In the annals of truly atrocious people in recent history, Charles Taylor, who presided over the massacre of not only large swaths of the population in his native Liberia but also throughout western Africa, ranks among the atroc-iest.  Pioneering ever more repulsive methods of war-making, Taylor can lay claim to being among the most prolific African tyrants in recruiting child soldiers, encouraging his men to hack off the limbs of enemies and civilians alike, and promoting the rape of women, all tactics he embraced in the campaigns that he backed in Liberia and Sierra Leone.  One of the ways in which it has long been believed that Taylor funded his wars is through smuggling diamonds that were apparently, according to prosecutors his ongoing trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, concealed in mayonnaise jars.  Taylor, for his part, has denied involvement in any Hellman’s-related smuggling activity:

“There are no diamonds running in and out (of Liberia) by the mayonnaise jar-full,” Taylor said on what was expected to be his last full day of testifying in his own defense at his war crimes trial.

I’m inclined to believe him, if for no other reason that if I was an evil dictator smuggling diamonds into my country, mayonnaise jars would seem a terribly small and especially smelly method of bringing them in–you can’t imagine brides across the world clamoring to wear a gem that reminds them less of everlasting love than a tuna melt.  On a more serious note though, I don’t think that denying involvement in diamond-smuggling is a particularly effective defense for Taylor, whose penchant for the gems is well-known and well-documented.  His statement recalled this creepy exchange from Jon Lee Anderson’s excellent 1998 piece in the New Yorker about the then-newly-elected Taylor:

“There is gold everywhere in this country. Diamonds! You just have to dig and you find gold,” Taylor said enthusiastically. The President waved toward a husky man who was standing uncomfortably out in the sun on the driveway about ten feet in front of us. Taylor introduced him as Jenkins Dunbar, the Minister for Lands, Mines, and Energy. “This is the man who is going to find us oil, which will be our salvation,” Taylor said. “Aren’t you, Dunbar?  When are you going to find that oil? It better be pretty soon!” Dunbar froze, laughed nervously, and quipped, “Soon, very soon, Mr. President. If it’s there, you can be sure we’ll find it!”

Ik wordt me in deze tijd steeds meer bewust van mijn eenzijdige drive om nadruk te leggen op verscheidenheid in mensen en geloofsbeleving en van de beperktheid die dit met zich meebrengt.

Dat hangt samen met mijn werkzaamheden op dit moment, waarbij ik op onderzoek ben naar christelijke spiritualiteit. Anderzijds hangt het ook samen met het lezen van de Canadese katholieke filosoof Charles Taylor. In zijn evenwichtige manier van beschouwen, ervaar ik mijn eigen eenzijdigheid. Deze eenzijdigheid vind ik niet problematisch. En als het wel problematisch is, dan is het vast problematisch voor de eenzijdigheid die ons allemaal eigen is. Juist in deze eenzijdigheid leer ik mijn behoefte aan aanvulling kennen. Het verbindt mij met mijn naaste. Zo kan mijn eenzijdigheid hopelijk een bijdrage leveren aan de veelkleurige wijsheid van God. Al is het maar vanwege zijn grote liefde voor iemand zoals ik…

Mijn blog van zwakgeloven laat de eenzijdigheid zien die mij eigen is. Ik ben hier eenzijdig in de nadruk op de menselijkheid van mijn geloof. Deze menselijkheid kenmerkt zich in zwakheid, in een spiritualiteit van beneden, in ruimte voor diversiteit, in deconstructie van de overheersing, in …

Als ik de liefde met mijn eenzijdigheid beperk dan wil ik bij deze noemen dat liefde gelukkig veel verder gaat en zich dienstbaar en met groot gezag opstelt aan iedereen die zich wil laten dienen. Zoals de apostelen het moment beleefden dat ze bewust moesten kiezen om hun vieze stinkvoeten aan Jezus zorg over te geven (Joh 13) In Jezus is deze volheid te vinden en zeker niet op mijn blog…

Toch wil ik mijn blog niet te ver door relativeren omdat ik wel vertrouwen heb dat het als “project” van waarde kan zijn. In het bijbelse spanningsveld tussen eenheid en verscheidenheid, zal mijn blog meer nadruk leggen op de verscheidenheid. Niet omdat dit goed bij mijn past, maar omdat het mijn ervaring is dat er veel “problematische” eenheid is. En dat moet ik uitleggen.

Problematisch wordt een eenheid als het de minderheid overheerst, als hun mores oplegt aan anderen, als minderwaardigheid predikt van de afwijkenden, als het de verscheidenheid van anderen geweld aan doet. En ik meen dit te zien buiten de kerk en binnen de kerk. Het atheisme die zich opdringerig gedraagt (zoals Kluun in zijn bijdrage aan de maand van spiritualiteit stelt) maar binnen de kerk ook de neiging om anderen langs de eigen meetlat te leggen ipv de openheid om zich aan te vullen. Hiermee heb ik geen specifieke kerk voor ogen. Volgens mij gebeurt dit van Katholiek tot Emergent… en vooral ook in mijn eigen hart. De neiging dat we het juiste hebben gevonden en dat de anderen dit ook moeten vinden kan veel te maken hebben met onze gevoelens van minderwaardigheid en onze behoefte aan bevestiging. Ik spreek maar even uit eigen ervaring. Niets menselijks is mij vreemd.

Om deze geslotenheid tegen te gaan heb ik veel sympathie gehad voor postmodernisme. Hoewel ik mezelf niet als postmodernist zie, heb ik er veel van geleerd en heb ik me verbaasd over de neiging om deze stroming te snel in een fout hokje te stoppen, zodat het corrigerend geluid – wat ik er in hoor – ons niet kan raken. Ook heb ik veel sympathie gehad voor Anselm Grun’s spiritualiteit van beneden. Ik zijn gelijknamig boekje legt hij ook uit dat dit in zijn ogen corrigerend is voor de grote nadruk op de spiritualiteit van boven.

“Het gaat er niet om de spiritualiteit van beneden vierkant tegenover die van boven te plaatsen. Eenzijdigheid levert nooit wat op. En zo bestaat er ook een gezonde spanning tussen deze beide spirituele benaderingen.”
(Spiritualiteit van beneden – Grun en Dufner p. 11)

Toch kan ik mij niet aan de indruk onttrekken dat Grun in zijn latere boekjes deze eenzijdigheid verder heeft uitgewerkt. Een eenzijdigheid die ik nog steeds als zeer heilzaam waardeer. Voor mijzelf en voor veel mensen die ik heb ontmoet, maar die toch eenzijdig is. Dit project – waar Grun niet de enige in was – heeft veel betekent voor het pastoraat en voor missionair denken, is mijn indruk.

In dit project is er een onuitgesproken eenheid geweest in spiritualiteit van beneden, zwak denken, monastieke gerichtheid, emergent, etc. Een project waarmee “de kerk van alle tijden” zich weer dichtbij mensen wilde begeven. Naast mensen wilde gaan staan. En ik zie dit nog steeds als een goede weg om de kloof te overbruggen.

En deze eenzijdigheid is ook te vinden op mijn blog. Ik hoop dat ik voor mezelf altijd het evenwicht bewaar tussen dichtbij God en dichtbij mensen. Dan zit ik hopelijk goed bij mijn huidige werkgever =) Ik wil niet dat mijn “dicht bij God zijn” tekort zal doen aan het “dichtbij mensen zijn”. En ik wil niet dat mijn “dichtbij mensen zijn” tekort zal doen aan het “dichtbij God zijn”. Maar hierin heb ik iets ervaren dat de het volgende citaat mooier verwoordt dan ik kan doen. Zowel de ‘hoogten’ als de ‘val’… In deze val is er zicht gekomen op aspecten van Jezus/God die ik anders nooit had kunnen zien. Zo werd het geen of/of maar een weg die via de 1 naar de ander leidt en weer terug.

“Niemand kan tot de opperste hoogten van de goddelijkheid komen”, zei de eeuwige wijsheid, “of zijn onuitsprekelijke goedheid smaken, als zij niet eerst de bitterheid en de laagheid van mijn menselijkheid hebben ervaren. Hoe hoger zij klimmen zonder mijn menselijkheid in aanmerking te nemen, des te dieper zal later hun val zijn. Mijn menselijkheid is het pad waarover wij allen moeten gaan die bij dat willen aankomen wat je zoekt: Mijn smart is de deur waardoor allen moeten binnengaan.”

H. Suso
(in Christelijke Mystici – Andrew Harvey p.106)

These are my reading notes and selections from the opening chapters of A Secular Age which lay out the framework for the rest of the book. It’s 872 pages and although I found it readable and will return to it, I’ve decided to take the advice of another reader to read the shorter A Catholic Modernity? (Oxford University Press, 1999) The latter is a published version of the Marianist Lecture that Dr. Taylor gave in Dayton where he casts the issue of how the Catholic Church should relate to the modern world. In the meantime these reading selections give a good overview of A Secular Age and function as a companion post to the interview and selections from the 2007 Templeton Prize speech I featured yesterday.

I think A Secular Age is one of the most important books for those of us who think about the religious landscape in America because it has wonderful concepts like “the buffered self” and “subtraction stories” that go a long way to explain the secular society Catholics live in. Elsewhere on this blog you will find many references to Michael Novak’s No One Sees God,  another book that helps Catholics understand the phenomena of atheism in relationship to their faith.

Belief And Unbelief: Living Lives That Have A Certain Moral/Spiritual Shape
I want to talk about belief and unbelief, not as rival theories, that is, ways that people account for existence, or morality, whether by God or by something in nature, or whatever. Rather what I want to do is focus attention on the different kinds of lived experience involved in understanding your life in one way or the other, on what it’s like to live as a believer or an unbeliever….

We all see our lives and/or the space wherein we live our lives as having a certain moral/spiritual shape. Somewhere, in some activity, or condition, lies a fullness, a richness: that is, in that place (activity or condition), life is fuller, richer, deeper, more worth while, or admirable, more what it should be. This is perhaps a place of power: we often experience this as deeply moving, as inspiring. Perhaps this sense of fullness is something we just catch glimpses of from afar off; we have the powerful intuition of what fullness would be, were we to be in that condition, e.g., of peace or wholeness: or able to act on that level of integrity or generosity or abandonment or self-forgetfulness. But sometimes there will moments of experienced fullness, of joy and fulfillment, where we feel ourselves there. Let one example, drawn from the autobiography of Bede Griffiths, stand for many:

“One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can only heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset. I remember the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all year round and I had never noticed it. As I walked I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I though that I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before, If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised. I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song over my head, and then sank still singing to rest. Everything grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth, I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.”

