there are no certainties; there are only people who are certain of their cause.”3 Echoing this, Jüngel’s position could be described as: Strictly speaking, there are no values, only people who value things. For Christians, however, it is not about values, but about the truth [of the Christian faith]. That is why in The Tyranny of Values, Eberhard Jüngel demonstrates a critical theological understanding of the concept of values, both in reference to Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann’s ethics of values and in Martin Heidegger’s scathing criticism of the same. Therefore, in relation to the particular context of this conference, we could ask: What are values? What are their origin? What chances, at least from an ethical point of view, do they offer us? And what are their limits? Are there possibly also specific Christian values? Something which is often claimed, especially in religious and political contexts, where Christian values and a Christian view of human nature – as if there were only one – are often spoken of. Hans Küng also assumes the existence of Christian values, but in his global ethics project he seeks to identify how they relate to the values of other world religions, and even endeavours to identify “a common set of ‘core values’.” Eberhard Jüngel and others, by contrast, want to keep the concept of values out of theology altogether and instead speak only of “truth.”4 The debate about the meaning and use of values has thus ebbed and flowed for decades, and there seems to be no end in sight. Why is that? To answer this question a quick look at the history of the concept of values would help. Admittedly, it was not originally a central concept in philosophy or theology. Plato and Aristotle with their concept of virtue or Thomas Aquinas with his focus on truth and natural law got along excellently without the concept of values. The modern concept of values was only established with the rise of economics, when seller and buyer try to agree on the question: “What is this object we both are interested in worth? If they can reach a consensus, the object changes hands. With Adam Smith, economics further differentiates between an object’s exchange value and its utility value. A golden cage, for example, has a high exchange value because of its material, but a relatively low utility value, because steel would serve the purpose equally well. So far, so good. In philosophy, the concept of values found a place in the work of Rudolf Hermann Lotze and subsequently of Neo-Kantians such as Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, who were interested in objectifying the concept 3

  H. Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), 6.   E. Jüngel, Wertlose Wahrheit. Zur Identität und Relevanz des christlichen Glaubens, 2nd edition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 4

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of values. Somewhat later, this approach was taken up by Max Scheler, but given a fundamentally different content in his hierarchies of ethical values. Scheler, and following him Nicolai Hartmann, were in search of objective and unchanging values. Scheler attempted to make the concept of values the foundation of his material ethics.5 For him, it was absolutely necessary for values to have being as part of a greater whole, as entities of a metaphysical construct. The being of values should differ, however, from the being of real existing values as an ideal being-in-itself, whereby phenomenologically revealed values are brought into a supposedly a priori existing hierarchy. And this hierarchy, he claims, is intuitively accessible. This last step, of course, led Scheler’s theory of values over the precipice’s edge, because it seems impossible to base an intersubjectively mediated and binding normative ethics on intuition. For how do I convey intuitive values to those who think differently, who refuse or are simply unable to share my intuition and its source? Through sheer willpower? By taking away their dessert? However, the weakness in Scheler’s deduction and justification of values does not mean that his thoughts on values remained without influence. On the contrary, they had profound effects on Germany’s legal system. In German criminal law the Unwert or “non-value” of an act must be determined, and the immorality of a legal transaction is measured by the “sense of what is right of all fair and just-thinking people.” Even the Federal Constitutional Court assumes that an “objective order of values” is embodied in the “basic rights provisions, which are a fundamental constitutional determinant throughout the legal system.”6 The concept of values also had its effect in Catholic social teaching, where Oswald von Nell-Breuning and others attempted, albeit not quite in Scheler’s sense, to align the concept of values with the traditional ethical concept of the good and thus insert it into the tradition of natural law. In the sixth edition of the Görres Society’s Encyclopaedia of State and Law, the entry on values has the following to say: “Reality [. . .] shows itself in all being in its peculiar graduated perfection, which can be described as goodness (bonitas) or value.”7

Martin Heidegger would probably have felt confirmed in his diagnosis by this sentence: “value and the valuable” had become “a positivist substitute for the 5   M. Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch eines ethischen Personalismus, Gesammelte Werke, vol. II, 4th edition (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1954). 6   See the Lüth Judgement of the German Federal Constitutional Court, in BVerfGE 7, 198. 7   M. Müller and A. Halder, “Wert I,” in Staatslexikon. Recht, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, ed. Görres Society, Volume VIII, 6th edition (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 596 – 601, 597.

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metaphysical.”8 Of course, Heidegger’s criticism of an ethics of values is closely related to his own philosophical insights, which cannot be discussed here in detail. But even if one does not want to follow Heidegger, he has in any case made it clear that the attempt of an ethics of values to construct a realm of objective and unchanging values on a vague ontological basis had to lead into a cul-de-sac.

3. Values Cannot Be Enforced But does not the concept of values, despite all the problems associated with it, at least have a highly practical value? Can and should certain values or value hierarchies be enforced, either by prescribing them by law or by compelling others to conform to them by social pressure? The answer is, in principle, no. Values should – for the sake of social peace and liberty – be enforced only where there is practically no dispute about them at all, as in the case of the historical facticity of the Holocaust and its incomparable horror. This is by no means equivalent to ethical relativism. On the contrary, I do not at all mean to dispute the fact that values such as diversity are recognised and affirmed by society as a whole. It can be a noble goal to work towards such a consensus. However, this recognition and affirmation should not be legally enforced by claiming that diversity is a “basic value” and thus takes precedence over other values, such as the principle that merit should be the main determinant of reward. For no value is valid in its own right. Whoever, for example, requires a diversity statement for every academic application, not only infringes on the civil rights of others – in this case their academic freedom by attempting to prevent the free exchange of thoughts and opinions – but also contradicts themselves, because academic autonomy does not entitle them to restrict the basic civil rights of others enjoying the same autonomy. In this way an individual value with personal importance becomes a collective norm. The social struggle over values is a struggle of personal beliefs and convictions; it is the private exercise of basic rights. The more beliefs and convictions are legally excluded from this struggle, the more the individual’s freedom shrinks (E.‑W. Böckenförde). In the end, this leads to a kind of dictatorship of virtue. Of course, everyone is free to argue that their own personal values become general law for all, but they should be aware of the losses that follow when the societal struggle over 8   M. Heidegger, “Nietzsches Wort ‘Gott ist tot’,” in Holzwege (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), 209 – 267, 227.

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values is censored. It becomes problematic when value communities try to help their values gain general acceptance by superseding or supplanting democratically established law – for example by denouncing other opinions as fascist or by covertly inflicting material disadvantages on their proponents. Values are discursive standards of comparison, not instruments of domination. Those holding genuine and legitimate convictions about their values seek dialogue, and may even want to missionize, but they want others to convert out of inner conviction, not to be baptized at the sword’s point. The concept of values is thus in practice wertvoll, or full of value, where it makes “the incommensurable commensurable,” so that “quite different goods, goals, ideals and interests [. . .] become comparable and compromises can be reached.”9 A useful practical instrument, then, but it must not take on a life of its own. Otherwise, it will be like the sorcerer’s apprentice with the broom, threatening a “tyranny of values” [Nicolai Hartmann] in which one value attempts to dominate all others and the more it succeeds, the more bitterness grows. How then should we deal with this dilemma – especially in an academic context?

4. Values and Norms At this point, it helps to think in terms of discourse-ethical categories. According to Jürgen Habermas, norms have a “general binding force,” whereas values have only a “special privileged status.”10 It follows from this that when working with and on the concept of values it is necessary and quite possible to depart from the claim that values have an ideal validity. The recognition that values are preferences shared by certain groups does not necessarily lead to ethical relativism or to a narrowly conceived legal positivism. Instead, it can lead to the demand that the discourse on norms be conducted differently such that values and norms must always be understood in relation to each other. For values need to be controlled by binding norms and, on the other hand, values show how and why people actually bind themselves to certain rules in their actions. Norms, in turn, cannot create human action, but can control, regulate and measure it against a binding standard. Values, on the other hand, are not properties of things or circumstances, nor are they their own “entities” [Lotze],11  9   C. Schmitt, Die Tyrannei der Werte, in C. Schmitt et al., Die Tyrannei der Werte (Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1979), 9 – 43, 13. 10   J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demo­ kratischen Rechtsstaats, 2nd edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), 315. 11   H. Lotze, “Seele und Seelenleben,” in Kleine Schriften, vol. II (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1886), 174; cf. Metaphysik (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1841).

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which form a “realm of values” in the sense of Max Scheler12 or Nicolai Hartmann. They are defined by us, but not invented, not constituted by philosophy or theology, but relativized, confirmed, rejected or ranked by them.13 Values have their roots in the judgmental subject, who, however, does not offer them for sale in a “market for values” nor does away with them, but recognizes or renounces them. That values play a role in human life and how they do this is determined by the fact that humans are communicating and learning beings, whereby the emergence of values is also often a communicative process. Our actions, before we even begin to reflect on them ourselves, are determined by our embedding in social institutions, by our upbringing, and by our imitating role models or critically questioning them. The concept of values unfolds its potential when we move from the prescriptive to the descriptive realm, when we no longer consider the question: “What should I do?” but instead “Why do I do what I do?” It then becomes clear that values – as the side of purposes turned towards the subject – in fact have a very decisive, existential significance. And this brings us finally back to theology.

5. Values and Theological Ethics The preceding analysis of the concept of values was quite deliberately not limited to a theological perspective, but proceeded from a philosophical critique of values. If we now change our perspective and look at these conclusions from a legal, economic, or political perspective, then the initial question of whether and how values in general should be communicated is of course seen in a completely different light. We must now ask whether it is theologically defensible to take up this contribution that values could make, and – if we affirm this in principle – what exactly would this contribution look like?14 If one appears as a theologian or ethicist in, for instance, the political sphere, one is often confronted with the following expectation: “Tell me something about values, it’s your specialization!” Theology and theological ethics in particular are expected to respond to a societal interest and at the same time to actively shape that interest. But the interests and expectations behind this 12   M. Scheler, “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen,” in Vom Umsturz der Werte, Gesammelte Werke, vol. III, 4th edition, (Bern and Munich: Francke, 1955); Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik. 13   H. von Hentig, Ach, die Werte! Ein öffentliches Bewußtsein von zwiespältigen Aufgaben. Über eine Erziehung für das 21. Jahrhundert (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser, 1999), 69. 14   T. Hüttenberger, “Was leistet der Wertbegriff für die Aufgaben von Theologie und Kirche?,” in Zutrauen zur Theologie, ed. A.‑K. Finke and J. Zehner (Berlin: Wichern Verlag, 2000), 316 – 32.

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demand could hardly be more different. Many – conservatives and progressives, cold warriors and pacifists – demand their values be given a kind of theological certification. Should and can such ambivalent expectations be fulfilled and, if so, how? As one of many sellers in a “market for values”? By setting up a Christian pavilion next to the booths of trade unions, political parties or other associations? As a place of spiritual retreat? Or as an arbitrator of “core values”? And if not, then what would be the alternative? Ethics, whether theological or philosophical, must accept society’s need for orientation. It must systematically test how it could make a contribution to a society’s value orientation that is compatible with its purpose and self-understanding. It must be critical in the sense of krinein, that is, involved and at the same time distanced, constructive and at the same time neutral. This contribution might be the specifically theological experience of truth, which in Eberhard Jüngel’s view, unlike the concept of values, always has the characteristic “that it unequivocally interrupts human experience to its benefit.”15 If one has this Christian concept of freedom in mind – especially in contrast with other conceptions of freedom – then in the light of the wertlose Wahrheit, the “value-less truth of the gospel” (Eberhard Jüngel) what is economically or politically valuable from a secular point of view often proves to be “value-less,” and so the fundamental Protestant insight into the justification of human beings sola gratia is also and always a radical critique of existing institutions and values. The point is that the experience of faith puts the whole world in, as it were, a new light, that the believer experiences a new freedom. The freedom of the Christian cannot be measured with a scale of values, because it transcends and nullifies all measurements on that scale. It is wertlos. But it is valueless in the sense of priceless. Values are and always will be subjectively formed and intersubjectively communicated, and this is precisely what makes them relative and why they must always compete with each other. There are simply no values that have their own objective and unchanging “being” and thus can be measured and scaled accordingly. There are only people who live their values and by doing so may convince others of their values. Theologians, economists, and philosophers can and must criticize the claim that values have normative validity. It is a category mistake to say that values are normative. But this criticism of the normative misuse of the concept of values – for instance, with regard to diversity or inclusion – is a constructive criticism, and would be a genuine contribution by a theological ethicist to this conference. This criticism should warn us against wanting to make our own values or value hierarchies binding for others. It should encourage people to make 15   E. Jüngel, “Wertlose Wahrheit. Christliche Wahrheitserfahrung im Streit gegen die ‘Tyrannei der Werte’,” in Die Tyrannei der Werte, 45 – 75, 49.

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their own value choices and live accordingly, and in doing so set an example for others. For values are based on convictions and beliefs, not on rules, and there are almost always good reasons to question the order in which values are ranked. The German constitutional law scholar Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde once famously said – with regard to the liberal, secularized state – that it depends on conditions that it cannot guarantee itself. After the schism in Christianity and the terrible religious and denominational civil wars that followed, the question arose how the followers of different religious convictions could live together peacefully in a common political order. The necessary minimum of moral substance and homogeneity could not be enforced by a liberal state through legal constraints or authoritative directives without losing its proprium, its liberty. The necessary measure of morality and mutual consideration could only arise from the convictions of individual citizens and from the consideration the groups of those citizens show each other. But where groups try to assert their convictions at any price, the balance of freedom is jeopardized.

6. Civil Liberties and Social Sanctions Only with this clarity about the possibilities and limits of the concept of values can a value orientation in the discussion about freedom and diversity be successful and meaningful. This discussion has shown that we should never forget that people cannot be compelled to adopt values and that every attempt to prohibit deviating values leads to a loss of freedom. And this is where, as the conclusion of my thoughts on the concept of values, the epistemological as well as ethical insights of my Commonwealth compatriot Karl Popper from The Open Society and its Enemies come into play. Value orientation by means of concepts can only succeed if, through the recognition of what I have always been, I reflect on what I should be and can be – and am allowed to be. In an open society, governance over others can only be exercised responsibly by those who not only attempt to answer the ethical question “What should I do?”, but also justify their answers to others with better arguments instead of curtailing their freedom or even using violence to coerce them. The open society does not rely on forcing people to submit diversity statements, even if this would advance such desirable goals as equity, diversity, and inclusion. The open society relies on persuading others with better arguments, and not sacrificing their civil liberties on the normative and collective altar of some basic values. While ethics in the Kantian sense searches for universalizable norms by means of rational arguments that test a value’s claim to validity, experience

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and rules lead to a constitutive, subjective critique of human values. Religion, politics, and the law are each different aspects of the human (in the anthropological sense of Kant’s fourth question: “What is the human being?”), and one cannot be reduced to another. They are only able to enrich each other when they authentically live up to their own standards. This is why under no circumstances should a diversity policy suppress diverse and divergent opinions. Certainly, as Alan Bloom argues in The Closing of the American Mind,16 we can and should be emphatically against the attitude that “nobody is right” or that one must “tolerate everything.” Nazis and racists, for example, are certainly not right and we certainly do not have to tolerate them. In a dialogue of better arguments, however, open-mindedness must not be lost, and neither must respect for each other. If we simply declare every unpopular opinion or value to be racist and Nazi, this only inflates and devalues the terms racism and Nazism, while proving nothing. Above all – and it cannot be said too often – civil liberties must always be respected, as far as possible without social sanctions. And, in my view, that is exactly what Claremont’s Diversity Department wants. In this talk, however, I have tried to show why the path to this goal should not involve collective basic values or normative diversity statements, but should instead rely solely on having the better arguments, and without regard to the person making the argument, in the sense of Scottish liberalism of the 18th century: “May the better man or woman win.” I would like to conclude with a memory from my time as a doctoral student. In Oxford, the Bodleian Library had every user sign a declaration that he or she would not “bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame.” This condition aims solely at preserving a building used by all and only minimally restricts the individual in his or her thoughts, feelings and actions. What  if, however, the Bodleian made its users swear never to have papist thoughts in their rooms? Or to value the ethnic diversity of the university more highly than their academic excellence? Would such an oath be reasonable? Would it be sincerely taken? Would it be just? Would some of us even be here today as the persons we now are? In short: Would it serve freedom?

16   A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York and Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 1987).

Questioning Values and Working for Freedom in a Time of Viruses and Bullets Robert Overy-Brown To what extent do we endure the manipulation of values and truth? Communities of various sizes and multiple persuasions share in public commemorations throughout the calendar year – war memorials, days of national tragedies, celebrations of heroes, and so on. These are reflections of history and ideals, and the truths that societies wish to tell. With that background, the critical analysis of the relationship between truth, values, freedom, and diversity in Nils Ole Oermann’s chapter is especially prescient. The public discourse surrounding these cultural moments is perpetually and tragically contested. This is only underscored further in the events that transpired since the Claremont conference: the COVID‑19 pandemic and uprisings across the U. S. to protest police brutality, which form the basis for rethinking the original concluding remarks. Oermann’s chapter provides an option to determine ways forward by an attempt at guaranteeing liberty within our democratic practice and diverse world. In this response, I will take the position that it is correct to question the conditional nature of values and propose a series of questions to clarify the relation between tolerance and creating operative arguments for freedom and diversity. This discussion points toward the nature of enforcement. Freedom allows the necessary choice between absolution and abolition; communal diversity demands differentiation between endurance and enduring for the sake of its denizens.

1. On the Conditional and Effective Values Oermann’s writing is a reflection on diversity statements, the signed comments on one’s inclusive and diverse pedagogical standards and teaching commitments particularly at public and non-sectarian universities. These documents are increasingly common as part of the hiring process or continuing employment standards to which numerous questions might be posed:1 what 1   “Writing a Diversity Statement.” Writing a Diversity Statement, Graduate Connections, Nebraska (https:// www.unl.edu / gradstudies / connections / writing-diversity-statement) (Accessed 6 / 10 / 2020).

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do the diversity statements accomplish and why are they necessary (or not)? What is the situation in which diversity statements are crafted and how might these professions of teaching standards relate to autonomy? Do the statements impede freedom, and if so, whose freedom? For this response, it would helpful to categorize Oermann’s framing around the question of society and values, with four definite emphases: analysis of the origination of values, the difficulty with making collective normative claims from values, the theological underwriting of values, and then orientation toward values within the privileging of freedom. First, employing the work of Eberhard Jüngel and Hans Joas, Oermann finds in their writing a description of values as “personal claims,” that consist of “competing individual values,” and ultimately that “there are no values, only people who value things.”2 Value needs an individual in his interpretation of Jüngel and Joas. This claim might at first appear controversial, particularly to theorists who presuppose a thin and abstract system of values or virtues. Yet the individuated construction of values presents a deeper understanding of human ordering. Humans gravitate toward constructing systems of order; our ethical decisions are influenced by the privileging of choices.3 Echoes arise of Jesus’ saying, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”4 How humans act reflects an externalization of the very personal claims to values.5 2   N. O. Oerman, “About Diversity, Freedom, the Open Society and Its Enemies,” this volume. 3   Even in minimally impactful circumstances, this ethical ordering is a constant balance of one preference over the other. Preferences are guided by multiple inputs such as rationality, knowledge, emotions, and so forth, but they are always a reflection of underlying values and value systems. In a positive sense, these values are helpful when ethical decisions become excruciatingly difficult because it allows an individual actor to depend on something beyond themselves when the ramifications are magnified. Particularly as contemporary societies are scaled up and interact with others, ethical decisions of this sort – and thus the underlying understandings and interpretations of values – are impossible to avoid. This is the brutal, literal sense of decide: to kill off one out of two. The horrifying choice between two Others is why Levinas prefers ethics to justice. Cf. E. Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne U, 1969). 4   Matthew 6:21 (NRSV, hereafter). 5   During the conference proceedings, Oermann offered that in his reading of theological ethics that Jesus represented truth rather than value. That is a worthwhile discussion that would hold bearing on any normative discussion of ethics but also raises further issues. The most immediate problem is one of contradiction: for every statement of Jesus implying values like that above, there are others where Jesus does not seem to be disposed to value but more so to truth (e. g.: “[. . .] I am the way, the truth, and the life [. . .].” John 14:6). Many Christian ethicists have internalized Reinhold Niebuhr’s position on the impossibility of enacting a consistent ethics from the teachings of Jesus Christ for the contemporary era. That is why the quote about treasure and the heart could be useful: Jesus is, at least here, not pronouncing a specific value or ethical action, but rather interpreting human will directly in relation to personal values. Cf. R. Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 35 – 62.

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Meanwhile, these words of Jesus read through contemporary context point toward Oermann’s articulation of the economic establishment of values. The public discourse of values, he shows from Adam Smith, depends not only on an individual assignment of worth but also on an object’s exchange and utility values.6 The economic nature of values should be accentuated. It is right to say that values are connected to their bartering origins because this re‑inscribes the way that capitalism understands values as effective. The claim at this point is not to argue whether or not capitalism is a value system in itself. Instead, capitalism – or more likely, the individual actors within capitalist economics – identifies and uses values to its advantage.7 For example, I can convince others of my values insofar as those values are connected to profit or wealth. This can be seen in historical events like the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama, a civil rights protest that turned on the nearly 13‑month sustained disruption of economic exchange for public services.8 The same could be true of plans to allure corporations into fighting climate catastrophe (such as clean energy innovation and cap-and-trade policies): if a value in this sense can move shareholders or boards to expand the bottom-line, then it becomes a possibility for implementing change. Second, Oermann shows through legal, philosophical, and theo-ethical resources that the subjective nature of values becomes an impossibility for collective implementation. The question is raised: “can and should [. . .] values and value hierarchies be enforced?” Fearing a “dictatorship of value,” he says no. The negation tracks on two lines: values, first, could “be only enforced where there is practically no dispute about them at all” and second, “no value is valid in its own right.”9 To explicitly name the problem, the public domain in which a multiplicity of values is on display is one of constant contestation at best, and with potential to devolve into social hierarchies in worse instances.

6

  Oermann, “About Diversity.”   Manipulation of human relation to values for positive or negative effects is shared across multiple ideologies. To the extent that capitalism does effectively use values beyond strictly monetary function, there are parallels worth exploring in conversation with Pierre Bourdieu’s description of social and cultural capital. At this point, much like the questions on Jesus as value versus truth, there remain open issues on what sources are functionally producing the normative categories for valuation. Cf. P. Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. Richardson (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 241 – 258. 8   To be clear, the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision to enforce desegregation of the buses did not immediately lead to a sense of justice or racial enlightenment but instead was met with intense violence. Cf. “Browder vs. Gayle, 352 U. S. 903.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, May  19, 2020 (https:// kinginstitute.stanford.edu / encyclopedia /  browder-v-gayle-352-us-903) (7 / 12 / 2022). 9   Oermann, “About Diversity.” 7

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The intention here is not to comment on the larger democratic theories. However, it is for this reason of plurality that John Rawls developed the idea of an overlapping consensus. Rawls assumes that a diverse society will contain people who hold fast to comprehensive normative doctrines, where one might expect a system of values to be cultivated. The overlapping consensus then is a process by which denizens who hold fast to the plurality of comprehensive normative doctrines agree to principles of justice to serve all within the political community.10 What is most similar to the present argument is that the protection of a free and open society depends on the reasonable persuasion for values or justice, rather than acceptance and enforcement by any means necessary. Third, the essay turns to the theological response to values, and in particular the assumption that a theo-ethical response to the world at large will necessarily be value-laden. Instead, the theological concept of the freedom of a Christian runs parallel to the previous discussion of the problem of values. Freedom “transcends and nullifies all measurements on that scale” of values.11 And so, theology itself is a critical and constructive tool that serves the balance of freedom where it instructs individuals to live out values to demonstrate convincingly, not impose coercively. There are issues here that remain, such as what this freedom of a Christian entails; for Luther, Christian liberty certainly directed the individual believer to respond in faith to God, but also bound the person ethically to serve others.12 Moreover, Oermann says that the ethics must, like a judge, be neutral.13 A neutral theology, and a theological ethics, can be tasked to providing critique rather than enforcing a certain sectarianism. At the same time, theologians like James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree demonstrate the pernicious effects that theology not internalizing its own critique had on at‑risk populations in the context of U. S. lynching.14 Later in this response, more questions will be posed to the actual neutrality of the judge in return. However, Oermann does seem correct in naming that what theology might offer is a critical clarity into reevaluating the relation between values and freedom. With that, the fourth moment juxtaposes the value orientation and the open society. The essay claims that values succeed where communities allow the person who formulates those values to flourish (“[. . .] what I have always been, [. . .] what I should be and can be – and am allowed to be”).15 That 10   J. Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University, 2005), 133 – 172. 11   Oermann, “About Diversity.” 12   M. Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520), LW vol. 31, 327 – 377. 13   Oermann, “About Diversity.” 14   J. H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011). Cone’s main target here was Reinhold Niebuhr. 15   Oermann, “About Diversity.”

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is because this open society privileges freedom: persuasion through better arguments,16 guaranteeing liberty over compelled agreements that suppress minority opinions. This naturally follows from the preceding argument, for if values are subjective constructions then their codification writ large are easily swayed. As Oermann notes, this is a topical consideration for the frequent proclamations against offensive materials (such as racist or Nazi); however, in these cases it is the offenders themselves who are unable to comprehend the monstrosity of their opinions and who most clearly demonstrate the ineffectiveness of their value orientations. According to his chapter, the would-be racist certainly is not constructing a better argument to win hearts and minds, but perhaps more exactly they demonstrate fully the impossibility of a subjective ordering of the world that no longer is accepted as ethically valid by others.

2. What Tolerance and How is it Enforced? The initial question cited from Martin Luther continues to haunt: why should I endure the positions of the other? Luther’s answer was that God tolerates us, so humans model that enduring toward others. Oermann rightly notes that Luther failed this when it came to his writings on Judaism. Beyond that, one might wonder how well Luther attempted to endure when reading his statements against the Papacy, or if the position could be squared with his famous saying from the Heidelberg Disputation: “a theologian of the cross calls the thing what it is.”17 In that light, I propose a series of questions around three issues: first, to try to reconcile the ideas of what it means to endure or tolerate, second, what exactly the “better arguments” might look like, and third, how the ideas of freedom and diversity presented here rely on a notion of enforcement. From the theological sense, what kind of tolerance is called for? Biblical ethics might point to two discrete forms of enduring. In the Pauline tradition, the writer of 2 Timothy 4:7 states that, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” In this case we might think of tolerance as an endurance. As long as better arguments for justice are presented, the more righteous position will eventually win out. The view here relies on an advancing teleological approach to justice. This is the sense of the chapter as I understand it; Oermann approved of this way of reading in the conference 16

 Ibid.   M. Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation (1518),” in Early Theological Works, ed. and trans. J. Atkinson (London: SCM Press, 1962), 278, 291 – 292. Luther here specifically referring to the “thing” as recognizing the difference between good and evil. 17

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discussion, that endurance should extend as far as possible and tolerance can never equate to indifference. However, there is the second group of biblical texts that vocalize a desperation, “How long, O Lord?”18 Now the idea of toleration is more closely an enduring of evil and pain toward a hope that the divine will rectify injustice in the future, or even in the eschaton. That is, if denizens are to be truthful, those who create the laws are requested to endure in a radically different way than those who the law has been crafted to exclude and work against. Endurance and enduring are asymmetrically related in these two biblical motifs. Would this change the analysis of freedom and the contestation of discourse? How long must we endure – particularly when these issues become existential realities like the suffering and loss of life at border crossings? Is there a source of hope, or are we waiting on God? In this sense, it  becomes critical to determine how exactly these better arguments might take form. The political scientists Joshua L. Kalla and David E. Broockman released findings in the American Political Science Review that empirically show how in the process of deep canvassing, potential voters could reduce prejudices.19 Their claim is that “non-judgmentally exchanging narratives in inter-personal conversations can facilitate durable reductions in exclusionary attitudes.” To put another way, this evidence provides hope that with hard work it is possible to counter the programming of reactionary politics and convince some to protect the rights of others.20 However, is this the same sort of “better argument” that Oermann pushes toward?21 The process of deep canvassing is one of sharing stories about experiences and connecting on emotive communal levels to persuade for change. Or should convincing depend on rationalism alone? For example, we can visit the sites of the Holocaust atrocities, and documented records display the redline segregation of housing. Despite the rise of neo-fascists and the Lost Cause theory of the Confederacy in the U. S., we know the evils of Nazism and racism. Moreover, persuasion through facts or shared experiences may be determinative of change for people who are passively or tangentially connected to 18

  This motif appears in many different locations but is especially evident in the Psalms and Prophetic writings. In an initial search, Psalm 13:1, 35:17, 79:5, 89:46, 90:13, 94:3; I­ saiah 6:11; Jeremiah 47:6; Habakkuk 1:2; Zechariah 1:12; Revelation 6:10. 19   J. L. Kalla and D. E. Broockman, “Reducing exclusionary attitudes through interpersonal conversation: evidence from three field experiments,” American Political Science Review 114, no. 2 (2020): 410 – 425. 20   Though of course, it is entirely possible that deep canvassing might work also in the opposite manner as well. 21   Oermann’s push for the stringent advancement of public debate and knowledge models closely Kant’s social philosophy of reason. Cf. I. Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (1784),” Practical Philosophy, ed. M. J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 11 – 22.

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the negative and oppressive worldviews. By this I mean that in the U. S., white people benefit from the histories and institutions of white privilege, regardless of their knowledge or personal attachment to that ideology. For the people who are caught unaware and in need of some form of enlightenment or motivation for change – within racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of marginalization – perhaps we might have a reasonable hope against the systemic odds that the better arguments theory will in fact be enough. But what about those people who actively engage in the evil? Is  social stigma enough? Can and should we protect the freedom of nihilists who would otherwise welcome the non-being of diverse others? Cornel West, who has written on the perverse and pervasive nihilism that is embedded in U. S. institutions,22 has theorized that for justice to be recognized, winning the better arguments will also involve activists placing their bodies into harm’s way so that hatred is confronted, not with an idea of diverse humanity but its actual, named faces.23 Thus, the words of civil rights organizer Ella Baker challenge us: “[. . .] We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”24 Finally, a question remains for the examples of law, norms, and enforcement: is legal codification a matter of truth, or of value? Certainly, in Luther’s case the ethical imperative is based on divine command. Likewise, the human rights discourse points toward some sort of objective standards.25 But to what extent is the law an extension of values, and in particular, the failing of values? That is to say, humans with individuated values wrote the laws that would later need to be amended: allowing women and people of color to vote, to equalize incommensurate drug penalties, or to allow the free practices of religion without state subordination, long after its supposed guarantee within the Bill of Rights. Laws are perpetually changing, usually for creation of a more just society or fairness. In the midst of this flux, there is a need for a legal system that more thoroughly accounts for justice. Who legitimates and why? The process of nominating and approving judges in the U. S. has become increasingly politicized. Moreover, the enforcement of those laws by policing and judicial decisions becomes headline news when conflicting values are at stake.

