What is religion? My definition is very broad: Religion is the conscious effort to situate ourselves within a reality that involves but infinitely exceeds us conceptually, practically and morally.
Category Archives: Ethics
Bodies and categories
If an individual elects to be part of a political body, then that individual shares responsibility for those who act on behalf of that body. It is fair to hold people responsible for what their political bodies do.
But if you classify a person as belonging to some category of person, and on that basis hold that person responsible for the actions of others who (according to you) also belong to that category, you are committing a grave sin against liberalism.
The line between belonging to a political body and being assigned to a category is a blurry and crooked one. No simple formulas exist to sharpen it. The line is not traced along the boundaries explicit declarations of membership: people are often cagy or deluded about the political significance of their actions. But neither are the lines those gridded out by ideology: every theorist has his correct schema.
The lines must be surveyed case by case through dialogue between the disputants.
Jewish red thread
A part of my autobiography that I had to compress into two lines was my experience with Jewish thinkers. Judaism only became a serious interest for me following my very strange experience of intensive study of Nietzsche starting in 2002 and extending to around 2006. During this time under Nietzsche’s influence I excavated the assumptions at the foundation of my understanding of the world.
Nietzsche was absolutely insightful on many points, but rarely as right as his here: If you want to get at the assumptions that matter, the most important thing to dig up is the ground beneath the warning signs that say “Do not dig here.” Those signs mark the pay dirt of self-transformation — at least if you begin with morality. (I believe this qualification is another insight of equal value to the first. Questioning values you do not actually hold — values which you have not internalized, that you do not live and that are not the the stand-point and vanishing-point of your perspective — is lazy nihilism or cynicism and it will do nothing or worse.)
From the Preface of Daybreak.
At that time I undertook something not everyone may undertake: I descended into the depths, I tunneled into the foundations, I commenced an investigation and digging out of an ancient faith, one upon which we philosophers have for a couple of millennia been accustomed to build as if upon the firmest of all foundations — and have continued to do so even though every building hitherto erected on them has fallen down: I commenced to undermine our faith in morality.
Hitherto, the subject reflected on least adequately has been good and evil: it was too dangerous a subject. Conscience, reputation, Hell, sometimes even the police have permitted and continue to permit no impartiality; in the presence of morality, as in the face of any authority, one is not allowed to think, far less to express an opinion: here one has to — obey! As long as the world has existed no authority has yet been willing to let itself become the object of criticism; and to criticise morality itself, to regard morality as a problem, as problematic: what? has that not been — is that not — immoral? — But morality does not merely have at its command every kind of means of frightening off critical hands and torture-instruments: its security reposes far more in a certain art of enchantment it has at its disposal — it knows how to ‘inspire’.
But despite what so many people say about Nietzsche, his goal is not at all to live an amoral and unprincipled existence. It is to reform one’s own relationship with morality. I believe his purpose is to re-establish one’s own values on realities that are less speculative and vastly more immediate, motivating and durable.
Nietzsche did a bang-up job with the demolition and ground clearing of my worldview. But it was a chain of Jewish thinkers who help me piece my soul back together, and to reassemble it toward a reality not confined to my own mind. And that realism most of all included the belief in the sacred reality of other minds.
Somewhere I made a list of the names of the Jewish thinkers who helped me, and I plan to expound on each, but for now I will just list some of them.
- Richard J. Bernstein
- Martin Buber
- Hannah Arendt
- Walter Benjamin
- Emmanuel Levinas
- Abraham Joshua Heschel
I was especially interested in the fact that whether the thinkers were religious or secular there was a distinct commonality among them, and I felt that this commonality connected with me in a vitally important way. It might have been an inheritance from lost Jewish ancestors, or maybe it was transmitted to me via Christianity, but the total experience of reading these thinkers made me want to enter and participate in the Jewish tradition.
Overcoming ressentiment
I’ve been thinking a lot about ressentiment lately. It saturates the news, art, conversations, nearly everything. Or so my eyes tell me.