Modern Unbelievers: The Power Within
For modern unbelievers…the power to reach fullness is within. There are different variations of this. One is that which centers on our nature as rational beings. The Kantian variation is the most upfront form of this. We have the power as a rational agency to make the laws by which we live. This is something so greatly superior to the force of mere nature in us, in the form of desire, that when we contemplate it without distortion, we cannot but feel reverence (Achtung) for this power.

The place of fullness is where we manage finally to give this power full reign, and so to live by it. We have a feeling of receptivity, when with our full sense of our own fragility and pathos as desiring beings, we look up to the power of law-giving with admiration and awe. But this doesn’t in the end mean that there is any reception from outside; the power is within; and the more we realize this power, the more we become aware that it is within, that morality must be autonomous (functioning independently without control by others) and not heteronomous (subject to another’s laws or rule).

Later a Feuerbachian theory of alienation can be added to this: we project God because of our early sense of this awesome power which we mistakenly place outside us; we need to appropriate it for human beings. But Kant didn’t take this step. …There may be a more rigorous naturalism…but within this kind of naturalism, we often find an admiration for the power of cool, disengaged reason, capable of contemplating the world and human life without illusion and of acting lucidly for the best in the interest of human flourishing.

A certain awe still surrounds reason as a critical power, capable of liberating us from illusion and blind forces of instinct, as well as the phantasies bred of our fear and narrowness and pusillanimity (timidity, cowardliness, irresolute; faintheartedness). The nearest thing to fullness lies in this power of reason, and it is entirely ours, developed if it is through our own, often heroic action. (And here the giants of modern “scientific” reason are often named: Copernicus, Darwin, Freud. ….

The sources of power are not transcendent (existing apart from the material universe: said of God). They are to be found in Nature, or in our own inner depths, or in both. We can recognize theories of immanence (present throughout the universe: said of God) …most notably certain ecological ethics of our day, particularly deep ecology (ecology = relations between living organisms and their environment; deep ecology= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology) …(These) views have certain analogies to the religious reaction to the unbelieving Enlightenment, in that they stress reception over against self-sufficiency; but they are views which intend to remain immanent, and are often as hostile, if not more so, to religion than the disengaged ones.

The Presumption Of Unbelief
We have changed from a condition in which belief was the default option, not just fit for the naive but also for those who knew, considered, talked abut atheism; to a condition in which for more and more people unbelieving construals seem at first blush the only plausible ones. They can only approach, without ever gaining the condition of “naïve” atheists, in the way that their ancestors were naive, semi-pagan  believers; but this seems to them the overwhelming plausible construal, and it is difficult to understand people adopting another. So much so that they easily reach for rather gross error theories to explain religious belief: people are afraid of uncertainty, the unknown; they’re weak in the head, crippled by guilt, etc.

That is not to say that everyone is in this condition. Our modern civilization is made up of a host of societies, sub-societies and milieu, all rather different from each other. But the presumption of unbelief has become dominant in more and more other milieu; and has achieved hegemony in certain crucial ones, in the academic and intellectual life, for instance; whence it can more easily extend itself to others….To put the point in different terms, belief in God isn’t quite the same thing in 1500 and 2000.

The Shift In Background: Understanding The Differences In Terms Of Experience And Sensibility
It is this shift in background, in the whole context in which we experience and search for fullness that I am calling the coming of a secular age….How did we move from a condition where, in Christendom, people lived naively within a theistic construal, to one in which we all shunt between two stances, in which everyone’s construal shows up as such; and in which, moreover, unbelief has become for many the major default option?…

We have to understand the differences between these two options not just in terms of creeds, but also in terms of differences of experience and sensibility. And on this latter level, we have to take account of two important differences: first, there is the massive change in the whole background of belief or unbelief, that is the passing to the earlier “naïve framework, and the rise of the “reflective” one. And secondly we have to be aware of how believers and unbelievers can experience their world very differently….

We have moved from a world in which the place of fullness was understood as unproblematically outside of “beyond” human life, to a conflicted age in which this construal is challenged by others which place it (in a wide range of different ways) “within” human life.

An Immanent Order In Nature: The Great Invention Of The West
The great invention of the West was that of an immanent order in Nature, whose working could be systematically understood and explained on its own terms, leaving open the question whether this whole order had a deeper significance, and whether, if it did, we should infer a transcendent Creator beyond it.

This notion of the “immanent” involved denying – or at least isolating and problematizing – any form of interpenetration between the things of Nature on one hand and the “supernatural” on the other, this understood in terms of the one transcendent God,  or of Gods, or magic forces, or whatever.

The Resources That Society Offers
Every person, and every society, lives with or by some conception(s) of what human flourishing is: What constitutes a fulfilled life? What makes life really worth living? What would we most admire people for? We can’t help asking these and related questions in our lives. And our struggles to answer them define the view or views that we try to live by, or between which we hover.

At another level these views are codified, sometimes in philosophical theories, sometimes in moral codes, sometimes in religious practices and devotion. Those and the various ill-formulated practices which people around us engage constitute the resources that our society offers each one of us as we try to lead our lives….

Buddhism and Christianity
In both Buddhism and Christianity, there is something similar to spite of the great difference in doctrine, This is that the believer or devout person is called on to make a profound inner break with the goals of flourishing in their own case; they are called on, that is, to detach themselves from their own flourishing, to the point of the extinction of self in one case, or to that of renunciation of human fulfillment to serve God. The respective patterns are clearly visible in the exemplary figures. The Buddha achieves Enlightenment; Christ consents to a degrading death to follow his Father’s will….

In the Christian case, the very point of renunciation requires that the ordinary flourishing forgone be confirmed as valid. Unless living the full span were a good, Christ’s giving of himself to death couldn’t have the meaning it does. In this it is utterly different from Socrates’ death, which the latter portrays as leaving this condition for a better one.

Here we see the unbridgeable gulf between Christianity and Greek philosophy. God wills ordinary human flourishing, and a great part of what is reported in the Gospels consists in Christ making this possible for the people whose afflictions he heals. The call to renounce doesn’t negate the value of flourishing; it is rather a call to center everything on God, even if it be at the cost of forgoing this un-substitutable good; and the fruit of this forgoing is that it become on one level the source of flourishing to others, and on another level, a collaboration with the restoration of a fuller flourishing by God. It is a mode of healing wounds and “repairing the world” (Here I am borrowing the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam).

This means that flourishing and renunciation cannot simply be collapsed into each other to make a single goal, by as it were, pitching the renounced goods overboard as unnecessary ballast on the journey of life, in the manner of Stoicism. There remains a fundamental tension in Christianity. Flourishing is good, nevertheless seeking it is not our ultimate goal. But even where we renounce it, we re-affirm it, because we follow God’s will in being a channel for it to others, and ultimately to all….

Buddhism also has this notion that the renouncer is source of compassion for those who suffer. There is an analogy between karuna and agape. And over the centuries in Buddhist civilization there developed parallel with Christendom, a distinction of vocation between radical renouncers, and those who go on living within the forms of life aiming at ordinary flourishing, while trying to accumulate merit or a future life.

Self-Sufficient Humanism And The Secular Age
Now the point in bringing out this distinction between human flourishing and the goals which go beyond it is this. I would like to claim that the coming of modern secularity in my sense has been coterminous with the rise of society in which for the first time in history a purely self-sufficient humanism came to be a widely available option. I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true. …

A secular age is one in which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing become conceivable; or better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people. This is the crucial link between secularity and self-sufficing humanism.

A Polemic Against “Subtraction Stories”
I will be making a continuing polemic against what I call “subtraction stories”. Concisely put, I mean by this stories of modernity in general, and secularity in particular, which explain them by human beings having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier confining horizons , or illusions, or limitations of knowledge.

What emerges from this process –modernity or secularity – is to be understood in terms of underlying features of human nature which were there all along, but had been impeded by what is now set aside. Against this kind of story, I will steadily be arguing that Western modernity, including its secularity, is the fruit of new inventions, newly constructed self-understandings and related practices, and can’t be explained in terms of perennial features of human life.

Three Modes Of God’s Felt Presence That Disappeared
One important part of the picture (why it was virtually impossible not to believe in God in 1500 while in 2000 many find this not only easy but inescapable.

(1)  The natural world they lived in, which had its place in the cosmos they imagined, testified to divine purpose and action; and not just in the obvious way which we can still understand and (at least many of us) appreciate today, that its order and design bespeaks creation, but also because the great events in this natural order, storms, droughts, floods, plagues, as well as years of exceptional fertility and flourishing were seen as acts of God, as the now dead metaphor of our legal language still bears witness.

(2)  God was also implicated in the very existence of society (but not descried as such — this is a modern term – rather as polis, kingdom, church or whatever). A kingdom could only be conceived as grounded in something higher than mere human action in secular time. And beyond that, the life of the various associations which made up society, parishes, boroughs, guilds, and so on, were interwoven with ritual and worship…. Once could not but encounter God everywhere.

(3)  People lived in an “enchanted” world. This is perhaps not the best expression; it seems to evoke light and fairies, But I am invoking here its negation, Weber’s expression “disenchantment” as a  description of our modern condition. …The enchanted world in this sense is the world of spirits, demons, and moral forces which our ancestors lived in.

…Now the disappearance of these three modes of God’s felt presence in our world, while it certainly facilitates this change, couldn’t by itself bring it about. Because we can certainly go on experiencing fullness as gift from God, even in a disenchanted world, a secular society, and a post-cosmic universe. In order to be able not to, we needed an alternative.

And so the story …will relate not only how God’s presence receded in these three dimensions; it also has to tell how something other than God could become the necessary objective pole of moral or spiritual aspiration of “fullness.” …What I’ll be concerned with is the Entstehungsgeschichte (developing history) of exclusive humanism.

Modern (Exclusive )Humanism Produced A Substitute For Agapē: The Buffered Self
In this respect, of course, science is helping to disenchant the universe, contributed to opening the way for exclusive humanism. A crucial condition for this was new sense of the self and its place in the cosmos: not open and porous and vulnerable to a world of spirits and powers, but what I want to call “buffered.” But it took more than disenchantment to produce the buffered self; it was also necessary to have confidence in our own powers of moral ordering…

It had to include the active capacity to shape and fashion our world, natural and social; and it had to be actuated by some drive to human beneficence. To put this second requirement in a way which refers back to the religious tradition, modern humanism, in addition to being activist and interventionist (like Epicureanism, that taught ataraxia — ataraxia was synonymous with the only true happiness possible for a person. It signifies the detached and balanced state of mind that shows that a person has transcended the material world and is now harvesting all the comforts of philosophy had to produce some substitute for agapē. …This couldn’t be done overnight.