22

  C. West, Democracy Matters (New York: Penguin, 2004), 25 – 62.   Cornel West (panel discussion, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, November 19, 2016). Dr. West has himself frequently been on the frontline of protests to be part of the work for civil rights in the contemporary era. 24   Ella Baker quoted in E. King and T. Watts, Ed King’s Mississippi: Behind the Scenes of Freedom Summer (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi, 2014), 129. Baker here was finishing her thought on making sure that the deaths of black children meant the same to society as those of white children. 25   For example, “We hold these truths to be self-evident [. . .]” in the U. S. Declaration of Independence. 23

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This serves again Oermann’s larger point about the difficulty of using values to construct a political community. Yet how can we trust that freedom would be truly protected in an existential and not academic sense? Have the better arguments – against racism, Nazism, and beyond – universally won in the institutions that are tasked with protecting the diverse society? Conceptions of the law and legality should appeal not only to its primary definition in what is required or enforced, but secondarily what is right, proper, just, and decent. As  a result, it  might be true that signing a diversity statement might limit a sense of freedom. The inverse possibility, given historical realities of how acceptance of diversity has to be fought for, should give an ethicist great pause.

3. Toward a Conclusion in a World Still Being Written It is true that despite positive, progressive outlooks there remain fundamental enemies, ideological and otherwise, to a truly open, free, and diverse society. Oermann has made a compelling case that the underlying issues are exacerbated by the dominance of values in order to institute societal control. Theology can serve as a useful tool of critique, although perhaps it cannot afford the neutrality of endurance and instead should opt for the marginalized who must constantly endure. Nevertheless, the call to crafting improved arguments for diverse communities should inspire to constant pursuit of implementing available intellectual and experiential resources and join together to create a healthier world. That is the first step to serving a better freedom. These above remarks deserve a postscript to acknowledge how different the world appears than when first given. In the weeks following the February 2020 conference, the COVID‑19 crisis exploded and then protests against police brutality and systemic racial injustice expanded across the U. S., with unprecedented combination of size and sustained length. How do these major events interact with the ideas of autonomy, diversity, and the common good? To an extent, it is too early in the process to be certain: the viral pandemic’s long-term effects are yet to be known; the protests and social upheaval at the time of writing are only beginning to have results in terms of concrete public policy changes. The cry of “Black lives matter” is not one of patience or endurance but a recognition that black people in the United States have had to endure evil, and the time to end it is at hand. In the same letter that Martin Luther King, Jr. condemned the abstract notions of freedom that maintain the status quo, he quotes a fellow justice worker that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”26 The conditional nature of values will remain contested when it is used to institute societal 26

  M. L. King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).

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control. Proponents of theological ethics rightly use the resources available to critique injustices and any attempts at the dissolution of freedom. However, the enemy of the open society is not primarily dictated values but any enforcement of law so asymmetric that it cannot be guaranteed to serve and protect all denizens. Autonomy cannot be a pretext for absolution and a flourishing diversity demands an abolition of historically rooted evil. To that end, the work of freedom calls all to imagine a better world together.

On Decreation and Obligation Deborah Casewell The questions that arise from the intersection of the individual and the collective, between what one is owed as an individual and the extent to which that can or should be sacrificed for a common good or goal, is of a particular concern to the philosopher Simone Weil. Whilst these debates are often framed as inevitable clashes of independence, freedom and autonomy with social commitments and political obligations, Weil seeks to move beyond that particular dichotomy in her own understanding of the pursuit of the good, moving not from the personal and the individual to the collective, which for her is always self-serving, but instead to the impersonal. It is the impersonal that leads to the pursuit of the good, and thus part of her response to these questions is to reframe them: seeking not to entrench the positions of individuals or of institutions, nor sacrificing the individual for a society or society for the individual, but instead working to decreate the personal into the impersonal.1 This paper intends to explore her understanding of the impersonal, with reference to questions of autonomy, diversity, and the common good, and bring out her own life and activity in the world, as her extreme lifestyle and commitments illustrate her philosophical ideas. This approach is pertinent as Weil’s thought is receiving renewed attention as regards how best to balance these apparently competing claims between the self and other, between the individual and the communal. The applicability of her thought, with its stress on affliction and the universality of suffering and pain, with her understanding of the world as the empire of force, and with her focus on obligations to the other rather than the abstract and unanchored rights, has been useful to contemporary feminist accounts of vulnerability as

1

  Simone Weil’s understanding of the good is essentially Platonic. She writes that “there is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man’s mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.” S. Weil, Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation, retrieved 6th May 2020 (http:// www.pbs.org / wgbh / question ofgod / voices / weil.html) (7 / 12 / 2022). This reality is the sole foundation of the good.

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the fundamental and defining aspect of our humanity and ethical action.2 See, for example, Yoon Sook Cha’s melding of Weil’s thought on force, affliction, and attention with Judith Butler’s mediation of Levinas with particular reference to embodied precarity and vulnerability.3 Weil’s similarity to Levinas’s account of responsibility has been noted previously,4 but here Weil’s decreation and attention is used by Cha to enhance Butler’s ethics. Cha articulates how Weil’s thought could be worked out as shifting away from an egocentric perspective without, in relinquishing the self, relinquishing the obligation to the other, where “decreation is opposed to the kind of agency that is identified with sovereign modes of action, even those subject-centered practices that aim specifically to address vulnerability and injurability.”5 It is an impossible demand; a relentless bind, and, as Michelle Boulous Walker’s exploration of Weil and Levinas notes, it is the religious aspect to it which is key to both Weil’s ethics and her asceticism. God, as the source of the good, the true, the beautiful, and the just, is “the displaced other to whom we must make amends. God is the other to whom we owe an excessive responsibility, beyond calculation or end.”6 She notes that it is Weil’s understanding of human duty and obligation that the decreative answer lies, as “obligation and human duty that the form of stepping back in order to let the other be.”7 Many of these approaches prevaricate over whether to take her life and her extreme asceticism as illustrative of her philosophy. Many of the attempts to do so contain numerous caveats about her particularly negative attitude to her own embodiment.8 As her asceticism predates her accounts of decreation and obligations some thinkers see her life of deprivation as incidental to her thought whereas others seek to reconcile the two. The fact remains that she did, mostly, live out a life that corresponds to her philosophical accounts 2   Weil has been used as a resource in the ethics of care, as detailed in S. Bourgault, “Beyond the Saint and the Red Virgin: Simone Weil as Feminist Theorist of Care,” Frontiers 35, no. 2 (2014): 1 – 27. 3   This has also briefly explored by C. Gaymay, “An Ethical Account of the Self Who Might Be Otherwise: Simone Weil and Judith Butler,” in The Relevance of the Radical: Simo­ne Weil 100 Years Later, ed. A. R. Rozelle-Stone and L. Stone, (London: Continuum, 2010), 193 – 205. 4  See M. Boulous Walker, “Eating Ethically: Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2002): 295 – 320. She brings out the question of Weil’s possible anorexia in her discussion. 5   Y. S. Cha, Decreation and the Ethical Bind: Simone Weil and the Claim of the Other (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), xii. 6   Boulous Walker, “Eating Ethically,” 307. 7   Ibid., 308. 8   The most hostile expression of this is found in N. Oxenhandler, “The Bodily Experience of Simone Weil,” L’Esprit Créateur 34, no. 3 (1994): 82 – 91, which sees her hostility to her own body as a result of the trauma of her childhood illness, which resulted in her particular repression. Her psychological make up is also explored by R. Coles in consultation with A. Freud in his book Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1987).

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of decreation and of solidarity: in action, suffering, and diet.9 This essay, in exploring her account of the impersonal, intends to build on these efforts that marry her ascetical practices with her philosophical and her religious thought. In doing so, I wish to explore whether a decreative ascetic ethics, as a new way of existing and relating within the world, may provide a new way of considering the questions and tensions that arise in considerations of autonomy, diversity and the common good. As such, this essay will analyse two particular stresses in the philosophy of Simone Weil. First is her understanding of humanity in the world, the second her way of responding to that. In her account, the world is governed by unescapable laws of necessity, force, and gravity. The only response to the world is decreation, work, and attention as routes to truth, beauty, justice, and thus the good.10

1. Simone Weil on Human Nature Weil’s understanding of human nature is bleak both in its analysis of humanity and in its expectations for ethical action and responsibility. It finds its fullest expression in her meditation on the Iliad as well as her later writings and notebooks, where she writes not only of the relationship between God and the world in the act of creation, but on the world as we experience and relate to it. Our experience of the world is one where we are subject to something variously described as force, gravity, and necessity, a universal, inescapable feature of human existence. As humanity is ruled by necessity, by force which causes suffering, to be human, to exist in the world is to experience and be subject to an inescapable suffering. Our relationship to this, how we receive this and try to mitigate it, is the existential basis of any ethical analysis and mandate. The effects of force are unavoidable, and in her analysis of the Iliad she writes that force is “that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.”11 It removes what is human from the person and turns them into something akin to a corpse, illustrated in The Iliad in how even the mighty heroes are reduced in the poem to “a thing dragged behind a chariot in the dust.”12 To be human is to be subject to force; force is exercised by others against others, and in exer 9   A. Pirruccello has thus far made the most concerted attempt to systematise her fragmentary comments on asceticism into a programme in “Making the World My Body: Simone Weil and Somatic Practice,” Philosophy East and West 52, no. 4 (2002): 479 – 497. 10   S. Weil, Draft for a Statement: “That [other] reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.” 11   S. Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force, trans. M. McCarthy, Chicago Review 18, no. 2 (1965): 6. 12   Weil, The Iliad, 6.

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cising it against others it is also exercised against the self.13 Weil sees that all are subject to force yet seek to deny that universal aspect of human existence.14 Thus any relation between the self and the other, between the individual and the community, is always tempered by and subject to this tendency to strip the other of their humanity and see them as a means for one’s own ends, to divide humanity into the strong and the weak and set up a hierarchy. Weil writes that “the concept of force must be made central in any attempt to think clearly about human relations, just as the concept of relation is central in mathematics.”15 This social force constitutes our own nature as well as our relations with others,16 as she sees that “our personality is entirely dependent on external circumstances which have unlimited power to crush it. But we would rather die than admit this.”17 Hence the impetus for impersonality as the starting point for any kind of ethical action, to move away from the self and its imposition onto others to develop an impersonal love based on the common nature of humanity as subject to force. For Weil “the sense of human misery is a pre-condition of justice and love.”18 Realisation of this allows us to see others not as something to be subjugated but as fellow-creatures, and opens up a way to act in such a way that is not subject to force or furthering its reach. Both linked to and indicative of force is affliction, which she understands to be the most extreme form of suffering, a suffering which is utterly unbearable. Affliction, she writes, “takes possession of a soul and marks it through and through.”19 It is inseparable from physical suffering and unlike mental anguish, cannot be thought away through a “suitable adjustment of the mind.”20 Affliction goes beyond that as it is an event that attacks every part of existence and degrades the sufferer.21 It kills the soul, it hardens the heart, and the afflicted is despised. One cannot, through 13   Ibid., 11: “Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.” 14   Ibid., 13: “the strong are, as a matter of fact, never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but neither is aware of this. They have in common a refusal to believe that they both belong to the same species: the weak see no relation between themselves and the strong, and vice versa.” 15   S. Weil, “The Great Beast,” in Selected Essays 1934 – 43, trans. R. Rees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 143. 16   With regards to social force she observes that “everyone will be governed by it, but no one will be conscious of the fact.” S. Weil, Oppression and Liberty, trans. A. Wills and J. Petrie (London: Routledge, 1958), 183. 17   S. Weil, Waiting for God, trans. E. Craufurd (London: HarperCollins, 2009), 149. 18   Weil, The Iliad, 34. 19   S. Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction,” in Waiting for God, 67. She links this to being branded as a slave. 20  Ibid., 67. 21   Ibid., 68: “There is not really affliction unless there is social degradation or the fear of it in some form or another.”

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one’s own efforts, love or care for the afflicted.22 Instead we naturally recoil from the afflicted, and so any attitude of compassion towards the afflicted has to be supernatural. Thus whilst only God is able to bestow compassion on the afflicted, the knowledge of and experience of affliction “impels us to question all the suppositions that support life,”23 and further opens up a way from the personal to the impersonal as our response to this should be decreation, as we in ourselves are unable to respond to affliction. A response can only come through the diminution of the self to allow the love of God to work in the place of our ego. This move towards decreation is the result of her understanding of the relationship of God to the world. Creation is a renunciation of being for God: God withdraws in order that we should be, and the imposition of the self in the world limits the space in which others and God can exist in the world. Thus she sees that “to efface oneself, to withdraw, is to create a passage for God both into oneself and others [. . .] if one does not, there is a danger of creating a screen between the Creator and the created.”24 In decreating there is the space for the impersonal openness of ethical action. Furthermore, this decreation and the diminution of the self has a religious element to it, in that our decreation is an “imitation of the renunciation of God in creation.” God in renouncing being everything, gives up “being everything.” This desire to take up space, to be, is “the origin of evil.” Thus she sees that that “we must give up being something. This is only good for us.”25

2. An Impersonal Response Thus the drive to the impersonal as the basis for ethics is grounded on Weil’s particular cosmology and her understanding of the strictures of existence. Yet her understanding of impersonality as the basis for any ethical stance develops further aspects of her thought, namely her understanding of the sacred and our responsibility towards that. Her reasoning on the impersonal and the ethical is best espoused in the essay “La Personne et le sacré.” Written at least in part to counter Jacques Maritain’s account of the self in The Rights of Man and Natural Law, Weil’s essay explores instead what it is about the other person that has a claim on us, and how we are best to respect that particular claim. Maritain’s Personalism focuses on the personality as constituting the particular metaphysical centre of the person, as that which grounds the rights of the individual. 22

  She writes that “compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility.” Ibid., 69.   L. McCullough, The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014), 23. 24   M.‑M. Davy, The Mysticism of Simone Weil (London: Rockliff, 1951), 12. 25   S. Weil, Oeuvres Completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1989 – 2006) IV:2, 270. 23

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In Weil’s argument, whilst what is personal is the personality, the personality is not that which is sacred and what grounds our ethical response to the person. Instead, the personality and the personal is of limited importance, not least as it is that which is given to us and subject to the machinations of force. The personality and the person are comparatively unimportant and the impersonal, the wholeness of one as a person or a human being, is the key concern. Weil illustrates this in a striking manner by asking what exactly stops her from poking out the eye of a man on the street, as “if the human personality were what is sacred for me, I could easily put out his eyes. Once he was blind, he would still have a personality.”26 This stark illustration underlines her fundamental dispute with personalism, that it ignores the effects of suffering, supposing it impossible “that human beings can be crushed and destroyed,” maintaining instead that they can “overcome circumstances, no matter how bad they are.”27 It does not take into account her analysis that suffering, affliction, and force turn a person into a thing, turns living people into corpses even though, in a personalist sense, they are still alive and still a personality. Weil’s answer comes back to the universal role that suffering and affliction play in her understanding of human nature. She writes that what would stay her hand is “knowing that if someone were to poke out his eyes that it would be his soul that was lacerated by the thought that someone had done evil to him.”28 It is this universal capacity to suffer, and rather than being inured to it, to react against it. Despite the universality and frequency of the experience of suffering, humanity hopes and expects good to be done rather than evil. It is this which for Weil is the sacred in the human, this universal expectation of good and the reaction to pain and suffering. This is not linked to any particular aspect of personality, or anything which differentiates one from another, as the cry of the person who is suffering is an impersonal cry. This impersonal cry comes from the capacity to suffer, and not is not due to the means or reason for the suffering, and thus it is the impersonal that is sacred in the human.29 If we do not develop this attentiveness to this impersonal cry and an attitude of impersonality, we remain within this world and are not able to focus on or 26   S. Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” in Late Philosophical Writings, trans. & ed. E. O. Springsted, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 103 – 129, 104. 27   E. O. Springsted, “Rootedness: Culture and Value,” in Simone Weil’s Philosophy of Culture, ed. R. H. Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 170 – 1. Springsted draws on S. Fraisse, “Simone Weil, la personne et les droits de l’homme,” Cahier Simone Weil 7 (1984): 120 – 132. 28   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 105. 29   “What is sacred in a human being is that which is, far from the personal, the impersonal. Everything that is impersonal in a human being is sacred, and that alone.” Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 107.

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attend to the good that is outside of this world. We are also thus unable to treat others justly or equally: it is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are unequal in all their relations with the things of this world, without exception. The only thing that is identical in all men is the presence of a link with the reality outside the world.30

Yet whilst the impersonal is universal and the basis of our ethical response to the other, it has to worked towards. Weil’s analysis of human nature is that instead of working towards this attitude we instead work to build up our personalities and our being and space in the world. The ethical stance that impersonality calls us to is only something we reach through decreation, through eradicating the self so that there is no ‘I’. In doing so, we move not from an ‘I’ to a ‘we’, where we become impersonal through absorption in a worldly goal or institution, but purely from the ‘I’ to nothing. Weil, pertinently, wants to move away from any understanding of the ‘us’ as standing over and against the I for good reasons, for the purpose of subordinating the I for a tangible goal. Instead, she sees that the ‘us’ is dangerous, that the collective hinders the impersonal and that any collective should be “dissolved into separate persons in order that they may enter into the impersonal.”31 This mandate against collectives results in an intense focus on the individual and individual responsibility, rather than relying on laws and institutions to be the basis for this. Weil does, however, accord a particular place and function to institutions and laws that is to support this impersonal ethics.

3. The Limits of Society The role of institutions is to provide almost a skeleton structure in which to enable the individual to act ethically towards the other. Weil sees that the highest good of a political institution is not to promote freedom or to inform behaviour, but instead to furnish the expression of the heart that cries out against evil. She writes that it is necessary to have a regime where the public expression of opinions is defined less by freedom and more by an atmosphere of silence and attention wherein this weak and inept cry can make itself heard. Finally, a system of institutions that brings out, as far as possible, leaders who can and want to hear and understand this cry.32

30

  Weil, Draft for a Statement.   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 109. 32   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 106. 31

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This sentiment is clearer in her work “On the Abolition of all Political Parties,” where she argues that by their very nature, any collective will sacrifice the individual and their efforts for the collective itself. Political parties exist to generate collective passions, to exert collective pressure over their members, and seek their own growth, without limit. This domination of individuals by a collective structure leads to people being seen as means, rather than ends. If the end of humanity is to be good, as she sees it, then all political parties must be abolished.33 If there are collectives, they are to be abolished, and if there are persons, they must move from the personal to the impersonal. This understanding of the impersonal rather than the personal or the collective informs her critique of rights as inadequate and instead she talks of obligations as governing our social interactions with others. In The Need for Roots she sees that “a right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation toward him.”34 Institutions and laws must thus be based around this account of obligations, and society must be set up in such a way as to give space for these to be noted and attended to. In reality, the individual and the framework of wider society and the demands of the communal are frequently in conflict with each other. This fundamental disjunction between the individual and the communal that happens in practice is the “essential absurdity lying at the very heart of social life.”35 We cannot get away from this absurdity and conflict, and the way in which we approach questions of the communal and individual are fraught. Weil’s line is always to privilege the individual – as it is the individual to whom the other is obliged, the communal cannot be trusted to uphold obligations. This responsibility is foundational and found in the obligation to the other, and the individual is wholly responsible for their action and attention to the other, as it is only if an individual recognises the right that makes it effective. As obligations are the grounds of the language and structure of rights, Weil sees that the language of rights is useless, because it is the recognition of responsibility which is key, and that is based on our obligation to the sacred in the human, and not on abstract rights given and consolidated in society, or based on the personal as a metaphysical centre. Again Weil illustrates this starkly: to say of a young girl forced into a brothel that her rights are being violated is ludicrously inadequate. Her humanity is being violated and the language of rights are of no use to her.36 33

  S. Weil, Note sur la suppression générale des partis politiques (Paris: Climats, 2006), 35, 69. It must be noted that there is an element of humour in this work. 34   S. Weil, The Need for Roots, trans A. Wills (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 3. 35   Weil, Oppression and Liberty, 71. 36   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 115.

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The human that is bound by duty to another human. Collectives have no obligation to anyone but the furthering of their cause, whereas our obligation to another human has to be unconditional to be of use and of meaning, grounded as it is in the good. It is the sacred, that which is beyond the human and their worldly horizon, that undergirds it. This aspect of her thought is at times taken in isolation from her religious thought but she sees that the only way in which to ground this duty and obligation is through the divine. It is an eternal obligation, from an eternal destiny that makes it so binding.37 This duty is to care for the vital needs of the human beings, to the needs of the soul, because of our intrinsic desire for beauty and the good. This desire is for something which is not part of the world, as “we love the beauty of this world, because we sense behind it the presence of something akin to that wisdom we should like to possess to slake our thirst for good.”38 It is this which grounds our obligations because “consciousness of the various obligations always proceeds from a desire for good which is unique, unchanging, and identical with itself for every man, from the cradle to the grave.”39 Thus in “La Personne et le sacré” she notes that “the possession of a right implies the possibility of using that right for either good or bad. Rights are therefore alien to the good. On the contrary, the accomplishment of an obligation is always good, everywhere. Truth, beauty, justice, compassion are always good, everywhere.”40 It is not quite that rights should not exist, but more that anything below justice, truth, beauty, and compassion cannot inspire and should not be seen as a good, even rights. If there are institutions in society, they cannot be where the authority stops or the meaning is held, instead “above the institutions that are meant to protect rights, persons, and democratic liberties, it is necessary to invent other ones that are meant to discern and to abolish all that which, in contemporary life, buries souls under injustice, lies, and ugliness.”41 What society can do is allow for people to be rooted enough to recognise these obligations, and thus the common good in society is rootedness. The rootedness of one leads to the rootedness of others and laws and communal order facilitates this.42 Laws are there to help us root, to find our place in soci-

37   S. Weil, The Need for Roots, trans. A. Wills (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 6. Cf. Ibid., 4 – 5: “the object of any obligation, in the realm of human affairs, is always the human being as such. There exists an obligation towards every human being for the sole reason that he or she is a human being, without any other condition requiring to be fulfilled, and even without any recognition of such obligation on the part of the individual concerned.” 38   Weil, The Need for Roots, 10. 39  Ibid., 11. 40   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 118. 41   Ibid., 128. 42   Weil, The Need for Roots, 48: “whoever is uprooted himself, uproots others. Whoever is rooted in himself doesn’t uproot others.”

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ety and the world, and we do no harm by rooting ourselves. The communal order helps us to root as not everyone can do it by themselves, and how it does so is through an account of decreation, for “a society which has lost all contact with the supernatural, or the ‘other reality,’ must inevitably degenerate into a specimen of the ‘social beast’ as described by Plato in the Republic.”43 It is only from this place of rootedness that a proper form of decreation can take place.

4. The Ascetic Response Decreation, proceeding from these particular premises, is to be understood as a profoundly ascetic response to the question of how to structure a society in such a way that the common good can not only be known, but be attended to and worked towards. For Weil there has to be a decreative step, and society has to be structured around the ends of decreation, as the good is only known and held to through decreation. Any other response to our existence in the world imposes ourselves upon the good and obscures it, furthering force. Decreation is the only response to force and affliction that does not further it as any movement that is informed by an attachment to the world ruled by force exacerbates the effects of force and affliction. This is the impetus behind the move from the collective to the person to the impersonal, and decreation is this process of detachment and purification from the self, the world, and others in their personality. Gustave Thibon writes that for Weil “her aim was self-forgetfulness,”44 and Marie-Magdeleine Davy notes that “to efface oneself, to withdraw, is to create a passage for God both into oneself and others.”45 This decreation is, I argue, a matter of labour for Weil, which for her entails “a certain contact with reality, truth, the beauty of the universe, and with the eternal wisdom that constitutes the order of the universe.”46 Thus paradoxically, decreation becomes our activity. Weil, in concert with Marx, sees humans as fundamentally active beings, whose good lies in working.47 Work, for Weil, is  inherently decreative and as Inese Radzins notes 43

  R. Rees, Simone Weil: A Sketch for a Portrait (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 83.   J. Perrin and G. Thibon, Simone Weil as We Knew Her (Abingdon: Routledge, 1953), 111. 45   M.‑M. Davy, The Mysticism of Simone Weil (London: Rockliff, 1951), 12. 46   Weil, “La Personne et le sacré,” 112. 47   She writes that “human nature, a term which, although difficult to define, is probably not devoid of meaning. But given the almost infinite diversity of individuals, and especially the fact that human nature includes among other things the ability to innovate, to create, to rise above oneself, this warp and woof of incoherent efforts would produce anything whatever in the way of social organization, were it not that chance found itself restricted in this field by the conditions of existence to which every society has to conform on pain of being either subdued or destroyed.” S. Weil, “Reflections Concerning the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression,” in Oppression and Liberty, 57. 44

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“functions like the more traditional spiritual activities of prayer, meditation, liturgy – a way of mediating the divine.”48 Work makes the individual more like matter: inherently obedient to the will of God.49 The concept of obedience and consent plays a significant part in Weil’s thought. She sees that we are always slaves to something, whether necessity or God, and the only freedom we have in the world that is not an imposition on the existence of the other person and thus an exercise of force is to consent to one’s own decreation, to the will of God, and to become like matter: inert and non-assertive. There is, as Pirruccello notes, a deeply somatic aspect to this.50 The body can shift the will, and for Weil “cultivation of the body – habits developed, training received, practices performed – plays an enormous role in the manner in which one reads the world.”51 This reading, or attention is best detailed in the essay “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” There Weil develops the account of attention as part of a discipline, a learning, and a training. The development of attention is “the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.”52 The process is akin to school studies, which although they develop a lower kind of attention, are effective in increasing the power of attention in itself. Even with subjects that we do not like, we develop attention in order to master them. The goal of attention is not intense study or concentration, but instead “attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.”53 48

  I. Radzins, “Simone Weil’s Political Theology,” Political Theology 17, no. 3 (2016): 226 –  242, 229. 49   Allen and Springsted write that “Weil’s religious conversion introduced her to a kind of force that elevates us, even though we are utterly subordinate to it. It modified her ideal of freedom. No longer is it modeled exclusively on the craftsperson. Now freedom is consent to being integrated into the flow of the created order. She cites the utter obedience of brute matter to the divine will as the image of perfect obedience. Manual work (along with death) are seen as the best ways of reentry into the flow of matter.” D. Allen and E. O. Springsted, Spirit, Nature and Community: Issues in the Thought of Simone Weil (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 71. B. McLane-Iles, Uprooting and Integration in the Writings of Simone Weil (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), 64, writes that “Weil’s notion of work is a resolution of this reciprocity of mind / body forces. Work, as an encounter of the mind with exteriority, fuses together the active and passive selves.” 50   Pirruccello, ‘Making the World My Body’, 480: “Her interest in the body led her to write energetically on the need to realise a spirituality that had physical labor at its core.” 51   Ibid., 481 – 482. 52   Weil, Waiting for God, 57. 53   Ibid., 62. She does not restrict this attention to scholars, but notes that workers in the field are able to develop this just as well, if not better, through their tasks. Weil worked as a manual laborer in vineyards after she lost her teaching license in the Vichy regime, and seems to have found it amongst the best experiences in her life.

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This attention is illustrated here with regards to intellectual studies but she notes it in relation to physical labour, where [t]hrough discipline imposed on the body, the wandering energy of the soul exhausts itself. If a goat is tethered, it pulls at the rope, turns around and around for hours on end; but exhausted at last, it lies down. It is the same with the wandering part of the soul when the body is kept fixed. It agitates, but despite that it is always brought back to the body, and it is finally exhausted and vanishes.54

This attention, focused on God as the source of the good, brings about this new way of considering our place and relationship to others. Weil sees that the more attentive we are, the nearer we are to God, and the more love we are able to have for our neighbour. We are able to give attention to those who suffer, to ask of our neighbour “what are you going through?” For Weil, this is “a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labelled ‘unfortunate,’ but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction.”55 It is this attitude of love towards the neighbour, that way of looking at him, that occurs only through attention, of giving the neighbour the space to be loved and known, where the “soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.”56 Through the impersonality achieved by attention, we are able to see others as fully human rather than as impinging on our autonomy or as a set of competing rights claims. She relates this in a letter to Father Perrin, that [n]ot only does the love of God have attention for its substance; the love of our neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance [. . .] In the first legend of the Grail, it is said that the Grail (the miraculous vessel that satisfies all hunger by virtue of the consecrated Host) belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king three-quarters paralyzed by the most painful wound, ‘What are you going through?’ The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’”57

Attention is an ascetic practice, and the ethical relationship to the other has a physical, embodied aspect to it, derived from her philosophy of work which uses the body as a lever. Pirruccello writes that “stated in its most ideal form, her hope was that by training, cultivating, disciplining, and habituating the biological body,”58 one would know the world better, integrate the mind, body, and universe. From this, one would develop an ethical position towards the 54   S. Weil, Œuvres complètes, Tome 6, Cahiers volume 4 (juillet 1942 – juillet 1943): La connaissance surnaturelle (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 264. 55   Weil, Waiting for God, 64. 56  Ibid., 65. 57   Ibid., 114 – 115. 58   Pirruccello, “Making the World My Body,” 485.

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world of “non-selectivity or non-opposition,”59 in short, the ethical position of impersonality. Thus whilst the roots and outworking of Weil’s asceticism focused in particular on solidarity with the suffering and the poor, there is, in her theorising of it during her later life, a development of this impersonal, decreative ascetic ethics, where the body participates in the movement from the personal to the impersonal. This did, in her life, lead to her privileging others above the self in the obligation to the individual human to the extent that the self was harmed in this process of decreation.60 In her programme we are obliged to the individual human in action and in our posture of attention, which makes our actions appropriate. Weil instantiates a new ascetic ideal in her later writings which is meant to be transformational in spiritual, mental, and bodily terms. Her asceticism is thus the physical outworking of the spiritual labour of decreation. This reading of Weil reflects aspects of Edith Wyschogrod’s call for an ethical asceticism of embodiment. For her the process that asceticism can provide entails a transformation of the self in a positive sense, where with this discipline ascetics across cultural and historical lines force pain and pleasure into new meaning constellations, so that through practices of self-mortification and deprivation the body is made transparent, a conduit for transcendence. At the same time, the transformed body also becomes an ideogram for this process. [. . .] The flesh is shown as polysemic: resplendent with higher meaning when disciplined, but always ready to erupt into temptation.61

For her, asceticism reveals and utilises the vulnerability of the body, to the Other, and thus the topos of postmodern asceticism is that the fragility of the Other may lead not only to refraining from harmful action but to undertaking meliorative action on behalf of the Other, to placing the Other higher than the self. When such deeds occur repeatedly they begin to form a pattern of altruistic behavior. Such a pattern begins to take shape when the vulnerability of the Other shatters one’s ego, turning it into vanity, thus giving vanity a new meaning. Preparation for this new social space requires a new askesis.62

Weil’s decreative ascetic ethics thus provides a clear way of reconsidering questions arising from autonomy, diversity, and the common good. The common good is reconceived not as a goal for society to structure and form collectively, but as the responsibility of the individual to another individual, and thus to all 59

  Ibid., 495.   This is in particular reference to her death, which resulted from her refusal to eat when suffering from tuberculosis in England. The coroner stated “that the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.” D. McLellan, Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil (New York: Poseidon Press, 1990), 266. 61   E. Wyschogrod, “The Howl of Oedipus, the Cry of Heloise: From Asceticism to Postmodern Ethics,” in Asceticism, ed. V. L. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 16 – 30, 26. 62   Wyschogrod, “The Howl of Oedipus,” 28. 60

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individuals in the impersonality that underscores Weil’s ethics. This eliding of the common good from the intentions and forms of how society is conceived and constructed entails that there is a strong sense of individual autonomy, but only with regards to how to honour your obligation to the other, as all other actions are subject to force. This account of the common good, through its account of impersonality, provides a way of rethinking our approaches to diversity, as diversity is not what we are committed to but may come about as the commitment is to a good beyond those aspects of our personality and personal characteristics. This also entails that we cede our control over what emerges as diverse, and thus diversity will not reflect so much what the strong deem appropriate or what is brought to our attention through personality rather than impersonality. As we are instead committed to the impersonal common good, it is the impersonal aspect of this that I would argue ensures that this position is not one that is exclusionary per se. In focusing on the impersonal one is freed to look beyond mere markers of diversity as a good in itself to a good beyond that, of attending to the sacred in the person.63 Furthermore, to dwell on the discussion about Weil’s ethics introduced at the start, her asceticism, when presented in its most positive light and articulated most ideally, understands and accepts the body as malleable. It is this malleability, and malleability for an end outside itself rather than in the world, that can provide a better framework for an embodied ethics that does not start and end with vulnerability. It is not that Weil is at all inattentive to vulnerability but in her ascetical practice there is a desire to move beyond that in mastery of the self rather than the other. The body, as well as the mind and spirit, is trainable and can be disciplined: the process of attention is that of a training, a development that happens analogously to how we learn in school studies. Whilst accepting the inherent vulnerability and limitedness of the body it does not stop there, and invites us to consider a new relationship with our body. The purpose of her asceticism, this relational ethics based on impersonality, ideally marks it out as not being purely self-condemnatory or torturous, although this is perhaps truer in theory than in her own practice. This presentation of Weil’s decreative ethics is perhaps an idealised one: providing a way in which a particular kind of autonomy can exist in relation to a common good, and in such a way that creates a situation in which diversity is present through the decreation of the self in the face of the other. Yet whilst 63

  Weil, Draft for a Statement: “The reality of the world we live in is composed of variety. Unequal objects unequally solicit our attention. Certain people personally attract our attention, either through the hazard of circumstances or some chance affinity. For the lack of such circumstance or affinity other people remain unidentified. They escape our attention or, at the most, it only sees them as items of a collectivity. If our attention is entirely confined to this world it is entirely subject to the effect of these inequalities, which it is all the less able to resist because it is unaware of it.”