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What is ressentiment? It is not as some (including me) an exact synonym of resentment, but a distinct flavor of resentment. I had been blurring them into synonymity, but the differences are important enough that I intend to start using the terms more precisely. According to Wikipedia,
Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one’s own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.
So my understanding is that ressentiment blames others not only for specific grievances but for one’s own existential state — how one is and how one habitually feels about life. I view it as both analogous and connected to Heidegger’s beautiful distinction between fear and angst. Fear has an object. Angst might seem to have an object, but in fact angst belongs to the subject. Remove the object of fear and the fear dissipates. Remove the object of angst and the angst must find another object. Resentments can be resolved by addressing the object of resentment. Ressentiment is insatiable.
The Dhammapada gets this right:
The hatred of those who harbor such ill feelings as, “He reviled me, assaulted me, vanquished me and robbed me,” is never appeased.
The hatred of those who do not harbor such ill feelings as, “He reviled me, assaulted me, vanquished me and robbed me,” is easily pacified.
Through hatred, hatreds are never appeased; through non-hatred are hatreds always appeased — and this is a law eternal.
Most people never realize that all of us here shall one day perish. But those who do realize that truth settle their quarrels peacefully. (I included this last stanza for the Heideggerians.)
Another problem: Ressentiment generates an aggressive ugliness that radiates and discolors everything and everyone around it. Sadly this ugliness is not confined to the eye of the beholder, but somehow reflects into the eyes of those beheld, which leads directly to the next point.
Ressentiment is counterproductive. The objects (the alleged causes) of ressentiment are only agitated and energized when approached with ressentiment. Resentment breeds resentment, and the infection spreads and intensifies. In combatting ressentiment it is necessary to cultivate lightness, cheer and buoyancy, and to resist succumbing to ressentiment’s natural darkness, dourness and deadweight. (Does this smell like Nietzsche to you? That is because it is Nietzsche. It is the cornerstone of his moral vision.)
All this should make it clear why I’ve recommitted to rooting out ressentiment in my own soul. Unfortunately, I have accumulated a great deal of it over the last decade. It will take some work to clean myself out. One key element of this effort has been to limit my exposure to other people’s ressentiment, especially those two antithetical ressentiment philosophies which have seemed into the mainstream from the fringes, and which have become the substance of popular politics. Staying away from social media has helped a lot.
Channeling La Rochefoucauld
Being offended offends less than giving offense. This can be seen as a kind desire to not cause others pain, or it can be seen as a narcissistic desire to be viewed as blameless.
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Long version:
A morally undeveloped boor who gives nothing but expects nothing from others can certainly be offensive, but be is not nearly as offensive as someone who gives but also expects things from others who cannot or will not give it. While former gives others no thought, the latter gives others unwanted thought, and that is worse.
Yet another attempt at Levinas
Whenever I try to read Levinas I have two reactions: first, an immediate relief in reading someone who shares my understanding; but second, a lingering anxiety that pervades and darkens every moment and detail of my life.
I have had to abandon books that were beyond my intellectual limits, but Levinas is the one author who pushes me over my moral limits.
Life is unfair
This scale is an attempt to diagram a framework I posted to Facebook.
Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more people declaring that “Life is unfair.” I actually grew up hearing that.
I’m starting to believe this statement is the essence of right-wing politics. Degree of renunciation of fairness is what defines the right-wing spectrum:
Centrism views fairness as one legitimate political goal, but acknowledges practical limits to the degree of achievable fairness. Centrism sees over-reaching attempts at fairness to be artifacts of naive partiality with distorted self-serving conceptions of fairness. To the degree a centrist leans right, he sees increasing levels of unfairness as inevitable and acceptable.
Middle right believes that fairness should not enter the discussion. Fairness is an inappropriate goal for politics, and an inadequate framework for thinking about it. Politics should be thought about in terms of other dynamics (such as economics). These dynamics naturally produce a healthy equilibrium which are in fact the best possible political outcomes. The distorting lens of “fairness” demands that we “fix” precisely that which is not broken (and conversely, that we preserve the hacks intended to produce fairness, but which destroy natural equilibrium).