2007 Templeton Prize and 2008 Kyoto Prize winner Charles Margrave Taylor is reputed to be a genial man with a disposition to laughter, often at himself. Perhaps more importantly, for a thinker who coined the term “malaise of modernity” he is also an optimist. That he, is considered a philosopher’s philosopher by his peers, exhibiting a rare mastery across an impressive spectrum of ideas only increases admiration. The author of more than a dozen books, including the widely praised “Sources of the Self” and the masterful “A Secular Age,” (reading selections in another post) Taylor’s work explores a dizzying array of disciplines — philosophy, religion, political theory, moral theory, and ethics, among others. Lindsay Waters, executive editor at Harvard University Press, has said, “Charles Taylor’s passionate philosophy allows him to zero in on the most distinctively human issues of our time, and not be afraid.”

A Bibliography of Charles Taylor (His comments on each follow the titles)

The Explanation of Behavior. (Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1964) This was my doctoral dissertation. It was an all-out attack on psychological behaviorism, which tried to show that only muddled philosophical thinking could hide from its practitioners that their research program was reaching a dead-end.

Hegel. (Cambridge University Press, 1975; various languages) This was an attempt to write an introduction to Hegel’s philosophy which would make his work understandable to people trained in the analytical tradition. It was originally commissioned for the Penguin series on major philosophers, but it rapidly outgrew the permitted dimensions for this series and had to be published elsewhere. Why Hegel? Because I sensed then that I wanted to attempt the kind of philosophically informed reflection on history, and particularly the rise of modernity, that Hegel had pioneered. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his actual results (and I have big disagreements with it), you have to come to terms with Hegel’s work before you form your own view.

Hegel and Modern Society. (Cambridge University Press, 1979; various languages) This was basically a shortened version of Hegel, without some of the difficult parts (for instance, on the Logic), and with more emphasis on the relevance of Hegel today.

Philosophical Papers Vol. 1: Human Agency and Language.
Philosophical Papers Vol. 2: Philosophy and the Human Sciences. (Cambridge University Press, 1985) In these two collections, I brought together a number of papers written in the previous two decades. These were mostly critiques of mechanistic, and/or reductive, and/or atomistic approaches to human sciences. Following a similar line to The Explanation of Behavior, I tried to show that the popularity of these approaches, which modeled human on natural science, depended on faulty philosophical thinking and /or obviously over-simplified views of human life. One paper in particular in these collections brought together a number of these themes: “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man.”

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. (Harvard University Press, 1989; various languages) This was my first large-scale attempt to make a philosophically-informed reflection on history. The theme was the development of the modern understanding of the human agent, with its peculiar and often conflicting features: an individual, potentially disengaged from history, society and the body, and yet with inner depths, calling for further definition through expressive activity, with an identity which he or she can contribute to define. My thesis is that we are all caught in the tension between what we have drawn from the Cartesian-Lockean tradition and the Enlightenment on one hand, and what we have learned from the Romantic-expressive movement on the other.

The Malaise of Modernity. (Anansi, 1991; various languages). Published in the United States as The Ethics of Authenticity (Harvard University Press, 1992). This text was the basis for my Massey Lectures, a series of talks given each year on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It tried to explore our conflictual relation to modernity, in particular to modern individualism, the stress on instrumental reason; and it looked at the problems these pose for democracy, largely in a Tocquevillean spirit. I attempted to describe the ethic of authenticity, which emerges from the Romantic-expressive tradition I had articulated in Sources, and to discuss the ways in which this can be led astray and trivialized in contemporary society.

Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”. (with Amy Gutman and others) (Princeton University Press, 1992; various languages) Modernity has produced a new concept of identity, a definition of self which we partly take over from our world and our history, and partly redefine ourselves. This has had a profound impact on our political life. Issues which might have been fought out in terms of equality versus privilege, or the fight against exploitation, in the past, are now frequently framed in terms of personal and collective identities and their alleged non- or mis-recognition. I was trying in this essay to analyze this new phenomenon, drawing heavily on conflicts with which I am (all too) familiar, those surrounding Quebec nationalism, language rights and the issue of independence.

Philosophical Arguments. (Harvard University Press, 1995; various languages) This is another collection similar to the two published in 1985, and it reflects further developments of the same themes, with a greater emphasis on epistemological issues.

A Catholic Modernity? (Oxford University Press, 1999) This is a published version of the Marianist Lecture that I gave in Dayton. I try to cast the issue of how the Catholic Church should relate to the modern world, in the context of an understanding of Catholic Christianity as capable of finding a place in, without ever identifying with, all human civilizations and cultures. I tried to look at modern Western civilization as another such culture, analogous to the unfamiliar cultures which missionaries may find themselves in. I think this kind of move dissolves the too close identification which Western Christians have with the Modern West, seen as a former Christendom partly in the process of apostasy, with all the multiple resentments and attempts to hold on to an idealized past which this entails.

Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. (Harvard University Press, 2002; various languages) This is one of the (three) products of my Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1999. The theme of those lectures, delivered at the Vienna Institute of the Human Sciences, was the rise of the contemporary secular age in the West (see below A Secular Age). This was an off-shoot, a look back at William James’ Gifford Lectures, also delivered in Edinburgh a century before (1902). I note the often uncanny parallels between what he said then, and what we see now.

Modern Social Imaginaries. (Duke University Press, 2004) This is the second product of the Gifford Lectures, an expanded version of one of the chapters in A Secular Age, where I try to define the shifts in our way of collectively imagining ourselves as a society which occurred in the development of Western modernity and helped to constitute it. I examine particularly the way we have come to understand ourselves as existing in an economy, participating in a public sphere, and being part of a citizen state.

A Secular Age. (Harvard University Press, to be published Fall 2007) This will be the third (and central) product of the Gifford Lectures. It is an attempt to follow the development of the modern Western secular age, which at the same time is an attempt to define what we mean by this term. It is a basic thesis of the book that these two questions: “What is secularity?” and “How did it develop?” can only be properly addressed together. In the course of it, I challenge what for a long time was the dominant “master narrative” of secularization, as the inevitable decline of religion with advancing modernity; and this, of course, involves a rather different understanding of the place of religion and spirituality today.

Reading Selections from  Charles Taylor’s Templeton Prize News Conference, March 14, 2007

About the Prize
I want to say first how deeply honoured I am to be chosen for the Templeton Prize. I believe that the goal Sir John Templeton has chosen is of the greatest contemporary importance and relevance: we have somehow to break down the barriers between our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study (what the Germans gather in the term “Wissenschaft”) on one hand, and the domain of spirit, on the other. This has been one of the driving goals of my own intellectual work, and to have it recognized as such fills me with an unstable mixture of joy and humility.

Sir John has seen, I believe, that the barriers between science and spirituality are not only ungrounded, but are also crippling. They impede crucial further insight. This case has been eloquently argued by the physicists, biologists and cosmologists who have been awarded the prize in recent years. But I feel that now a further step is being taken. The divorce of natural science and religion has been damaging to both; but it is equally true that the culture of the humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to the spiritual, and that in my case, the attempt to break down these barriers is being recognized and honoured.

A Deafness To The Spiritual Dimension
The deafness of many philosophers, social scientists and historians to the spiritual dimension can be remarkable. And this is the more damaging in that it affects the culture of the media and of educated public opinion in general. I take a striking case, a statement, not admittedly by a social scientist, but by a Nobel Laureate cosmologist, Steven Weinberg. I take it, because I find that it is often repeated in the media and in informal argument. Weinberg said (I quote from memory): “there are good people who do good things, and bad people who do bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

On one level, it is astonishing that anyone who lived through a good part of the 20th Century could say something like this. What are we to make of those noble, well-intentioned Bolsheviks, Marxist materialist atheists to a man (and occasional woman), who ended up building one of the most oppressive and murderous brace of regimes in human history? When people quote this phrase to me, or some equivalent, and I enter this objection, they often reply, “but Communism was a religion,” a reply which shifts the goal-posts and upsets the argument.

When “Religion” Means The Murderously Irrational
But it’s worth pondering for a minute what lies behind this move. The “Weinberg principle,” if I might use this term, is being made tautologically true, because any set of beliefs which can induce decent people, who would never kill for personal gain, to murder for the cause, is being defined as “religion.” “Religion” is being defined as the murderously irrational.

Pretty sloppy thinking. But it is also crippling. What the speaker is really expressing is something like this: the terrible violence of the 20th Century has nothing to do with right-thinking, rational, enlightened people like me. The argument is then joined on the other side by certain believers who point out that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., were all enemies of religion, and feel that good Christians like me have no part in such horrors. This conveniently forgets the Crusades, the Inquisition, and much else.

Both sides need to be wrenched out of their complacent dream, and see that no-one, just in virtue of having the right beliefs, is immune from being recruited to group violence: from the temptation to target another group which is made responsible for all our ills, from the illusion of our own purity which comes from our readiness to combat this evil force with all our might. We urgently need to understand what makes whole groups of people ready to be swept up into this kind of project.

A Need For A New Insight Into The Human Propensity For Violence
But in fact, we have only a very imperfect grasp on this. Some of our most insightful scholars, like Ren Girard, or Sudhir Kakar, have studied it. Great writers, like Dostoevsky, have cast great light on it, but it remains still mysterious. What is equally imperfectly understood is the way in which charismatic spiritual leadership, of a Gandhi, a Mandela, a Tutu, can bring people back from the brink.

But without this kind of spiritual initiative, the best-intentioned efforts to put human history on a new, and more humane footing, have often turned this history into a slaughter bench, in Hegel’s memorable phrase. It is a sobering thought that Robespierre, in the first discussions on the new revolutionary constitution for France, voted against the death penalty. Yet the path to this peaceable republic, which would spare the lives of even its worst criminals, somehow led through the nightmare of the Terror.

We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence, and following the authors I mentioned above, this cannot be a reductive sociobiological one, but must take full account of the human striving for meaning and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion. But we don’t even begin to see where we have to look as long as we accept the complacent myth that people like us (enlightened secularists, or believers) are not part of the problem. We will pay a high price if we allow this kind of muddled thinking to prevail.

The Secularization Thesis
The barriers between our social sciences and the spiritual dimension of life are crippling in a whole host of other ways as well. I have recently been working on the issue of what we mean in describing our present civilization in the West as “secular.” For a long time, in mainstream sociology this development was taken as unproblematic and inevitable. Certain of the features of modernity: economic development, urbanization, rising mobility, higher educational levels, were seen as inevitably bringing about a decline in religious belief and practice. This was the famous “secularization thesis.” For a long time, this view dominated thinking in social science and history. More recent events have shaken this conviction, even among mainstream scholars.

But well before this revision occurred, a minority of scholars were already turning the theory inside out. In particular, David Martin in his epochal, General Theory of Secularization. The main thrust of this work, and of others who have followed, is that secularization theory was not just factually wrong. It also misconceived the whole process.