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her philosophy provides a way of reconsidering the questions arising from autonomy, diversity, and the common good and framing them in an active way that incorporates the physical as well as spiritual and ethical, her radical, extreme approach must be interrogated. Firstly, is it enough to move from the collective to the individual, and then to decreation? This can be asked in two ways: whether it is a realistic demand; and whether it is the correct demand. Cabaud writes that the true nature of her idealism was a form of martyrdom, “a sort of moral need never to shelter herself from any struggle; a restless will to act, immediately, upon any idea that seemed to her to be good; a tendency to meet and out-do violence and suffering by total sacrifice.”64 Thibon sees that her spirituality ends up doing more harm than good, that Simone Weil, with her vertigo of the absolute, pronounces exclusions where it would be enough to establish a scale of virtues. She throws wide the doors of the temple, but, intoxicated with the height, she does away with the steps, and the religion she proposes to us appears to be a thousand times more rigorous and more loaded with anathemas than the Catholicism whose narrowness she condemns! Instead of levelling the roads leading to God she makes of the narrow way a path too steep for human weakness.65

There is a tendency is to point towards the positive vision that Weil puts forward, and say that whilst she may have taken it further, and that may be the consequence of her thought, if we abstract away enough, we can have a mitigated self-denial – everything in moderation, including moderation. This is an easier to position to take when abstracting the bodily, ascetic character of her ethics and taking from it a position akin to a Levinasian posture of infinite responsibility towards the unknowable Other. Yet with the emphasis on and even acceptance of embodiment, albeit as a thing to be exhausted and controlled, it  becomes harder to divorce Weil’s ethics from her own example. Is the stress on extreme self-denial to the point of death a natural outworking of her philosophy? Whilst there is a strong stress on self-denial in the bodily practice of decreation, it can be argued that the obligation to the other in terms of activity is conceived more frequently in terms of attention and space rather than a mandated self-denial. Yet this is a further abstraction, as the stress 64

  J. Cabaud, A Fellowship in Love (London: Harvill Press, 1964), 194.   Perrin and Thibon, Simone Weil As We Knew Her, 155. He is not alone in this at all. See A. Loades, Searching for Lost Coins (London: SPCK, 1987), 52, as well as Chr. Hamilton, “Raimond Gaita on Saints, Love and Human Preciousness,” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 181 – 195. J. C. Oates sees Weil’s self-denial was a kind of will over self, whether she was “possessed of a ferociously inviolate will even as she claims to possess no self.” “May God Grant that I become nothing.” The “mysticism of Simone Weil” in The Profane Art: Essays and Reviews (New York: Dutton, 1983), 148. Some of this understanding of selflessness as an extreme selfishness is echoed in Bell’s account of Holy Anorexia, where both Bell and Oates see the extreme asceticism not as decreation of the self, but vainglory and elevation of the self, where “autonomy demands freedom from the shackles of sexual desire, hunger, and weariness.” R. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 11. 65

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on attention stands in relation to the physical activity of decreation and self-denial. Attention is the result of self-denial and decreation. We then move to the other way of understanding Weil’s ethical vision, as an impossible one.66 It is along these lines that Weil’s vision can be made palatable, or contextualised in such a way that the demand for self-denial and decreation does not become complete physical self-erasure. Yet the language of impossibility is perhaps unhelpful, and whilst impossibility does not entail a lack of value, and the impossibility of the demands can frame our obligations and responsibilities; a more productive way of understanding Weil’s ethics is to emphasise their reliance on a transcendent good. A transcendent ethics is not impossible per se, but is instead rooted in an end and goal that is beyond our efforts and abilities: in the being of God. This then does justice to how she grounds her ethics not in the human but in the sacred, where the ultimate end of ethics is always beyond us but it is also what we desire and strive towards. This then entails that God does not become a Levinasian trace: where God is the eternal absent Other to whom we are infinitely obligated and responsible, but is instead the ne plus ultra of our ethical action and attention that we can bring into the world through our ethical actions. This approach is attentive to the ethical approach that results from Simone Weil’s ontology. The decreative ethical move rests on an understanding of obligation and responsibility that works by a narrowing of concerns from the collective to the individual back up to all individuals via God. With this demand for impersonality there is a rejection of the social order as standing over and against the needs and responsibilities of the individual, and instead whatever social order there is must be minimal and facilitate the individual in their own rootedness.67 This is not to say that she neglects the way in which the common good is a practical as well as an aspirational thing: in The Need for Roots her account of basic human needs starts from the satisfaction of hunger and only then moves up to truth as the key need of the soul.68 This is again the aspect of her ethics that, despite its decreative bent, is not divorced from the needs of the flesh, but works with that to transform the person in the world. There

66  Cf. Y. S. Cha, who argues that whilst Weil’s ethics are impossible they offer “instead a mode of self-dispossession that, by relinquishing the power to say ‘I’, opens up a fragile passage to the other that is also, however strangely, the fragile possibility of saying itself,” Decreation and the Ethical Bind, 149. Or as Weil puts it, to see a landscape as it is when I am not there. 67   Ashlee Cunsolo Willox compares Weil with Rawls, but looking at her actual demands for the role of the state, Robert Nozick, whilst admittedly an interesting choice, maybe a more productive comparison to make. A. C. Willox, “The Cross, the Flesh, and the Absent God: Finding Justice through Love and Affliction in Simone Weil’s Writings,” The Journal of Religion 88, no. 1 (2008): 53 – 74. 68   See also the Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation where she writes that “the principal needs of the human body are food, warmth, sleep, health, rest, exercise, fresh air.”

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is also, in Weil’s thought, a further transformation in moving from a focus on the individual as making herself impersonal to viewing and experiencing the world impersonally, as the blind man experiences the world with their stick. In doing so, the suffering of all can be experienced as impersonally as she hopes her own death will be.69 This shocking impersonality leads into a final concern, of whether there is an inherent irreconcilability between the decreative ascetic ethics that she has actually lived out and the social order that she wants constructed. The trans­ cendence of her ethics and the impossibility of it being realised in the human can temper this, but her attempt at an impersonal, universal God’s eye view leaves little in the way of individual responses to the particular suffering of a particular individual. This concern comes out not just in the actualisation of her impersonal ascetic ethics but in its theorisation. As impersonality resists anything more than a skeleton social order to guarantee the space for attention, and as any social order that sacrifices the individual for the social is deemed immoral, we are left with a strange universal individualism. This, as an abstract ethical system, initially appears to be an excellent approach. Yet despite its focus on the individual the impersonality that attends it means that it falters when it comes to the particularity of individuals and how they actually exist and suffer in society. This is the absurdity that comes about in the tension between the communal and the individual that dogs her thought and her ethics.70 For her it is essential that impersonality, not particularity or preferential options, are the basis of justice in society, where impersonality is rooted in the sacred. The needs of the human are not purely to do with material comfort but with the responsibility to the sacred, to that which is impersonal, and it is difficult to construct a practical programme on this basis, especially as the responsibility to what is sacred involves the delicate balancing of opposed pairs such as equality and hierarchy, liberty and obedience, punishment and honour. These tensions come about in Weil’s own writings and life: dedicated to 69

  Peter Winch writes on this passage in Weil’s cahiers that “as the blind man extends his sensibility beyond the confines of his disabled body through the use of his stick, so do we all extend our sensibilities by reading one situation through another [. . .] in such ways as this, what happens outside our bodies comes to have a significance for us as great as, or greater than, what happens to our bodies themselves. I can extend my sensibility in such a way that I no longer locate myself and my well-being in my (biological) body.” P. Winch, Simone Weil: The Just Balance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 134. 70   Christopher Hamilton writes that Weil “would like all the power and impersonal authority of a metaphysical system even as that system is anchored in, and draws strength from, her own deeply personal sensibility and experiences. But this creates an instability in her work that is clearly simultaneously deeply personal and yet longs to be impersonal.” Chr. Hamilton, “Simone Weil’s ‘Human Personality:’ Between the Personal and the Impersonal,” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 2 (2005): 196. He notes later that “she wishes for her own destruction even as she asserts herself against it” (ibid., 198).

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this pursuit of the impersonal and the universal, to this detached perspective of an attitude of love towards all, yet in reality fiercely personal, particular, and focused on the marginalised and against the aggressor.71 However, despite these other sets of caveats and concerns, this unavoidable tension is not an unproductive one. Even if Weil’s impersonal ascetic ethics do not provide a systematic programme, they provide a position, a posture from which to start out and to return to as a check and balance. It can provide a framework or a roadmap for constructing an ethics that attends to questions of autonomy and diversity, in relation to her vision of the Good as transcendent and separate, all the while being attentive to the limits of humanity that, despite her attempts to escape them, nevertheless productively permeate her work.

71   Weil has been described as anti-human for how she combined “great compassion for the suffering with a settled contempt for those of us who are up and around, but not up to much.” C. C. O’Brien, “Patriotism and The Need for Roots,” in Simone Weil: Interpretations of a Life, ed. G. A. White (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 98.

When Forbidden to Think: Against Appeals to the Common Good Tad DeLay In Negative Dialectics, Adorno wrote, “When men are forbidden to think, their thinking sanctions what simply exists. The genuinely critical need of thought to awaken from the cultural phantasmagoria is trapped, channeled, steered into the wrong consciousness.”1 My thesis argues that the appeal to a mythical “common good” is a trap, however genuine in its optimism, which obscures the intransigence of competing social desires. A politics concerned with harm-reduction – especially with regard to climate change, consequent mass migration and xenophobic backlash, and the possibility of near-term collapse – requires us to abandon insipid appeals, to clearly say No to deleterious desires rather than sanctioning those desires by granting equivalence or legitimacy. But to criticize the common good feels almost like criticizing happiness or flourishing, so what does my critique actually target? This essay will search examples of the common good, examine the rhetoric demanding civility in recent United States political discourse, and situate the hollowness of common good rhetoric alongside migration, melancholia, and catastrophes sure to arrive with the Great Changes of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries. I will provisionally define common good as a shared horizon of desire, one which appeals to a utilitarian aesthetic of benevolent and / or egalitarian values judged either universal or at least predominant. I call this definition provisional insofar as it is only the first part, a shared horizon of desire, which could constitute the possibility of a common good; unfortunately, desire takes far too many (often opaque, sadistic, or masochistic) vicissitudes to cohere within a single subject, let alone society or world. Thus the part of the definition falling after the comma is the trap, the farce, the facade to which appeals to the common good aim and yet necessarily fall short of precisely because desire does not work the way reasonable people want it to work. It is this split between the impossible (a shared horizon) and the vapid (a utilitarian aesthetic of . . .) that we will investigate in idealistic, rhetorical maneuvers which suppose we might all get along if only we could just stop thinking critically, calm down, and remain civil! 1   T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York and London: Routledge, 1973), 85.

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1. The Common Good, Contested One could read my provisional definition and thesis in two ways: either (1)  a  list of values with near-universal assent would be impossible to construct, or (2) if such a list were constructed we would find it did not matter, on account of “true” or unconscious desires overriding their conscious values. My argument sides with the latter; it would be easy to construct a list of near-universally held values (general public safety, elimination of hunger or lack of healthcare, egalitarian rights, etc.), but these would be easy to procure if unconscious desires were not covertly thwarting us at all times. The soundness of my argument hinges on the reader’s agreement with the provisional definition of the common good offered above, so let us consider first signifiers implicitly attached to the term and ways in which it seems to rhetorically function. Our editors for this volume prompted a helpful starting point, indicating “the social order in which individuals and groups can best strive for perfection.” Only as the editors rightly noted, the notion of perfection obscures or covers over authentic differences. My perfection must not infringe upon another’s rights in a liberal society, regional value-sets negate the possibility of a shared framework which is not inherent violence to the Other, and the very notion is almost always conceptualized as a secular ideal over and against religious or non-liberal cultural valuations which might not prioritize, for example, human flourishing. While we could veer into a discussion of Aristotelean eudaemonia at this juncture, appeals to the common good today veer closer to John Stuart Mill. Each and every time I have taught Mill in an Introduction to Ethics course, I am struck by the way in which he takes for granted certain desires within his soul are universal. I once read such a section to my class in which Mill states “no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool.”2 Mill restates in pithier form: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”3 One student smirked, countering that she would not wish to transform into a pig but would gladly trade her anxious existence and swap positions with her puppy. The laughter and agreement from others in the classroom sits in my memory next to another moment from that same course, when an undocumented student bravely alluded to his DACA status while knowing peers in the room would gladly see him deported or worse. The classroom is a microcosm of public 2

  “[N]o instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.” J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism and On Liberty, ed. M. Warnock (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003),187. 3   Ibid., 188.

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divergences in desire, and if we seek a serious utilitarianism of harm-reduction, let us acknowledge the woeful inadequacies of projected, liberal idealism portrayed as shared desires. Adorno argued this decades ago when he said education cannot afford to play neutral, and yet the imperative to take sides remains deeply controversial. As I began writing, I  had a hunch querying the wisdom of the Internet might turn up risible examples of the common good. In the first few search results, even the noxiously reactionary journal First Things published an article recognizing that public intellectuals appealing to the common good means nothing after Trump, when consensus is unattainable.4 Jacobin magazine described a teacher’s strike for the common good in Chicago,5 and Forbes declared entrepreneurs are natural allies of the common good since they seek the happiness of others.6 The New Yorker detailed a group of Christian liberals called Vote Common Good, which claims evangelicals would vote for Democrats if the former felt the latter were paying attention to them. The article literally framed “a sign of progress: in ones and twos, evangelicals were becoming disenchanted with Trump.”7 In ones and twos! Examining leftwing populist and rightwing nationalist movements, Ernesto Laclau delineates two categories of social signifiers: the empty signifier and the floating signifier. An empty signifier organizes; it need not mean anything specific in order to rally a cause. The classic empty signifier is The People, which wills this or that but has no specific political content without imputation. When Vote Common Good suggests it might snatch away those with violent desires by pursuing faith, hope, and love, I would counter that Democrats will never be able to brutalize or kill enough human beings to sway white evangelicals. Yet the illusion persists. In contrast, the floating signifier advances the agenda of the empty signifier, but the floating signifier means something very specific – though never what it overtly designates. For example, if we designated “MAGA” an empty signifier, its floating signifiers might be “law and order” (meaning ramped up policing of communities of color) or “all lives matter” (meaning black lives do not). What floats freely can evade scrutiny. For our purposes, if the empty signifier is the common good, the floating signifier is civility. 4   J. Wilson, “Conversations About the Common Good” (https:// www.firstthings.com /  web-exclusives / 2019 / 10 / conversations-about-the-common-good) (7 / 12 / 2022). 5   A. Maass, “Chicago Teachers Strike for the Common Good” (https:// www.jacobinmag. com / 2019 / 10 / chicago-teachers-union-strike-ctu-cps) (7 / 12 / 2022). 6   D. Lidow, “Four Ways To Focus Entrepreneurs On The Common Good” (https:// www. forbes.com / sites / dereklidow / 2019 / 10 / 07 / four-ways-to-focus-entrepreneurs-on-the-com mon-good / ?sh=1fce524a631d) (7 / 12 / 2022). 7   E. Griswold, “Teaching Democrats to Speak Evangelical” (https:// www.newyorker. com / news / on-religion / teaching-democrats-to-speak-evangelical) (7 / 12 / 2022).

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2. Civility, Demanded To call for civility is to demand foreclosure of moral judgement. Woe to those who call evil “evil” and good “good”! In the summer of 2018, we learned of a kidnapping policy instituted as a zero-tolerance family separation effort on the southern United States border. Outrage mounted with reports of new camps and brutal conditions, and leaders demanded civility to calm the clamor once protesters started interrupting dinner for the persecutors. On June 20, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen dined in Washington D. C. when protesters crowded in and shouted “How dare you spend your evening here eating dinner as you’re complicit in the separation and deportation of over 10,000 children separated from their parents?” Streaming the castigation live on social media, they chanted “Shame, shame, shame!” and “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace!”8 Nielson hung her head throughout the ordeal until leaving. Two days later, White House advisor Stephen Miller, an architect of the immigration crackdown for non-white persons, faced dinnertime heckling from a patron shouting, “Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?”9 After that, a restaurant owner forced White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to leave, explaining she felt she needed to uphold values of honesty, compassion, and cooperation.10 Having their dinner interrupted as well, bystander patrons expressed approval for the protesters with high-fives and praise for the disruption. Right away, protestors got the blame for lack of civility. Should expressing oneself by heckling administration officials be socially condoned, or should we recognize differences in perspectives regarding the persecution of toddlers? I am outlining a schema of anxiety in relation to shame and indifference, which I discussed in more detail in my most recent book Against.11 I posit anxiety as a middle register between shame and indifference. The latter two are worlds apart internally but often manifest externally in identical manner. Neither think to defend themselves. Lacan described the intensification of difficulty of affective states in dynamic tension with their progression or  8   Protesters also shouted “No human being is illegal!” and “End Texas concentration camps!” Nelson, “Protesters chant ‘shame’ at DHS Secretary Nielsen at Mexican Restaurant.”  9   N. Schwab, “Protester Yells ‘Fascist’ at Stephen Miller Dining in Mexican Restaurant” (https:// nypost.com / 2018 / 06 / 20 / protester-yells-fascist-at-stephen-miller-dining-in-mexi can-restaurant / ) (7 / 12 / 2022). 10   K. Karson and M. Winsor, “Sarah Sanders says she was told to leave restaurant because she works for Trump,” (https:// abcnews.go.com / Politics / sarah-sanders-told-leave-restaurantworks-trump / story?id=56109477) (7 / 12 / 2022). 11   See especially T. DeLay, Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want? (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), 7 – 11.

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movement.12 Occasionally the tension of the symptom erupts into a decisive moment, a passage à l’acte as in the case of Dora slapping Herr K. (or spontaneously harassing the administration’s ghouls at the next table) or acting-out, which is when the subject tries to display her actions for the world to see (such as complaining that citizens are insufficiently civil to administration ghouls). But at the outer edge of difficulty and movement or tension, anxiety stabilizes the subject’s inner turmoil by generating behavior and exercising (or exorcising) the symptom. Difficulty → Movement

Inhibition

Impediment

Embarrasment

↓

Emotion

Symptom

Passage à l’acte

Turmoil

Acting-Out

Anxiety

Figure I: Lacan’s Blackboard13 Though Lacan had much to say about anxiety, he had unfortunately little to say about shame – which is unfortunate, since the past few years have proven that norms do not work without a capacity for shame! At the highest levels of power, a bellicose game show host with a cadre of predators and racists can do a lot of damage precisely because the capacity for shame remains undeveloped. It surely feels odd to make a case for shame, but Lacan did so himself when suggesting that shame might be an opportunity for a new master signifier to emerge.14 As Copjec argued, shame is proof that one’s commitments lied in vain: “In shame, unlike guilt, one experiences one’s visibility, but there is no external Other who sees, since shame is proof that the Other does not exist.” In a state of shame, I feel like I am seen too much by the world. I feel exposed, and I wish to retreat and avoid attention. Shame does not jump to defend itself. It share this lack of defense with indifference, which likewise does not make any effort to defend itself (after all, if I am indifferent, then I am aware 12   This was Lacan’s modulation of Freud’s triad developed in Inhibition, Symptoms, and Anxiety. There exists a triadic pull between inhibition, symptom, and anxiety such that wherever we find two of these, we shall also find the third. 13   Table modified for clarity from J. Lacan, Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X, ed. J.‑A. Miller, trans. A. R. Price (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), 13, 77. 14   “It is not a comfortable thing to put forward. It is not one of the easiest things to speak about. This is perhaps what it really is, the hole from which the master signifier arises. If it were, it might perhaps not be useless for measuring how close one has to get to it if one wants to have anything to do with the subversion, or even just the rotation, of the master’s discourse.” J. Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII, ed. J.‑A. Miller, trans. R. Grigg (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 189.

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of nothing that calls for a defense in the first place). Shame and indifference are worlds apart in the interior experience but might appear stoic or content externally. However, anxiety jumps to defend itself. Lacan famously associates anxiety with the question Che vuoi? (What do you want? or What’s bugging you?).15 Human beings would prefer to be in a state of untention (indifference), but at the epiphany of our sins, we would much prefer a frantic state of anxiously defending ourselves to the collapse of shame, which is the worst of feelings. People will do anything to avoid shame, even if it requires them to engage in the most clairvoyantly duplicitous excuses for, e. g., why it is perfectly reasonable for grown adults to kidnap migrant children. Thus to build on Lacan’s blackboard, the relationship I posit works like so:

Shame ↓ Passage à l’acte?

Indifference ↓ Emotion → Passage à l’acte ↓ Turmoil Acting-out → ↓ Anxiety ← → Indifference ↓ ↓ Return of the repressed Repetition

Figure II: Shame, Anxiety, and Indifference16 To put it all together, when desperately requested by the racist, the demand for civility expresses desires to be treated as an mirror signifier for another signifier; to be treated as an ordinary citizen by other ordinary citizens, a human being by other human beings, a good person by other good people. It is a complaint born of anxiety, a defense against shame, and an inverted truth. “Please be civil” is the partner of “So that I might continue to be barbaric.” Their spasms testify to the truth, which is that they know very well they are conjuring something vile.

15

  The question goes both ways; I feel anxiety if the Other asks me “What do you want?” and I am unable to immediately call up an adequate response. Likewise, I might ask the Other “What do you want?” and feel anxiety precisely because I do not know how the other will respond. 16   Graph from DeLay, Against, 11.

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3. Climate Crisis as the Test of a Shared Horizon Where academic essays speak of climate change, I often hear what amounts to a causal aside (e. g. “Then, of course, there’s climate change,” or “Well, the crisis will present additional challenges”) that keeps the subject vague, as if hinting toward no underlying specificity or concern in the speaker’s awareness. Because of this, I will designate what I consider the emergencies of the near future with respect to the common good. The first thing I tell my students is they live amidst the greatest period of migration the world has ever seen. Mass migrations during the Great Changes are already in motion, they will bring dense metropolises and heretofore isolated rural communities alike into frequent contact with varieties of faiths, and this is a good reason to study religions. A 2019 Oxfam report indicated 20 million people per year are now displaced by climate change-fueled “natural disasters” (which are no longer purely natural), an increase of five-fold from climate refugees ten years ago.17 This number represents the more catastrophic end of current estimates for climate refugees, which span from 25 million to as many as a billion by 2050, with 200 million being a most commonly predicted number.18 Climate refugees already outnumber war refugees anywhere from three-to-one to as many as ten-to-one, but climate refugees are not currently a recognized category.19 There is no legal option for those who need aid most, and reactions in recent years to Syrian refugees in Europe, migrant caravans in the United States, and the general nativist backlash across the Western world preview reactions we will see once climate triggers, amplifiers, and feedback loops intensify. Secondly, I tell my students the Great Changes will provide fertile soil for the most vile, bigoted, and xenophobic faiths the world has ever seen. While my recent work narrowly focuses on transference between North American 17  Oxfam International, “Climate fuelled [sic] disasters number one driver of internal displacement globally forcing more than 20 million people a year from their homes.” (https:// www.oxfam.org / en / press-releases / forced-from-home-eng) (7 / 12 / 2022). 18   IOM, “IOM Migration Research Series No. 31” (https:// www.iom.int / news / iom-mi gration-research-series-no-31-migration-and-climate-change) and B. Kamal, “Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050” (https:// reliefweb.int / report / world / climate-mi grants-might-reach-one-billion-2050) (7 / 12 / 2022). 19   The United Nations defines a refugee as someone who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” Article 1 A. (2) of the “Convention and Protocol Relating to Status of Refugees” of the UN Refugee Agency (https:// www.unhcr.org / 3b66c2aa10.html) (7 / 12 / 2022).

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white evangelicalism and reactionary nativism, my wager is that this faith supposedly in decline (I am skeptical of that decline) provides an excellent model for future iterations of xenophobic faiths organizing around ever-shifting permutations of whiteness in reaction to migration. Since 9 / 11, baselessly conjured fears of Muslim terrorists pouring over the southern border serve as an effective pretext for barbaric treatment of migrants. We know what the United States does to the Muslim who is Other over there; would it be so strange in the near future to see migrant caravans hit with hellfire missiles over here? How long until sentry drones become the “compromise” option for liberals who imagine they desire “smart border” technology? Following the political theory of climate developed by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright, might we see a slumbering capitalism (climate behemoth) be displaced by a capitalist planet sovereign (climate leviathan) that takes the crisis seriously, but only as a threat to profits rather than to humans? Or will we instead see a non-capitalist planetary sovereign (climate Mao) or even a non-capitalist, non-centralized mode of organization yet to come (climate X)?20 We are rapidly approaching a mid-century future in which compromise – for the common good! – will condone violence unimaginable today. The ultimate test for a shared horizon of desire will be the secondary and tertiary effects of climate change. The barbarism of the Great Changes will be justified by law-abiding citizens assuring us they are only concerned about fair rules. If we are to “arrange thoughts and actions,”21 as Adorno so solemnly says of the new imperative in the face of brutality, we must contemplate contemplate how, unlike Benjamin’s Angelus Novus who only saw the pile of history, we how see the catastrophe of the approaching future. If we were to burn all fossil fuel resources we should expect to see global temperatures averages rise by as much as 9.5 to 20 degrees Celsius.22 Staple crops drop off dramatically long before that threshold; crop yields drop by approximately 3 – 10 percent per degree Celsius increase. We would quite literally starve to death before we could burn through our fuel, which we are clearly trying to do when coal use is up 65 % since 2000.23 The danger does not seem to drain the potency of “energy independence” – very important for the common good! – even as we drift ever closer to that IPCC deadline to cut emissions in half in 12 years (or less now that we’ve wasted 20   The latter two (Mao and X) feel like our only hope for genuine transformation and realism about the implications of perpetual expansion in a world of limited resources, but then we are pinning our survival an ideal communist revolution in the midst of an aggressively resurgent fascist spirit. See J. Wainwright and G. Mann, Climate Leviathan. A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future (London and New York: Verso, 2017). 21   Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 365. 22   M. Hood, “Burning All Fossil Fuels Would Scorch Earth” (https:// phys.org / news /  2016-05-fossil-fuels-earth.html) (7 / 12 / 2022). 23  IEA, Coal 2019 (https:// www.iea.org / reports / coal-2019) (7 / 12 / 2022).

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time). The IPCC estimates are rightly and continually criticized as far too conservative, and their less-than-a-meter sea level rise by 2100 will prove far too optimistic if a rapid collapse of Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet, or the East Antarctic Wilkes Basin raises sea level by several meters inside of 50 – 150  years.24 Non-linear feedback loops suggest far worse scenarios.25 Even in the unrealistically tame scenarios of gradual, slow-moving sea level rise, we must remember approximately four in ten people worldwide live within 100 kilometers of the shore,26 and the situation is worse if we necessarily include those living on major river ways effected by sea level. My grandchild might explain to their grandchild why there are no more beaches covered in sand except for wherever the wealthy can pay to dredge up the old coastlines and deposits then along the new private shores. When all of this comes to pass, we will hear how these horrors too are justified, for we must think of the market and the common good! In the midst of this, when the 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg cried “How dare you!” at the 2019 UN Climate Action summit, her intensely affected angst became a point of mockery for deniers, for whom the cancelation of the future and the melancholic pain of children is hilarious. Yet we are told we must compromise for the common good? We need more affect, not less. A final way to think about the impossibility of a common good, then, is the gap between sadism and melancholia. Freud described melancholia as a guilty ego fully ready to accept its punishment; it supplements for loss by tormenting itself as an excess punishment. On the other hand, sadism enjoys not so much the other’s pain but instead the other’s anxiety.27 In Freud’s theory 24   A scenario similar to this was suggested in the 2016 essay co‑authored by James Hansen (the same Hanesn who first alerted the public to global warming in Congressional testimony in 1988). See J. Hansen et al., “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2oC global warming could be dangerous,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): 3761 – 3812. 25   A runaway ice shelf sufficiently large enough to raise sea levels in a decade or so could destroy most every port in the world and trigger a massive global depression. One bad crop season or wildfire could trigger emergency evacuations so immense that, in a world with over 400 currently active nuclear power reactors, we might consider what happens not only when cities starve but also when nearby reactors are not all shut down properly during mass evacuations. And of course, a massive power grid failure would eliminate the ability to pump water, placing untold millions in mortal jeopardy. 26   Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, “Percentage of Total Population Living in Coastal Areas” (https:// www.un.org / esa / sustdev / natlinfo / indicators / methodology_ sheets / oceans_seas_coasts / pop_coastal_areas.pdf ). 27   Rather than opposing sadism to masochism, which are bi‑polar facets of a self-identical desiring structure, the sublime opposite of sadism is melancholia. One enjoys inflicting anxiety, while the other enjoys being afflicted. The hostile ego enjoys the act of triggering (sadism), but, on the other hand, suffering / enjoyment of melancholia and excessive enjoyment of masochism are not identical.