Hard right believes that inequality is necessary — that establishing proper rank is required for the health of a society. The strongest, or wisest, or smartest or the most righteous should have more power than the weak, foolish, unintelligent, vicious masses.
I can see the self-consistent logic and validity of these positions. But as a left-leaning person, I believe the elimination of fairness from political discourse is a disaster. To say “life is unfair” is to misrepresent a moral intention as a natural fact. It pretends to say “perfect fairness is not an achievable goal” but really means: “I have no intention of treating you fairly.” I do not believe I can credibly ask a person to trust me if I do not intend to treat them fairly.
But, with all that being said, here is a troubling question: can right-wingers actually trust the left to treat them fairly? Because being fair means making the question “what is fair?” an open question for discussion, and I am not at all sure this is the case with many Clinton and Sanders supporters, who seem to have already decided unilaterally for themselves what is fair.
When asked for the left half of the scale, I added:
Hard left wants to maximize fairness by ensuring that everyone has exactly the same resources. Middle left believes politics is essentially about achieving maximum fairness. Centrism, as it leans leftward, sees fairness as one key condition of freedom for all. Fairness and freedom will never be perfect, but we are obligated to pursue it.
Going first
Being morally responsible means going first. Trying first. Opening first. Listening first. Repenting first. Giving first. Disarming first. Showing goodwill first. Seeking forgiveness first. Acting first.
We can speculate on how others will respond — whether they will or won’t reciprocate, cooperate, collaborate, exploit or humiliate us — but we cannot really know what is possible until someone actually makes that first move toward mutuality.
Being morally responsible means being that person.
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Being morally responsible means acting on faith that other people do not live inside our own minds. They can shock us with the reality of who they are and how much it differs from our ideas of them.
The varieties of othering experience
Othering occurs in a variety of forms which can look highly dissimilar or even opposite.
There’s a complacent incurious othering: Those others are not really part of my life. I don’t know them, they’re not my problem, I don’t know how to help, and I don’t even know if I can help.
There’s an objective othering: Those others have different characteristics from us, which can be studied and comprehended factually.
Another objective othering: I have studied those others and concluded that their problems are self-inflicted. They must solve their own problems.
There’s a smug and superior othering: We, unlike those others, are moral or talented or informed or enlightened, etc.
There’s a hostile othering: Those others want to do us harm, and will do so if they get the chance.
There’s a resentful othering: The principle pain in my life would not have happened if I were one of those others.
Resentful othering can evolve into a vengeful othering: The principle pain in my life, which is the pain of my people, would not have occurred if it were not for those others.
There’s a post-liberal othering: Those others engage in othering me, and I have found that I cannot avoid doing the same — at least as long as they persist in their othering. Perhaps othering is unavoidable. Perhaps the conceit of overcoming othering is a tactic for preserving the status quo.
These are dissimilar in ways: they are the products of different power relations.
However, they are alike in that they all lead away from mutuality, further from dialogical understanding and toward reciprocal dehumanization, force and dehumanizing counter-force.
Mutuality
It is important to distinguish between feeling as though you are member of a community because you share its values and beliefs, and actually becoming a member of that community by mutually acknowledging shared values and beliefs with fellow members. This is true of communities of dozens, hundreds, thousands or millions, and it is true of communities as small as two, such as friendships and marriages. Community is essentially mutual.
Similarly, there is a difference between forgiveness that involves making peace with estrangement with an alienated friend or loved one and the deeper forgiveness of mutual reconciliation. Most feelings of alienation come from a sense that one’s reality has not been acknowledged — from a sense that mutuality is lacking. Reconciliation is restoration of mutuality. Sometimes this is not possible (yet), and we do have to make peace with that fact in unilateral forgiveness, but we should know and feel the difference between this and true mutual forgiveness.
Mutual relationships transcend individuality and that’s what makes them sacred.
This view feels Jewish to me, and when I articulate it I want to be Jewish.