New Forms Of Religious Life
It was indeed, true that the various facets of modernization destabilized older, traditional forms of religious life; but new forms were always being re-invented, and some of these took on tremendous importance. David Martin has traced the development of new congregational forms through Methodism, and various waves of revival in the United States, through the birth of Pentacostal forms about a century ago, which are now spreading with great speed in all parts of the globe. Equally far-reaching changes have occurred in Catholic Churches in many parts of the world.

Breaking out of the old intellectual mould opens up a whole new field of great importance: what are the new forms of religion which are developing in the West? And what relation do they have to those which are growing elsewhere, in Asia, Africa, Latin America? This is part of what I am trying to study in my work, drawing on the pioneering analyses of David Martin, on the writings of Robert Bellah, and on the recent work of younger sociologists, like Jos Casanova and Hans Joas.

Some of these forms, like those in which religion or confessionality becomes the basis of a quasi-nationalist political mobilization, have obviously assumed immense, even threatening proportions in our day. We urgently need to understand their dynamic, their benefits and dangers, an area that the old framework of secularization theory hid from sight.

John Templeton’s Insight
In this domain too, John Templeton’s insight turns out to be valid, a blindness to the spiritual dimension of human life makes us incapable of exploring issues which are vital to our lives. Or to turn it around and state the positive: bringing the spiritual back in opens domains in which important and even exciting discoveries become possible.

I am happy to be engaged in this work, among a number of others: the sociologists I mentioned above, and some philosophers, like Alasdair MacIntyre. I sense in this prize awarded to me a recognition not only of my work but of this collective effort. This awakens powerful, if somewhat confused emotions: joy, pride, and a sense of inadequacy mingle together. But above all I feel the great satisfaction of knowing that this whole area of work will acquire a higher saliency through the award of this Prize; and I feel the most heartfelt gratitude to Sir John and to the

Templeton Foundation Interview with Dr. Charles Taylor

In the following Q&A, Professor Taylor explains the importance of the concept of mystery to our understanding of the universe, why “God is not Dead,” and whether he is a fox or a hedgehog.

JTF: In your 2007 Templeton Prize statement you spoke of “the deafness of many philosophers, social scientists, and historians to the spiritual dimensions.” What do you think accounts for this deafness? Where is that deafness coming from?

CT: Well, we can go back and back and back … the immediate cause is that people bought into a very simple narrative of secularization. Modernity – however you want to define it, be it economic growth or urbanization or science and technology, or the whole package – makes religion shrink. But that’s not sufficient to explain it intellectually. For a long time people tried to explain the Reformation in economic terms, which is the same kind of deafness. So they buy very deeply into this narrative and I think we all live by narratives. And always have

JTF: The ancient Mayans said the universe is made out of stories.

CT: That’s right and they’re absolutely right. The thing is these people believe in science and they don’t think they are living by narrative. They think they are just picking up the facts.

JTF: Science is just a magnet that picks up facts?

CT: Yes … there is this idea of science, and “God is Dead” as part of the background to this narrative, that tells you that you don’t need to worry about religion.

JTF: Isn’t “God is Dead” getting old as a concept?

CT: You’re right. But there’s a lag. People – and I’ve lived a long time – people in the last few decades are more embarrassed about just saying “God is Dead,” or religion doesn’t count … But these disciplines are like a large tanker. They are not easy to turn. You can’t turn academic disciplines around in six months. They are trained, and they have entire dissertations, and a lot invested (laughter).

JTF: In a certain sense we’re talking about “God is Dead” as an intellectual exercise, but if you take that idea out of the academy and apply it on a global scale, it doesn’t track. Religious activity is very high world-wide and over 90% of Americans say they in fact believe in god. Doesn’t this create a tension for the “God is Dead” narrative?

CT: Well, not necessarily because the people who are really sure of this picture, of this narrative, they have all sorts of ways of accounting for this. They will always account for it by some other factor, be it economic or social factors, etc.

JTF: Is religious belief too big a phenomenon to be explained by one or two reductionistic theories?

CT: Yes, but it’s more than that. This is something that you cannot ultimately prove except by impressing people with the fact that you have a more intelligent interpretation all the time. But it is just evident that human beings are religious animals. There’s something that intrinsically strikes people about spirituality and that’s part of the motivation. It’s part of the reason why it goes on. And it you try to circle around that, you go nowhere.

JTF: What do you make of the Richard Dawkins/Sam Harris argument that religious moderates of all faiths empower, and in some cases allow, religious extremists to exist by dint of their tolerance? In a sense the moderate broad-mindedness enables the extremist’s narrow-mindedness.

CT: This doesn’t make an awful lot of sense to me. I know my Muslim friends are not tolerating extremists. They say, “This is awful, a distortion, a travesty of what I consider my faith.” Now, if they aren’t saying that, then it is a political criticism to make to them very severely, “Why are you shutting up?” But what Dawkins means is that by propounding the core doctrines of Islam or Christianity we are somehow empowering Pat Robertson’s or what have you. That seems to me to be absurd. Particularly if you think these doctrines are correct, and that these doctrines are the only antidote to this kind of rage. I would also throw back to Dawkins, ‘Are you empowering Stalin? Are you empowering Pol Pot?’ These people took their violence out in destroying religious institutions. So is Dawkins empowering them by saying that religion is a terrible curse, a virus that has to be stamped out? I’m sure he would say “no, Joseph Stalin, don’t shoot those priests. Be a nice guy!” But that’s exactly what we’re trying to say to religious extremists! So if we’re supposed to stop promoting these doctrines because people carry them to extremes, then he is surely guilty of doing the same thing.

JTF: Why are we encountering fundamentalism–in all stripes–atheists, Christians, Islam right now?

CT: We’re living in an age of anxiety where everybody is made insecure in their own deep sense of meaning by the fact that there are all these competing elements. One of the ways you can calm down that anxiety about your own sense of meaning is by diabolizing the others, making it absolutely clear and undeniable that they are wrong.

JTF: Some scientists criticize religion for not properly understanding science’s incredible ability to explain the natural world.

CT: The Christian tradition got totally pulled off-track in the 17^th century where a very simple scientific influenced notion–through Newton–arrived at design; thinking of the universe like a clock.

JTF: They thought if we just start to peel off the hands and then we’ll get to the inner cogs and we have just start to really understand the universe as a mechanism.

CT: They saw it as this fantastic design. But they lost the sense of a really great mystery; the sense that there is maybe something here we can’t understand. And a great deal of Christian apologetic since then has been based on this incredible oversimplification of our universe. The result has been, in a certain sense, a kind of not very fruitful spirituality.

JTF: The battle over the mystery that you speak of is one that many scientists are keen to engage in. Will science come up against a fundamental limit?

CT: I don’t know. It’s something you’d have to guess at. We know that Newton had oversimplifying ideas. Although the mystery has been pushed further out, it’s not just the mystery of how it all began that is important here, but there’s also of course the absolutely untouched yet mystery of how we–intelligent beings–arose out of all of this. Today, the equivalent of the Newtonian mind are people in genetics. They say, ‘we’ve got the human genome.’ But it’s laughable, they are no closer to understanding how it really works. People talk about a gene for this, a gene for that. But then you’ve got to press them, how does it really work? They say, ’something switches it off, and then something switches it on.’ What’s missing here is a holistic account of how it all works. My hunch is that it’s very, very unlikely that we will have a complete resolution on how this extraordinary rise of species came about in terms that are consonant with current molecular biology.

JTF: As a philosopher, what do you think about the role of neuroscience in pushing back this mystery?

CT: I’m not a great expert, but I am a great consumer of it. The people that are really cutting-edge are making a lot of sense, but they are more backing me up than anything else… what we really need is a kind of field theory and nobody really knows what that could be.

JTF: If you were hired to consult with all the great world religions, with the idea toward finding a pluralistic solution that guaranteed mutual respect, how would you get around the obvious problem that the closer the world religions come together, the more they must flatten their beliefs into a universal theme, denying their depth and differences?

CT: It’s a very, very deep question and when I’ve been in dialogues across these barriers, that haven’t been of that watering down kind, but where there’s something else, there’s a deep sense that there’s something very important and valid there even if you don’t end up believing it. That in this other spirituality there is something very deep. I’ve talked to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and I’ve said ‘tell me what really makes you tick, and don’t water it down, and I’ll do the same for you.’ And this has been a remarkably spiritually rewarding experience for me. You don’t need to find some middle-point, some syntheses, that doesn’t make sense . . . The Dalai Lama, someone I admire very much and I’ve had some discussions with said about this issue, ‘you don’t put a yak’s head on a sheep’s body.’

JTF: Do you think the 21^st century is going to be pulled towards religious pluralism? Or do you think the forces of fundamentalism are going to be a wedge into that concept?

CT: Well, the jury’s out. We have a battle on our hands whether we end up getting into a clash of civilizations mindset. At the moment in the West, we have a huge cultural fight within ourselves against Islamophobia. There’s a kind of mindless Islamophobia that says all 1.2 billion Muslims believe the same thing and that what they believe makes them do terrible things. I’ve seen this in Europe and in North America and we have to fight this kind of thinking very, very hard.

JTF: You say in your JTF essay that now more than ever we need “trail-blazers, who will open new or retrieve forgotten modes of prayer, meditation, friendship, solidarity and compassionate action.” Who are some figures that qualify in your mind as past trail-blazers?

CT: Well John Main, who created a Christian meditation practice, and Mother Theresa come to mind.

JTF: There is a long-standing debate about the relationship between science and religion. Some see modern science as a new kind of explanatory power, capable of pushing into territory once held exclusively by religion. Others see science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria?” (To quote Stephen Jay Gould) Where do you fall in this dialogue?

CT: Science and religion are not quite totally non-overlapping magisteria, but he is right in the sense that if anybody said, ‘I’m going to solve all the problems of the meaning of life, by only looking at the evolutionary view,’ they would be mad, they do not understand the limitations. Or, on the other hand, reading the Bible to understand how human beings evolved, that’s equally unrealistic.

JTF: So it is perfectly reasonable to believe in both God and evolution…

CT: Yes, of course.

JTF: Aristotle talked about the good life and what it means to live a good life. What is the Taylor view of how to live the good life in the 21^st century?

CT: You have to look at it like this: what do you want to give to your children and grandchildren? You want to give them some range of these very profound spiritual languages that have come down to us, with the understanding that they will always have to tweak them and change them, but you want to give them some starting insight. What is really disconcerting in a lot of the modern world is how many young people no longer have contact with Shakespeare, or what a biblical reference is, and they are really cut off.

JTF: You work has focused on some of the most horrifying realities of human existence: religion and violence, the malaise of modernity, and yet in so much of your writing contains real optimism. Where does that come from?