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of melancholia, identification with a lost object replaces the object-cathexis; character, for Freud, is suffused with an abundance of identification with loss.28 Or, to move this disquisition in the direction of guilt, Freud thought of conscious guilt as the superego’s criticism of the ego. The melancholic experience of guilt is different from that of the obsessional or hysteric.29 “In melancholia the impression that the super-ego has obtained a hold upon consciousness is even stronger,” Freud says. “But here the ego ventures no objection; it admits its guilt and submits to the punishment [. . .] in melancholia the object to which the super-ego’s wrath applies has been taken into the ego through identification.”30 What a remarkable observation for our era of climate angst – the loss of the world all civilization heretofore enjoyed and is yet now gone, a loss for which we feel guilty with each plastic straw we sip through, each tank of gasoline we pump, each child we bring into the world. We feel that loss and readily submit to punishment, even if we are in no real sense guilty. The reactions trace multiple vectors – sadism, masochism, melancholia, guilt – underscoring the impossibility of suturing so many drives and their vicissitudes to a shared horizon of desire.

4. On the Impossibility of a Common Shame In July 2018, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced conclusively that the Earth was on a path to warming by 7 degrees Fahrenheit (nearly 4 Celsius). What grabbed headlines, though, was not that an agency housed with the Trump executive branch was suddenly affirming anthropocentric warming; instead, we gasped as we read their conclusion that, since warming was locked in, we need not worry about regulating to mitigate the worst effects. The report purportedly examined multiple options for regulating CO2 emissions from vehicles. In stunning nihilism, the report claimed that while carbon would rise from over 400 parts per million now to 789.76 ppm by 2100 if nothing was done, implementing Obama-era emissions caps would 28

  “We succeeded in explaining the painful disorder of melancholia by supposing that [. . .] an object with was lost has been set up again inside the ego – that is, that an object-cathexis has been replaced by an identification [. . .] Since then we have come to understand that this kind of substitution has a great share in determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution towards building up what is called its ‘character.’” S. Freud, The Ego and the Id (Seattle, WA: Pacific Publishing Studio, 2010), 23. 29   The obsessional seeks the analyst’s aid in repudiating guilt, which testifies to an unconscious knowledge at the level of superego, but it is the superego which is assaulting the ego and is therefore responsible for guilt. In contrast, the hysteric’s guilt comes from the ego’s active effort’s to keep knowledge at a distance, so the generation of guilt works nearer the site of consciousness in the hysteric. See ibid., 52 – 53. 30  Ibid., 52.

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only limit the leap to 789.11 ppm.31 Climate scientist Michael MacCracken summarized the report: “The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it.”32 The 500 page report suggested that if American auto industry regulations would only make a difference of .65 ppm, and if 7 degrees were then inevitable, then why not reap profits now and let future generations deal with the fallout? If shame is the affect of collapse, of withdrawal, of feeling seen too much, then a 500 page compendium of shameless nihilism is the opposite: acting-out for the world to see. The denial of the data, the acknowledgement of the data while refusing to act, the mockery of a stressed young climate activist, the warning of 7 degrees so that profits can be squeezed out quickly – these all share not only in their catastrophe but also in shamelessness. They are not even expressions of anxiety and suffering but instead of total indifference to suffering. When such indifference holds the seat of power, it should rightly challenge our notions of persuasion toward a common good. The very fact that we do not wish to compromise on border drones or border camps testifies against the fiction of a shared horizon of desire! We are not quite forbidden to think that the common good is a trap, but I am surely called cynical or pessimistic for saying so. To live, especially to live in the West even with the best intentions, is to kill. When Adorno considered the “guilt of a life which purely as a fact will strangle other life,” he called it irreconcilable with living. “And the guilt does not cease to reproduce itself, because not for an instant can it be made fully, presently conscious,”33 he said, which is the emergency of our moment, because no amount of consciousness-raising can bear an adequate account of just how dire our situation is in the midst of climate collapse. But that is why negative dialectics must be a “thinking against itself.”34 It cannot encompass or sublate so much as it must subtract or close in, for we cannot appeal to a shared horizon of desire with those determined to destroy for reasons of profit, ignorance, or vengeance. The common good is a feeble simulacrum of peace seducing those who would (understandably) rather not contemplate the grotesque desire of their neighbor. This emergency pains 31   National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Year 2021 – 2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks,” S‑15 (https:// www.nhtsa.gov / corporate-average-fuel-economy / safe) (7 / 12 / 2022). 32   MacCracken, as quoted J. Eilperin et al., “Trump administration sees a 7‑degree rise in global temperatures by 2100” (https:// www.washingtonpost.com / national / health-science /  trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100 / 2018 / 09 / 27 /  b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html) (7 / 12 / 2022). 33   Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 364. 34   Ibid., 365.

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us with melancholic guilt, which is a gift hinting we are not indifferent and are in fact quite alarmed. Immediately after feeling the horror living a life that harms merely by living, for better or worse Adorno suggests: “This, nothing else, is what compels us to philosophize.”35

35

  Ibid., 364.

Reasonable Pluralism and the Procedure-Independent Standard in Epistemic Democracy Will Mittendorf 1. Introduction Deliberative theories of democracy place the legitimacy of the use of coercive political power in democratic procedures and outcomes produced through a process of fair, equal, and reasoned deliberation. Under debate is whether mutual respect requires the use of ‘public reasons’ rather than ‘the whole truth’ in democratic deliberations. Many deliberative democrats have rejected the public reason requirement as too exclusionary and unfriendly to reasonable pluralism, opting instead for an epistemic theory of democracy that places legitimacy in the epistemic function of democratic deliberation. For instrumental, outcome-based epistemic theories, legitimacy resides in the ability of democratic deliberation to determine ‘correct’, ‘likely true’, or ‘best’ solutions to social problems, while utilizing a procedure-independent standard, such as a common good, to gauge the epistemic success of deliberation. However, the procedure-independent standard may fall prey to the same objection from reasonable pluralism as public reason – it is a requirement that can be reasonably rejected. In this essay, I briefly outline several outcome-based epistemic approaches, highlighting the disagreement over the common good as a procedure-independent standard for correctness. I argue that due to fact of reasonable pluralism, the most promising path forward for outcome epistemic democracy is to abandon the procedure-independent standard entirely. I propose that the pragmatist epistemic democracy offers the best balance of including and utilizing diverse viewpoints with the truth-tracking, problem solving ability of group deliberation towards a common good.

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2. Political Legitimacy and Reasonable Pluralism Liberal political philosopher, John Rawls, explains that a successful democracy will lead to an increased pluralism of conflicting but reasonable worldviews. This fact of reasonable pluralism is both a positive feature of democracy but also a challenge to its legitimacy. Democracy requires mutual respect between citizens and that means avoiding the imposition of one worldview on another who can reasonably reject it. To respect pluralism in a diverse society, Rawls argues, political legitimacy requires avoiding the use of truth-talk in democratic deliberation. By avoiding the use of controversial claims tied to private worldviews in the public sphere, citizens can find generally shared reasons that provide a neutral justification for coercive policies. So, as a matter of ethical citizenship, people ought to deliberate using ‘public reasons’ – reasons that all people can reasonably accept.1 Public reasons are reasons that do not directly rely on the truth of any one worldview but rather on the reasonable acceptability of the proposal. By removing truth from deliberation, the debate stays ‘on the surface’ where people can find an ‘overlapping consensus’ and wide agreement. This avoids the problem of any one group imposing an oppressive worldview on others and instead creates a justification that is acceptable to all. However, the drawback to public reason is that many who want to participate in the deliberative process are de facto excluded from debate because they are either unable to separate their truth-based reasons from their public reasons or they only have truth-based reasons.2 This is an acute concern for religious citizens who may be excluded from democracy at‑large. Moreover, the requirement of public reason imposes a controversial, pre-deliberative requirement of the acceptance of certain liberal values and can therefore be reasonably rejected by those who do not share that worldview.3 Where does this leave the project of democratic justification? If truth-based reasons are used in deliberation, those who can reasonably reject these reasons will be oppressed and justification fails, but the imposition of certain pre-deliberative, normative requirements (such as public reason) can also be oppressive, and justification fails. Ideally, a successful theory of democratic justification should offer a substantial account of democratic norms, practices, and institutions without imposing substantive normative restrictions on citizens, such as excluding truth-based reasons in deliberation, and still avoid one conception of truth being imposed on all. 1

  J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 10.   N. Wolterstorff and R. Audi, Religion in the Public Square (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), 1997. 3   Political liberal, Johnathan Quong, says that political liberalism is not self-defeating, it is only meant for other political liberals. J. Quong, “The Rights of Unreasonable Citizens,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2004): 314 – 335. 2

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3. The Epistemic Turn A trend many refer to as the ‘epistemic turn’ in democracy reintroduces truth back into democratic justification.4 This turn not only challenges the assumption that truth is detrimental to justification but offers compelling reasons to believe that including truth is beneficial to democratic deliberation. The epistemic turn begins within a Rawlsian framework in the 1980s with Joshua Cohen’s essay, “An Epistemic Conception of Democracy,” and further developed by David Estlund in “The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority.”5 Cohen formalizes the epistemic dimensions of democracy into a distinct epistemic approach and defends the possibility of a “procedure independent standard of correct decisions,” like an account of justice or the public good, e. g., Rawls’s requirements of “equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle.”6 Cohen claims there are three features of an epistemic conception of democracy. First, the idea of a public good, or ‘general will’ that can be used as a populist tool for identifying an objective standard for democratic decisions which is independent of any procedure. Societal values and public needs work as a measuring stick for the effectiveness of democratic outcomes and effective approaches in turn justify the process. Second, an epistemic conception of democracy is a cognitive view and sees democratic citizens as expressing their beliefs as to the best outcome, rather than personal preferences. Epistemic democracy supposes that citizens argue for what they consider to be the best outcome – what they sincerely believe to be in their best interest by way of being the best solution to the social problem. Third, epistemic democracy is deliberative insofar as the decision-making process requires citizens to offer reasons and respond to them, adjusting their beliefs accordingly. Cohen’s defense of the epistemic dimension of democracy opens the door for correctness theories of democracy, such as the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) and the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem (DTA), which rely on the decision-making abilities of the many to solve social problems. Correctness accounts hold that democratic deliberation can produce true, correct, or at 4   J. Mansbridge, et al., “A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy,” in Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1 – 26; J. Knight, et al., “Roundtable on Epistemic Democracy and Its Critics,” Critical Review 28, no. 2 (2016): 1 – 34 (doi:10.1080 / 08913811. 2016.1206744) (7 / 12 / 2022). 5   J. Cohen, “An Epistemic Conception of Democracy,” Ethics 97, no. 1 (1986): 26 – 38 (http:// www.jstor.org.ccl.idm.oclc.org / stable / 2381404) (7 / 12 / 2022); D. M. Estlund, “Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority,” in Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 260. 6   Cohen, “An Epistemic Conception of Democracy,” 34.

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least better answers to social problems than alternative systems and democracy is justified by its ability to create these outcomes. While it may seem naïve to think that large groups can create correct answers through democratic debate, recent work on the CJT shows that this trust is not misplaced.7 The CJT proposes that when voters have at least two options, vote based on their best judgement (and not strategically), vote independently, and are correct (on average) at least 51 % of the time, then democratic outcomes will be correct. If individual voters are more likely than not to be correct, then by aggregating large numbers of voters the decisions are also more likely to be correct, and the larger the sample, the more likely the correctness of the outcome. Beyond being an interesting statistical peculiarity, the CJT offers a path for a substantive justification of democracy – democratic outcomes are legitimate because democracy is a good collective decision-making process that is more likely than other political systems to determine the common good. The Diversity Trumps Ability (DTA) approach and Hélène Landemore’s augmented version: The Numbers Trumps Ability Theorem (NTA) explain that while individual members of a group can be better than one another at problem solving, the cognitive diversity of the group as a whole – the breadth of the diversity of perspectives  – can lead to overall better decision-making. Landemore’s argument focuses on the ability of democracy to improve the common good as justification for democracy’s legitimacy.8 She says that democracy has been successful because it is an effective way to solve social problems, for example, Amartya Sen’s insight that democracy avoids famines and Spencer Weart’s discovery of the correlation of democracy with peace between democratic regimes.9 The benefit of Landemore’s approach over the CJT is that DTA / NTA requires only a small diverse group for better decision-making.10 This approach highlights the benefits of a widely inclusive democracy. Bringing every citizen into the debate, regardless of the source of their reasoning, leads to higher quality outcomes. Assuming, of course, that there are correct answers to social problems, correctness approaches demonstrate that large diverse democracies can locate the common good through inclusive group deliberation.  7   B. Grofman and S. L. Feld, “Rousseau’s General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective,” The American Political Science Review 82, no. 2 (1988): 567 – 76 (doi:10.2307 / 1957401) (7 / 12 /  2022).  8   H. E. Landemore, “Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and Why It Matters,” Journal of Public Deliberation 8, no. 1 (March 2012) (https:// www.publicdeliberation.net / jpd /  vol8 / iss1 / art7) (7 / 12 / 2022).  9   A. Sen, Freedom as Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); S. Weart, Never At War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 10   H. E. Landemore, “An Epistemic Argument for Democracy,” in The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology, ed. M. Hannon and J. de Ridder (Abingdon, Oxon / New York: Routledge, 2021), chap. 31 (doi: 10.4324 / 9780429326769) (7 / 12 / 2022).

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4. The General Will as Procedure-independent Standard Despite the more inclusive approach of epistemic democracy, it can still run into an issue posed by the fact of reasonable pluralism. If the legitimacy of epistemic democracy stems from the ability of deliberation to reach certain substantive outcomes, those outcomes must be measured by a procedure-independent standard for correctness (or at least according to Cohen). However, who or what determines the procedure-independent standard of correctness? If the standard is controversial, then it may impose a requirement on citizens that can be reasonably rejected. The CJT claims that the likelihood of correct answers comes with a larger sample while the DTA / NTA says the same for diverse groups. Both views rely on a procedure-independent, objective standard of correctness, which, in a Rousseauean fashion, claims that the outcome of deliberation is the correct decision. Bernard Grofman and Scott L. Feld formalize Rousseau’s general will through a reading of Condorcet, explaining that the general will should be seen, not as the aggregation of individual citizens voting their personal preferences but rather “as a process that searches for ‘truth’.”11 This is what makes the CJT and DTA / NTA such a powerful tool for epistemic democrats – these theorems demonstrate why it is that the general will is the correct decision. If these theorems hold true in practice, then large diverse democratic bodies are highly accurate at truth-tracking. However, the problem with the CJT and DTA / NTA approaches is that if their claim is that the outcome of group deliberation is correct, then this means that minority beliefs (i. e., beliefs that are contrary to the outcome of the deliberative process) are incorrect. These approaches therefore ask for too much deference from the minority who must accept that their position is wrong.12 Assuming the minority offers reasons from a position of sincerity, and if they do not change their opinion due to the outcome of the debate, then they may nonetheless reject the outcome as correct, despite the outcome aligning with the independent standard of correctness (in this case the general will). This is especially the case when the debate is over moral matters. Moreover, the CJT and DTA / NTA only argue for the increased ability to reach correct outcomes but do not guarantee correctness, and so, it seems reasonable for people to disagree with the alleged correctness of those outcomes.13

11

  Grofman and Feld, “Rousseau’s General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective,” 568.   E. Anderson, “An Epistemic Defense of Democracy: David Estlund’s Democratic Authority,” Episteme 5, no. 1 (2008): 129 – 39 (doi:10.3366 / E1742360008000270) (7 / 12 / 2022). 13   C. Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Sunstein argues that homogenous groups may make worse decisions because of group polarization. 12

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5. Estlund’s Mixed Epistemic Proceduralism Estlund’s epistemic account of democratic legitimacy stems from a conception of what he calls ‘normative consent’. In consent theories of legitimacy, state authority results from the individual citizens consenting to laws. Moral obligations, like the duty to obey state laws, are created through the consent of the governed – without consent there is no legitimate authority. Estlund proposes that there are cases where it may be the case that consent is not given but, nonetheless, consent should be given. Comparing democracy to a jury, Estlund claims that the authority of the jury derives from the duty of citizens to promise to obey those juries, and that duty to promise rests on the epistemic value of the jury “that no reasonable or qualified point of view can deny.”14 Democracies and juries alike are more likely than random to produce substantively just outcomes (even when those outcomes are erroneous), and there is a great value to having laws and policies that are substantively just. Moreover, he claims there is no nondemocratic alternative that can produce these outcomes better. This creates normative consent – a moral obligation to consent to democratic outcomes. Even granting that the epistemic powers of democracy can, or are more likely, to produce substantively just outcomes than nondemocratic alternatives, it is still not clear how those substantively just outcomes are set as ends to be achieved. Here Estlund points to a distinction between formal and substantive epistemic value. Substantive refers to the content of the standard, formal to the process of determining the outcome. His example is a biology student who will likely do well on a biology test because the student already possesses the substantive information, while a group of students working together will likely do well because of their cooperative ability to create good answers. If the legitimacy of democracy rests on its ability to create just outcomes, then, according to a substantive epistemic account, there must be a standard of justice in which to aim. But this standard would be controversial and therefore, a system aiming at creating that pre-determined just outcome is as controversial as the standard. Instead, he says epistemic proceduralism is a formal epistemic account, which places the value on the process to get it right “from the standpoint of justice or common good whatever the best conception of those might be.”15 Epistemic proceduralism, he claims, can produce the best outcomes, even if it does not set or even know what those outcomes are in advance of the procedure. Estlund admits that this might seem far-fetched – that we can know a system leads to correct answers if we do not know what is correct before setting off to achieve that goal – but he defends that position by claiming that we can have a sense of 14

  Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework, 156.   Ibid., 169.

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correct or just outcomes based on the ability of those outcomes to have a ‘good performance’ in relation to ‘primary bads’: war, famine, economic collapse, political collapse, epidemic, and genocide.16 Primary bads are those injustices that would be agreed upon by “all reasonable comprehensive views.”17 Yet, this falls into the same trouble as public reason, that a particular conception of justice must be reasonably acceptable to all. This is a problem – not because primary bads are not reasonable – but what Estlund counts as just is described in overly general terms. The trouble with a reasonable acceptability requirement is that it is difficult to agree on what counts as just – offering a conception of justice that is more vague does not reduce this problem. Moreover, legitimacy does not depend on achieving this goal of general justness, but on a system that is more likely than not to achieve justice. But what does it mean for a system to have a high probability of achieving justice, let alone a conception of justice that is not explicit? Estlund’s case for democracy rests on a probability to achieve outcomes that are not clear. Elizabeth Anderson points out that if legitimacy does not ultimately rest on epistemic criteria, then why not include thicker commitments such as autonomy and equality? And, if legitimacy resides in “a commitment to civic respect for citizens who hold a plurality of reasonable moral, theological, and philosophical ideals,” then Estlund is imposing the same commitment as Rawls, and, like Rawls, this requirement can be reasonably rejected.18

6. Pragmatism The epistemic turn has found a welcome home in pragmatist political theory with distinctive Deweyan and Peircean epistemic approaches coming into focus. Pragmatism’s experimental and holistic approach to solving human problems is well fitted to democracy, and pragmatists have been some of the most influential contributors to democratic theory – none more so than John Dewey.19 Dewey viewed democracy as a form of scientific inquiry and the public sphere as the space where the ‘problems of men’ can be investigated and debated, a place to “convince and be convinced by reason.”20 Deweyan democracy har16

  Ibid., 163.   Ibid., 162. 18   Anderson, “An Epistemic Defense of Democracy: David Estlund’s Democratic Authority,” 135. 19   Contemporary Deweyan democrats such as Elizabeth Anderson, James Bohman, Amy Gutmann, Hilary Putnam, and Robert Westbrook are standard bearers of the deliberative model. 20   J. Dewey, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882 – 1953, Electronic Edition, ed. J. A. Boydston and L. Hickman (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967 – 1991), MW 10:404. 17

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nesses the epistemic ability of social inquiry to identify and solve social problems. It also focuses on the quality of discussion and inclusivity of diverse opinions. Like the DTA / NTA, Deweyan democracy views diversity as a resource to deliberation rather than a problem to overcome. When there is a wide variety of opinions and backgrounds, democratic deliberation is enhanced. Dewey rejects what he calls the “spectator” theory of knowledge, that knowledge consists of knowing objects which are independent of the knower. Rather, for Dewey, knowledge is relational to the solutions of problems. Knowledge in this sense is social and responsive. Democracy is constitutive of knowledge, rather than a process to uncover it, because democracy is experimental – it is a place to test out hypotheses. In this way democratic deliberation is an exercise in practical intelligence and leads to both higher quality answers to social problems and the personal growth of the individual engaged in inquiry. Citizens discuss remedies to social problems and then test out those solutions. When solutions fail, democracy provides a system that offers remedies and allows for the revision of policies. This approach abandons dogmatism and embraces fallibilism and cooperation between citizens and public officials. Deweyan democracy is therefore dynamic insofar as it is responsive to reasons but is also imaginative in embracing creative and novel solutions to social problems. Writing from the Deweyan Perspective, Hilary Putnam explains that democratic inquiry is to be trusted because “the way in which we will find out where and how our procedures need to be revised is through the process of inquiry itself.”21 Democratic ideals are not infallible and should not be taken for granted, they are hypotheses to be tested out and improved upon. If certain democratic ideals, norms, or practices are delineated in advance of the deliberative process, then the ability for the public to make proper judgements about solutions to social issues is unnecessarily limited. Every problem is different and imposing pre-deliberative restrictions to debate confines the epistemic ability of the process. Democratic inquiry, then, is not a matter of predetermined procedures or substantive outcomes, it is “a way of life.”22 Democracy is intertwined with all aspects of social and ethical life, and, so, is “an ethical conception [. . .] a form of government only because it is a form of moral and spiritual association.”23 Democracy is a communicative theory that reaches deeply into our lives in both our political and social associations, a “conjoint communicated experience.”24 Deweyan democracy, in this sense, requires a shared moral vision that extends past the electorate and into the social institutions. Democracy is a condition that allows for human transformation through a process of socialization 21

  H. Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), 75.   Dewey, LW 14:226. 23   Dewey, EW 1:240. 24   Dewey, MW 9:93. 22

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and interaction. For Dewey, individuals are not given prior to this process, they are created through this relational process. Democracy then allows for human flourishing by creating a space for the development of capabilities and the public good. Political institutions are therefore a “means of creating individuals.”25 The Peircean Epistemic Defense of Democracy is an approach to democratic theory developed mainly by Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse based on the 1878 essay by the classical pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.”26 The Peircean perspective views truth as “the end of inquiry” – a true belief is a belief that could not improve based on ample evidence, evaluation, and debate. The Peircean view claims that all people, simply by being believers (in the Peircean sense of belief ), are implicitly committed to democracy since democracy is the best (or only) system that provides the protections and institutions necessary for the inquiry into the truth of our beliefs. Misak argues that the Peircean view allows truth back into political and moral deliberation but within a fallibilistic frame. Peircean epistemology offers a middle ground where fallibilism is accepted but relativism is rejected. This does justice to the practical dimension of truth inquiry: our moral and political inquiries aim at something objective, even if it is the case that our truth claims are fallible. When people engage in moral and political deliberation, they are not attempting to force people to take on their views but believe that through rational debate they can persuade others of the truth of their positions, in other words, “moral inquiry aims at truth.”27 We believe our moral and political beliefs are true, otherwise we would not hold such beliefs. Belief in this sense is what epistemologists call ‘full belief ’, a belief that one holds to be true, not a belief that one holds only in part or tentatively. Full belief can include degrees or probability of truth, for example, that a belief is more likely to be true than alternatives, but, on the whole, the believer is committed to the truth of belief and that commitment is demonstrated by the actions of the believer.28 Democratic theory should integrate and build on this phenomenology because it preserves our deeply held convictions, even if some of those beliefs are ultimately defeasible. The pragmatist approaches eschew the procedure-independent standard for causal efficacy.29 The legitimacy of democracy is in its successful operation. 25

  Dewey, MW 12:191   C. S. Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly  12 (January 1878): 286 – 302. 27   C. Misak, Truth, Politics, Morality (New York: Routledge, 2000), 3. 28  See A. T. Forcehimes and R. B. Talisse, “Belief and the Error Theory,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (2016): 849 – 856. 29   J. Knight and J. Johnson, The Priority of Democracy: Political Consequences of Pragmatism (Princeton, NJ and New York: Princeton University Press and Russell Sage Found, 2011), 272. 26

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Whereas the CJT and DTA / NTA require a procedure-independent standard to judge the correctness of deliberative outcomes, in the Pragmatist approach, both problems and solutions to social problems are constructed through the process of deliberation. Since determining the problem is part of deliberation, no correct solution can be posited prior to deliberation, thus avoiding the problem of imposing a standard that can be reasonably rejected. Moreover, the correctness of the solution is judged by an ongoing process of revision and deliberation, thus avoiding the problem of deference. In this way procedures and consequences are the source of legitimacy. Deliberation determines the common good and the efficacy of democratic procedures in solving those problems determines its legitimacy. The Pragmatist views include more voices in public debate, which means more people can see their reasons as justifying democratic outcomes. Unlike the CJT and DTA, justification does not lie in the correctness of the outcomes, but individuals justify democracy through their own commitments to epistemic norms. Their commitment to the veracity of their own opinions implies a commitment to a democratic system which allows the formation of those opinions.

7. Conclusion Epistemic democracy has the potential to offer an approach to political legitimacy that can include and utilize diversity in democratic deliberation, but, as I have argued, the procedure-independent standard is a roadblock to inclusivity since, in several cases, it can be reasonably rejected. Pragmatist approaches view democracy in dynamic terms, with democratic deliberation constructing both social problems and solutions. The Pragmatist approaches maintain the commitment to truth-tracking and view democracy as a useful epistemic tool but avoid the imposition of any one view of truth on all other citizens, thus respecting diversity while utilizing it for the common good.

On Cosmopolitanism: Its Precarious Relation to Religious Belief Hartmut von Sass “I don’t take coffee, I take tea, my dear I like my toast done on one side And you can hear it in my accent when I talk I’m an Englishman in New York See me walking down Fifth Avenue A walking cane here at my side I take it everywhere I walk I’m an Englishman in New York [. . .]” Sting, “Englishman in New York,” . . . Nothing Like the Sun (1988)

1. Introduction: The Heresy of Cosmopolitanism For the great English essayist Gilbert Keith Chesterton, heresy is not challenging the orthodox consensus and ecclesiastical common sense. It is not giving up the correct liturgy as the ortho-practical nucleus of leading a religious life ‘correctly’ either. It is not carelessly omitting to prove a contestable assertion or to test and weigh up a particular claim. And it is not about being thrown into the modern situation of being forced to make a choice while confronted with a “hubbub of voices” (Rush Rhees) or a range of lived and vital options. For Chesterton, heresy consists in not taking a stance, in not fighting for what one considers to be true, in being ignorant or feeling intellectually, socially, and politically far too comfortable.1 Therefore, Chesterton might wholeheartedly disagree with his opponents – and he won’t hide his polemical fury from 1   Behind all these merely sketched positions lie actual accounts of the concept of ‘heresy’; see M. Kellner, “Heresy and the Nature of Faith in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series 77, no. 4 (1987): 299 – 318; M. Mosebach, Häresie der Formlosigkeit. Die römische Liturgie und ihr Feind (Vienna and Leipzig: Karolinger, 2002); T. Gregory, “How Milton Defined Heresy and Why,” Religion & Literature 45, no. 1 (2013): 148 – 160; P. L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday, 1979), ch. 1; cf. also G. Viswanathan, “Blasphemy and Heresy: The Modernist Challenge. A Review Article,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 2 (1995): 399 – 412.

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them – and yet, he will also defend them against hasty critics if these opponents are not heretical by, in fact, taking a stance. There might be a disagreement in content, but there should be a shared virtue of real engagement. And this attitude leads Chesterton to a position of intellectual empathy that he is only willing to show when confronted with – in his sense – heretical voices. As  in the case of his close friend Bernard Shaw, he totally disagrees with Shaw’s Nietzschean fantasies of a ‘superior man’ while appreciating the writer’s readiness to stand up for his principles. And a similar stance runs through Chesterton’s rather grumpy approach to Rudyard Kipling, presented in chapter three of his 1905 collection of essays simply titled Heretics. Here again, we can encounter the ambivalence between the celebration of principles – for instance, Kipling’s take on discipline, candor, and sincerity – and, in sharp contrast to it, the almost devastating replique to Kipling’s “making the world small,” as the subtitle of that chapter reads.2 What Chesterton dislikes so much is Kipling’s cosmopolitan attitude that, he fears, will necessarily undermine a genuine patriotism and a real love for the country. Chesterton writes in his typically sardonic tone and temper: And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban.3

Kipling, born in India, a constant traveller, the author of, inter alia, The Jungle Book, but also a representative figure of British colonial imperialism,4 defended a vision of an all-encompassing sense of duty, a  duty addressed to literally ‘everyone’. And it is this universal outreach that makes Chesterton furious: The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant. He is always breathing an air of locality. London is a place, to be compared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuctoo. But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the winds of the world. [. . .] Mr. Kipling, with all his merits, is the globe-trotter; he has not the patience to become part of anything. So great and genuine a man is not to be accused of a merely cynical cosmopolitanism; still, his cosmopolitanism is his weakness.5 2   G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (London: The Bodley Head, 1905), 31; the German translation is not very precise, but funnier: “Vielleicht mit einem amüsierten Lächeln sieht dieses Leben aus seiner grandiosen Beschränktheit zu, wie die Motorwagenzivilisation ihren triumphalen Lauf nimmt, wie sie die Zeit überholt, den Raum auffrißt, alles und nichts gewahrt, weiterdonnert und am Ende das Sonnensystem erobert, nur um festzustellen, daß die Sonne berlinert und die Sterne Spießer sind.” (Ketzer. Eine Verteidigung der Orthodoxie gegen ihre Verächter, trans. M. Noll and U. Enderwitz [Frankfurt a. M.: Eichborn, 1998], 49). 3   Ibid., 46. This is the last sentence of that essay. 4  See J. Thompson, Fiction, Crime, and Empire clues to Modernity and Postmodernism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993). 5  Ibid., 43.