Moral types
Some people listen carefully to others, learning from them how they perceive, think and act, and try to hear beneath it who this person is, what kind of life they live, what kind of world they inhabit, what might interest and benefit them.
Some live by the rules of reason. They look for compelling logical arguments and if they see that they have been overpowered, they proudly yield.
Others live by the rules of their ethos. They do what they ought to according to prevailing norms, in loyalty to that which gives their reality structure, substance and meaning.
Yet others follow rules for practical reasons. They avoid breaking rules in order to avoid the consequences of breaking them. They answer primarily to coercive social forces.
Finally, there are those who know only physical force. Everything that seems coercively social is only a few degrees away from physical force. They are barely removed from a state of war.
Each of these types represents a different relationship with transcendence.
Meta-xenophobia
A xenophobe is averse to alien being. The degree of aversion is proportional to the alienness of the alien.
Two xenophobes from different tribes will go to war over their differing loyalties, beliefs and customs. But at least they share xenophobia (and those tacit fundamental faiths that produce xenophobia).
What happens when a xenophobe encounters a someone who not only tolerates alienness, but seeks and affirms it? — a soul for whom alienness marks a path to transcendence? A soul founded on a faith that everts xenophobia into xenophilia?
For a xenophobe, this exponential alienness — alien even in its fundamental disposition toward the alien — provokes exponential hostility, for which war is insufficiently violent.
“God Is Not Dead”
A church in my neighborhood put a flyer in my mailbox inviting me to a screening of “God Is Not Dead.” I decided to go and see it and to meet the people at the church.
The film was interesting, but the church was even more interesting. The people there were extremely nice, both to me and to each other. People of different races sat together, with no trace of self-segregation. It was surprising how surprising this was to see. The children were exceptionally polite, but without any evidence of brokenness. They seemed very happy and alive. The service was moving. Everything centered around love. God loves every one of us. The world is underpinned and saturated with love. We are called to love each other.
The only major problem I had with any of it was the image they had of their non-Christian neighbors. I saw this image both in the film and in how they spoke about the wicked people in the world that make life difficult for everyone — themselves most of all, but also believers. The characters in the film were alarmingly flat and unbelievable. It was nearly as bad as reading Ayn Rand. They had some kind of horrific aversion to God and could not accept his love for various reasons, despite on some level feeling the truth. It made them lash out at God and Jesus and his faithful worshipers.
If I lived in the world with angry, irrational, evil people like that, and especially if I had children, I would take drastic measures to stop them. But they don’t live in a world full of people like that. These unbelievers were imagined characters — moral straw men. When I tried to tell them how they were getting their neighbors wrong, they were uninterested in discussing it. Eventually they stopped answering my emails.
It makes me wonder if we don’t store our own most vicious, hateful and violent impulses in the imputed inner-lives of our enemies.
I hear “God Is Not Dead 2” is coming out soon. Maybe they’ll screen that, too. It might be a good excuse to resume the conversation.
Just
Nobody wants the world to be unjust.
But different people regard justice very differently.
Whose vision of justice prevails? The objectively true one, right? — the one your opponent has been arguing for ages, but you will not accept because of your self-interest and lack of character.
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Is it possible that there are unjust ways of determining what is just? And conversely, that our ways of determining what is just can become more just?
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One principle frequently neglected by decriers of privilege and demander of fairness: it is fundamentally unjust and unfair to privilege certain visions of justice and fairness over others — no matter who imposes it.