CT: Yes, it’s terrible. It’s just temperamental, I can’t stop myself! My friends keep saying I’m ridiculously optimistic.

JTF: Isn’t being optimistic a little bit at odds with philosophy?

CT: Definitively, it’s at odds with the zeitgeist. But I recognize that I must be as realistic as possible and that I must not get carried away. On the other hand, if you don’t have optimism you just give up in a way that I don’t want to do.

JTF: You studied under the famed political philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin at Oxford, Are you a fox or hedgehog?

CT: (laughing) Oh very definitely a hedgehog.

JTF: You’re a hedgehog? He said you were a hedgehog, but I’m surprised to hear you say that.

CT: Everything connects.

JTF: Everything connects, but I see in your range of interests and your ability to go across multiple disciplines, a fox-like demeanor. Are you not a hedgehog disguised as a fox?

CT: Yes, ok, as a fox. (laughs). But don’t blow my cover!

Las siguientes notas tienen como fin el hacer de esquema de práctica dirigida para los alumnos del curso de Temas de filosofía contemporánea de Cecilia Monteagudo, del cual soy jefe de práctica. Tiene como fin, pues, el ser una especie de guía esquemática e introductoria a una serie de problemas abiertos (y relacionados), en parte, con la filosofía política desarrollada por el filósofo Charles Taylor. El texto de base para esta sesión es el artículo “La política del reconocimiento”, en: Taylor, Charles, El multiculturalismo y la política del reconocimiento. Ensayos de Charles Taylor, México D.F.: FCE, 1993.

***

Taylor empieza la sección diciéndonos que los dos principales exponentes de los fundamentos modernos de la política de la universalidad son Kant y Rousseau. Este último fue uno de los que inició el discurso del reconocimiento, aunque no con esta palabra, a partir de la propuesta del respeto universal hacia todo ser humano. En Rousseau se encuentra, por ejemplo, la fuerte creencia de que los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales y que las desigualdades no son un factor natural, sino social (Cfr. El discurso sobre el origen de las desigualdades entre los hombres). De ahí que Rousseau arremeta contra las jerarquías que se pretenden naturales, contra la nobleza y el linaje. En pocas palabras, de lo que se trata aquí es de una postura que critica fuertemente el concepto de honor que vimos en el primer post acerca de este tema.

Rousseau sostiene que la dependencia en la modernidad se ha mostrado como un tipo de opresión, aunque sí llegue a considerar que en una república ideal, pensada desde el mundo clásico, la dependencia (o interdependencia) no sería necesariamente un tipo de dominación, coacción o limitación. La diferencia esencial se encuentra, para Rousseau, en que dicha dependencia tiene como trasfondo una real y efectiva igualdad entre todos los ciudadanos que se reconocen como miembros libres e iguales de la república de la cual forman parte.

La respuesta parece ser la igualdad , o más exactamente, la equilibrada reciprocidad que constituye su base. Podríamos decir (aun cuando Rousseau no lo diga) que en este contexto republicano ideal cada quien dependía de todos los demás, pero con la misma igualdad. Rousseau afirma que el rasgo clave de estos eventos, juegos, fiestas y recitales, que hizo de ellas las fuentes del patriotismo y de la virtud, fue la ausencia total de diferenciación o de distinción entre las diversas clases de ciudadanos. Esos eventos se celebraban al aire libre, y en ellos participaban todos. El pueblo constituía, a la vez, los espectadores y eñ espectáculo. El contraste que Rousseau establece en este pasaje es con los servicios religiosos en iglesias cerradas, y ante todo con el teatro moderno en salas cerradas, para en ingresar en las cuales hay que pagar y que se integra por una clase especial de profesionales que se presentan ante los demás (72-73).

Desde esta perspectiva Rousseau puede conciliar la comunidad de un nosotros, con un proyecto común, a la vez que afirma la identidad particular de cada miembro en vínculos intersubjetivos que no se caracterizan por el antagonismo que caracteriza a la sociedades fundadas en un honor que no puede ser para todos. Lo que debemos rechazar es el pensar la búsqueda de la estima de los demás desde los criterios y parámetros del honor, para empezar a pensarla desde los marcos que provenientes de una ética fundada en la dignidad y la política universalista.

El remedio no consiste en rechazar la importancia de la estima sino entrar en un sistema totalmente distinto que se caracterice por la igualdad, la reciprocidad y la unidad de propósito. Esta última hace posible la igualdad de la estima, pero el hecho de que la estima sea, en principio, igual en este sistema, es lo que resulta esencial a esa misma unidad de propósito. Bajo la égida de la voluntad general, todos los ciudadanos virtuosos serán honrados por igual. Ha nacido la época de la dignidad (75-76).

La idea es buscar el reconocimiento, pero en los marcos universalistas. Hegel muestra, a juicio de Taylor, que dicha dialéctica solamente puede resolverse satisfactoriamente entre iguales. Sin embargo, los límites de Rousseau se hacen claros cuando vemos las consecuencias radicales e inevitables que se desprenden de sus supuestos y planteamientos:

En Rousseau, tres cosas parecen inseparables: libertad (no dominación), ausencia de roles diferenciados, y un propósito común compacto. Todos debemos depender de la voluntad general para que no surjan formas bilaterales de dependencia. ésta ha sido la fórmula para las formas más terribles de tiranía homogeneizante, comenzando con los jacobinos para terminar con los regímenes totalitarios de nuestro siglo. Pero aun si hacemos a un lado el tercer elemento de la triada, alinear la libertad igualitaria con la ausencia de diferenciación no ha dejado de ser un tentador modo de pensar. Y dondequiera que reina, sea en las modalidades del pensamiento feminista o en la política liberal, el margen que deja para reconocer la diferencia resulta sumamente estrecho (77-78).

So we here at CoG have all decided to write a post where we talk about five major influences on our thinking. Since this is a blog about Christianity in no small part, we added the degree of difficulty that Jesus is off limits. I don’t pretend that any of what I write should be considered as the definitive commentaries on these authors. Moreover I would not take this as a “required reading” list as much as I would a sort of intellectual autobiography – I wanted these to be authors who had changed my thinking in one way or another. Now that the caveats are out of the way, here goes:

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky: I don’t think there’s anything new or original that I can add to what has been said about Dostoevsky. Probably inferior to Tolstoy as a conventional novelist – but that’s not at all what he was trying for – at least I don’t think it was. Again to say that Dostoevsky’s grasp of human nature was profound seems cliche. Nonetheless like most people who encounter Dostoevsky for the first time in their late teens or early 20s, I was quite struck by these same observations. His characters are so real and yet so unreal – Shakespearian perhaps? Unlike so many artists who experience a religious conversion, Dostoevsky never got maudlin or sentimental. He did not spare the church or the faithful in his works. His observations on the human condition defy reduction the way those of a good writer should. I’ll end with one of my favourites:

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”

2. Naomi Klein’s No Logo: I know this book can feel stuck in the late-90s zeitgeist in which it was written. Why put it down on list of books that influence me? So here’s my case for Naomi Klein: In 2000 when I read No Logo my political sympathies were different than they are now – I thought that Mike Harris conservatism was a superb way to run a government – low taxes and laissez faire policies would let business improve everything on its own. The lasting effect of No Logo on my thinking has little to do with the whole “battle of Seattle” culture-jamming moment of its release (No Logo itself didn’t put too much stock in that kind of street theatre as a way to remake society). Rather it has given me an abiding suspicion of free markets – mainly because this book made it clear to me how much global corporations actually seek to use their power to undermine free markets. Changing the world is perhaps best done outside of both corporate and government structures as much as possible – a thesis that Klein would further develop in her film, The Take.

3. Slavoj Žižek is a difficult one to argue for on this list since I’d never read anything by him until, say, about a year ago. That said, a lot of what Žižek says seems to have already colonized my thinking.

Here’s what I think I’ve learned from him: Žižek illuminates the falsehoods of those who claim that they are non-ideological or post-ideological. Such claims, according to Žižek, are nothing but attempts to smuggle in some kind of a priori ideology and silence critics by accusing them of being the ones who are ideological. Žižek also does a superb job of arguing that modern New Age movements are stalking horses for class-society and oppression. By appealing for harmony and inner peace such groups are really trying to get people to acquiesce to a system that Christians and Marxists can both see (albeit perhaps for not all the same reasons) as oppressive. In fact, Žižek believes that both groups are natural allies against the New Age since both teach that real transformation is possible in this world (as opposed to some immaterial underlying spiritual realm). Related to this refusal to acquiesce to the New Age’s harmonious world perhaps is Žižek’s analysis of violence. Acts of subjective violence: riots, terrorism, assassinations are carried out by individuals or groups that transgress the state’s rules. Meanwhile the state possesses the tools of objective violence, the violence of the system – police, army, prison system, et cetera. Since most of us take these powers of state for granted, these constitute a sort of “background” violence. Transgressing the state is violent, but often so is acquiescing to the state – this is a challenge to pacifism – Christian and otherwise in that our choice is often between different kinds of violence.

4. Robertson Davies was a surprise pick – to me at least, and I’m making the list! He’s the second author on this list who is primarily known for his fiction, though I would argue that he’s the reason that there are fiction authors on this list at all. As a fiction author Davies captured that uniquely Canadian sense of being on the outside looking in at other people’s lives (Fifth Business). The entire Deptford Trilogy explores the idea that there are multiple narratives that apply to any story and that we almost inevitably tell our stories based around a narrative that centers on us – even when we, like Ramsay, try not to do so. From World of Wonders:

“Look at what the politicians write about themselves! Churchill and Hitler and all the rest of them seem suddenly to be secondary figures surrounding Sir Numbskull Poop, who is always in the limelight.”

The Lacanian idea that we are always telling stories about ourselves is something that gets explored in Fifth Business without all that Lacanian language. Stories and myths are of great importance in The Merry Heart, a collection of Davies’ works on writing. This gave me an abiding respect for myth as word that does not refer to a falsehood in need of “busting,” but rather one that denotes the narrative that explains us.

5. Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age seems like a difficult one to justify being on this list. I mean, it’s only two years old and I only finished it a couple months ago. Nonetheless, Taylor’s conception of what it means to live in a “secular age” and his charting of Western society as it moves from the late medieval period through to the 21st Century is remarkable. Taylor dispenses with the typical “subtraction stories” that claim that the development of secularism and of an exclusive materialism was merely a process of taking away progressive layers of superstition. The story of how we came to be living in our current age is far more interesting and far more nuanced than most of us have been led to believe. As far as how this book has affected me, I think part of that still has to be determined. A Secular Age re-invigorated my passion for history – particularly the history of philosophy. I don’t know where that will lead, maybe I’ll revisit this one in a couple years.