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Chesterton tries out a telling inversion here: the telegraph made the world smaller, he states in slight nostalgia, while the microscope turns the world bigger.6 Kipling’s cosmopolitans, however, are the men of telegraphs without the “loyalty of children” that is, he adds, essential to understand the world. Cosmopolitanism, by contrast, wants to conquer the universe – but that is, Chesterton concludes, to lose it.7 Again, Kipling’s cosmopolitanism is, for Chesterton, not heretical, but just unacceptable. However, the Kipling essay is particularly interesting since Chesterton’s latent distinction between heresy and getting it wrong, between not taking a stance and defending a false claim reaches its limits here: the allegedly wrong-headed doctrine of cosmopolitanism is itself a stance of dangerously undermining taking a stance in the first place. The impatient globe-trotter seems to be another label for a relativist for whom nothing is really important, relevant, deep enough or for whom nothing deserves undivided attention and commitment. Hence, cosmopolitanism is – according to Chesterton and, yet, against his own take – one of the crucial heresies of his (and our?) time. Chesterton was an admirer of Nietzsche (despite his critique of Shaw’s sympathies for the Übermensch). His Heretics reveal several features in common with Nietzsche’s prose and with some of the topics of his late period. Among them is the strong reservation against a cosmopolitan agenda, which is, interestingly, given a theological twist by Nietzsche that is not to be found in Chesterton. As well known, Nietzsche condemns the loss of a power dynamics affirming itself. Christianity, however, is  guilty of leaving ‘the people’ behind in turning itself into a religion of compassion open for everyone. Accordingly, tribe, nation, country, the people as agents of that powerful affirmation are the relevant addressees of his anti-Christian agitation, whereas God – who is supposed to be the God of one people, of only one nation – turns into a God of anyone, even of the marginalized and downtrodden. In losing the “will to power” and the people’s self-affirmation, God becomes a “private man” – a cosmopolitan, for all and for no one. Christianity becomes heretical here by revealing itself as nihilistic, i. e. in not affirming one’s own self-affirmation.8 In the end, God is “the great cosmopolitan,”9 a globe-trotter without patience for real localities – making the world small(er) and losing it at the same time. We have two conceptual couples now representing the major topics in what follows – heresy and cosmopolitanism as well as God and the people. 6

 Ibid., 44.   Ibid., 45. See also chapter 5 on H. G. Wells. 8  See F. Nietzsche, Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christentum (1888), KSA 6 (Munich, Berlin, and New York: DTV: de Gruyter, 1999), 165 – 253, here 172 and 183. 9   Ibid., 184. 7

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My central concern in this essay is the rather marginalized relation between religion (in its Christian fashion)10 and cosmopolitanism: is there a productive affinity?; are there significant or even telling tensions?; does faith produce additional obstacles to a cosmopolitan outlook?; or is faith itself cosmopolitan ‘in nature’? To address this ramified complex, it is required in Part 1 to elaborate more on the very concept of cosmopolitanism: sketching its context in current debates (2.1), indicating the different layers on which cosmopolitanism plays divergent roles (2.2), working out a sociological heuristics to locate cosmopolitanism as chance or challenge today (2.3), and, to deepen this last point, suggesting a psychogram of the cosmopolitan (2.4). On that basis, Part 2 turns to faith in its relation to cosmopolitanism. Relying on the distinctions and clarifications developed in the first part, I shall distinguish between a diagnostic and a dogmatic level touching on that relation. I will argue, first, that religious belief does itself contain a cosmopolitan scope by drawing on neighbour love as an integral part of faith while suspending usual distinctions between nations, ethnicity, gender, and also religions; and I will argue, second, that the architecture of religious belief, at the same time, is necessarily unstable and ambivalent, precisely due to its cosmopolitan scope given other, equally essential elements of that architecture, such as love, trust, and hope.

2. Contextualizing Cosmopolitanism Obviously, we do not live in the time of Chesterton and Nietzsche anymore. Trying to give an account of cosmopolitanism today has to be done in a completely different political scenery with its own keywords (or hashtags): globalization and its abyss, the ongoing crisis of Western liberalism, the limits of democracy struggling with populism and different forms of radicalism, various challenges of global impact such as climate change, immigration, poverty, and the threat of a nuclear war, but also with significantly different and advanced technical possibilities and a completely transformed forms of communication and media. Therefore, some claim that we are inhabitants of a “global village,” parts of a “world society.”11 Others try to combine both elements, the local aspect and its beyond-local counterpart, by introducing the idea of “two modernities,” one that is nation-oriented and a succeeding one that is cosmopolitan in giving – as a revolutionary act – the priority to human rights over

10   Hence, this essay won’t discuss the important question if and in which sense other religions have affinities to cosmopolitanism of some sort. 11  Cf. R. Stichweh, Die Weltgesellschaft: Soziologische Analysen (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000).

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national rights (with consequences, for instance, concerning political interventions in sovereign states).12 Let’s take a closer look at this transformation. 2.1 The Politics of Cosmopolitanism It might be helpful to contextualize and, thus, historize the very idea of cosmopolitanism, because it is crucial to see that it is itself a reaction to particular historical developments and events. However, cosmopolitanism has been around as a topic for a long time  – some go back to the Stoics and Diogenes, the self-proclaimed “citizen of the world” [kosmopolitês], others stick to a stricter grasp by referring to Kant’s political philosophy, esp. his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace,13 but it nevertheless remained a backbencher, if you take philosophy to be a parliament of ideas. It is interesting to see the paradoxical background of cosmopolitanism’s emergence: it was the modern state that has given rise to the idea of a nation, or to use Craig Calhoun’s words: “It is precisely when democracy became a popular passion and a political project that nationalism flourished.”14 The modern state developed a democratic framework and, at the same time, a national consciousness; and while the democratic vain – together with the aforementioned dynamics of political and economical globalization – triggered a second, i. e. cosmopolitan modernity, it has to struggle now with its parallel strand or sibling: overcoming nationalism that goes back to similar developments as do modern democracy and, eventually, (proto‑)cosmopolitanism.15 In more recent years, the issue has elicited new interest, but also brought surprising facets to the fore. It  was Richard Rorty who tried to wake up America’s left to not let patriotism go as an important value and to give, eventually, national pride and a sensibility for a shared national identity their due.16 This article provoked a wake of critical responses, since the danger of a slippery slope from this (leftist) identity politics to a robust nationalism and its

12  See U. Beck, “The cosmopolitan perspective: sociology in the second age of modernity,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice, ed. S. Vertovec and R. Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61 – 85, esp. 65 and 70. 13   On Kant’s cosmopolitanism see K. Reinhardt, Migration und Weltbürgerrecht. Zur Aktua­ lität eines Theoriestücks der politischen Philosophie Kants (Freiburg im Br. / Munich: Alber, 2019). 14   C. Calhoun, “The class consciousness of frequent travelers: towards a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 86 – 109, 107. 15  See T. K. Beck and K. Schlichte, Theorien der Gewalt (Hamburg: Junius, 2014), 68. – On the ramified history of cosmopolitanism see P. Kleingeld and E. Brown, “Cosmopolitanism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019), ed. E. N. Zalta (https:// plato.stanford.edu /  archives / win2019 / entries / cosmopolitanism / ) (6 / 23 / 2022). 16  Cf. R. Rorty, Achieving our Country. Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998), 15, 91 – 2.

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darker siblings was or became real.17 It was notably Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah who  – in  very different forms and tones  – presented cosmopolitan programs going beyond the limits of national states and borders. Nussbaum preferred a moral account by attacking the idea that moral obligations implied a difference between being inside a state and remaining outside it.18 Appiah, by contrast, presented a more cultural approach in repudiating the assumption – also known from Chesterton – that being a “citizen of the world” necessarily entailed the destruction of local ties, commitments, and even preferences.19 Since this initial debate, the concept of cosmopolitanism has gained significant attention and enjoyed further conceptual clarification. One might hold that this discussion is the synchronic counterpart to what has since been established by Derek Parfit (and others), as ‘future or generation ethics.’20 While in this latter case, the diachronic extension of ethical considerations is in focus, cosmopolitanism could be regarded as a topographical equivalent in broadening the spatial scope of duty, concern, and ethical care in a world, that indeed becomes “smaller,” as Chesterton feared. Cosmopolitanism fulfills, one might think, all aspects of what has been described as an “essentially contested concept.” ‘Cosmopolitanism’ has a factual as well as normative (or evaluative) dimension (hence, it is also a ‘thick’ concept), it entails several essential elements leading to divergent readings depending on the aspect that is particularly underlined, and it is subject to significant historical changes that do not leave a potential definition untouched.21 Hence, ‘cosmopolitanism’ is not only, according to this picture, contingently, but “essentially contested.” Taking a look at various meanings and specifications that ‘cosmopolitanism’ enjoys (or suffers from), this ‘essential contention’ seems to be accurate. We have a ‘situated,’ ‘rooted,’ ‘discrepant,’ ‘vernacular,’ ‘first world,’ ‘third world,’ ‘critical,’ ‘elite’ cosmopolitanism (to name but a few labels). And one might 17

 See B. Warf, “Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Geographical Imaginations,” Geographical Review 102, no. 3 (2012): 271 – 292, esp. 280. 18  See M. C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” (October 1994), (http:// bos tonreview.net / martha-nussbaum-patriotism-and-cosmopolitanism) (7 / 3 / 2022). 19  See K. A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), 16, 18, 24 – 5; see on the reactions to Rorty’s article also M. H. ­McMurran, “The New Cosmopolitanism and the Eighteenth Century,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 19 – 38, 23. 20  Cf. D. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), part III, chapter 16; J. Broome, “Should We Value Population?,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 13, no. 4 (2005): 399 – 413; S. Scheffler, Why Worry About Future Generations? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), chapter 1: “Temporal Parochialism and Its Discontents.” 21  Cf. W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1956): 167 – 198.

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agree with Pratap Mehta who states that if one stipulates what cosmopolitanism is, then one could guess what its best examples and representatives are: Exiles? Diasporas? Tourists? Migrant labor? Entrepreneurs? Jet setters and globe-trotters? Academics and intellectuals?22 Things are getting more complicated when considering related topics and doctrines, such as globalization, universalism, transnationalism, global ethics, etc. Despite these crucial differences and divergent aspects one could ask whether there is a common theme running through all these variations. Following Cecile Fabre, one could hold that: (i) individuals are the essential units of moral concern and have to be regarded as one another’s equals, morally and politically, in a cosmopolitan framework; (ii) states have rights and privileges only insofar as they serve individuals’ fundamental interests by these rights and privileges; (iii) states have no greater obligation to respect their own individual members and their fundamental rights compared to foreigners.23 Obviously, (i) – (iii) are built on the presupposition that cosmopolitanism is, essentially, a political theme. That is not totally wrong, but it’s not completely appropriate either. On the one hand, there are other levels on which cosmopolitanism plays a very significant role – economic, legal, moral, cultural, also religious ones; these other aspects might lead to a justified reservation against subscribing to (iii), because cosmopolitanism is not only about states and their obligations, but also about collectives, groups and individuals as cosmopolitically concerned agents. And this is true, even when disagreeing with Fabre on individuals as the supposedly central unit of moral concern, as (i) has it. On the other hand, all of these other dimensions do in fact possess a political element or, one might also say, they lead back to cosmopolitanism as an essentially contested political concept whose core element is, arguably, expressed in (iii). 2.2 A Taxonomy: Overviewing the Grammatical Landscape It will be helpful to give at least a sketch concerning these different dimensions of cosmopolitanism – going beyond, but leading back to politics. Samuel Scheffler proposed a merely twofold order in holding that cosmopolitanism combines two basic strands: one treats cosmopolitanism primarily as a doctrine 22

 See P. B. Mehta, “Cosmopolitanism and the Circle of Reason,” Political Theory 28, no. 5 (2000): 619 – 639, 621. 23  See C. Fabre, “Cosmopolitanism, Just War Theory and Legitimate Authority,” International Affairs 84, no. 5 (2008): 963 – 976, esp. 964; see also T. W. Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” Ethics 103, no. 1 (1992): 48 – 75, 48 – 49.

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about justice; the other strand presents it primarily as a doctrine about culture and the self. And this distinction, he adds, gets clearer when considering what both strands deny or are critical of: a legal or moral particularism and a mostly nationally-oriented communitarism.24 The following taxonomy25 integrates this distinction in suggesting a survey that is still a sketch, but more precise. Cosmopolitanism as political doctrine: The English political scientist Mary Kaldor holds: “Cosmopolitanism is often treated as a sentiment or moral standpoint. I want to suggest that it is, in fact, a political project, which is best elucidated in relation to ‘new wars’.”26 She adds that it is more important to enhance a global and, eventually, cosmopolitan politics than pacify exclusive groups; a new social contract, a global one, would be necessary facing new wars and guerilla-like forms of violence.27 It was Kant who gave shape to the idea of a philosophically underwritten cosmopolitanism, both transcendental as well as phenomenological, by putting the emphasis on juridification of international relations as, he says, “ständiger Kongress” (permanent congress).28 The second part of his Perpetual Peace contains an account trying to find a middle way between a merely utopian world state or a global republic on the one hand and national isolation and political ‘solipsism’ on the other. Asking how sustainable peace could best be achieved, Kant outlines the architecture of a strong federal union of free and sovereign states. A global civil right is, for Kant, restricted to what he calls “general hospitality” repudiating colonialism while allowing “foreigners” to “visit” all countries.29 Finding the middle path for the sake of a politically realistic form of cosmopolitanism is also the element that distinguishes it from plain universalism: where universalism is the undifferentiated sphere of the human-as-such (by pinning down common features shared by everyone), cosmopolitanism is directed to the international body of single states and their peoples around the 24  Cf. S. Scheffler, “Concepts of Cosmopolitanism,” Utilitas 11, no. 3 (1999): 255 – 276, 256; however, ‘communitarism’ is itself a label of manifold meanings; hence, it is not without danger to contrast cosmopolitanism with communitarian thinking, as Scheffler himself admits. 25   See also P. Kleingeld, “Six varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 505 – 524. 26   M. Kaldor, “Cosmopolitanism and organised violence,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 268 – 278, 276. 27   One has, however, to remember that cosmopolitanism often enough elicited the ‘myth of a violence-free modernity,’ insofar as it was connected to a one-sided narrative of modern progress; see, for a critique of that (moral or political) narrative and ‘myth,’ Beck and Schlichte, Theorien der Gewalt, 29 – 31 and 162. 28   Cf. ibid, 96. 29  See I. Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf [1795 / 96], in Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. W. Weischedel, vol. VI, 7th ed. (Darmstadt: WBG, 2011), 191 – 251, esp. 213 and 217; the second part is followed by “appendices” opening up the political topic to the legal and cultural sphere. See also proposition no. 7 of Kant’s 1784 essay “The Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan.”

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globe. Hence, this doctrine has a double status since it is ‘loyal to this world’ and its ambiguities and yet, Kant’s moral transcendentalism enables providential cosmopolitanism to function as a regulative ideal and, hence, as an imperative for individuals as well as on an institutional level.30 This federalism of states obviously allows for highly different versions of political interaction – a global state, a state of states, a union of states, etc. It also allows for different political systems and does not have to imply a ‘democratic bias’.31 And it might also allow for a diplomatic division of cosmopolitan ambitions and national responsibility corresponding to particular topics, such as environment, peace, trade on the one side and education, taxes, and culture on the other (the European Union relies, one might think, on that kind of divide).32 Cosmopolitanism in its legal form: this dimension stands between the previous, political frame and cosmopolitanism as moral doctrine. The question of how to create a “League of Nations” has obviously legal implications of taking up particular duties and giving up responsibilities as well as rights to a superior power supervening on its national units. The historical “League” – a result of the First World War and heavily relying on a Kantian framework – is a cosmopolitan enterprise with its own legal status. The justification of the “League,” however, is a complex matter integrating moral considerations (global justice, natural law), political necessities (fighting terror and war) and economic pressure (a increasingly globalized market).33 Therefore, this new political order is in dire need of a legal framework; and both, the political as well as the legal dimension, are often based on or at least entail moral considerations concerning human dignity and social justice.34 Cosmopolitanism and Morality: This political enterprise with its legal underpinning leads to the question of the scope of moral obligations – or is itself derived from it. Usually, cosmopolitanism in its moral form is universalistic and relies on justice as the ethical core element that is all – inclusive, i. e. justice that is for all and that does not know morally relevant differences. Therefore, cosmopolitan morality serves either as fundament of cosmopolitanism as political endeavor or it represents one of its implications. Either way, its moral concept of global justice is only universalistic and all – inclusive if it subjects all people to the same system of fundamental moral principles (including the same moral 30  Cf. W. E. Connolly, “Speed, Concentric Cultures, and Cosmopolitanism,” Political Theory 28:5 (2000): 596 – 618, 599. 31   Although this is contested; see for example B. Warf, “Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Geographical Imaginations,” 287. 32   Cf. also Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” 50, 56, 58. 33   C. Calhoun states quite correctly, that it is a missing element in a Rawlsian contra-factual scenario of a “vail of ignorance” that it lacks a cosmopolitan dimension; in this regard, Rawls sticks to the national state as implicit condition of his thought experiment; see his “The class consciousness of frequent travellers,” 93 – 4. 34  Cf. B. Ackerman, “Rooted Cosmopolitanism,” Ethics 104, no. 3 (1994): 516 – 535, 533.

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benefits and burdens) without (dis)advantaging any group relative to any other. Or as Fred Dallmayr has put it: If ethics is to function for the wellbeing of all, it must be indivisible. The undivided world increasingly needs an undivided ethic.35

But again, this claim is highly contested by everyday intuition as well as by particularist approaches systematizing this intuition. Isn’t it true that human beings must have stronger attachments toward members of their own family, group, state, or nation? Isn’t this a ‘relational fact’ about how we do and should interact with others?36 Finding the answer to that question is dependent on the moral framework in general, and that means what kind of ‘theory’ (if any) one subscribes to in ethics: utilitarian or consequentialist cosmopolitanism, its deontological counter-part, or cosmopolitanism as part of value and virtue ethics, etc.?37 As soon as this first question is clarified, another one is already lurking in the background: how to reconcile the cosmopolitan (universalistic)38 scope of moral concern with the equally relevant, particularist agenda reflecting on the “reactive attitudes” (P. F. Strawson) to our private, social and even national contexts? Usually, the tactic is not to plainly deny these different while significant affiliations, but to argue for a compatibility between a truly cosmopolitan outlook and more restricted attitudes (such as patriotism, a particular loyalty to family members, etc.).39 And what is repudiated is the assumption that cosmopolitanism excluded the sensitivity toward diversity and cultural differences in establishing a new quasi-colonial and hegemonic super-system, as particularly underlined by Anthony Appiah.40 What is denied, however, is what has been established as ‘particularism’ in ethical theory, namely the claim that it is morally justified to privilege particular groups on the basis of refuting the existence (or relevance) of general moral principles.41 35   F. Dallmayr, “Cosmopolitanism: Moral and Political,” Political Theory 31, no. 3 (2003): 421 – 442, 424. 36  See R. W. Miller, “Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 24, no. 3 (1998): 202 – 224, 214. 37   On this ethical spectrum and its implications for cosmopolitanism, Fabre, “Cosmopolitanism, Just War Theory and Legitimate Authority,” 965. 38   J. Habermas holds that a universalistic account of morals and law cannot be criticized or undermined by historical counter-examples (which would resemble a category mistake), but only by reference to philosophical arguments; see his “Moralischer Universalismus in Zeiten politischer Regression. Jürgen Habermas im Gespräch über die Gegenwart und sein Lebenswerk,” Leviathan 48, no. 1 (2020): 7 – 28, 18. 39   See, for instance, Scheffler, “Concepts of Cosmopolitanism,” 263 – 66. 40  See K. A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, chapters 5 – 6. 41  Cf. J. Dancy, “Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties,” Mind 92 (1983): 530 – 47; see also R. Audi, “Moderate Intuitionism and the Epistemology of Moral Judgement,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 1 (1998): 15 – 44, esp. 36 – 41.

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It should at least be mentioned that the majority of defenders of cosmopolitanism (of some sort) are compatibilists, i. e. a cosmopolitan scope is reconcilable with local ties.42 Hence, a national orientation, patriotism or other forms of (moral) partiality do not rule out being a cosmopolitan. This compatibilism is either based on different regards (when and in which sense is cosmopolitanism required or partiality possible?)43 and on different levels (justifying second-order options for justifying first order options).44 There are several labels in circulation to grasp that combination of a cosmopolitan and local orientation, such as ‘vernacular’ or a ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism.45 Cosmopolitan economy: It is interesting to see that from the early Enlightenment period on, economical considerations not only accompanied cosmopolitan thinking, but served as an integral part of it.46 International relations have become an increasingly significant aspect that must be clarified, especially given the economical interactions between states (or  ‘units’ that had been on the way to becoming national states, as Germany in the 19th century). Here too, we have, roughly speaking, the alternative between protectionism of national systems versus a liberal approach of open, partly duty-free global trade and more inclusive trade unions. Needless to say, this early chapter is only the beginning of what has become more significant today, given the ambivalences of market capitalism breaking the bounds of the nation-state system and turning into “polarized post-industrialism and cognitive-cultural capitalism.”47 Cosmopolitanism: romantic – cultural – social: As already noted, the first philosopher in the Western tradition who has given explicit expression to cosmopol42   This is the basic distinction between cosmopolitanism and universalism: while cosmopolitanism accepts or even appreciates cultural, etc. differences, universalism is based on some features that all have in common. Cosmopolitanism is, in this sense, a particular attitude regarding factual differences, whereas universalism is searching for a basis shared by all to, eventually and at least partly, overcome these differences; cf. Hollinger, “Not universalists, not pluralists: the new cosmopolitans find their own way,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 227 – 239. 43  See R. Sennett, “Cosmopolitanism and the social experience of cities,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 42 – 47, esp. 47. 44  Cf. J. Driver, “Cosmopolitan Virtue,” Social Theory and Practice 33, no. 4, Special Issue: ‘Virtue and Social Diversity’ (2007): 595 – 608, 596 and 603. 45  See S. Hall, “Political belonging in a world of multiple identities,” in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 25 – 31, 30. 46  See P. Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 5, esp. on Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch (1746 – 1812). 47  See A. Reckwitz, Das Ende der Illusionen. Politik, Ökonomie und Kultur in der Spätmo­ der­ne (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2019), chapter 3. Drawing on cosmopolitanism’s economic dimension leads also to a meta-distinction, namely between cosmopolitanism as a normative program and as a factual development. The economic dimension is ‘thick’ in the sense that it combines evaluative and empirical (and historical) regards; see H. Saito, “An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism,” Sociological Theory 29, no. 2 (2011): 124 – 149, esp. 125 – 6 (also on Ulrich Beck’s account).

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itanism was the Socratically inspired Cynic Diogenes in the 4th century BCE. When he was asked where he came from, he responded, ‘I am a citizen of the world’. This is not a political and not a primarily moral statement, but rather the expression of a general attitude or Weltbild: to feel connected to all humans or even to humanity as such. What Diogenes only alluded to is brought into a more sophisticated account in romanticism. Authors like Friedrich Schlegel or Novalis put the stress on unifying human beings that are already, but latently inter-connected by love and faith (it is a different story that, after Napoleon, these same writers turned reactionary and rather nationalistic). Today, there are two post-romantic versions in political theory and activism as well as social and sociological analysis. The first one is critical-negative in stating that the challenges today, most notably climate and environmental issues, call urgently for global answers in eliciting this feeling of global communality. One proponent of this version is Noam Chomsky, of whom a commentator states: Chomsky has arguably become the most famous and most cosmopolitan public intellectual in the United States in large part because his viewpoint so successfully mimics that of a visitor to Earth from outer space.48

The second version is more optimistic or hopeful (which is not the same) in not reacting to political (and moral) difficulties, but in creating expressions that transgress borders and ‘natural’ limitations. An obvious example is art that does have this cosmopolitan effect;49 another one is political activism as an expression of global responsibility up to the point of ‘civil disobedience.’50 However, even more important than this is a social shift in Western societies, according to sociologists such as Andreas Reckwitz. There is, Reckwitz holds, a new, post-materialist middle class whose self-understanding entails a Diogenes-like attitude of living in a globalized universe. National identity does not play a defining role anymore and it is met with reservation, even explicit contempt. It is not only the receptive celebration of multi-culturalism or cultural plurality, but a more active engagement in what the world has to give.51 For this class – educated, globe-trotters, multi-lingual, open and curious, mostly politically 48   B. Robbins, “Chomsky‘s Golden Rule: Comparison and Cosmopolitanism,” New Literary History 40, no. 3 ‘Comparison’ (2009): 547 – 565, 548. 49   There is a growing literature on music and cosmopolitanism; see, for instance, M. C.  Tusa, “Cosmopolitanism and the National Opera: Weber‘s ‘Der Freischütz,’ ” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36, no. 3 ‘Opera and Society: Part I’ (2006): 483 – 506; J. Toynbee and L. W. Source, “Audiences, Cosmopolitanism, and Inequality in Black British Jazz,” Black Music Research Journal 33, no. 1 (2013): 27 – 48. 50  Cf. R. V. Kutz-Flamenbaum and B. Duncan, “Contested Cosmopolitanisms: Global Meetings and Local Mobilizations,” Sociological Forum 30, no. 1 (2015): 188 – 208. 51   See also R. Posnock, “The Dream of Deracination: The Uses of Cosmopolitanism,” American Literary History 12, no. 4 (2000): 802 – 818, esp. 807.

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left, etc. – culture might be taken as public property, but turns also into something that could be integrated into one’s own life – almost without restrictions of taste, local embeddedness, historical context. I will come back to this group in a moment. So far, we have considered cosmopolitanism – as political doctrine: substituting the national-based identity by a global scope; – in its legal form: a program of founding a supra-national league; – as a form of morality: an all-inclusive ethics based on global social justice; – as an economic framework: a globally free market; – romantic, cultural, or social expression: the connectedness to all. The relevant counter-positions may be: – nationalism and cultural essentialism; – constitutionalism or legal parochialism; – moral particularism; – economic protectionism; – a locally bound or nationally oriented self-understanding. 2.3 The Sketch of a Sociological Framework After this survey it is now necessary to focus on the scope. And I shall concentrate myself on this last dimension: cosmopolitan imagination and self-understanding today – which brings us to considering the current situation (in, at least, Western societies) that meets or is met by cosmopolitanism in its romantic, cultural, and social expressions. And here, I will largely rely on the recent diagnosis by the aforementioned German sociologist Andreas Reckwitz and on what he calls a “Society of Singularities.”52 Let me sketch the theoretical framework first. Nietzsche’s rather critical assumption that we would leave behind “the self-enclosed original national cultures”53 and thereby loosen local ties, could be read as an aphoristic precursor to Reckwitz’s account, since a similar concern is expressed by him, although without referring to Nietzsche. He says: In late modern times there is a structural transformation in society that consists in a social logic of the general losing its predominance to the social logic of the particular. This particular, the unique, i. e. what seems to be irreplacable and incomparable, I would like to describe by the concept of singularity.54 52

 See A. Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2017); an English translation is forthcoming with Polity Press. 53   F. Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. A Book for Free Spirit, trans. by R. J. Hollingdale. With an Introduction by R. Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), § 23, 24. 54   Reckwitz, Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 11, my translation.

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Turning to the semantic neighborhood of his main concept Reckwitz adds: If the general-particular denotes the variation of the same and if idiosyncracy stands for the presocial oddity, then singularity is socio-culturally fabricated uniqueness. These uniquenesses could be qualified, first, negatively: as non-generalizability, non-interchangeability and non-comparability.55

Conceptually speaking, Reckwitz follows Kant’s mereological qualifications in his Critique of Judgment. There, Kant introduces concepts as the general abstracting from the perception as the particular. This qualification sticks to the area of the “general-particular”, since the single element is here nothing but an example of general clusters.56 But the idiosyncratic is not meant either, because it is located beyond the social order and convention. Singularities, however, take up the inheritance of what Kant has called the ‘sublime’: they do not reproduce general orders, but they are not mere oddities outside known and acknowledged arrangements either. Rather, singularities emerge within socio-cultural processes and are produced there. They are an alternative draft to the ‘mass production zone’; here, the misfit is not alone, but is the hottest type. Reckwitz investigates different areas and numerous social practices to elaborate on what he coins as doing singularity: not standard vacations anymore, but the documentation of remote travel paths; not the clothes size of what everyone’s wearing, but the stylistic conspicuity and fashionable combination; not labour as merely providing earnings, but as an essential part of one’s authentic self-expression; but all the modes of self-presentation, individually and by organizations (especially politics), are also alluded to: leaving the standard behind and turning to the unmistakable that is produced and presented, but that has also to be, as such, acknowledged and evaluatively and affectively accepted.57 Reckwitz combines his singularity thesis, first, with a diagnostic explanation for the genesis of today’s ‘sublimities’ and, second, with revitalizing the concept of class. He holds that three elements have become unified since the 1970s that jointly got an “authenticity revolution” going.58 We are its inheritors today: one, the development of a middle class with a transformed life style; two, the transformation of the economy in a post-industrial age; and three, the digitalization of society.59 A new class – this is the second element – has been created that established itself along the old model of a standard-oriented group 55

 Ibid., 51.  Cf. I. Kant, Critique of Power of Judgment, ed. P. Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), [5:247 – 250]. 57  Cf. Reckwitz, Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, esp. 246 and 265. 58  Ibid., 19. 59   Cf. ibid., 103. See F. Stalder, Kultur der Digitalität (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016), ch. 2, esp. the section on algorithmicity. 56

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and along with a poorer sub-class left behind. Within this new class, evaluating success is not bound to money and material goods anymore, but to the particularity of one’s life plan. Not the pre-designed value-cluster that had been mandatory for the old middle class is relevant anymore, but the celebration of the different and particular including devaluing old orientations. One third of the society, Reckwitz states, is successful in this, whereas the rest is marginalized and feels accordingly – plus all socio-political distortions that are about to be unloaded nowadays. Hence, Reckwitz introduces a three-class model. It  consists of a lower class struggling with income, poverty, and real participation. They, Reckwitz thinks, are living in a constant mode of “muddling through.”60 Then, there is the old middle class. They have, as  alluded to above, more conservative ­values, which is shown in particularly two respects: they have an instrumental understanding of things and activities. For instance, their work is a means to get money, but not primarily about self-fulfillment and expression. And the participants of this class are far more nationally oriented and struggle to find their place within an increasingly global world. And this is totally different in the new middle class circumscribed above: they have – given the dynamics of singularization – a rather non-instrumental take on activities including their work. Ideally, everything is turned into an act of self-expression insofar as real fulfillment should take place now and not postponed to some future state. And these participants fit perfectly what Chesterton feared so much: they are globe-trotters – an existence that does challenge their allegiance to their people, state or nation. Singularizations create new elites that have a post-materialistic self-image. Elites, however, are incompatible with an equal status for all; and they dissolve as soon as everyone is enjoying that status. Extravagance, niche existence, subculture – all these ‘institutions’ rely on idiosyncrasies that are acknowledged as singular. If these idiosyncrasies become highly popular, an over-acknowledgement follows. Formerly marginal values, locally limited styles, and cultural peculiarities become, then, objects of a potentially global comparison. Urban design in San Francisco looks similar to design in Berlin-Mitte; the much-maligned hipsters are indistinguishable between Brooklyn and Belgrade; and a blog, an influencer’s instagram account, or vacations in Georgia have already lost their flavor of particularity. An all-encompassing comparison has to amount to an equally all-encompassing thrust reversal, if one sticks to the regulative idea of becoming singularized. What is left are phenomena of withdrawal; they might make us rethink our design – the institution of arranging a flat or so, in general; they could lead to what has been called ‘detox,’ i. e. a temporally abstaining from social media; and they may let us find new forms 60

  Reckwitz, Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 350.