Postenlightenment harmony
Tillich (from The Courage to Be):
The whole [Enlightenment] period believed in the principle of “harmony” — harmony being the law of the universe according to which the activities of the individual, however individualistically conceived and performed, lead “behind the back” of the single actor to a harmonious whole, to a truth in which at least a large majority can agree, to a good in which more and more people can participate, to a conformity which is based on the free activity of every individual. The individual can be free without destroying the group. The functioning of economic liberalism seemed to confirm this view: the laws of the market produce, behind the backs of the competitors in the market, the greatest possible amount of goods for everybody. The functioning of liberal democracy showed that the freedom of the individual to decide politically does not necessarily destroy political conformity. Scientific progress showed that individual research and the freedom for individual scientific convictions do not prevent a large measure of scientific agreement. Education showed that emphasis on the free development of the individual child does not reduce the chances of his becoming an active member of a conformist society. And the history of Protestantism confirmed the belief of the Reformers that the free encounter of everybody with the Bible can create an ecclesiastical conformity in spite of individual and even denominational differences. Therefore it was by no means absurd when Leibnitz formulated the law of preestablished harmony by teaching that the monads of which all things consist, although they have no doors and windows that open toward each other, participate in the same world which is present in each of them, whether it be dimly or clearly perceived. The problem of individualization and participation seemed to be solved philosophically as well as practically.
It is the belief in a preexisting harmony that separates the classical Enlightenment view from a Postenlightenment view. I believe in disharmonious reasons, which is another way of saying that I believe in Pluralism. To extend the music analogy, reason does not produce chords, it produces a chromatic scale, from which harmonies can be made, but only if sour reasonable notes are muted, at least until the melody progresses and the key changes, making the formerly sour note sweet. A harmonious truth must be designed, and design always means making good tradeoffs.
Symmetrical egalitarianism
Can egalitarianism be disrespectful?
In some social contexts strict egalitarianism is the very embodiment of respect. An example of such a context is a gathering of equal peers deliberating on a shared problem. Each is understood by the others to hold an opinion of equal validity to his own. Each peer is entitled the same level of attention, the same time to speak and to be heard out and to be believed and also to be questioned. Of course, each participant has a personal opinion regarding the rightness and wrongness of opinions stated, but any expectation that others will give one’s own opinion more weight than any another’s undermines the equal peer relationship. Let’s call this symmetrical egalitarianism.
In other social contexts, however, strict egalitarianism can be disrespectful. An example of this kind of context is a group of people gathered to discuss a specialized topic, where some members of the group have invested significant time, energy and resources to continually improve the quality of their beliefs in this area, where other members have not made the same level investment. The former have worked to become authorities on the topic at hand and the latter have not. (Imagine an accomplished physicist in conversation with a group of less experienced scientists, or even scientists who are accomplished in fields outside the one being discussed). In such situations, giving equal weight to each person’s opinion would insult the authority’s hard-won expertise. For one reason or another his work has failed to accomplish its goal of improving his understanding — that is, elevating his initial opinion to informed belief, reflective practice, cultivated knowledge and refined judgment.
Why would an expert’s expertise be denied or ignored? Perhaps his field is not one where genuine knowledge is possible, and can never be more than a matter of opinion, where one person’s opinion is as good as another’s no matter how much work is invested in cultivating knowledge. Or perhaps the alleged expert has taken a bad approach, and has wasted years of effort following the wrong path further from the truth. Or perhaps the would-be expert has some personal flaw or limitation that has prevented him from acquiring real knowledge or has led him to aquire delusional opinions that only appear to him to be knowledge. Or perhaps the laypeople are convinced that genuine knowledge in the field necessarily and automatically leads an expert to an egaliarian attitude toward his own opinion: the superiority of his view consists in its paradoxical refusal to regard itself as superior, and any hint of judgment is a symptom of inferior knowledge.
This latter view actually has some validity. The world is stuffed with authoritarian experts who flash their credentials and demand submission to their authority. This ought to be resisted. No expert should require non-experts to obey without being persuaded by reason. This is non-egaliarian tyranny of experts.
But what true experts ask for is not unconditional obedience or uncritical belief. What they ask for from others is patience and effort The expert needs time not only to express their views, but also to impart enough expertise that others have the context needed to understand and fairly assess the expert’s ideas. Let’s call this asymmertical egalitarianism — an egalitarianism that acknowledges equality of reason and judgment, but also acknowledges the realities of expertise and permits it conditions needed to be heard and understood.
It is these conditions that symmetrical egalitarianism denies. From the point of view of symmetrical egalitarianism, the time and attention an expert requires to convey the background of his factual opinions is experienced as an unfair domination of a conversation. Each person is doled out the same quantity of time as everyone else, and this self-regarded expert is trying to take more than his share.