So there you have my list, I’ll tag Andrew and Keith to go next.

Las siguientes notas tienen como fin el hacer de esquema de práctica dirigida para los alumnos del curso de Temas de filosofía contemporánea de Cecilia Monteagudo, del cual soy jefe de práctica. Tiene como fin, pues, el ser una especie de guía esquemática e introductoria a una serie de problemas abiertos (y relacionados), en parte, con la filosofía política desarrollada por el filósofo Charles Taylor. El texto de base para esta sesión es el artículo “La política del reconocimiento”, en: Taylor, Charles, El multiculturalismo y la política del reconocimiento. Ensayos de Charles Taylor, México D.F.: FCE, 1993.

***

A partir de los visto en el post anterior, podemos (siguiendo a Taylor) concebir el desarrollo del discurso del reconocimiento en dos niveles fundamentales:

1. Esfera íntima: donde la identidad se da en diálogo con los otros significantes.
2. Esfera pública: donde la política del reconocimiento igualitario va teniendo un papel cada vez más importante.

En el proceso de desarrollo de lo que concierne al nivel de la esfera pública, Taylor quiere señalarnos que el paso del honor a la dignidad engendró el embrión de la política del universalismo. Esta política tiene como posición esencial la afirmación de una dignidad igual para todo ciudadano. Su efecto fue la igualación de los derechos, su universalización.

La política de la dignidad igualitaria se basa en la idea de que todos los seres humanos son igualmente dignos de respeto. Su fundamento lo constituye la idea de lo que en los seres humanos merece respeto, por mucho que tratemos de apartarnos de este trasfondo “metafísico” (65).

En qué grado esto se ha dado, y en qué tipos de derecho, es algo complicado y depende del caso. Lo importante es que ya no se tenga a ciudadanos de “primera clase”, frente a ciudadanos de “segunda clase”. De lo que se trata es de tener ciudadanos libres e iguales entre sí. Sobre lo de los derechos, algunos argumentan que solamente se han universalizado derechos civiles y políticos, más no derechos sociales, lo cual sería un nuevo tipo de segmentación (Cfr. La lectura que hace Sinesio López acerca del cambio del Estado y de la ciudadanía en nuestro país para entender un poco como se habrían dado dichos cambios en nuestro caso particular, aunque el marco conceptual no sea, en sentido estricto, el propuesto por este artículo de Taylor.

Pero mientras se desarrolla este progresivo movimiento de universalización y de igualdad,  tenemos por otra parte el desarrollo de lo que Taylor llama la política de la diferencia. La política de la diferencia plantea, con una base igualmente universalista, que cada ser humano debe ser reconocido en su particularidad y unicidad.

Con la política de la dignidad igualitaria lo que se establece pretende ser universalmente lo mismo, una “canasta” idéntica de derechos e inmunidades; con la política de la diferencia, lo que pedimos que sea reconocido es la identidad única de este individuo o de este grupo, el hecho de que es distinto de todos los demás. la idea es que, precisamente, esta condición de ser distinto es la que se ha pasado por alto, ha sido objeto de glosas y asimilada por una identidad dominante o mayoritaria. Y esta asimilación es el pecado cardinal contra el ideal de autenticidad (61).

De lo que se trata hoy es de ver como mediar y resolver la constante tensión que tenemos entre los ideales de universalidad y particularidad sin llegar a omitir o discriminar. Lo importante es que no caigamos en pensar que el trato diferente siempre es discriminador en un sentido negativo:

Mientras que la política de la dignidad universal luchaba por unas formas de no discriminación que eran enteramente “ciegas” a los modos en que difieren los ciudadanos, en cambio la política de la diferencia a menudo redefine la no discriminación exigiendo que hagamos de estas distinciones la base del tratamiento diferencial. De este modo los miembros de los grupos aborígenes recibirán ciertos derechos y facultades de que no gozan otros canadienses si finalmente aceptamos la exigencia de un autogobierno aborigen, y ciertas minorías recibirán el derecho de excluir a otras para conservar su integridad cultural, y así sucesivamente (62-63).

La política de la universalidad quiere que rescatemos un potencial humano común a todos, del que nadie carece y al nadie se le debe de enajenar. Esta dignidad común es lo que merece un respeto universal (Kant es uno de los que en la modernidad establecieron  algunas de las bases de dicha concepción). La manera como desarrollemos dicha potencialidad es algo que la política de la diferencia quiere que respetemos. De ahí que el respeto a la diversidad y la escucha del otro, algo que también vimos de manera anticipada en Gadamer, sean pieza clave de los proyectos democráticos que contemplen la inetracción y coexistencia pacífica de múltiples cultura y pueblos. De ahí que no se pueda hablar sin más de pueblos “civilizados” o “superiores”, algo que Vattimo nos ha hecho ver también con el fin de la modernidad en términos de una filosofía de la historia racionalista y teleológica.

Sin embargo no debemos olvidar que la cuestión esencial con la que debemos enfrentarnos es la tensión fuertemente antagónica y no resuelta entre ambas políticas surgidas en la modernidad, de la que somos herederos.

Así, estos modos de política que comparten el concepto básico de igualdad de respeto entran en conflicto. Para el uno, el principio de respeto igualitario exige que tratemos a las personas en una forma ciega a la diferencia. La intuición fundamental de que los seres humanos merecen este respeto se centra en lo que es igual para todos. Para el otro, hemos de reconocer y aun fomentar la particularidad. El reproche que el primero hace al segundo es, justamente, que viola el principio de no discriminación. El reproche que el segundo hace al primero es que niega la identidad cuando constriñe a las personas para introducirlas en un molde homogéneo que no les pertenece de suyo. Esto ya será bastante malo si el molde en sí fuese neutral: si no fuera el molde de nadie en particular. Pero en general la queja va más allá, pues expone que ese conjunto de principios ciegos a la diferencia -supuestamente neutral- de la política de la dignidad igualitaria es, en realidad, el reflejo de una cultura hegemónica. Así, según resulta, sólo las culturas minoritarias o suprimidas son constreñidas a asumir una forma que les es ajena. Por consiguiente, la sociedad supuestamente justa y ciega a las diferencias no sólo es inhumana (en la medida en que suprime las identidades) sino también, en una forma sutil e inconsciente, resulta sumamente discriminatoria.

Este último punto es clave, ya que lo que busca mostrar es una fuerte crítica que se hace al liberalismo político que prima en las democracias contemporáneas y en el sistema económico capitalista internacional. Lo que Taylor quiere resaltar es que muchos críticos de la univresalidad ciega señalan como culpables a los liberales, ya que sus ideales de neutralidad y universalidad esconden una dominación e imposición acerca de cómo debemos ser, aunque ellos digan que únicamente piensan en cuestiones puramente formales, procedimentales (Taylor incluye aquí las propuestas de Rawls, Dworkin y el proyecto de Habermas) y no en cuestiones sustanciales.

El punto en cuestión es pues si el liberalismo es una particularidad disfrazada de neutralidad y de universalidad.

]]> http://erichluna.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/la-politica-del-reconocimiento-de-taylor-1/ Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:43:47 +0000 Erich Luna http://erichluna.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/la-politica-del-reconocimiento-de-taylor-1/

Las siguientes notas tienen como fin el hacer de esquema de práctica dirigida para los alumnos del curso de Temas de filosofía contemporánea de Cecilia Monteagudo, del cual soy jefe de práctica. Tiene como fin, pues, el ser una especie de guía esquemática e introductoria a una serie de problemas abiertos (y relacionados), en parte, con la filosofía política desarrollada por el filósofo Charles Taylor. El texto de base para esta sesión es el artículo “La política del reconocimiento”, en: Taylor, Charles, El multiculturalismo y la política del reconocimiento. Ensayos de Charles Taylor, México D.F.: FCE, 1993.

***

La tesis con la parte Taylor en este artículo es la que afirma que existe una íntima y esencial relación entre nuestra identidad (la interpretación que hacemos de quiénes somos y cuáles son nuestras características fundamentales) y el reconocimiento (o ausencia de éste, o un falso reconocimiento) que tenemos por parte de los demás, así como también por nosotros mismos. Nuestra mundo contemporáneo constataría una variedad de grupos, pueblos, etnias, naciones, minorías, excluidos, “subalternos”, etc., que buscan y exigen reconocimiento.

Taylor entiende esta ausencia de reconocimiento y de falso reconocimiento como un tipo de opresión que deforma y moldea la concepción que dichos seres humanos tienen de sí mismos. El autodesprecio que uno interioriza frente a los demás grupos, vía este falso o carente reconocimiento, es una de las armas de opresión y discriminación más fuertes que existen. Las feministas en esta línea piensan que las mujeres a lo largo de la historia han interiorizado una imagen despectivas de sí mismas, una imagen inferior de lo que realmente son. Taylor engloba todo el punto anterior, concerniente al reconocimiento, de la siguiente manera:

Dentro de esta perspectiva, el falso reconocimiento no sólo muestra una falta del respeto debido. Puede infligir una herida dolorosa, que causa a sus víctimas un mutilador odio a sí mismas. El reconocimiento no sólo es una cortesía que debemos a los demás: es una necesidad humana vital (44-45).

Lo que Taylor va a querer mostrarnos aquí es una breve genealogía histórica de cómo es que el discurso concerniente al reconocimiento y a la identidad ganando, cada vez más, una mayor comprensión, aceptación y familiaridad.

La modernidad fue el período donde dichos conceptos fueron más desarrollados. Para Taylor, esto surge con el desplome de las jerarquías sociales basadas en el honor, en la nobleza, etc. Estas desigualdades tienen como características el ser una suma cero, es decir, que no todos pueden tener honor, ya que éste está esencialmente definido por su oposición a quienes no lo tienen. Frente al concepto de honor, la modernidad generó el concepto de dignidad. Lo que caracteriza a la dignidad es el ser universalista, la dignidad es algo que todos comparten, como cuando hablamos de la “dignidad de los seres humanos”. El concepto de dignidad, para Taylor, es el que puede ser compatible con una sociedad democrática. Por el contrario, el concepto de honor no lo es. De ahí que cada vez más vaya cayendo en un mayor desuso.

El concepto de identidad individualizada, surge a finales del siglo XVIII y modificó intensamente el concepto de reconocimiento, que también ha sido determinado por el concepto de dignidad. Esta manera de entender a nuestra identidad implica cierta fidelidad que yo debo tener a mí mismo. Podemos llamar a este ideal ético el ideal de la autenticidad. Esta identidad va de la mano con lo que en el siglo XVIII se entendió como el sentido moral interior del ser humano. La moral era algo que nos venía desde lo más profundo, no era algo que tenía que ver con un cálculo instrumental de efectos y consecuencias, sino que era más bien algo que sentíamos en nosotros mismos. Ya no es Dios o la Idea del Bien a quien tenemos que prestar atención para actuar rectamente, sino a nosotros mismos.