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of travelling and tourism, and so on. If one does not succeed in finding a more sovereign way of dealing with the not very individual, but rather collectively structured Lebenswelt than the permanent comparison in the name of the new, then the game between the particular and the general will go on and on. In sum, Reckwitz develops a social theory  – or, rather, a  heuristics of late-modern and Western societies. According to this picture, these societies are the result of a latent revolution around 1970 consisting of four basic elements: a post-industrial culture capitalism turning potentially everything into the logic of competition, comparison, and application; the globalization of that capitalist agenda; a revolution of media technology; and a post-romantic “authenticity revolution” following the liberalization of values, norms, and education.61 2.4 The Psychogram of a Cosmopolitan Reckwitz is particularly interested in two aspects that bring us back to our initial cosmopolitan topic: the new middle class and a psychogram of its members and, based on this, the deep problems created by the loss of national identity and identification in regard to social cohesion and solidarity. Let’s turn briefly to the first aspect – and the second is then a result of it. Committed to global brother- and sisterhood, the cosmopolitan eventually eschews party, faction, state, and nation as major source of identity and orientation. But as a friend to all, s / he is, it might seem, loyal to no one and therefore open to suspicion.62 The crucial parameters are, according to Reckwitz: authenticity, self-realization, cultural openness, quality of life, often including a post-materialistic attitude, and creativity connected to singularity.63 It is a symbiosis of being a citizen and a romantic, i. e. enjoying a particular status and yet working on one’s own self-expression. In other words: The late-modern self is then a dramatugical one, and its subjectivization is primarily brought about by presenting itself successfully in front of others. More and more the subject has become on late-modern times identical with its performance facing an audience – and the internet is its central arena.64

In this sense, being part of the self-singularizing middle class is not only a status to be gained, but also a status to be acknowledged by others. Reckwitz thinks that this emphatic individuality goes back to the authenticity revolution around 1970. Since then, the group of people and eventually the new middle class singularized their lives in all regards: eating, clothing, love life, family, travel61

 Ibid. 19.   J. Bryant, “‘Nowhere a Stranger:’ Melville and Cosmopolitanism,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 39, no. 3 (1984): 275 – 291, 277. 63   Reckwitz, Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 275. 64   Ibid., 246. 62

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ling, the values of appreciating something, the concepts of culture, etc. The ‘high culture’ of the bourgeoisie is not the identity marker anymore, but the plurality of goods – including trash, alien, obscure forms of expressions – are now demanded: opera plus death metal, the love for Casper David Friedrich and the support for FC Liverpool, for David Forster Wallace (himself in many regards an example of what Reckwitz is describing here) and for traditional poems from Asia at the same time. Reckwitz calls this a ‘hyperculture’ – since it is not only the appreciation and openness for ‘the other’, but the integration of it into one’s own life: taste, preferences, values, social orientation, attitudes, and politics. And here, Reckwitz detects a mostly urban cosmopolitanism that is increasingly critical of what he unhappily calls ‘communitarians’ that are rather locally bound, dedicated to and focused on their state and country, conservative in their way of life, “rooted selves.”65 While these people were the heart of the industrial countries for a long time, the urban cosmopolitan middle class is taking over now, including all tensions between these classes and their conflicting ideals of self-discipline and personal fulfillment.66 And this brings us now to the old question framed here by an updated narrative: how to create social cohesion and solidarity under recent conditions? Is cosmopolitanism a tool that helps to meet these problems or is it part of ‘the’ problem itself?67 Reckwitz’s own take on this alternative remains ambivalent. He states: What first was welcome as an emancipatory empowerment of responsible citizens, is now, in a late-modern culture, in danger of being inverted into an egoism of individuals against institutions.68

But this danger is, for Reckwitz, not only based on individuals and their withdrawal from forms of national identity, but also expressed by the severe clash between both middle classes. The first vote on Brexit in the U. K., the election of Macron in France and the growing reservation against his administration, the reemergence of right-wing ‘democratic’ parties all over Europe, sadly 65

 Ibid., 99.   Ibid., 206. A psychogram is given also by C. Stenger; see his “The new cosmopolitans: Challenges and discontents,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 30, no. 2 (2013): 264 – 280. 67   There are several suggestions to create that cohesion facing global challenges: to create shared attachment to things and developing common values (cf. Saito, “An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism,” 131 – 3); working on a shared description of our situation and contexts (see Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 77 – 9, 110); reducing the obstacles to create a common sense by focussing on shared results that do allow for different reasons not shared by all (ibid., 89 – 90); and hermeneutical virtues such as dialogue, empathy, respect (cf. Jordaan, “Dialogic Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice,” 472); revised programs of education for increasing openness, tolerance and the will to really engage with other cultures (see Mehta, “Cosmopolitanism and the Circle of Reason,” 623; also Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism”). 68   Reckwitz, Das Ende der Illusionen, 274; my translation. 66

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including Germany, and the polarized separation of the seemingly ‘United States’ are Reckwitz’s not very surprising evidence for that clash. Interestingly, Reckwitz refers to a description that is also well known for defending cosmopolitanism: he calls for a “rooted liberalism”69 bridging the gap between a global order and cultural integration. This is exactly what was meant to be the semantic cure for cosmopolitanism: to deny the merely alleged necessity according to which the cosmopolitan ‘vice’ undermines local or national ties by being at home potentially everywhere. Therefore, Reckwitz concludes, we have to fight the social compartmentalization of classes with their different values and without a common understanding in terms of moral obligations and our relations to others. He increasingly calls for more governmental regulation or for what he calls a “regulative liberalism” as historical compromise between cosmopolitans open to a culture of globalization and communitarians welcoming state regulations.70 How this compromise of a “rooted liberalism” might look and how to bring about this cultural integration that respects the many faces of current diversity is still to be answered.

3. Cosmopolitanism and Religious Belief: A Happy Couple? As we have seen, cosmopolitanism is not only a political framework or agenda, but has also legal, economical, moral, and social dimensions. And we have also seen that another distinction runs through all these different dimensions, namely the factual / normative-divide. One might, for example, state that there are ‘cosmopolitan’ features that the global market already has; and one might also hold that a stronger cosmopolitan framework is what is economically required. The first assertion is about how things are, the second is about how things should be. This version of a fact / value-divide – itself highly or “essentially contested” – is relevant for all dimensions dealt with above. And discussing cosmopolitanism as answer to challenges today or as amplifier of these difficulties presupposes an analysis of late-modern Western societies and their ambivalences as well as an account of the moral and aretaic stature of a cosmopolitan. This is what we have done so far. It is now, finally, time to approach the religious and theological dimension of the topic – a dimension that is marginalized in recent debates or that is misconstrued in reducing ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ to trouble-makers in relation to the “common good” or as the remnants of a unity that is latently implied by cosmopolitan agendas. Coming back to our list of divergent dimensions of cosmopolitanism  – political, legal, and so forth – there are two basic ways of relating the religious 69

  Reckwitz, Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 143.  See Reckwitz, Ende der Illusionen, 303.

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(and theological) dimension to that list. Either it serves just as an additional element in that list in which case we have to deal with political cosmopolitanism and the legal aspects of that very concept –plus particularly religious features that are, in the ‘best’ case, not merely reducible to one of those previous elements in that list (this is the logic of addition). Or, the religious dimension is not simply a further element of that otherwise incomplete list; rather, the religious dimension reshapes all of these other aspects (that is the logic of qualification).71 In the first case, we are following a ‘plus 1’ procedure; in the second case, the religious dimension qualifies all other dimensions in a new way; in other words, the cosmos of cosmopolitianism qualified by religious belief looks different than without that belief: it is, now, God’s ‘good creation’ that is at stake, not a merely causally inter-connected nature, a globally structured market or a universalistic morality, etc. Faith implies its own cosmos that sets all other dimensions into a new light. The initial list is, therefore, not longer, but qualified in a distinctive way.72 To give a systematic overview concerning the essential aspects of relating religion and cosmopolitanism, we have to distinguish, first, between a diagnostic (A) and a genuinely theological (or dogmatic) regard (B). The diagnostic regard is itself divided into two sub-dimensions, namely between a descriptive element (A1) and a normative counterpart (A2). The descriptive account relies on a sociological analysis (as, for instance, the one outlined above, Reckwitz’s singularity ‘theory’) in asking which role religious belief and communities factually play in this late-modern framework of Western societies (A1). Its normative companion contemplates the possibility of whether and to what extent cosmopolitanism (which one?, in which regard?) could contribute to (dis)solving recent difficulties in these societies – with the consequence that religion could be part of the solution if it has affinities to cosmopolitanism (of some sort) (A2). There is also a theological (or dogmatic) regard meeting the question of whether (or, in which sense) religious belief is itself, i. e. not merely factually, but systematically (or even conceptually) cosmopolitan “in nature.” And here too, we have to differentiate between two sub-categories. The first one testifies to the ortho-practical element of religious belief – an element that could deepen 71

  I would like to thank Marlene Block for stressing that point in her response to this essay.   There are, again, two versions of this qualification: the first one is presented by Paul Tillich in his program of a ‘theology of culture,’ meaning that the religious dimension is already implicit, but hidden in / by all other dimensions; the second reading elaborated on here is hermeneutic ‘in nature,’ claiming that the qualification of all other dimensions is truly ‘new’ and not already implicit in those other layers or latently present everywhere. Hence, not metaphors of continuity, but of rupture are governing here. See, for the first version, P. Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. R. C. Kimball (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), part 1: “Basic Considerations.” 72

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the problems of regulation and unity or, quite on the contrary, might support both (B1). The second one deals with conceptual questions: whether religious belief is (necessarily) cosmopolitan and which role a cosmopolitan module might play within the architecture of faith (B2). Hence, the scenery looks like this: A. diagnostic: A1 descriptive; A2 normative. B. theological (dogmatic): B1 ortho-practical; B2 conceptual.

I will briefly comment on both A‑versions (since this is rather the business of religious diagnosis, empirical comparison, and religious studies) and shall be focused, then, on B1 and B2 (since this belongs to theological concerns). A1 – a descriptive diagnosis: Put simply, the question is: how does religious belief fit the current state of societies. As we have seen, following Reckwitz’s account, we are dealing with a three-class-model consisting of a lower class in the constant mode of ‘muddling through,’ an old and devalued old middle class and a new middle class: educated and mostly academic, cosmopolitan, politically left, singularizing their existence in the name of authenticity and self-fulfillment. Reckwitz admits that this middle class potentially suffers from disappointments when authenticity and self-fulfillment remain ideals without becoming reality. Here, religion, he adds, has in fact played an important role (this is the only context in which Reckwitz refers substantially to religion).73 This might be correct and reflects the rather traditional understanding of religion as a controlled way of dealing with contingencies: illness, evil, loss, disappointments. However, if one does not subscribe to Reckwitz’s presuppositions concerning the current state of religion(s), one might draw a more complex picture of the situation. Religion could itself serve as an ‘authentic’ self-expression and element of singularisation and, by contrast, as the critique of self-singularizing agents and their egoisms and self-centeredness (see again, the psychogram). In consequence, religion was only indicating a merely new-middle-class dynamics, although it has its place in all classes. And that is, potentially, an essentially inclusive position, either in terms of shared values and orientation (substantial; a ‘common good’) or as a communicative space in which diversity has its place (procedural; a shared ‘discourse’) and could be reflected or as a sphere in which – theologically speaking: coram Deo – all possible and factual differences do not play a significant role (following Kierkegaard: ‘teleological’, suspending classes). 73

 See Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 347 – 8; Ende der Illusionen, 237.

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A rather different image has to be drawn when considering forms of religious exclusivity and, following Richard Rorty, ‘idiosyncrasies.’74 Here, Rorty and others may be correct in underlining effects of religious engagement that are non- or even anti-cosmopolitan in being intolerant when it comes to disagreements, dogmatic when it comes to existential (and moral) convictions, and challenging a political common sense in multiplying divergent frameworks of leading one’s life. However, religions do not stand outside the complex dynamics analysed by Reckwitz. Rather, they are not left untouched by classes and should be considered to be one potentially crucial ‘system’, ‘discourse’, or ‘space’ (these different metaphors are telling) for meeting the dangerous separation between classes and social strata. A2 – normative dimensions: Rorty concludes, therefore, that all forms of ‘private’ idiosyncrasies have to remain in that sphere without entering public discourse. Habermas, notably, sketched a more decent picture in holding that religious propositions have to be translated into secular language-games that, however and often enough, require normative support from religious traditions.75 Others, like Charles Taylor, denied the remaining asymmetry between the religious and secular sphere, warning against the loss of religious orientation or its reduction to a merely instrumental grasp.76 Seen from the religious perspective itself, one has to consider the relation between religious traditions and the secular state and society. And that relation is, traditionally, ambivalent: religions are still a crucial part of late-modern Western society (of which Reckwitz is speaking) – and yet, they are also a tool of critique of that very society and its three increasingly divergent classes, including their latent or explicit self-understanding and ideals. Given that ­critical stance, one might go beyond Reckwitz’s take on religions as only formerly relevant catalysts of existential disappointments. Religions could also be a critical and productive commentator within increasingly cosmopolitan societies (I.3) as well as individual subjects and agents of singularity (I.4) precisely by being participants in these recent developments or in strengthening a socially inclusive and global outlook. – But how? This brings us to B, i. e. the theological dimension. In contrast to both A‑versions, we are not dealing here with diagnostic aspects of religion (how things factually stand in terms of religion and cosmopolitanism), but with essential elements of religion in the Christian tradition (how things have to be, practically as 74

  See his “Religion As Conversation-stopper,” in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), 168 – 174. 75  Cf. J. Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2010). 76  Cf. C. Taylor, A  Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), esp. ch. 20: “Conversions” what Taylor describes as “age of authenticity” (ch. 13) had deep influence on what Reckwitz addresses as neo-romantic traits in late-modern societies.

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well as dogmatically, in terms of religion and its relation to cosmopolitanism). In view of cosmopolitanism, the following question has now to be addressed: what kind of internal resources does Christianity have that might turn it cosmopolitan?77 And as noted before, we should distinguish again between two sub-versions of a relevant response to that very question. B1 – ortho-practice: By ‘ortho-practice’ I basically mean elements of a particular religious practice that are essential parts of that very tradition. One might think that there is no religion without prayer; hence, prayer (of some sort) belongs, as the argument goes, to the ortho-practical ingredients of (all) religion(s). More specifically, one can make the case that Christianity entails or is even built around the practice of neighbour love. Thus, Christianity without that particular kind of practice, without an “agapeistic way of life”78 is then a contradiction in terms. The crucial thing is now, and maybe unsurprisingly: neighbour love has cosmopolitan ambitions. In other words it fulfills the aforementioned circumscription saying that F: traditional limitations of concern are transgressed while being ‘all-inclusive’ without neglecting relevant differences between cultures, orientations, (other) religions, and political units.

However, formula F requires, for the religious or theological sphere, a more precise articulation: F*: political, legal, moral, economical and social-romantic limitations of concern and, hence, intra-worldly, mundane distinctions are transgressed in favor of all79 people as part(icipants) of / in God’s good creation.

Christian neighbour love or the Christian “agapeistic way of life” is one way of realizing F (or F*). As the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, however, this ‘way of life’ is not universalistic in a foundationalist, transcendental, or rationalistic sense. That would already be at odds with the hermeneutic framework in which this neighbour love is narrated and circumscribed: a parable-like narra77

  A rather old-fashioned version relies on the idea that religion is the foundation of all other areas of life or social systems (see above: politics, law, morality, the market, sociality). Religious beliefs were, then, indirectly cosmopolitan in providing the basis for other, genuinely cosmopolitan systems; on that version see Dallmayr, “Cosmopolitanism: Moral and Political,” 425. 78  See R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 25 – 6. 79   One might discuss what ‘all’ means here, i. e. whether it includes only human beings, or also animals, plants, or nature per se, etc. Could God’s creation be the addressee of neighbour love? I think, it can; see also K. Klingan et al. (eds.), Texture of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2015); H. Bajohr (ed.), Der Anthropos im Anthropozän. Die Wiederkehr des Menschen im Moment seiner vermeintlich endgültigen Verabschiedung (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2020), esp. the contributions by Frederike Felcht and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

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tion without providing straightforward answers, but leading the addressee into her or his own responses or “reactive attitudes.” Put more strongly: without one’s own responses to this particular scene, there is no response at all possible when tentatively generalizing the scene. It has to be recognized that the initial question “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:29) is turned into “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?” (10:36). It is crucial to see that being this neighbour of someone (or “unto” someone else) is not connected to the idea of fulfilling certain features or general markers, as Jesus’ counterpart latently suggests. The form and content of the parable undermines that very expectation. It is Peter Winch in particular who underlines the importance of appreciating the semantic significance of our reactions to the parable and the concrete constellation it depicts. Winch denies the possibility that there is something ‘behind’ these reactions. Rather, he holds the Samaritan does what he considers to be ‘necessary’ in that very moment.80 Moreover, Winch – in his ‘theory’ of action – programmatically inverts the traditional relation between general claims and particular reactions. Following Wittgenstein,81 Winch states that we do not start off by recognizing shared features between human beings as justification for our reactions to them; rather, recognizing these features is itself dependent on our reactions to human beings.82 The Levite and the priest went away while having seen something different on that street between Jericho and Jerusalem (or, while seeing differently) than the Samaritan has.83 As part of the agapeistic ortho-practice within a Christian way of life this scene deals implicitly with bridging the gap that is underlined by many cosmopolitans, such as Appiah: namely, that this doctrine has a universal ambition, but pays heed to the particulars, especially to the significant differences given in divergent contexts. Hence, what we have here is a contextual or context-sensitive cosmopolitanism. This context-sensitivity does not only apply to the cosmopolitan content and ambition; it is also relevant to the mode of introducing cosmopolitanism in the first place: it does not give a grounding theory – as, for instance, Schopenhauer did in promoting compassion as the fundament of all ethics (and Ernst Tugendhat seems to be following him here).84 Rather, it shows and depicts a scene 80  Cf. P. Winch, “Who is my Neighbour,” in Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 81  See L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 4th edition, ed. P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte (New York: Wiley, 2009), §§ 286 – 7. 82   Ibid., cf. § 288. 83  See P. Winch, “The Universalizability of Moral Judgments,” in Ethics and Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 151 – 170, esp. 169. 84  Cf. E. Tugendhat, Vorlesungen über Ethik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1993), 183 – 9; see also S. Zabala, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy. A Study of Ernst Tugendhat (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

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narrated by Jesus (the Good Samaritan) or embodied by him (the Passion and the Cross) that makes visible a particular constellation by presenting pictures to which one reacts without being able to withdraw that reaction or remaining untouched in empty neutrality. In this sense, we are not only dealing with a context-sensitive, but also with a confrontative while invitative cosmopolitanism. Capturing these elaborations on religious ortho-practice and its narrative companions requires, again, F’s reformulation: F**: cosmopolitanism is an invitation to transgress all mundane distinctions when this transgression is considered to be or to be seen as necessary – while faith in God’s good creation turns every situation into such a ‘necessity.’

The Christian imagination tentatively universalizes love, first, by not regarding it as a selective feeling or an exclusive emotion85 and second, by confronting the addressee of the narrative invitation with a concrete scenario that calls for a reaction. In doing this, it is universal as well as precise at the same time. In sum: if neighbour love is an integral part of Christianity’s ortho-practice, and if this kind of love has a cosmopolitan sting as invitative gesture, then Christian faith does not only have affinities with cosmopolitanism, but requalifies the list of relevant dimensions (political, legal, moral, etc.; see I.2.) in being itself cosmopolitan ‘in nature.’ B2 – conceptual architecture: One might argue that F** is, theologically speaking, still far too weak. The crucial upshot of the parable is not answering the question of “unto whom could I become a neighbour?” (subjective) or “who is my neighbour”? (social), but rather “who is the one that will be my neighbour whatever might happen?” For a Christian understanding, one might hold that meeting this last question is presupposed when truly responding to the subjective and social versions. This could take the following tentative form: F***: cosmopolitanism, in its theological dimension, is God’s invitation to transgress all mundane distinctions when it is considered to be or ‘seen as’ ‘necessary’ – while faith in His good creation turns every situation into an event, in which He can become your neighbour.

I think, we have enough ‘***’ now. However, the different and increasingly theological versions of F lead us to the important and, for this essay, the final issue of how to integrate a cosmopolitan unit into the architecture of believing in God. Given that faith does not have a particular, pseudo-spatial-temporal reference called ‘God’ and that faith, instead, is to be understood as a “qualified existence” (as Rudolf Bultmann has it), that is led in God’s salvific reality, one has to clarify what it precisely is that “qualifies” that very existence consisting

85  See I. V. Ferran, “Religious Emotion as a Form of Religious Experience,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 33, no. 1 (2019): 78 – 101.

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of concrete activities x, y, z – without being itself a merely additional activity (hence, ): qualifies faith f {  x, y, z, . . . n }, while f  { . . . }

According to a fairly classical picture, this existence coram Deo (or, I would rather say, in Deo) is defined by love, trust, and hope. In other words, the way in which faith serves as the qualification of a particular existence is itself qualified by love (including neighbour love and charity), trust (fiducia), and hope (spes).86 One could call this understanding of faith a modal one – in contrast to, for instance, theistic approaches. This looks like this: qualifies through . . . love L trust T hope H faith f {  x, y, z, . . . n }, while f, L,T and H  { . . . }

When trying to integrate cosmopolitanism into this structure, things are getting more complicated – and this still simplistic structure loses its unambiguity. As we have seen above, love L entails neighbour love, while this agapeistic mode has a cosmopolitan scope: it does not know mundane limits or, put more modestly, they are not relevant for faith. Hence L already and necessarily implies a cosmopolitan dimension C. Put differently, L turns faith cosmopolitan, not by qualification, but by implication: C is not an additional element of the classical list consisting of L, T, and H,87 but itself serves as a modal qualification of L.

86

  See also H.  von Sass, “Glauben und Hoffen. Oder: was das ‘und’ zwischen ihnen bedeuten könnte,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 58, no. 4 (2016): 489 – 504. 87  This list might be longer and could also include humility and thankfulness; see my “On Thankfulness” (forthcoming).

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qualifies (1)

through . . . (2):

love L > > trust T > >

faith f {  x, y, z, . . . n }, while f, L,V, H and C  { . . . }

And what about trust T and hope H? Here, the ambivalence comes to the fore: While it is easier to hold that hope, in a Christian sense, includes all people (i. e. to hope is to hope for all), integrating C into T is far more difficult, since trust is selective and cautious when remaining ‘rational’ and not sliding into ‘blind trust’ and, hence, ‘blind faith’. Empirically, faith’s cosmopolitan scope C is factually always contested (but that belongs to A1; see above). Dogmatically, faith’s cosmopolitan scope C is internally contested by the interplay between different layers of modal qualifications (and that belongs to B1 & 2). As seen, these different layers of modal qualifications are (1) f qualifies the mode of existence { x, y, z, . . . n } (2) f qualifies – by love L, trust T, hope H – the mode of existence { x, y, z, . . . n } (3) f qualifies – by L, T, H – the mode of existence { x, y, z, . . . n }, while the scope of L, T, H is qualified by C.

In sum: religious belief (or faith, in the Christian tradition) is necessarily (and conceptually) cosmopolitan because it essentially implies love as one of its qualifications while love, again, entails neighbour love whose upshot is the cosmopolitan suspension of limits (F***). And yet, there is an internal tension between f as cosmopolitan by L on the one hand and T resisting a straightforward cosmopolitan extension on the other. In versions (1) and (2) things look fairly unproblematic. This changes in (3) due to C. Hence, C is a theological irritation, that won’t easily go away.88 And in this sense, Chesterton, with whom we have began this longer, but still too short trip, had been quite right, but for different reasons than the ones he actually had: cosmopolitanism is a heresy – a heresy that lies at the heart of Christian faith itself, not as ‘cynical weakness,’ but as trouble-maker of leading a life before and in God. 88

  Things are far more complicated, of course, and lead beyond this sketch. For instance, there is another vital and vivid irritation traditionally called ‘spiritual trial’ (Anfechtung), irritating faith by irritating its modal qualifications, i. e. love, trust, hope (and, possibly, others; cf. the previous footnote); see S. D. Podmore, Kierkegaard and the Self before God. Anatomy of the Abyss (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), chapters 2 and 6.

Cosmopolitanism: The Irony, the Tension, the Reductio in Mysterium Marlene Block 1. The Cosmopolitanism of Diogenes of Sinope, its Echo in Paul, and in von Sass’ Essay Hartmut von Sass does not discuss Paul and only briefly mentions Diogenes in passing. Nevertheless, I suggest that the cosmopolitan visions of Diogenes and Paul bear some kinship to one another and von Sass’ vision is akin to both. Putting these in relation helps one to grasp what is at issue in von Sass’ project of articulating a Christian vision of cosmopolitanism. There are, to be sure, significant differences among these three thinkers, but I find the similarities to be more compelling, the most important among them being the idea that the established distinctions between categories that we (perhaps mistakenly) consider to be indispensible to our sense of who we are and that are even taken as being in the nature of things, must be challenged, transgressed, set aside, or in some sense, neutralized, and this is accomplished through a reorientation or turning toward a ‘deeper’ reality, mysterious at its core, and hence, in principle, beyond our grasp in thought or theory. This reorientation cannot be accomplished through a step by step process that simply unfolds what is already implicitly there. It represents a kind of irruption or breakthrough that can best be described as a radical discontinuity.1 Studies of cosmopolitanism often begin with a brief reference to Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic (412 – 323 bce), since he was the very first to use the term when he answered the question “Where are you from?” with the statement 1   H. von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism: Its Precarious Relation to Religious Belief,” this volume. In his footnote 72, von Sass makes an important distinction. He explains in his text how the cosmos in cosmopolitanism is qualified in a distinctive way by religious belief, noting that “Faith implies its own cosmos that sets all other dimensions in a new light.” He makes the important further observation that the nature of this qualification or the difference that religious faith makes is not one that can be derived step by step as if it were implicit in what is already manifest to us. By way of contrast to this, von Sass characterizes his reading as “hermeneutic,” meaning that the qualification brought about by religious faith in his sense “is truly ‘new’ and not already implicit in those other layers.” He asserts that it is not “metaphors of continuity, but of rupture that are governing here.”

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“I am a citizen of the cosmos” (kosmopolitês).2 It is helpful to situate our thought about cosmopolitanism within the context of its Cynical beginnings and to consider what this question and answer might have meant then, what it might mean to us now, and how it might be more closely akin to von Sass’s religious and Christian theological interpretation than might be apparent at first glance. Diogenes was known by the derogatory nickname of “the dog,” and this was a nickname that he fully embraced: Alexander once came and stood opposite him and said, “I am Alexander the great king.” [. . .] “And I am Diogenes the Dog [the Cynic].” Being asked what he had done to be called a hound, he said, “I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.”3

Diogenes was exiled from his birthplace for defacing the currency, he was a slave for a time, and a homeless wanderer. It is important to note that in its earliest and perhaps legendary origins, cosmopolitanism is not the expression of an elite, affected view of the sort that Chesterton criticized, but has its roots in the life of one who is exiled, homeless, and rejected. Diogenes described himself thus in a little verse:      A homeless exile, to his country dead.      A wanderer who begs his daily bread.4

He slept on the streets in a tub, and was widely known for his outrageous behavior, laughing in the face of the sovereign king, ridiculing the philosopher Plato, and transgressing local customs and norms in shocking ways.5 His cynicism is not the equivalent of our everyday notion, which is applied to one who always expects the worst of people and tends to see the downside in everything, especially in things having to do with human behavior. Diogenes’ cynicism is perhaps faintly related to our casual understanding, but his is a much broader notion, both in what it includes as a matter of content and in what it entails in the way of practice or of living a life. At the heart of his cynicism was a striving for autonomy (autarkia) in the sense of a self-sufficiency marked by freedom from arbitrary cultural conventions and arbitrary wants, on 2

  Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks (London: William Heineman, 1925), 65. 3  Ibid., 63. 4   Ibid., 41. In the Greek there is explicit reference here to being without a polis, and without a home or oikos. Diogenes’ identity was expressed in terms of the negation of the polis and the conventions and laws entailed in this identity. 5   Diogenes called Plato’s lectures “a waste of time,” he disparaged the Dionysian ritual performances as “great peep-shows for fools” and referred to politicians as lackeys of the mob. And there is Diogenes’ infamous response to Plato’s definition of man as a biped, featherless animal: He threw a plucked chicken into the midst of the philosophers exclaiming “Here is Plato’s man.” When Plato was asked what sort of man he considered Diogenes to be, Plato answered “A Socrates gone mad.” Ibid., 27, 43, 55.

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the one hand, and in the sense of thereby realizing a positive freedom in our true nature (phusis), on the other.6 It is this deeper freedom that allows for and is the goal of the Cynic’s radical questioning of nomos or all human customs and laws. Nomos is set in opposition to and rejected in favor of phusis. This was not just a theoretical opposition. Negation of the law and hence of the polis was a central feature of Diogenes’ cynicism and it was the ground of his cosmopolitanism. But to free oneself from arbitrary laws and conventions and from pointless desires required the practice of discipline (askēsis). There are in fact many references to Diogenes’ ascetic practices.7 We have become so used to hearing the term cosmopolitanism that it takes some effort to imagine what the use of the term might have meant when Diogenes first uttered it. Given the importance of the notion of the city state or polis in the ancient Greek context and the circumscription of the political to such a narrow local entity, it must have seemed incongruous, ironic, and maybe even a little bit funny to pair the notion of the polis with the notion of the cosmos.8 At 6   ‘Nature’ is of course a highly contestable concept and its meaning varies widely. Some have suggested that a more appropriate translation of the Greek phusis is ‘being’ rather than ‘nature’. See for example, G. Baker, “Cynical Cosmopolitanism,” Theory & Event 21 (2018), 608. 7   In the summer Diogenes used to roll in the hot sand “while in the winter he used to embrace statues covered with snow, using every means of inuring himself to hardship.” Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 25. 8   In later Stoicism the incongruity between the cosmos and the polis dissolved, as the cosmos as a whole came to be thought of by way of analogy with the polis, giving rise to the notion of cosmopolis, thereby linking the two notions. This can be seen very clearly in Cicero’s various accounts of the views of the Stoics. Central to this notion of cosmopolis was the idea of community between humans and gods, the latter providing the basis of the unity of the former, and a ground for a notion of a common good that transcended the good of any particular individual. In addition, a different concept of order emerges in which the idea of the rule of right reason, sometimes construed as natural law (as opposed to the arbitrary conventional laws that Diogenes mocked). See for example, Cicero’s statement in De Finibus, III, 19: “they [i. e., the Stoics] hold that the universe [mundum] is governed by divine will; it is a city or state [urbem et civitatem] of which both men and gods are members, and each one of us is a part of this universe; from which it is a natural consequence that we should prefer the common advantage [commune utilitatem] to our own.” Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, trans., H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 285. In De Natura Deorum, II.31 Cicero states: “from the fact of the gods’ existence [. . .] it necessarily follows that they are animate beings, and not only animate but possessed of reason [rationis] and united together in a sort of social community or fellowship, ruling the one world as a united commonwealth or state. It follows that they possess the same faculty of reason as the human race, and that both have the same apprehension of truth and the same law enjoining what is right and rejecting what is wrong. Hence we see that wisdom and intelligence also have been derived by men from the gods.” And in De Natura Deorum II.62: “For the world [mundus] is as it were the common dwelling-place [domus] of gods and men, or the city [urbs] that belongs to both; for they alone [i. e., the gods and humans] have the use of reason and live by justice and by law. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 199, 273. With Stoicism we move from the dogs to the gods, and the tension generated by the incongruity of the idea of the city state with its arbitrary laws and the cosmos evaporates.

