"American political discourse oscillates between the claim that one's own side represents the public good and one's opponents's side the private interests of the selfish and greedy. What is remarkable, however, is the ease with which either side in our public debates can claim that it represents the public good... Are not the key terms used to construct statements of moral principles...simply building blocks for ideology in the crudest sense...? [American culture is founded on a central myth], "the myth that society is the product of autonomously choosing individuals. If this is so, then communities that are not formed as the result of such voluntary consent are not legitimate. If one lives one's intellectual, emotional, and moral life under the spell of this myth, then it will not seem paradoxical that political opponents...each proclaim a relativistic morality with universal intentions. Each stands up for a type of morality that sees the individual's self-interest being fulfilled only through commitment to a community. Each proclaims that individual rights have to be understood in the context of corresponding responsibilities to community. [American political discourse is much like that of] the religious believer in the protestant tradition who, in theory, decides on his or her won, without the mediation of the church, to make an act of faith in God, and only then enters into a fellowship with other believers who have independently made the same faith commitment."
"Contentless Consensus" Richard Madsen
cat typed:
>kelley wrote, long ago:
i was typing to doug and to wider audience in an attempt to flesh out *why* the C takes on the mythic status that it does. my answer was that our highly individualistic, utilitarian conception of justice is one that is primarily procedural [formal] rather than substantive. we do not cultivate an ethical-political terrain within which we grapple with difficult ethical questions. rather, we turn to legal mechanisms, algorithms, formal procedures to resolve ethical disputes. when my neighbor thinks my stereo is too loud he calls the cops rather than knocking on my door and talking with me about it. a conversation is much more difficult and painful and yet i'd like to think it's much more productive in the sense that we become human beings living together and negotiating together how to respect one another, how to accord one another dignity. but increasingly, it is much easier to call the cops or lawyers you see. why bother hashing it out? that's hard work and i [we] might actually have to see the other as a human being, i [we] might have to concede something, admit that we're wrong or that the other has a point when our understandings of what constitutes the good life clash. it seems easier to embrace our negative freedom to simply walk away when we don't agree. with regard to the state, habermas calls it the colonization of the lifeworld [civil society] by the steering medium of power embodied in the rationalized, bureaucratic state, a state that mushroomed in response to the legitimation crises attending capitalist development.
>I have no interest in attempting to dispense with the sacred and mythical,
i don't think we're using these concepts in in quite the same way. for example, i have been arguing with ken at BAD that the individual is sacred in the US. god is dead but it lives on as the idea of the 'self' or the 'individual' we can see this sacredness in the most mundane ways and yet the mundane is replete with rituals that sustain the sacredness of the self as some sort of inviolable core of agency. joking and irony are rituals that demonstrate this quite nicely: we perform rituals of psychological detachment from others judgments. in doing so we produce a kind of cult of the ultra-self which produces endless layers of inner detachment from everything that others might throw at you.
>I just have a problem with legal documents being accorded a status which
>makes them unavailable for interrogation as to their usefulness.
precisely why i wrote what i did. i'm drawing on a tradition of american cultural critique, specifically of u.s. notions of justice, freedom, democracy, success in order to reveal why these documents, originally intended to be interrogated and changed, though surely not easily, become unavailable for interrogation.
i also wrote another piece on democracy, that might clue you in to how i'm thinking about this. the democracy post complicates these claims i'm making here, though. that is, i took explored arguments against the claim that you can make political institutions and practices transparent to our investigation and critique. but, you know me cat....
>I know I've lost track entirely of this and every thread, but I'm not sure
>how these questions followed from anything I said and thus not sure how to
>approach them. All I can say is you want theology, and I hope you're not
>looking to the constitution for that.
i entitled the post "the constitution: the real problem" i thought that was a klew. and i was writing to doug, not you--i was using the ethical challenges that you offered to jordan and wojtek as examples of the kinds of dilemmas that we face every single day.
>Any further than that -- can you legislate ethics?
we already do; indeed, in some sense, we must. if ethics is about judgments on human conduct, if it is about human welfare and human dignity then it is also about justice insofar as it must ask how well society creates the political and legal institutions and practices that fairly or equitably distribute the burdens and benefits of human social life. western legal systems are the result of four different ways of thinking about ethics, or the good: 1. the greek quest for excellence, emphasizing the cultivation of virtue and character. the focus was on how to create civic institutions and practices which cultivated virtue and character: plato's republic, aristotle's polis 2. the biblical tradition with its focus on commitment to god, to obey god's laws, and to love god and neighbor 3. the moral law tradition which sought out a reasonable order in the universe: epictetus, the natural law tradition, kant, rawls, martin luther king, ghandi 4. the utilitarian tradition as the pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number: epicurus, bentham, j.s. mill
there is no way that our laws can be neutral with regard to vision of what constitutes the good life
>no probably not I guess
>not, but you can avoid legislating in the interests of unethical behaviour
>I think.
i disagree, of course. i'm not sure how we got to legislation. the C is a social contract which specifies the distribution of power between various branches of government--who's responsible for what and how. that's the meat of it. the part that comes up in disputes is the bill of rights based on a set of ethical claims about the 'rights of man.' the bill of rights evolved out of a long tradition of rights discourse originating in GB, successively codified in the colonies as each one of them included a 'declaration of rights of man' --due process, protection from search and seizure of property on the part of the gov't without good cause. the bill of rights specifies the relationship between the individual and the state primarily through a language of rights --rights as dissociated largely from responsibilities to the state [society] in exchange for those rights. it is based on an ethical claim that people create the society/polity and must consent to it and agree to it, on the assumption of ontological individualism really. and it largely follows the utilitarian and moral law traditions.
both you and jordan are making ethical claims. he's claiming individual rights to enjoy the use of something for sport, recreation, or protection in the name of an imagined community. you're claiming community rights to safety from violent abusers of weapons in the name of an imagined community.
there is no adjudicating this dispute. that's the human condition. oh but wait, there is a way out and, as wojtek has often said, it has to start with transforming institutions and practices which brings us right back to the greeks. leave one aporia for another, eh?
kelley