Rousseau es el pensador moderno que, a juicio de Taylor, articula muy bien esto. Rousseau nos presenta, en lo esencial, a una voz interior de la naturaleza a quien debemos oír, buscando callar nuestras pasiones y amor propio. Esta voz y sentimiento fue desarrollado mucho más por Herder. Lo que Herder sostuve es que dicho sentimiento interno es algo individual, propio de cada uno, es decir, que no se trata de algo puramente universal. Cada ser humano tiene su propia manera de ser particular e individual a la que tiene que mantenerse fiel. Esta fidelidad de cada uno es una fidelidad a ser de una determinada manera, a vivir de una determinada manera, propio de mi modo de ser, algo que no puede ser impuesto u obligado. Siendo fiel a mí mismo, soy auténtico. Es algo propio de cada uno que descubrimos y desarrollamos como algo propio e interno a nosotros.

Sin embargo, es necesario señalar que Herder no pensó estas nociones de autenticidad, fidelidad y propiedad a un nivel estrictamente individual, sino que también lo pensó para grupos determinados históricamente: los pueblos y las naciones. El Volk, desde la perspectiva de Herder, tiene que ser fiel a sí mismo. Cada pueblo debe ser lo más fiel posible a sí mismo, no buscar ser como otro pueblo, sino que debe seguir su propio camino. Aquí se juega la gestación del nacionalismo moderno, pero para Taylor este nacionalismo puede cobrar dos tipos de forma una benigna y una maligna.

El rechazo de las jerarquías no implica un rechazo de las diferencias, en las sociedades modernas democráticas. Lo que implica es que dichas diferencias estén fundamentadas en el ideal de autenticidad de ser fiel a uno mismo, esto es, que uno elija ser lo que “esté llamado a ser” por sí mismo y no por una coacción puramente externa (por ejemplo, posición social). Sin embargo, Taylor quiere cuestionar que dicha identidad sea puramente interna, ya que piensa que ese es un supuesto fuertemente cuestionable de la filosofía moderna, a partir del giro subjetivo de Descartes. La existencia humana no estaría, pues, caracterizada por tener una estructura monológica, sino una dialógica (algo que ya habríamos visto en Gadamer a la hora pensar la relación del lenguaje con el ser humano).

Nos transformamos en agentes humanos plenos, capaces de comprendernos a nosotros mismos y por tanto de definir nuestra identidad por medio de nuestra adquisición de enriquecedores lenguajes humanos para expresarnos. Para mis propósitos sobre este punto, desde valerme del término lenguaje en su sentido más flexible, que no sólo abarca las palabras que pronunciamos sino también otros modos de expresión con los cuales nos definimos, y entre los que se incluyen los “lenguajes” del arte, del gesto, del amor y similares. Pero aprendemos estos modos de expresión mediante nuestro intercambio con los demás. Las personas, por sí mismas, no adquieren los lenguajes necesarios para su autodefinición. Antes bien, entramos en contacto con ellos por la interacción con otros que son importantes para nosotros: lo que George herbert Mead llamó los “otros significantes”. La génesis de la mente humana no es, en este sentido, monológica (no es algo que cada quien logra por sí mismo), sino dialógica (52-53).

Lo esencial de esta reflexión sobre el lenguaje es que sus implicancias sostienen fundamentalmente que nuestra identidad (quiénes somos y “de dónde venimos”) es algo constituido dialógicamente, intersubjetivamente. Mantenemos un diálogo constante con esos otros significantes que, incluso, después de muertos pueden ser interlocutores nuestros en nuestra interioridad: una conversación que nunca termina. Descubrir quiénes somos no será algo que obtendremos solos y puramente aislados, ya que eso es imposible, sino más bien a través de la negociación y el diálogo intersubjetivo con los demás.

De este modo, el que yo descubra mi propia identidad no significa que yo la haya elaborado en el aislamiento, sino que la he negociado por medio del diálogo, en parte abierto, en parte interno, con los demás. Por ello, el desarrollo de un ideal de identidad que se genera internamente atribuye una nueva importancia al reconocimiento. Mi propia identidad depende, en forma crucial, de mis relaciones dialógicas con los demás (55).

La importancia del reconocimiento y de la identidad que resalta Taylor como asuntos centrales de nuestra época no se sostiene en una contraposición a una ausencia de dichas cuestiones en épocas pasadas. Antes también los seres humanos tenían identidad y reconocimiento, pero estos asuntos eran tan obvios y “sencillos” que nadie los tematizaba por ser supuestos evidentes.  Taylor concluye esta sección de la siguiente manera:

El reconocimiento igualitario no sólo es el modo pertinente a una sociedad democrática sana. Su rechazo puede causar daños a aquellos a quienes se les niega, según una idea moderna muy difundida, como lo indiqué desde el principio. La proyección sobre otro de una imagen inferior o humillante puede en realidad deformar y oprimir hasta el grado en que esa imagen sea internalizada. No sólo el feminismo contemporáneo sino también las relaciones raciales y las discusiones del multiculturalismo se orientan por la premisa de que no dar este reconocimiento puede constituir una forma de opresión. Podemos discutir si este factor ha sido exagerado, pero es claro que la interpretación de la identidad y de la autenticidad introdujo una nueva dimensión en la política del reconocimiento igualitario, que hoy actúa con algo parecido a su propio concepto de autenticidad, al menos en lo tocante a la denuncia de las deformaciones que causan los demás (58-59).

]]> http://afwire.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/un-backed-court-hands-down-final-rulings-in-sierra-leone/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:16:14 +0000 africasecuritywire http://afwire.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/un-backed-court-hands-down-final-rulings-in-sierra-leone/ http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/david-novak-the-jewish-social-contract-part-i/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:30:49 +0000 Alan Brill http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/david-novak-the-jewish-social-contract-part-i/

I will be working through several of David Novak’s volumes. I will return to Fishbane afterwards.

David Novak- The Jewish Social Contract, Princeton UP 2005

The book asks the good question:
“How can a traditional Jew actively and intelligently participate in my democratic polities?”

I will divide his position into units. For the full answer to his good question, wait until the next post on Novak.

1] To provide a Jewish social theory he will use “Theological retrieval, philosophic imagination, and political prudence.” Theological retrieval “searches the classical Jewish literary sources for guidance, and in which historical description is always part of the essential normative thrust.” Anytime Jews need to act beyond the four cubits of halakhah “philosophical imagination must be employed since here speech and action need to be justified to more universal criteria.” We need to find enough democracy in the Jewish tradition and not just a form of superficial apologetics for some current ethnic agenda.”

2] Novak’s imagination envisions that the definition of human nature, human rights, and human society are not natural but God given. We enter social contract not as isolated but from community. We accept the Biblical covenants – the Noahite covenant and the Sinai covnant – both are unconditional and interminable.

3] Novak uses “the law of the kingdom is law” “dina demalkhuta dina” to say we need to crate a civil society, as a social contract.

The very creation of a secular realm was a chance for many cultures to participate. (In this he seems to use Charles Taylor, who is only briefly cited later) Religious liberty was not for tolerance and to keep it out of the public sphere, but to allow us to have our individual covenants. (He explains the establishment cause based on Hutchenson not Jefferson, and freedom of religion as a Baptist not as Locke and Hobbes)We accept civil society and civil society in order to respect our covenantal community.
Novak is against Rawls, we do not approach things based on fairness and rationality.
(He blames the naked public sphere entirely on the Spinoza tradition, rather than the private religion of Jonathan Edwards and the Protestant America.). Novak claims that civil society is made up of many religious groups and the founding fathers of America planned it that way. (not empirically or historically true for the US). Civil religion is from Rousseau and is against traditional faiths and their authority, Novak cites Richard Neuhaus as his source.

He thinks that religious people can argue better in a democracy for cultural autonomy than liberals.
He thinks that religious people will show more respect for other faiths than liberals since every religion knows it is in its best interest to not abuse its self-interested or totalizing demands.

4] Novak does not think he is creating a synthesis of social theory and Torah, there is no confrontation. Social theory is Torah with philosophic imagination.
Jews were multicultural in antiquity since they had to get along with Assyrians and others.
And from the Bible to today Jews are multicultural. Even Haredim choose to be a minority in a multicultural Israel because they know that if they claim hegemony over the secular it will destroy the social contact of Israel !!!

5] All of humanity is in the “Image of God”– defined as “a relational capacity for what pertains between God and all humans.” He bases this on Hermann Cohen and Psalms.
Judaism is a universal religion. Multiculturalism of Judaism is based on interreligious respect, and the respect for everyone’s image of God. As a contrast, Jonathan Sacks places the emphasis on Babel-there are no universals, all knowledge is limited. God chose one family, the Jews, to show that we need to celebrate diversity of families and religions. For Novak, we have a universal to follow and to argue for within the public sphere. For Sacks, absolute religions are the enemy of religion and public life. For Novak, liberalism that does not start with an absolute divine covenant does not allow a public sphere. For Novak, Jewish secularists are poor advocates of Jewish national claims on world!!! We need those with a covenantal certainty. It seems Novak has never heard of secular Zionism or any of many public advocates of Judaism.

6] The Bible shows us that we can only talk to covenantal partners who fear God. We can work with Malkizedek and not the king of Sodom. We can only make work with those who have the moral prerequisites. Therefore, Shimon and Levi could kill the men of Shechem since they are not moral, so we cannot enter into covenant with them. Does Novak notice what he is saying when he justifies killing them because we deem them immoral?

Covenant is n affirmation of creation for humans to make world inhabitable.. He cites as his proof Nahmanides’ introduction to the Torah – berit = bara – make the world inhabitable. But the original of Nahmanides was a praise of the mystery of God’s miraculous powers of creation. Novak transfers these powers man. Hermann Cohen’s universalism and man’s powers presented as Nahmanides.

7] Novak boldly states “Jewish and Christian ideas of human nature and community, which are most often identical” He thinks this is true even in medieval Europe.
Novak states that Jews lived in medieval Europe with integrity by knowing they shared values with the Christians. They had a social contract with medieval Christians based on trust His proof:
Tosafot states that a Jew can accept an oath from a Christian even though, the latter associates (shituf ) something else mentions with God. For Novak, this shows, that Jews share with Christians trust and social contract. They are not idolatrous, rather they are answerable to the same God so it is a social contract. Novak pictures the tosafot as conceiving the relationship as follows: “I have good reason to believe you will not change your word to me, I can trust you because of your Christian faithfulness. And Christians believe in God’s faithful covenant. I trust you because of your belief in God. This is unlike modern atheists and secularists whom we cannot truly trust.