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the beginning of his Politics Aristotle makes the point that the human being is a political animal and that an individual existing apart from the city state must be either an animal or a god. Diogenes thinks of the human being not as a political animal but just as an animal, but note, this is not to be taken as derogatory, but as something to which we aspire. And the life in exile disconnected from affiliation with a city state makes one, not a god, but (again, in Diogenes’ case) an animal, a dog. In his discussion of the distinctiveness of Diogenes’ cynical cosmopolitanism, Gideon Baker stressed that its aim was not to establish the order of the city state at a broader level, namely at the level of the cosmos. In this respect, Baker notes how far contemporary versions of cosmopolitanism depart from the radical character of the original cosmopolitanism of the cynics. Cynical cosmopolitanism does not aim to construct a cosmic polis, a cosmic or world wide political order, nor does it aim to construct an order based upon a final grasp of the ethical dignity of all human beings. To be sure, Diogenes’ practice points toward a construction of the human that must recognize the depth and value and hence dignity of the human as established independent of the particular, conventional distinctions that accrue to persons in their local contexts. But Baker makes the point that any care for all humankind – or to apply the terms of von Sass’ focus to Baker’s conclusion – any extension of neighbor love to the whole of human kind, is for the Cynic an “accidental effect of actually living the true life of philosophy,” and that life is only possible once one has reduced one’s “existence, in the name of the truth of that existence, to apolis.” It is only then, according to Baker, that the Cynic “finds that he is a brother of all, and that that which separates him from other men has no ground in being.”9 We must keep the negation of the nomoi and the negation of the polis in the foreground as we think about the early roots of cosmopolitanism, and as we aim to grasp the distinguishing feature of religious cosmopolitanisms, including that of von Sass. Baker suggests that in practice the cynicism of Diogenes issued in and actively cultivated an indifference to differences. The cynic’s task was to become indifferent to all differences through ascetic practices performed with the aim of realizing our deeper animal nature. One can already see in this early form of cosmopolitanism many of the tensions that come to the fore in later versions. The problem of cosmopolitanism is first given expression in response to a question and a series of implied questions that we must all ask ourselves as we ponder cosmopolitanism as a problem (or as a potential answer), and as we confront the themes of the conference: autonomy, diversity, and the common good. Where are we from? Who are we? The question of provenance and the question of identity are inextricably linked and neither can be answered by listing the characteristic notes or qualities that are predicated of a subject. These questions require a different kind of answer, and von Sass 9

  Baker, “Cynical Cosmopolitanism,” 619 – 620.

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aims to provide such an answer. Diogenes (and von Sass) decouple the question of provenance and identity from the usual markers that we meet in ordinary instances of predication and that seek to determine the identity of a subject by attaching distinctive predicates to it. In the case of cynical cosmopolitanism, and also in the case of von Sass’ Christian version of cosmopolitanism, which centers on the idea of neighbor love, we must to come to grips with the fact that identity and provenance are about our existence in a deeper sense, that is, in a sense that is ultimately unanalyzable in terms of predication. By contrast with von Sass, however, I would blur the line between Christian and non-Christian forms of cosmopolitanism, in this case, that of Diogenes. In my view it is important to blur such lines, particularly when the topic is one like cosmopolitanism, a theme which speaks to and of the world or cosmos and which inevitably conjures up many views and their opposites, as von Sass’ wide ranging review of the literature on cosmopolitanism has amply documented. To ‘blur the lines between’ does not set one on a search for common ground that might function as a ground in a deeper sense. Rather, the aim here is to find points of contact that open up possibilities despite huge looming differences, and flashes of recognition across boundaries that might suggest that the ‘in between’, the relation, is ultimately the primary thing and not the “thing” with clear boundaries and securely walled in. Of course cosmopolitanism and related themes confront us with issues that we can only approach from our own particular perspectives. And I have no objection to approaching these themes from a particular Christian perspective as von Sass does here. I too approach the world from an undeniably Christian perspective – although even at that, it perhaps goes almost without saying, there are many diverse Christian perspectives. We must nevertheless recognize that when we pursue this course without simultaneously looking for points of contact and openings in the lines between, we are walking along a tightrope. There is always the danger that we fall from a position that looks out onto the world from a particular perspective into a common default position, in which one’s identity as this or that (whether as Christian or as some or any other identity) becomes the primary point. This is, as I said, an undesirable default position into which we continually fall. But to return to the specific matter near at hand – consider again Diogenes’ answer to the question, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Who are you?’ He answers, ‘I am a citizen of the cosmos’. What might be encrypted in such an answer? It is difficult to avoid hearing in his answer a series of underlying oppositions – oppositions that are either nullified completely or which perhaps remain in place but to which we are called to become indifferent. What is not said, or what is being unsaid when Diogenes answers ‘I am a citizen of the world’? I am a citizen of the world and not a citizen of this or that city state. I am a citizen of the world, never mind that I am a male and not a female. I am a citizen of the world, never mind that I am a slave and not a free man, and so on. He is in

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exile, literally and figuratively from all of those distinctions. The cosmopolitan is perhaps best described here as one who is in exile. There is a temptation to read this condition of exile in the familiar terms of the opposition between the local and the global: I am in exile from the locale of my birth and now belong to the world. This opposition is alive and operative throughout the history of the idea of cosmopolitanism. And there is more than a hint of this opposition in Diogenes’ practice. To begin with, one must consider all of the distinctions that mark us as this being here and now and not someone else. It is these distinctions that Diogenes marks as arbitrary. But can they really be nullified? There is another distinction, perhaps hardened here into an opposition between the particular, that is, between what accrues to us as beings positioned in a here and now, and something else, something more – another identity, perhaps, but of a different order. There is a lingering question here with respect to the status of the distinctions that Diogenes regards as arbitrary. Are they there merely to be transgressed, nullified, or suspended, and thus put behind us? Clearly for Diogenes the notion of autonomy or self-sufficiency depends upon his calling into question arbitrary cultural conventions and doing so by publically transgressing those culturally set limits. And in addition, his autonomy depends upon learning detachment from material goods through ascetic discipline. He embraces poverty as a way of life. But it seems that the modus operandi of Diogenes suggests that these conventions and the arbitrary distinctions that he mocks can’t be completely dispensed with or simply cancelled. This “citizen of the cosmos” who wants to awaken us to the arbitrariness of convention must have boundaries to cross (in order to so awaken us). The transgression of boundaries is central to his ascetic and performative practice. His point isn’t simply the idiocy and arbitrariness of conventions, but is rather the necessity of somehow, that is, by some means or through some practice, connecting with something he regards as deeper or truer. Diogenes acts out the nullification of those conventions that are taken for granted in order to tap something within us that is somehow beyond or more than those distinctions. A parallel concern arises in connection with von Sass’ step by step description of the increasingly theological intensification of cosmopolitanism. His culminating step is as follows: cosmopolitanism, in its theological dimension, is God’s invitation to transgress all mundane distinctions when it is considered to be or to be ‘seen as’ necessary – while faith in His good creation turns every situation into an event, in which He can become your neighbor10

There is much to unpack in von Sass’ statement here, but I want to draw attention to the fact that he speaks here of the transgression of “all mundane 10

  von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism,” this volume.

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distinctions.” What is the exact nature and consequence of this transgression? A misinterpretation (of either von Sass or Diogenes) would regard transgression as a vehicle of decontextualization. Is it not the case that all of these particulars that arise from singular contexts contribute in some way to making us the people who we are? Can they simply be suspended? von Sass calls specifically for a contextually grounded cosmopolitanism. What is ‘contextual’ in a contextually based cosmopolitanism? A partial answer to this can be found in von Sass’ framing of the practice of neighbor love and the transgression that this requires as “God’s invitation.” The whole is situated within the context of this invitation and response. This is made clear in von Sass’ discussion of Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. A further question arises here as one tries to grasp the implications of von Sass’ understanding of the theological dimension of cosmopolitanism, which he describes as “God’s invitation to transgress all mundane distinctions.” What does it mean to “transgress all mundane distinctions?” What is the nature of this transgression, particularly as it is manifest in the everyday? And what does it mean to say that our faith in God’s good creation potentially transforms every situation “into an event” in which God Himself “can become your neighbor?”11 How does my life change if I become a cosmopolitan in the mode of Diogenes or in the mode of von Sass’ Christian version of cosmopolitanism? As I noted above, in the case of Diogenes, I must become a wanderer of sorts, a being-in-exile, even if not literally. I must detach myself from common comforts and affiliations. I must embrace a life of spiritual and literal poverty. I must embrace a radical letting-go, not with the aim of showing myself to be a worldly-wise sophisticate who has seen the world and who is superior to the local yokels who don’t know better (this latter was a central theme in Chesterton’s critique of cosmopolitanism). The path of the cosmopolitan in Diogenes’ sense is not an easy one. It is followed in pursuit of something deeper that connects us and not something that sets apart one person from another or one group from another. von Sass’ construction of cosmopolitanism shares some features with this earliest cosmopolitanism, most importantly, as I noted above, his emphasis on transgression of and (perhaps) nullification of what he refers to as “mundane distinctions,” and his emphasis on the radicality of this transgression. I would suggest, however, in the case of both there is a residual tension that centers around the status of what von Sass refers to as “mundane distinctions” and of what Diogenes attacked as arbitrary conventions and distinctions. The tension arises here because of who we are as humans. It seems to me that we humans are radically pluralized, that is, scattered within or interiorly, and scattered without, across all of our affiliations and social and cultural constructions. Is it really possible that such distinctions are ultimately cancelable in some sense? I raise this as a question awaiting an answer. 11

 Ibid.

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It is difficult to hear Diogenes’ cosmopolitan answer to the question about his identity without thinking of Paul, in particular his letter to the Galatians. What Paul says here seems to echo the unsaid implicit in Diogenes’ answer to the question addressed to him: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female12

Diogenes asserted, “I am [instead] a citizen of the cosmos.” In this suspension of oppositions there is the promise of a kind of oneness that reaches beyond all such oppositions. But the whole thing hinges upon what Paul means by the phrase “there is no longer” and further, what the context of this transformation is. Of course Paul’s statement here is taken out of context, and a closer look at Paul’s broader message to the Galatians reveals similarities but also important divergences from Diogenes, but I am more interested in pointing out the kinship between Paul and Diogenes here. There has been a proliferation of philosophical interpretations of Paul, examining all aspects of his Christian universalism. Most notable in the context of the discussion of von Sass’ conception of a distinctively Christian cosmopolitanism is Alain Badiou’s work on Paul.13 While von Sass does not discuss Paul or Badiou’s interpretation of Paul, I find Badiou’s discussion of Paul to be helpful in thinking through some of the difficulties that von Sass’ analysis raises for me, most centrally, the question of the status of differences and distinctions and the nature and significance of the transgression or nullification of such differences that von Sass’ suggests becomes more and more intensified as we enact the principle of neighbor love. Badiou’s explication of the uniqueness of Paul’s universalism centers on the process of becoming indifferent to differences and on his conviction that the idea of universalism that he derived from his analysis of Paul entails a qualitatively different understanding of truth. Truth in this context does not have to do with universality expressed as a judgment, but rather with a conception of truth “as a creation, a process, an event.”14 In fact, becoming indifferent to differences is a sign or indication that something new has come to pass, that we have, in effect, been seized by a truth event. Something has happened. Badiou describes it this way: What is this new conception? For  me, something is universal if it is something that is beyond established differences. We have differences that seem absolutely natural to us. In the context of these differences, the sign of a new truth is that these differences 12

  Galatians 3:28.   A. Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 14   Alain Badiou, in Adam Miller, “An Interview with Alain Badiou: ‘Universal Truths and the Question of Religion,’” Journal of Philosophy & Scripture 3, no. 1 (2005), 39. 13

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become indifferent. So we have an absorption of an evident natural difference into something that is beyond that difference. [. . .] with a new truth there is always something like the becoming indifferent of some evident differences15

In his essay on Diogenes’ cynical cosmopolitanism, Gideon Baker questioned Badiou’s suggestion that Paul was the first to conceptualize universalism as an indifference to differences. This claim, he suggests, overlooks the Cynics, who had already cultivated a sense of indifference to difference and “who had already addressed their truth indifferently to all.”16 Kwame Appiah argues against those who consider religion to be a problem or obstacle to cosmopolitan aspirations, as does von Sass also, but Appiah focuses on the importance of appreciating cosmopolitanisms that inhabit different religious traditions, often coexisting alongside “countercosmopolitan fundamentalisms.”17 In  this connection he notes that the first person who referred to himself as a cosmopolitan, Diogenes, established a tradition “in the classical world that was inherited by both Hellenized Judaism and Christianity, and thus, later, by Islamic philosophy.”18 He notes ironically that one can hear the “echoes of Stoic cosmopolitanism” in the language of “the Greek-speaking Saul of Tarsus” – a town in Asia Minor midway between Sinope and Jerusalem. Paul’s oft quoted words cited above were from the epistle to the Galatians. Galatia was the home of Diogenes, the first cosmopolitan. On this point Appiah notes: Here is a fact that you can’t make up: Sinope, Diogenes’ hometown, was in Galatia. So Saint Paul, when he wrote those very cosmopolitan words, was writing to Diogenes’ people – to those very people who gave the world the first known cosmopolitan.19

In light of these reflections I would suggest that the cynical cosmopolitanism of Diogenes is not to be read as a mere a precursor to Romantic visions of humanity as a whole, which is what von Sass’ suggests in passing in his essay,20 but rather as a forerunner of Christian versions of cosmopolitanism. There is in both a radical calling into question of the nomoi and of the order and significance of the worldly polis. And neither the Cynical nor the Christian versions of cosmopolitanism aim to establish the order of the local (the polis) on the level of the universe or cosmos (as cosmopolis), but look instead to a connection to a deeper reality. 15

 Ibid., 38.   Baker, “Cynical Cosmopolitanism,” 625. 17   K. Appiah, “Causes of Quarrel: What’s Special about Religious Disputes?” In T. Banchoff, ed., Religious Pluralism, Globalization, and World Politics (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2008), 59. 18  Ibid., 60. 19  Ibid., 61. 20   von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism.” 16

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von Sass’ analysis suggests that something subversive (in a good way) underlies cosmopolitan thought. In his analysis of the intensification of neighbor love and its increasingly broadening “scope,” von Sass paves the way for a complete over-turning of the spatial implications of this construction in its final step – namely when God himself is manifest in and as an event and as our neighbor. The notion of neighbor seems to be clearly rooted in the notion of proximity. And yet if the omnipresent God becomes “proximate” to us as neighbor, and if we look to the possibility of every event becoming such an occasion, then it would seem that the spatial imagery that undergirds the notion of neighbor collapses in on itself via this notion of God’s omnipresence and, one could argue, this collapse ought to be welcomed. Proximity in this transfigured sense does not have to do with distance near or far, but has to do with presence, a concept that is only very weakly captured in spatial terms. We need to briefly consider the idea of neighbor love21 and the related idea of proximity, since neighbor love is at the center of von Sass’ rethinking of the topic of cosmopolitanism. In addition, the culmination of the process in the event of God becoming our neighbor as described in von Sass’ analysis forces us to think the idea of proximity in terms that are something other than spatial. It is helpful to consider von Sass’ analysis in tandem with Hermann Cohen and Emmanuel Levinas on the topic of neighbor love.22 I believe there is a convergence of their interpretations with what von Sass points to, and their discussions help us to address the question of the significance of differences, the meaning of the transgression or nullification of difference, or the import of a cultivated indifference to difference. For Cohen, proximity cannot ground the obligation to love and to love universally. This is in part also the message of von Sass’ discussion of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. We do not treat one as a neighbor because they fall into a certain category, or because we have extended categorical membership to an individual or group who wouldn’t 21   It is a painful fact that the idea of neighbor love and even Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan have often been invoked in anti-Semitic contexts. Since the idea of neighbor love, and even more, the imperative to love the stranger is deeply rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and is not a uniquely Christian contribution, such negative associations are the source of a very deep and troubling irony, and one that is not easily dispelled. Here, as in many diverse contexts, we are confronted with the fact that we humans have the capacity to transform what begins as a beautiful idea into a deadly weapon that bears no resemblance to its original form, and which in fact brings into being its complete inversion. The idea of neighbor love ought not to be confused with its misuse and abuses, nor should the parable of the Good Samaritan. But these abuses cast a shadow on all of our discussions of these themes and ought not to be allowed to pass without comment. 22   I base my brief comments here on the more satisfying discussion of these two thinkers in Dana Hollander, “Is the Other My Neighbor?: Reading Levinas Alongside Hermann Cohen,” in Kevin Hart and Michael Signer, eds., The Exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas between Jews and Christians (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 90 – 107.

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otherwise have a claim to it. I am called to this and I don’t necessarily respond to this call because I am free, but I am nevertheless called to be a neighbor to anyone and everyone who needs me to be a neighbor to them. If we search for an adequate ground that would make such universalized neighbor love possible, it can only be found in the uniqueness of God for Cohen – not a God who is your God or my God or one religion’s or one nation’s God, and not even the notion of the one God. It is the uniqueness of God that is key here for Cohen. For me the idea of uniqueness shades quickly into a mystery and depth that cannot be fully grasped conceptually or theoretically. But it is a call to exist in a certain way. As von Sass puts it, it is a call to live in coram Deo and even in Deo. Hollander notes that Levinas’ interpretation contrasts with Cohen’s but is not in conflict with it. Levinas takes issue with the notion of commonality that seems so closely bound up with the notion of the neighbor. Neighbor love does not find its ground in the common, and not even in the extension of the common via an ‘as if ’ transformation, namely, that transformation whereby we treat those with whom we have nothing or little in common as if we shared much in common with them. It is not about finding common ground or acting as if there were common ground. But there is a twist here: in fact it is about difference, but in this case we must distinguish between an unqualified reference to difference (perhaps those rooted in distinctions that von Sass’ labels “mundane”) and specific reference to absolute difference that is the ground of a deeply ethical orientation to the Other. Otherness is not about particular qualities or predicates that are or are not shared, and it cannot be captured in those terms. That which is absolute cannot be grasped or tamed by any system. The suggestion here is that absolute difference has two modes, both of which are key to grasping von Sass’ analysis. First there is the absolute difference between God and God’s creation. von Sass notes that when we see through the eyes of faith we see the cosmos as God’s creation. To say “I am citizen of the cosmos” now becomes “I am a creature in God’s creation.” Secondly, there is the absolute difference that opens one onto the mystery of the Other. This is itself grounded in the distinction between God and creation, a distinction that we can label as the uniqueness of God.

2. The Framing of Cosmopolitanism in G. K. Chesterton and Hartmut von Sass von Sass doesn’t begin his essay with Paul or with Diogenes, but frames his essay at beginning and end with thoughts on G. K. Chesterton. This framing casts the whole of his essay in a distinctive light. These beginning reflections set the tone or put the reader in a certain mood. In particular, Chesterton’s characterization of the idea of cosmopolitanism as heresy is a very

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thought-provoking way of setting the stage for what follows in von Sass’s essay. If we are inclined to think that the idea of cosmopolitanism is necessarily a positive one, Chesterton’s essay underscores the point that this is not the case for everyone. Chesterton’s objection to the pursuit of cosmopolitanism as a style of life brings to the fore the tension between the world considered as a whole and the many concrete particulars that we inhabit and embody, not as world citizens or as someone or anyone, but as historically particular human beings located, here and now, interacting in a specific community, belonging to a particular nation, and committed to a particular lifeway and set of beliefs. von Sass notes that the exemplar and target of Chesterton’s criticism was Rudyard Kipling, who (according to Chesterton) was unable to truly engage with the world because of his cosmopolitan attitude. Chesterton affirmed that Kipling was one who certainly knew the world, but in knowing the world in this cosmopolitan mode he in fact made the world very small. Chesterton inverts the opposition between a world made large by cosmopolitanism and a world rendered small by localism. Surprisingly, it is the cosmopolitan attitude that makes the world small. But this is not a simple inversion. Chesterton’s brief discussion and von Sass’s analysis call us to radically question any facile opposition between the universal and the particular and between the global and the local, but it is important to ask, in what ways? von Sass brings out the fact that for Chesterton the opposition is not so much between the global and the local as it is between a deeply committed life and the superficial lifestyle of the globe trotter. What I find interesting and worthy of more exploration is the way in which Chesterton, through this inversion, sets the stage for making the contrast between a truly cosmopolitan orientation, on the one hand, and what can only be described as a superficial, unexamined universalism on the other. von Sass notes that the opposition between cosmopolitanism and universalism that recurs in the literature centers around contrasting attitudes toward particulars. According to one view, those who embrace cosmopolitanism appreciate cultural and other differences while orienting themselves to the whole, while ‘universalists’ look for what features we share that crosscut those differences.23 The critical point here is that the universalist, so construed, is less inclined to embrace or make way for the differences. What is important to the so‑called universalist are the features that are shared by all, because it is through those features that the differences that separate us can be overcome. When seen in this light, the cosmopolitan who seeks unity beyond the local differences while at the same time valuing those differences, seems preferable to the universalist who seeks to subordinate local differences to the features we all supposedly share “in common.” But in fact both von Sass and Chesterton are aiming at something much deeper here, and as suggested above, this understanding of universalism is not 23

  von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism,” footnote 42.

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their goal. The tension between universalism and particularism and between the global and the local seems to continually press itself upon us as we read through the vast literature on the idea of cosmopolitanism. But in fact, it is these very notions and their opposition one to the other that threaten to confine us, leaving us skimming across the surface of what are actually very deep and very complex problems that require a different mode of expression if we are to even begin to imagine possible solutions. von Sass turns to the religious and theological for a deeper view into the matter, and I embrace this turn. But what does it entail? von Sass’ analysis generates surprise at certain points, mainly by inverting expectations, and it is at these disruptive junctures that one feels the presence of the spirit of Diogenes. A core example of this is von Sass’s conclusion that cosmopolitanism is indeed heretical (just as Chesterton asserted, but not in the sense that Chesterton meant it), but more to the point here, that this heresy dwells in the very heart of Christianity. It is important to address the tone that von Sass takes and to see how this tone might be essentially rooted in or naturally flows forth from the topic itself. As I studied von Sass’s paper and as I read about the idea of cosmopolitanism and thought about its relation to the topic of the conference, a sense of something akin to irony greeted me at every turn. By irony I mean, to begin with, a kind of tension (mild at first) that rises up from the materials insofar as they seem to give voice to one meaning while silently pointing toward its opposite or its inversion; the materials harbor contradiction, seemingly irresolvable oppositions, incongruities, and repeated instances of the oxymoronic. The topic itself generates this tension and it is unavoidable, and the tension is intensified and deepened once the problems are recontextualized, first as we attempt to resolve these tensions in thought (as philosophers) or perhaps through “more research” as historians or social scientists. And once these problems are recontextualized religiously and theologically this tension is further heightened. I suggest a continuous transformation of one’s orientation here, beginning first in reaction to ironies of a very ordinary sort, in which what we say or focus on tends to call up its opposite or inversion, then on to a deeper sense of irony which issues forth from a certain tension that is inherent in our existence as humans: there is an unavoidable gap between what we aspire to and what we are. This contrast is captured in Socrates’ question, what does it mean to become a human being?, as well as in Kierkegaard’s question, Is there a Christian to be found anywhere at all in all of Christendom?24 What we aspire to confronts us as a task, but it is one that seems impossible to achieve 24   Jonathan Lear clarifies this distinction and connection between a superficial sense of irony and its deeper significance, the latter rooted in his analysis of Kierkegaard on this topic. See for example Jonathan Lear, Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony (London: H. Karnac, Ltd., 2003), especially Chapter 2.

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through our own agency. We are confronted with a gap that seems to urgently call for action, but which is beyond our power to bridge. The tone or “mood” here is one of paradox and it necessarily points beyond itself to a third, which is captured in Erich Przywara’s phrase, “reductio in mysterium.”25 In Przywara’s terms, this reduction or return is a turning to the final irreducibility that we call God, who is in and beyond all things. The rhythm created by this tension is also mirrored in the being of the human, in that our essence always points beyond our existence. von Sass’ review of the literature on cosmopolitanism has captured something like this tension. And his turn to a religious and theological view of the matter is to my mind at least in harmony with this reductio in mysterium. But to return to Chesterton: he noted that the “moment we care for anything deeply, the world [. . .] becomes our enemy.”26 He said that all lovers recognize this truth, namely that the “moment you love anything, the world becomes your foe.” This is an important point and it is one that is also directly relevant to von Sass’s analysis, because at this point the idea of love (or of one mode of love) enters the picture. Chesterton’s discussion should alert us to begin with that the core issue is not identity per se but relation. While the two notions (identity and relation) intersect in a variety of ways, as starting points they lead in very different directions. What does Chesterton mean by saying that when one falls in love the whole world becomes the enemy? Mightn’t one say instead that when one falls in love the whole world seems to be a wondrous, magical place? And what does Chesterton mean when he says that when we really and truly care for something the world becomes our foe? And aren’t we exhorted to love our foe? One might be tempted to jump to the easy conclusion that Chesterton is here simply opposing the particularity of the loved one with a commonality that necessarily ignores everything about that one that makes that one the one who is loved. We are not in love with someone because of what they share in common with everyone else. Loving and caring seem necessarily grounded in the local, the individual, the singular. Chesterton’s assertion of this basic truth, namely, that when we love and when we care about something the world becomes our enemy, seems to once again set the local in opposition to the global. In fact, 25   E. Przywara, Analogia Entis. Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. J. Betz and D. Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014), 281, 472. “Reduction” here is not to be understood in the sense of a deflationary decomposition of the real, but rather, in Przywara’s terms as a turning and return or Rückführung to the mystery of God, that is to “the final irreducibility [das letzte Unrückführbare] of what is beyond and in all things [über und in allem].” The rhythm of this oscillation between the in and beyond, or the in‑über is mirrored in the being of the human, in that our essence (in Przywara’s language, our Sosein) always points beyond our existence (our Dasein). 26   G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (London: John Lane Company, 1905), 49.

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however, he hints at something that requires a different language. It is the world conceived in a particular way that is the enemy, that is the world held apart, at a distance – ‘at arms length’. It is the world as something we know as an object, as if from a standpoint apart and from on high that is the problem – a world that we understand in terms of its component parts and in terms of the things and persons of which it is composed, alike and different, with specific characteristics or lacking certain characteristics. We can know everything about a place, but if we have no roots in the place and do not love and care for that place we certainly don’t belong to it, and Chesterton suggests, the evidence for this is that we think of it as a place. By contrast, he says “the moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes. We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe.”27 The love of and in the local, concrete here-and-now proclaims once more a oneness with the universe, but it does so in a particular (or one should say, in a singular) way. But what does Chesterton mean by heresy? It is important to grasp this in order to fully appreciate the end and telos of von Sass’s discussion. There is a sense in which von Sass’s whole paper turns around this idea of heresy. The notion of heresy appears again in the very last sentence of his paper, where von Sass affirms (agreeing in part with Chesterton) that cosmopolitanism is indeed a heresy, but not in the same sense or for the same reasons as Chesterton had argued. For Chesterton, heresy was not about deviations from correct belief or practice; heresy had more to do with “not taking a stance,” of having no clear idea of what one considers to be true, as when one follows vaguely grasped fashions out of cynical weakness –“cynical” in the modern sense here – rather than on the basis of any well thought-through conviction. Heresy, in von Sass’ account, is also not set in opposition to right religious practice. In fact for von Sass heresy becomes inextricably bound up with the essence of theological conviction. von Sass places the heresy of cosmopolitanism within “the heart of Christian faith itself.” Both the notion of heresy and the idea of cosmopolitanism take on a positive meaning. There is much to be unfurled that lies hidden in the notion of the heretic (positively construed here) as a trouble maker, and as a trouble maker whose trouble making flows from the activity of “leading a life before and in God.”28 It seems to me that von Sass suggests that all Christians are called to be heretics, in a sense. I do not say this here by way of provocation. In fact I find the notion that we are called to be heretics, and that heresy is rooted deep within the heart of Christianity to be a compelling and almost irresistible interpretation. One way of thinking about this is to consider that the notion of God as mystery is not simply a reality that limits or resists any attempt we might make to “know” or to adequately conceptualize God. There 27

  Ibid., my emphasis.   von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism.”

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is a second important point that is often missed, namely, the notion of God as mystery relativizes any conceptualization, any attempt to hold onto or grasp a living God. Even the most profound of profound theologies is relativized by this mystery and runs up against its limits here. It is important to note that von Sass and Chesterton have set the tone for the discussion here and it is a tone of irony – to begin with. In both Chesterton and in von Sass (especially in the context of his religious and theological analysis) things are often not what we might expect them to be. Up is down and down is up. Everything is turned topsy turvy and our feet can’t find solid ground to stand on. For Chesterton, for example, religious orthodoxy, which we might be inclined to regard as backward looking, close-minded, and even as spirit- and freedom-stifling, is rather (or can be) a “truly subversive” and even “revolutionary” standpoint.29 Slavoj Žižek underscores that this mood of irony morphs into an even a more intensified mood of paradox, and points to a tensive relation between opposites in Chesterton’s writings, as when he notes, summarizing the exclamations of the main character in Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who was Thursday, that “Law is the greatest transgression” and yet the “defender of the Law the greatest rebel.”30 Žižek moves from the ironic insight that for Chesterton, Christian orthodoxy itself is “the greatest transgression, the most rebellious and adventurous thing” to a much deeper and darker tension that, Žižek suggests, inhabits Christianity as its central mystery. Chesterton articulates this central mystery as follows: When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.31

Chesterton’s words suggest one way of thinking about the uniqueness of God, namely, as a God who, if only for a moment, is an atheist. What could this possibly mean – this contradictory, oxymoronic, and perhaps even paradoxical expression? And what other beliefs and practices pour forth from a heart opened to such a vision of the mysterium Dei? I can’t answer this question. 29

  S. Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 35. 30   S. Žižek, “From Job to Christ: A Paulinian Reading of Chesterton,” in J. D. Caputo and L. M. Alcoff, eds., St. Paul among the Philosophers (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 43. 31   G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London: The Bodley Head, 1908), 237. Cited in Žižek, ibid., 44.

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However, it is a signal to us to be prepared to let go of everything we thought we knew about God, since whatever God is and whatever grasp we think we have on this notion, the reality of God is ever different and “ever greater.”

3. The Reduction of Religion and the Reductio in Mysterium von Sass observes that the literature on the topic of cosmopolitanism is very complex. He notes that the idea of cosmopolitanism is “an essentially contested concept.”32 He observes, however, that religion has been marginalized in much of the discussion, seen as irrelevant to the theme, or much more negatively, as representing an obstacle to the desired unity that is integral to the concept of cosmopolitanism. It is clear that religion is often treated in a reductive way, not only in the literature on the idea of cosmopolitanism, but in many discourses that speak to the broader themes of this volume. What positive insights can religion and theology bring to the table when the discussion centers on the pressing ideas of unity and diversity, autonomy, and the pursuit of a good that we can all hold in common? Religion is often seen as being no different than any other identity marker that is used to set one group in contrast to or in opposition to every other, or worse, religion is criticized as being just one of so many pretenders to the throne of universality, projecting its particular, contingent, self-interested vision as necessary and total. Despite the shortcomings of this reductive view, one should not be too quick to jump to the defense of religion. It is not simply the analysts and commentators (perhaps ‘despisers’ of religion) who have reduced the religious in this way. The reduction can be traced back to bad actors within religious traditions who have themselves reduced their own traditions (through their action and inaction), and who have missed or by‑passed deeper truths in order to enjoy fleeting worldly gains that have more to do with brute power than with genuine religious insight, faith, or practice – and this often in the name of religion.

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  On essentially contested concepts see W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). It is interesting to note that Gallie also describes religion as an essentially contested concept (168 – 169). To describe a concept as essentially contested is not to say something negative about it, but is rather to identify it as a certain type of concept with a specific pragmatic function. Gallie links this species of concept with the question of how we understand by way of story, namely through the interplay of presupposed framework and seemingly contingent or unexpected events that shake up those very frameworks. One could sum up his point in this way: essentially contested concepts are situated contextually within a story-like structure or dynamic. He suggests that the interpretation of such concepts “must always be in dispute.” This is because certain concepts are so important, so very deeply embedded in history, in life, and are themselves alive in a certain respect, and so they are “peculiarly susceptible to change” and to challenge.