But from the point of view of expertise, this symmetry creates an unfair asymmetry of means to convey meaning. The laypeople are given what they need to fully communicate their views, but experts — the very ones best informed on the topic at hand — are forced to provide their views without context, which means their views will seem obscure, pedantic or nonsensical compared to the down-to-earth practicality and plain speech of the regular guy, or they try to provide context and get cut off before their point is made. Symmetrical egalitarianism guarantees the common sense status quo view always prevails, and those in the room with genuinely unique and deeply considered views will be subjected to a Bed of Procrustes truncation that allows them to talk but denies them the means to be understood.
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Incidentally, this symmetrical and asymmetrical egalitarian concept can be applied to other fields. For instance, in education symmetries of fairness are sometimes established on the basis of allocated resources, the right to reach some standard level of acheivement or to maintain some pace of improvement. These symmetries are often enforced at the expense of subtler forms of fairness, such as the ability to actualize one’s own potential. Obviously, this creates deep problems, including problems of measurement and objectivity, but the depth of such problems does not warrant ignoring these problems as essentially insoluble, or worse (and most commonly) denying the problem’s existence altogether.
Pop ideology how-to guide
Here is how to build a popular ideology:
Do rock-solid factual investigation. Satisfy the requirements of the critical mind.
Present the facts of the investigation in compelling stories that win over the heart, too. Adhere to the facts.
Encourage the heart and the mind to believe together for once. And what a relief wholehearted belief is in these fragmentary contradictory times. This rare peace is reason enough to believe.
Build fact and feeling together, higher and higher, to moral heights where gravity weakens and earth loosens its grip. Up here ideas are lighter and can be piled one upon the other with only sporadic logical spot welding.
The heart has the mind’s endorsement now, the newly unified soul hangs on your verdict.
Now is poetry’s moment. Passionate declarations, inspired insinuations, elegant analogies, and flights of spirit move mountains arguments cannot even touch.
Set your conclusion at the tip of the crescendo.
Then drop to earth again. Plant your feet where all can see where they are rooted. Return to facts. Build a second edifice like the first and crown it with the same conclusion. Then drop.
Repeat a third time, then a fourth.
Spread your conclusive points over the breadth of the sky. Now it is a worldview, supported on columns of excellent journalism. Readers will rise with you to hold it up, united in heart and mind, with themselves, with each other, as a community, as a collective mind, as a political body ready to act on behalf of your faith.
Nobody will notice the heavenly roof is suspended by nothing but a desire for sheltering unity. Nobody can believe the sky is not attached to the ground.
The columns of fact and argument bear no load. They are decorative stumps. They are monuments to the idea of reason.
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If you teach your poetry ventriloquism, when you let the facts speak for themselves they say what your heart wants to hear. This is doubly true if you think a complete knowledge of facts points to a single moral conclusion.
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The formula: Journalism; poetic ethical interlude; journalism; poetic ethical interlude…
Protected: A, B, C
A newish political framework
(Updated November 25, 2015, and edited slightly on January 19, 2020.)
No word is more loaded and distorted than the word “liberal”.
No word is more crucial, especially right now. Deprived of language, the very concept of liberalism is slipping away. Liberalism is losing its place in polical discourse, precisely when it is most needed. Each ideology sees liberals as unwitting dupes of its enemy, and happily shoots through liberals to fire on its foes, and tallies fallen liberals into its kill count.
But liberalism differs more from illiberal ideology than strains of illiberalism differ from from one another. Far from being the midpoint, average or muddling of purer ideologies, liberalism represents the cleanest and most radical departure from all ideological extremes, and our best hope for transcending them.
For this reason the word “liberal” needs clarification and revitalization.
For the last several decades the word “liberal” has been casually associated with “left”. And among the right, liberal has also been connected with Political Correctness.