I am not sure what to make of this. It is not halakhic – juridical reasoning from Shulkhan Arukh. It is not historic reasoning even though he cites Jacob Katz. (Katz saw the medieval situation as without trust and commonality, only exclusivism. These tosafot statements were only ad-hoc leniencies without theological power.)
This is Novak’s “theological imagination” using the tradition, having fidelity to halakhah but not to halakhic reasoning.

8] The bible is covenantal and rabbinical thought is all contractual. Rabbinic law is justified by Scripture and debated by scripture. – (All texts for Novak seem sibah ledavar velo siman ladavar). Rabbinic statements are mainly left as stalemate, continuous arguments. It is all open interpretation. (cf new book by Boyarin- I will get to later this season)Rabbinic law is contractual since it gives reasons (Novak assumes darshinan taama dekra) and since law can be repealed by a greater beth din

9] Babylonians were secular and not idolatrous> hence we respect their civil society. Novak uses “the law of the kingdom is law” “dina demalkhuta dina”  to say we need to crate a civil society, as a social contract.Rashba and Ran – right of kings to create secular law but since  we are not really into kings – today it means social contract.          [he damns with slight praise Lorberbaum on Ran, and his edited with Waltzer The Jewish Political Tradition. For Lorberbaum , Halbertal, Waltzer – these medieval texts show an opening to create a secular realm,  without the interference of Judaism and rabbis. A realm consisting of  kings, prime ministers, laity, populous] For Novak, these texts point to natural law and covenant Abarbanel’s critique of kingship is taken as the Jewish norm, cf rambam

10] Moses Mendelssohn  taught that religion is private and to be keep out of the social contract. There should be tolerance for religion. The secular state should tolerate religion because one’s transcendental warrant for one’s religion comes prior to the liberal state. One’s religion is one’s public persona. The secular state is a place to encourage multiple religions. The state is multicultural recognition of diverse religions.  Our Covenantal duties are stronger than Mendelssohn’s duties of conscience. Novak concludes that Mendelsohnn was wrong. We do not start as individuals and follow reason and conscience but we start as a covenantal community, which knows that the Noahite Laws are the natural law for society.  Mendelsohn not enough to bring religion into public sphere.

Novak does not seem to get that Mendelssohn had a very real fear of herem, seruv, beis din control of society and economics, rabbinical pronouncements on society, heresy trials, and an autonomous kehilah. Novak assumes that Mendelssohn’s rabbinical establishment would write op-eds and First Things articles, rather than put each other in herem.

To be continued and edited tomorrow night.
Galleys of my Book One are due tomorrow.

Il m’arrive souvent de chambrer le Canada sur Twitter, en raison de ses nombreuses atteintes aux droits des personnes en matière notamment de terrorisme (songez à Maher Arar) et de son alignement aveugle sur l’interventionnisme étatsunien. C’est surtout parce que le Canada, tout comme les Pays-Bas (Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali) et le Danemark (Dansk Folkeparti), voire même le Royaume-Uni, symbolise parfaitement cette étonnante dérive d’un certain libéralisme vers un autoritarisme fondé sur l’atlantisme, la lutte anti-terroriste et la xénophobie (et plus particulièrement l’islamophobie). Ce qui caractérise ce libéralisme autoritaire c’est qu’il est éclectique: il pourra ainsi être en pointe en matière de parité hommes/femmes ou des droits des homosexuels, tout en votant avec enthousiasme des lois liberticides, des invasions ou bombardements de pays étrangers (de préférence musulmans) et comporter un discours et une pratique de plus en plus xénophobe ou islamophobe.

Mais dans certains cas, le libéralisme initial a encore de beaux restes: c’est malgré tout le cas du Canada, célèbre pour sa tolérance qui va jusqu’à défendre le droit pour un élève sikh de porter son poignard rituel, le kirpan, en classe (décision du 2 mars 2006 de la Cour suprême du Canada dans l’affaire Multani c. Commission scolaire), mais dont la principale contribution au multi-culturalisme est sans conteste la notion d’accomodement raisonnable.

Voici une définition officielle de ce concept:

Accommodement raisonnable
Arrangement qui relève de la sphère juridique, plus précisément de la jurisprudence; il vise à assouplir l’application d’une norme en faveur d’une personne menacée de discrimination en raison de particularités individuelles protégées par la loi.

Une commission canadienne, présidée par le célébrissime philosophe québecois Charles Taylor ainsi que par son collègue francophone Gérard Bouchard à l’instigation du premier ministre du Québec Jean Charest, s’est ainsi penchée sur la question après des réunions publiques généralement assez déprimantes pour les tenants du multi-culturalisme. Appelée officiellement la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles (CCPARDC) et officieusement la commission Taylor-Bouchard, cette commission était chargée d’apporter une réponse à la conciliation des identités religieuses, ethniques et linguistiques différentes au Québec. Un volumineux rapport final ainsi qu’une série d’études spécifiques ont couronné ses travaux, y compris 37 recommandations concrètes. Pour leur mise en oeuvre, par contre, on repassera.

Cette notion est bien sûr d’actualité non seulement au Québec ou au Canada, mais aussi en Belgique – le militant des droits de l’homme Henri Goldman appelle sur son blog  la Belgique - où une vague de mesures inspirées par la laïcité à la française, très différente du principe de neutralité reconnu par la Constitution belge – à s’inspirer des accommodements (ou aménagements) raisonnables à la québecoise plutôt que de la loi scélérate d’interdiction du voile adoptée en France:

de toute façon, nous n’échapperons pas à un débat serein sur ce qu’on préfère appeler, dans la tradition juridique européenne, des « aménagements raisonnables » |2|. Ce concept appartient désormais pleinement au droit communautaire de la non-discrimination, tel qu’il a été transposé en droit belge par la loi « anti-discrimination » du 10 mai 2007. Ces nouvelles dispositions étendent dans une large mesure les dispositifs de lutte contre les discriminations raciales à d’autres motifs : l’âge, l’orientation sexuelle, l’état civil, la naissance, la fortune, les convictions religieuses, philosophiques ou politiques, la langue, l’état de santé actuel ou futur, un handicap, une caractéristique physique ou génétique, le sexe, la grossesse, l’accouchement, la maternité, le changement de sexe, en plus des critères « classiques » de la nationalité, de la prétendue race, de la couleur de peau, de l’ascendance et de l’origine nationale, ethnique ou sociale |3|.

Ce droit distingue classiquement deux formes de discriminations, selon qu’elles sont directes (c’est-à-dire qu’elles visent directement une ou plusieurs catégories de personnes) ou indirectes. Dans ce cas, la discrimination n’apparaît pas parmi les buts visés d’une disposition apparemment neutre poursuivant un but légitime, mais il en résulte pourtant un désavantage particulier pour certaines personnes relevant d’une catégorie reprise par la loi. Dans certains cas, il est possible de changer la disposition pour supprimer la discrimination sans nuire au but poursuivi. Dans d’autres, c’est impossible.

C’est ici qu’intervient la notion d’aménagement raisonnable : on examine s’il est possible de supprimer cette discrimination par des dispositions particulières s’appliquant aux personnes victimes des discriminations indirectes. Et c’est ici que les discussions commencent, car certains aménagements proposés peuvent relever de ce qu’on appelle une « contrainte excessive ». Par exemple, des personnes handicapées en chaise roulante ne peuvent accéder par leurs propres moyens au sommet du beffroi de Bruges, ce qui constitue incontestablement une discrimination indirecte à leur égard. Mais l’aménagement qui pourrait faire disparaître cette discrimination – la construction d’un ascenseur parallèle à la tour – est à l’évidence une contrainte excessive à cause de son coût exorbitant et parce qu’elle défigurerait un monument historique. Mais tous les aménagements n’ont pas cette évidence, d’où un large champ de débats.

Et les accomodements raisonnables au Maroc, ça donnerait quoi? Sans doute une abrogation de l’article 222 du Code pénal réprimant la rupture publique du jeûne par une personne notoirement connue pour son appartenance à la religion musulmane, une dépénalisation des relations sexuelles entre personnes du même sexe ou personnes non mariées (article 490 du Code pénal) et la suppression de l’interdiction pour les Marocaines musulmanes d’épouser un non-musulman (article 39 du Code de la famille), sans parler de la question des prénoms berbères. Mais de l’autre côté, l’interdiction de mesures discriminatoires contre les femmes voilées, les hommes barbus ou les chiites.

Je vous l’avais bien dit, cette notion d’accommodement raisonnable est intéressante…

Prince Attakora-Gyima of Kessben FC set the season to a flying start with his 17th minute goal against home side and city rivals King Faisal at the Babayara stadium. On Week 1 of the Glo Premiership, 12, 12 goals were scored. Only two clubs managed (Heart of Lions and Ashgold) home wins. Kessben FC was the only away winner.Three games ended in draws with goals and 1 in a goalless draw. On the match day, three penalty kicks were awarded  to home teams.

 Some outstanding players were Richard Mpong of Kessben FC, Samuel Ayew Yeboah of Eleven Wise, goal keeper Muntari Tagoe of Accra Hearts of Oak, Mohammed Tanko of Heart of Lions, Prince Attakora Gyima of Kessben FC, Samuel Yaw Owusus of Berekum Arsenals. Find full details of results below:

 OHENE DJAN: Great Olympics-Asante Kotoko

Referee: Cecil Fletcher

0-1 Ofosu Appiah

1-1 James Abban(PK)

KPANDO: Heart of Lions 2:0 Hearts of Oak

Referee: Ali Musa Plato

1-0 Kofi Nti Boakye

2-0 Daniel Yeboah (PK)

 ESSIPON: Eleven Wise 1:1 All Stars

Referee: Reginald Latbridge

0-1 Daniel Bonfa

1-1 Sam Ayew Yeboah

Red Card: Michael Ocansey (All Stars)

 LENCLAY: AshGod 1:0 Berekum Chelsea

Referee: Seidu Bomison

1-0 Daniel Asamoah (PK)

BABAYARA: King Faisal 1:2 Kessben FC

Referee: Charles Dowuona

1-0 Prince Atakora-Gyima

1-1 Ofosu Mickey

1-2 James Buadu

GOLDEN CITY PARK: Berekum Arsenal 1:1Aduana Stars

Referee:Samuel Gyasi

0-1 Nurudeen Ali

1-1 Samuel Yaw Owusu

TAMALE SPORTS: Real Tamale United 0:0 Hasaacas

Referee:Laud Vuvor

Red Card: Joseph Akowuah (Hasaacas)

CARL REINDORF: Liberty Professionals-New Edubiase FC

William Agbovi

Match postponed to 28th October