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von Sass’s project takes issue with the reductive approach to religion, and yet, thankfully, does not speak in an apologetic tone that would require us to ignore such deficient conceptualizations of ‘religion’. He aims instead to bring one version of a deeper religious and theological vision to bear upon the problems presented by the idea of cosmopolitanism, and by extension, on the themes of the conference. This is an important project, as one would hope that a genuinely religious perspective on the idea of cosmopolitanism might transform our view of the matters at hand. But what does he mean by religion? In his analysis, religion is not treated as object of study or as obstacle to the goals of cosmopolitanism, but as a potential source of deeper insight into the problems at hand, and as a source of critical and substantive voices that can speak actively and constructively in and to the secular discourses on cosmopolitanism.33 He notes that the religious dimension is set apart from the many other analytic dimensions of cosmopolitanism, which are most often the focus in the literature on cosmopolitanism: economic, political, sociological, and so on. He explains that the religious dimension is not just one more added to this list. He distinguishes between this “logic of addition,” which sees each perspective as one more added to the list of perspectives, and a “logic of qualification.”34 In his view, the religious dimension “qualifies all other dimensions in a new way.” von Sass makes this point again in a different way through his formal symbolism, where we are invited to imagine our life represented as a series of activities embraced within curly brackets: { x, y, z, . . .n }.35 These activities are distinct from one another, but the religious dimension (which he refers to as faith or simply, as f ) will be found nowhere and everywhere in this list. It is nowhere in the sense that it does not show itself as just one more activity in the series, but it is everywhere in the sense that it runs through and transforms each and every activity in the series. It is a mode that makes something new of the whole, namely transforming the cosmos of cosmopolitanism into God’s creation, as I noted above. von Sass does not address the question of whether and what kind of notions of cosmopolitanism might be embraced by other non-Christian traditions, although he notes that this is an important issue.36 I would suggest that these 33   von Sass’s turn to the religious dimension of the problem brings to my mind Irfan Ahmad, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), xii. Ahmad aimed to theorize religion “as an important agent of critique, viewing Moses, the Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, [. . .] and many others as critics par excellence.” While religion and religions are so often analyzed as objects, especially in religious studies, Ahmad’s work aims to reestablish religions as having critical agency. 34   von Sass, “On Cosmopolitanism.” 35  Ibid. 36   Ibid., footnote 10.

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other potential voices, given only a passing nod in the footnote, are of crucial significance in any discussion of cosmopolitanism, and their absence here is a bit troubling and perhaps a little bit ironic. We must find a way to actively engage other voices in a context where we aim to speak of the world or creation or the cosmos as a whole. Nevertheless, despite this critical point, I recognize that von Sass’ characterization of religion here points to a way of grounding the wider discussion that I believe is warranted by the topic. His connection of ‘religion’ with wholeness, or more specifically, with that which is not one of a series of things or qualities, but that which transforms all (transposes everything into a different mode) and runs through all, is very much reminiscent of the anthropologist Marcel Mauss’ analysis of “total social phenomena.”37 Mauss’ work was formulated as a critique of modernity, a critique focused in part on the tendency of modernity to compartmentalize, to  break up this wholeness of life into separate domains: economy, polity, religion, kinship, and so on. Mauss clearly distinguished between a notion of totality and a notion of generality. This points to an important problem that must be addressed whenever we speak of the whole, whether it be as world, as the cosmos in cosmopolitanism, or as creation. The appropriate conjunction for Mauss is between the concrete and the universal, and not that between the specific and the general. This entails grasping the difference between a many united within a category and a many that makes up a world. One cannot inhabit a category. A category is created by reading across apparently autonomous and diverse individuals and abstracting qualities that they hold in common. In thinking categorically and in terms of thing and quality, we abstract from the diversity, and all singularities are transformed thereby into interchangeable tokens of a single type. Categories can thus be grasped in thought. They can be determined in a clear and distinct way. By contrast, if we subject the notion of world to a similar sort of analysis, the world, in any meaningful sense of the word falls apart. Mauss’ method of interpreting what he called total social phenomena was not by way of a reimagined notion of ‘religion’, since that term was too often used in the modern context to designate one domain as opposed to others, but I would suggest that his analysis is in harmony with von Sass’ understanding of religion as summarized above. Instead of redefining religion, Marcel Mauss appealed to the ethnographic sources and pointed at a family of notions, roughly translated as spirit or power, and which we would recognize as being religious in content and import: mana, wakan, hau, nawalak. Analogues of such notions are familiar to us, but they are not analyzable in any ordinary sense. Mauss’ ‘analysis’ could be characterized as pneumatological (although Mauss 37   M. Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Cohen & West, 1966), trans., Ian Cunnison.

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would not characterize it this way), while von Sass’s analysis is ultimately theological. The analysis of the phenomenon of gift and exchange (which was Mauss’ immediate focus) ends ultimately with the notion of spirit (the hau of the gift). In von Sass, the analysis culminates in a theological notion: there are increasing intensifications of love of neighbor, culminating finally in the notion of God himself as our neighbor. There are clear differences here and I don’t want to pretend that these views are the same. But both approaches – the pneumatological focus of Mauss and the theological focus of von Sass – require a turn to a different kind of orientation toward the problem of totality, an approach that contrasts with the great variety of approaches covered by the secular literature on cosmopolitanism as outlined by von Sass. There is something in the notions of spirit (in Mauss) and in the idea of God as creator and neighbor that exceeds our analytical grasp and that resists all of our attempts to subject them to analysis. It is interesting that Claude Levi-Strauss criticized Mauss’ appeal to such mana-like or spirit notions on the grounds that they do not “throw light on the phenomena but they participate in them.” Levi-Strauss noted that that these notions are found everywhere and they mean in a distinctive way: conceptions of the mana type are so frequent and so widespread that we should ask ourselves if we are not confronted with a permanent and universal form of thought which [. . .] being a function of a certain situation of the mind in the face of things, must appear each time this situation is given.38

Note that for Levi-Strauss, characteristically, the issue is about modes of thought and not about the reality of spirit. Nevertheless, his observations are insightful. These notions intervene, somewhat as algebraic symbols, to represent a value of indeterminate meaning (signification), which being itself empty of meaning (sens) is therefore susceptible of any meaning (sens) whatsoever. Its unique function is to make good a discrepancy between signifier and signified, or, more exactly to draw attention to the fact that in certain circumstances, on a certain occasion or in certain of their manifestations, a relation of inadequacy exists between signified and signifier to the detriment of the anterior relation of complementarity.39

Levi-Strauss seems to be denigrating these mana-like notions, suggesting they are empty or at best indeterminate, but this can be read another way. This emptiness, this indeterminacy that is associated with various notions analogous to spirit – this relation of inadequacy that holds between signifier and signified can be read as an opening up of a space in which we can imagine other possibilities. Furthermore, he draws attention to the inextricable link between 38   C. Levi-Strauss quoted in the foreword to Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 3. 39  Ibid., 4

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these empty signifiers and the specific occasions or contexts of their manifestations. Levi-Strauss, however, cuts off this avenue to new meanings as he argues, in criticism of Mauss, that the invocation of such notions is “unscientific.” Whatever “mysterious power and secret force” that both Durkheim and Mauss attribute to mana-like notions is confined to the role such notions play in their own sociological discourse according to Levi-Strauss, and for Levi-Strauss, this marks the breakdown and weakness of their accounts. One could argue, however, that Levi-Strauss has himself reduced a religious notion to something much less than what it is. We must distinguish between two senses of reductionism here, both of which are relevant to understanding von Sass’ project in this essay. I have already mentioned the problem of the reductionism that often governs discussion of religion in many contexts, and von Sass has pointed to this as well. What does reduction mean in this first sense? We are all familiar with this notion. In this sense of reduction there is something like a decomposition into parts; the reduction is deflationary, either taking the part for the whole, or abstracting from the essence of the thing, or mistaking the use or misuse of a thing for its most important or essential characteristic. There are many provisionally true things that can be said of a thing or a person that are clearly reductive in this sense. I can say, for example, that I am a good source of protein, as are all human beings. But I find this description of a person to be sorely lacking, reductionist, and deflationary in the extreme. There is another sense of reduction that I would suggest is applicable here: not a reduction in the deflationary sense of decomposition or diminution, but in the sense of the reductio in mysterium that I briefly referred to above, namely a turning and returning to the depth of what really matters, even as this remains unanalyzable and ultimately beyond us. My point in juxtaposing von Sass and Mauss is to suggest that if we want to speak to the world beyond our own about topics such as how we can truly be one in the world, it matters what language we use. The ever-present danger is that the discussion will devolve into questions about our identity as Christians, and this in a contrastive sense. As I noted, Mauss’ orientation is pneumatological, and it is my conviction that such language – the language of spirit – can actively facilitate an opening of our Christian vision onto the non-Christian world. One could even say that the ‘language of spirit’ provides us with an opening onto the wider world that the ‘language of God’ does not. In addition, the notion of spirit is a more congenial locus for the formulation of a cosmopolitanism that is inherently contextual, which is what von Sass establishes as his goal. The point, however, is not to exclude talk about God, but to avoid talk about God that has become untethered from the notion of mystery and thus from the essential reductio in mysterium of all questions that we humans confront. The theologian Karl Rahner insisted, on the one hand, that theology

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must necessarily speak of God, of the experience of God, and not just about the use of the term ‘God’. However, he also spoke of God as “mystery” and as “holy mystery,” placing this notion at the center of his theology, meaning by the term not something not yet known, but referring to the utter depth of the real God beyond all of our comprehension and grasping. He did so because we often assume we know what we mean when we speak so readily and with such ease of ‘God’, but in the end, we don’t.40

40   K. Rahner, “Theology Today,” trans. H. M. Riley, in Theological Investigations 21 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1988), 56 – 69.

List of Contributors Andrew Lee Bridges holds the Bhagwan Shantinath Lectureship in the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London and Programme Director of the Associate of King’s College (AKC). Deborah Casewell holds a Humboldt Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bonn. Tad DeLay is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baltimore City Community College. Jörg Dierken is Chair of Systematic Theology / Ethics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Trevor Kimball completed his PhD in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont Graduate University in 2019. Kevin McCabe is a Teaching Fellow in the Core Humanities Program at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. Will Mittendorf is Full-time instructor and Philosophy Department Chair at Cerritos College, Norwalk, California. Nils Ole Oermann is Direktor des Instituts für Ethik und Transdisziplinäre Nachhaltigkeitsforschung, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Henry Omeike is a Phd Candidate and Teaching Associate in Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University, New York. Robert Overy-Brown is a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. Raymond Perrier received his PhD in Religion from the Claremont Graduate University. He is currently Instructional Content Developer for Prime Power Services. Hartmut von Sass is Prof. Dr. theol. habil., Heisenberg scholar at the Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. Josiah Solis is Director of Digital Learning at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena CA.

290

List of Contributors

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Stellenbosch Elliot Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Yun Kwon Yoo received his PhD in religion from Claremont Graduate University in 2020. His first book, Globalization and Human Subjectivity: Insights from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, was recently published.

Index of Names Achebe, C.  110 Adorno, T.  219, 221, 226, 229 – 230 Agbasiere, J.‑T.  109 Allen, D.  211 Appiah, K. A.  12, 246, 250, 257, 263, 275 Aquinas, Thomas  27 – 28, 33, 35, 88 – 89, 92, 94, 104 – 105, 110, 119, 121, 182 Aristotle  25, 28, 102, 104 – 105, 157, 182, 270 Arndt, J.  32 Asad, T.  23, 29 – 30 Augustine  92, 104 – 105 Augoustoinos, M.  5 Badiou, A.  142, 274 – 275 Baker, G.  269 – 270, 275 Bar-Bettelheim, L.  154, 163, 166 Baumgarten, E.  164, 166 Beck, U.  245 Bennet, J.  126 Ben-Porath, S.  6 Beyer, G.  107 – 108 Biebricher, T.  58 Bloom, A.  189 Bodin, J.  75 Bolsonaro, J.  57 Bösch. F.  59 Bourdieu, P.  193 Bourgault, S.  202 Brill, A.  165 Brown, B.  170 Bujo, B.  109 Burgh, A.  32 – 33 Cabaud, J.  215 Caputo, J.  176 – 177 Cavell, S.  144 Calvin  29, 35 Capobianco, R.  144 Cardoso, A.  137 Carlebach, E.  137 Cha, Y. S.  202, 216

Chesterton, G. K.  241 – 244, 246, 255, 266, 268, 273, 277 – 282 Chinweuba, G.  111 Cicero  25, 92, 104 – 105, 269 Cohen, H.  276 – 277 Cohen, J.  233, 235 Comensoli, P.  118 – 119 Cone, J.  194 Cordovero, M.  148 Coulmas, F.  6 Curley, E.  32 Davy, M.  205, 210 de Beauvoir, S.  126 Deleuze, G.  162 Derrida, J.  49, 50, 126, 131, 133, 175 – 178 Descartes, R.  24 – 27, 41, 88 Dewey, J.  237 – 239 DiAngelo, R.  8 Diogenes  245, 252, 267 – 275, 277, 279 Eliot, George  23, 37, 39 Eliashiv, Solomon  139 – 141, 151 – 152, 154, 158 – 170 Ellacuría, I.  83 Erdogan, R.  57 Ergas, J.  134, 137 Estlund, D.  233, 235 – 237 Etzioni, A.  104 – 106 Ezeugwu, E.  111 Fanon, F.  85, 126 Feld, A.  135 Forbes, J.  119, 221 Foucault, M.  126 Freud, S.  223, 227 – 228 Fritz, P.  124 – 125 Fukuyama, F.  3, 4, 58, 66 Gale, L.  119 Gallie, W.  246, 283

292

Index of Names

Gandhi, M. K.  76 – 77 Gaymay, C.  202 Gazzaniga, M.  88 Geertz, C.  29 – 30 Greene, G.  94 Greig, J.  117 – 118 Griswold, E.  221 Gunn, G.  108 Gyekye, K.  109 Habermas, J.  63 – 65, 74 – 77, 185, 250, 261 Hamilton, C.  215, 217 Hanson-Easey, S.  5 Harrison, P.  26, 28 – 30 Hartmann, N.  182 – 183, 185 Hauerwas, S.  115 – 118, 120, 126 Hayek, F.  106 Hayyim of Volozhin  140 ˙ ayon, N. H.  135 – 139, 147 H ˙ ˙ Hegel, G. F. W.  16, 45 – 55, 73, 75 – 81 Heidegger, M.  48, 144, 169, 182, 183 – 184 Hillel, Y. M.  164 – 165, 168 Hobbes, T.  5, 25 – 26, 52, 61, 126 Idel, M  148, 155 Joas, H.  182, 192 John Paul II  107 – 108, 111 Jüngel, E.  181 – 182, 187, 192 Kant, I.  10, 14, 24 – 25, 27, 37, 41, 47 – 48, 61, 63, 75, 88, 102, 182, 188 – 189, 196, 245,  248 – 249, 251, 254 Kendi, I. X.   7 Kierkegaard, S.  16, 17, 32, 43, 260, 266, 279 King, M. L., Jr.  198 Kipling, R.  242 – 243, 278 Koch, P. B.  132 Kook, A. I.  131 Kostner, S.  6 Lacan, J.  222 – 224 Laruelle, F.  141 Lassalle-Klein, R.  83 Latour, B.  95

Leahy, D.  134 – 135 Levinas, E.  4, 126, 175, 192, 202, 215 – 216, 276, 277 Levi-Strauss, C.  286 – 287 Liebes, Y.  137 Lilla, M.  4, 15, 66 Locke, J.  60 – 62, 75, 126 Luria, I.  147 – 150 Luther, M.  25 – 26, 180 – 181, 194 – 195, 197 Luzzatto, M. H.  165 – 166 ˙ Maass, A.  221 Magesa, L.  109 – 110 Magid, S.  170 Maritain, J.  205 Mauss, M.  285 – 287 McLellan, D.  213 McLane-Iles, B.  211 Merleau-Ponty, M.  95, 162 Metuh, I.  109 Milbank, J.  23 – 24 Mill, J. S.  30 – 31, 37, 102, 105, 220 Miller, R. W.  250 Miller, S.  222 Mofokeng, T.  83 Molony, G.  5 Nagel, T.  64, 75 Nassehi, A.  69 Neuhouser, F.  46 Niebuhr, R.  192 Nietzsche, F.  3, 162, 176, 178, 243 – 244, 253 Nussbaum, M.  246, 257 O’Brien, C.  218 Ogude, J.  109 Oxenhandler, N.  202 Paul  85 – 87, 93, 132, 143, 195, 267, 274 – 275, 277 Parfit, D.  246 Peirce, C. S.  142, 237, 239 Perrin, J.  210, 212, 215 Pines, S.  8 Pirruccello, A.  203, 211 – 212 Plato  86, 104 – 105, 182, 210, 268 Pluckrose, H.  6

Index of Names

293

Podmore, S.  266 Pogge, T.  65, 247, 249 Pope, A.  9 Popper, K.  181, 188 Priest, G.  163 Przywara, E.  164, 280 Pseudo-Dionysius  87

Sen, A.  234 Smith, A.  52, 105, 182, 193 Sobrino, J.  83 Spinoza, B.  23 – 37, 39 – 43 Springsted, E. O.  206, 211 Stiglitz, J.  54 Sunstein, C.  235

Quong, J.  232

Tanner, K.  120 – 122, 124 Taylor, C.  23 – 24, 30, 52, 60, 64 – 67, 75, 106, 261 Thibon, G.  210, 215 Thunberg, G.  68, 227 Tillich, P.  259 Trump, D.  57, 68, 221 – 222, 228 – 229 Turner, W.  30

Radzins, I.  210, 211 Rahner, K.  102, 115, 122 – 125, 127, 287 – 288 Rand, A.  106 Rawls, J.  60, 63 – 65, 75, 194, 216, 232 – 233, 237, 249 Reckwitz, A.  68 – 69, 73, 76 – 78, 80 – 82, 251 – 261 Rees, R.  204 Ricoeur, P.  2, 11 Riordan, P.  89 Robinson, M.  85 Rorty, R.  245 – 246, 261 Rosa, H.  70 Rousseau, J.‑J.  46, 60 – 64, 75, 234 – 235 Sadik, S.  156 Sandel, M. J.  18, 106 Scharlemann, R.  86 Schatz, M.  166 Scheler, M.  183, 186 Scheu, R.  6 Scheffler, S.  247 – 248 Schleiermacher, F. D. E.  32, 43, 67 Schmitt, C.  178, 185 Schneerson, M. M.  169 Scholem, G.  131 – 132, 142, 148 – 149, 161, 176

Valabregue-Perry, S.  133 Valantasis, R.  213 Vanier, J.  90 Villa Braslavsky, P.‑I.  10 Vital, H.  134, 145 – 149, 155, 160 ˙ ˙ Walker, M. Boulous  202 Walzer, M.  65 Weil, S.  201 – 218 West, Cornel  197 White, G. A.  218 Willox, A.  216 Wilson, J.  221 Wimbush, V.  213 Winch. P.  217, 263 Wyschogrod, E.  213 Yuengert, A.  105 Žižek, S.  19, 282 Zizioulas, J.  102

Index of Subjects Anthropology  43, 55, 56, 64, 75, 102, 103, 109, 113, 117 – 118, 122 – 125, 127 Autonomy  1 – 7, 9 – 11, 13, 19 – 20, 23, 24 – 27, 30, 32, 34 – 37, 39, 41, 43, 45 – 49, 51 – 56, 61, 63, 101 – 104, 107, 109, 112 – 113, 115 – 120, 121 – 127, 141, 146, 153, 184, 192, 198, 201, 203, 212 – 215, 218, 237, 268, 270, 272, 283 Common Good  1 – 2, 5, 9, 18 – 21, 23 – 24, 34, 36 – 37, 39 – 42, 43, 45 – 46, 48 – 49, 51 – 52, 53 – 56, 60, 72 – 74, 76, 81 – 2, 85, 88 – 91, 94 – 95, 97 – 99, 101 – 107, 112 – 114, 129, 175, 178, 198, 201, 203, 209, 210, 213 – 216, 219 – 221, 225 – 227, 229, 231, 234, 236, 240, 258, 260 – 269, 270 Community  7, 24, 40, 48 – 49, 51 – 56, 61 – 62, 83, 87, 101 – 104, 106 – 113, 116, 180, 194, 198, 204, 211, 269, 278 Cosmopolitanism  3, 241 – 266, 267 – 287 Culture / Culturalism  1 – 3, 5 – 7, 9, 12, 15 – 16, 18, 20, 23, 30, 54, 57, 59, 63 – 77, 79, 81 – 82, 87 – 90, 106, 108, 111, 131, 133, 176, 191, 193, 206, 213, 219 – 220, 246 – 253, 255 – 259, 262, 268, 272 – 273, 278 Democracy  57, 59, 63 – 64, 71, 73 – 76, 180, 197, 231 – 240, 244 – 245 Dependence / Interdependence  23 – 24, 32, 35 – 37, 39 – 40, 42 – 43, 45, 83, 95, 98, 99, 108, 110, 115, 117 – 122, 124 – 126 Difference  1, 7, 13, 17, 23 – 24, 30, 34, 40, 45, 49, 50 – 51, 55, 80, 91, 97, 108 – 109, 113, 117, 121, 126, 135, 138, 141, 143 – 144, 156, 162 – 163, 177, 195, 229, 233, 246, 267, 275 – 277, 285

Dignity  4, 6, 10, 40, 66, 72, 111, 249, 270 Disability  7, 115 – 127 Diversity  7 – 10, 15, 17, 20, 23, 29 – 31, 36 – 37, 45 – 46, 48 – 56, 66 – 68, 74, 87, 113, 129, 179, 181, 184, 187 – 189, 191 – 195, 198, 201, 203, 210, 213 – 215, 218, 233 – 234, 238, 240, 250 – 251, 258, 260, 270, 283, 285 Duty  4, 10, 25, 131, 180, 202, 209, 236, 242, 246, 251 Ecological Crisis  54, 84, 96 Enlightenment  9, 14 – 16, 25, 32, 41, 60, 64 – 66, 70, 105, 193, 196, 197, 251 Equality  4, 9, 13, 17 – 18, 20, 57, 60 – 65, 70, 72, 74 – 75, 217, 233, 237 Equity  4, 6 – 9, 36, 181, 188 Ethics / Ethical  20, 23 – 24, 26 – 27, 31 – 37, 39 – 43, 45, 48 – 49, 53, 75, 89, 91, 96, 102, 107 f, 110 – 111, 115 – 118, 120, 125 – 126, 131, 133, 160, 173, 175 – 178, 182 – 188, 192 – 197, 199, 202 – 207, 212 – 218, 220, 232 – 233, 238 – 239, 246 – 247, 249 – 250, 253, 263, 270, 277 Freedom  2 – 4, 9, 14, 23 – 24, 26, 30 – 33, 36 – 37, 42 – 43, 46 – 47, 52, 57 – 58, 60 – 66, 70 – 72, 74 – 77, 103, 113, 120 – 127, 179 – 181, 184, 187 – 189, 191 – 199, 201, 207, 211, 215, 234, 268 – 269, 282 Gender  6, 10, 12, 14 – 15, 66, 76, 126, 133, 135, 141, 143, 145, 148, 150, 154 – 155, 176, 244 God  1 – 2, 9, 17 – 18, 24 – 29, 32 – 37, 39, 41 – 43, 64 – 65, 72, 75, 85 – 86, 88 – 89, 92 – 96, 102, 105, 109 – 110, 115, 117 – 127, 139 – 140, 144, 148, 150 – 151, 156 – 163, 165, 171 – 173,

296

Index of Subjects

181, 194 – 196, 201 – 205, 210 – 212, 215 – 217, 243, 259, 262, 264, 266, 269 – 270, 272 – 273, 276 – 278, 280 – 284, 286 – 288 Good and Evil  69, 158 – 159, 172, 175 – 178, 195

Modernity  10, 24, 60, 64 – 66, 68, 73, 76, 78 – 82, 115 – 118, 123, 137, 242, 245, 248, 285 Morality  25, 27, 35, 47, 109, 175 – 177, 188, 239, 249, 253, 259, 262 Multiculturalism  14, 252

Hope  23, 83, 92 – 95, 97, 103, 136, 164, 196, 212, 221, 226, 244, 261, 265 – 266 Human / humanity  2 – 7, 9 – 12, 14, 16 – 18, 20, 23 – 37, 39 – 43, 45 – 48, 50 – 56, 57, 60, 62, 65, 72, 78 – 79, 83 – 91, 93 – 95, 98 – 99, 101 – 102, 104 – 105, 107 – 111, 115 – 127, 139, 143 – 144, 149, 151, 156, 160, 164, 166, 171, 178, 180 – 182, 185 – 189, 192 – 193, 195, 197, 201 – 206, 208 – 210, 212, 215 – 218, 220 – 222, 224, 226, 229, 237 – 239, 244, 248 – 253, 262 – 263, 268 – 270, 273, 275 – 276, 278 – 282, 287

Nature  3, 24 – 27, 31, 34 – 35, 41, 49, 60 – 61, 76, 86, 89, 93 – 95, 98, 108, 110, 119, 121, 124, 131 – 132, 143, 149, 154, 159, 163, 166, 168, 173, 178, 182, 191, 193, 198, 203 – 204, 206, 208, 210 – 212, 215, 241, 244, 259, 262 – 264, 267, 269 – 270, 273 – 274 Neighbor / love of neighbor  17 – 18, 39, 212, 239, 270 – 277, 286

Identity  1 – 4, 6, 8, 11 – 17, 48 – 56, 59, 66 – 67, 69 – 70, 74, 83, 106, 109, 132, 141, 146, 156, 245, 252, 256 – 257, 268, 270 – 271, 274, 280, 283, 287 Imagination  73, 81, 89 – 90, 94, 96, 116, 141, 148, 166, 168, 246, 249, 253, 264 Independence  4, 45, 57, 62, 116, 118, 120 – 121, 197, 201, 226 Individualism  3, 10, 40, 45, 65, 67, 101, 103, 105, 113, 115, 117, 217

Participation  3, 14 – 16, 57, 60, 63 – 64, 72 – 79, 82, 86 – 89, 94 – 95, 99, 108, 255 Person / Personhood  4, 6, 13, 28, 32, 40, 42 – 43, 45, 76 – 77, 80, 98, 102, 104, 106, 109 – 110, 113, 120, 122 – 124, 136, 145 – 146, 164, 167, 172, 180, 189, 194, 203 – 206, 210, 214, 216, 220, 273, 275, 287 Pluralism  37, 45, 66, 87, 231 – 233, 235, 275 Politics  1, 3 – 4, 7 – 8, 13 – 15, 54, 56, 59, 66 – 72, 83, 89, 104 – 105, 117, 126, 146, 179, 189, 196, 219, 222, 245 – 247, 254, 257, 262 Power  1 – 3, 5, 8, 11, 15 – 18, 23 – 27, 29, 31 – 32, 34 – 36, 39, 42 – 43, 48, 55 – 57, 59, 61 – 63, 65, 69 – 70, 79 – 80, 92 – 93, 117, 119, 121, 126, 135, 144, 151, 157 – 158, 161, 168, 204, 211, 216 – 217, 223, 227, 229, 231, 243, 249, 254, 280, 282 – 283, 285, 287

Kabbalistic ethics  131, 175 Law  25, 27, 29, 46 – 48, 57, 61 – 62, 70, 73, 77 – 80, 102, 110, 131 – 133, 141 – 142, 160 – 163, 169 – 170, 173, 175 – 178, 182 – 185, 188, 196 – 199, 205, 221, 249 – 250, 262, 269, 282 Law of the Heart  73, 78 – 81 Law beyond the Law  131, 133 – 173, 175 – 179 Liberalism  30, 57, 59 – 60, 63 – 65, 70, 73 – 75, 81 – 82, 106, 118, 177, 189, 194, 232, 244, 258 Liberation  3, 10, 81, 83 – 84, 86, 97 – 98, 126, 231 – 240

Obligation  25, 101 – 102, 172, 201 – 202, 208 – 209, 213, 215 – 216, 236, 247, 276

Racism / racist  6, 8, 14, 19, 189, 195 – 196, 198, 224 Relation / relationship  1 – 2, 11, 24 – 25, 28, 35, 39 – 41, 43, 48 – 50, 52, 54,

Index of Subjects

61 – 62, 74, 77 – 80, 83 – 84, 86, 89, 91, 94 – 95, 99, 107 – 109, 115, 120 – 124, 126, 133, 137, 140, 144, 149 – 150, 156, 159 – 160, 163 – 167, 175 – 178, 182, 185, 191 – 194, 203 – 205, 208, 212, 214, 216, 218, 222, 224, 237, 241 – 244, 248, 258, 261 – 263, 267, 271, 279, 280, 282, 286 Religion / Religions / religious belief / religio  1 – 3, 5 – 6, 9, 23 – 24, 26, 28 – 37, 39 – 43, 59 – 60, 62 – 68, 71 – 80, 109 – 111, 132, 148, 170, 176 – 177, 182, 189, 197, 215 – 216, 221, 225, 232, 241, 243 – 244, 258 – 262, 265 – 267, 274, 277, 282 – 285, 287 Respect  3, 15, 20, 40, 51, 57, 59, 66 – 67, 70, 73 – 79, 81 – 86, 104, 122, 125, 134, 137, 150, 162 – 165, 171, 189, 205, 207, 225, 231 – 232, 237, 247, 250, 257, 270, 272, 283 Romanticism  32, 65, 68 – 69, 71, 252 Secularism / secular  9, 18, 20, 23 – 24, 30, 37, 39, 65, 80, 110, 126, 187, 220, 261, 284, 286 Sectarianism  33, 39, 194 Self  2 – 3, 10 – 12, 14 – 17, 24, 37, 51, 59, 61, 64, 70, 102, 117, 126, 150, 201, 204 – 207, 210, 213 – 214, 248, 256, 266 Singularity  48, 66, 69, 73, 75 – 80, 142, 253 – 254, 259, 261

297

Solidarity  4, 9, 20, 49, 51, 56, 64 – 67, 75, 101, 103 – 104, 107 – 113, 203, 256, 257 Substance  24, 34, 95, 134, 137, 140, 165, 188, 212 Theology  26, 30, 65, 70, 83 – 92, 94, 96 – 97, 99, 107, 115 – 116, 119 – 127, 135, 182, 186, 194, 198, 211, 259, 283, 287 – 288 Tolerance  8, 179 – 181, 191, 195 – 196, 222, 257 Transcendence / the transcendent  53, 55, 64, 70 – 73, 75, 79 – 82, 120, 134, 141, 167, 213, 216 – 218 Uniqueness  68, 76, 144, 254, 274, 277, 282 Universality / Universalism  3, 10, 48 – 49, 51 – 55, 57, 66, 70, 72 – 79, 201, 206, 247 – 248, 251, 274 – 275, 278 – 279, 283 Utility / utilitarianism  60, 182, 193, 220 – 221 Values  4, 7, 19, 30, 48, 75, 102, 106 – 108, 115, 118, 132, 145, 154, 159, 167, 182 – 185, 187 – 189, 192 – 195, 197, 216, 220, 236, 245 – 246, 250, 255, 258, 270, 286 Virtue  23 – 37, 39, 41 – 43, 92 – 94, 117, 120, 145, 180, 182, 184, 212, 242, 250 – 251