The PC-liberal association, especially, makes it impossible to discuss what liberalism really is, because what makes PC objectionable to those who reject it is not liberalism, but illiberalism: an aggressive prioritization of the interests of particular collectives over individual freedom of speech, with the goal of manually re-balancing the scales of justice to compensate for generations-old collective imbalance.
Of course, this sort of collective oppression is exactly what liberals accuse conservatives of attempting. Some conservatives cheerfully admit to this, because they believe their institutions are backed by some absolute super-human authority. But the libertarian faction of conservatism balks at this. Libertarians want to maximize all liberty — social and economic — and will not tolerate any authoritarian interference in the private sphere, even if the authority claims to be underwritten by God Himself. This commitment to liberty is what makes libertarians true liberals (and why they have been correctly called “classical liberals”).
In theory, left-leaning liberals are sympathetic to the libertarian goal of maximizing social and economic liberty — but they are deeply skeptical of the libertarian favored means of achieving it, deregulation. They suspect that those who favor deregulation (and reduction or elimination of the welfare state) are invested primarily in the interests of those Americans who benefit directly from deregulation and shrinking of the state, and that all talk of the Invisible Hand of the market and Trickle Down is justificatory myth.
I am not interested at this point in the merits of the left and right forms of liberalism. Instead I want to point out the important fact that liberals agree on the end — liberty — and disagree primarily on means of achieving it. My belief is that alliances founded on ends, where the means are contested, make far more sense than alliances founded on means used to pursue divergent ends.
When liberalism is secure, the disagreement between left or right liberal strategies can seem enormous — even the key difference between friend and an adversary. At times when liberalism itself is threatened (and it seems we are approaching that point), liberals of all kinds must close ranks and redraw battle-lines. To join ranks with lesser-of-evil illiberal forces allows liberalism to be divided and conquered.
For this purpose, I am proposing a framework to help liberals of all kinds understand our shared political ideals and to frame discussion of our disagreements.
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The strategy hinges on separating the idea of left versus right from liberal versus illiberal.
The left-right continuum is one of equality. The further left you go, the more importance you assign to actual, achieved equality. The further right you go, the more you believe that some people (for whatever reason) ought to have more power or wealth than others, and that this achievement of inequality is good. In the middle region (where I think most liberals stand) is belief in equality of potential, with the left-middle emphasizing mobility of status and the right-middle emphasizing stability of status.
The liberal-illiberal continuum is one of individual versus collective purpose. At the far end of liberalism is complete disregard for collective purposes. For a pure liberal, collectivities exist solely for the sake of individual purposes. At the far end of illiberalism is the belief that the collectivity is the only thing that gives an individual life purpose. Toward the middle is the belief that individual and collective purposes are at least potentially mutually reinforcing. Those who lean liberal will emphasize the value of individual experience of participation in collective purpose, while those who lean illiberal will emphasize the enduring greatness of institutions while acknowledging the importance of winning the loyalty and faith of those who contribute to its preservation and flourishing.
Having worked far too long in consulting, I’ve made a nice 2×2, so we can link up our understanding to the awesome power of the human mind’s hypertrophied visual intelligence.
Here’s the catch — there is a theory embedded in this diagram, and it is what distinguishes this model from similar frameworks.
In the middle of the diagram is a gray triangle, a region I call the “political gamut“. What falls inside the political gamut is a coherent and practical position. What falls outside of it is impracticable, or requires inconsistency in practice.
According to this model it is impossible to be extreme left or extreme right and also liberal. I think a great many hard-left liberals and hard-right libertarians look at each other and see the impracticability of the other’s position without seeing the impracticability of their own. But this model claims that liberalism is required to be centrist with regard to the left-right spectrum. Or, to put it differently, extreme liberalism requires extreme left-right centrism. I call this position “ambiliberalism“.
Have at it. I’m trying to be a good designer and user testing this conceptual model. Please respond here or on Facebook.
The responsible party
Who did it?
That person.
What is kind of person is he?
That kind of person.
Who else is that kind of person?
They are.
And because they are what he is, they share responsibility for what he did.
But they say they disagree with what he did.
They refuse to take responsibility for what their kind does.