I've previously observed that I'm not a libertarian. Instead, I asserted, I would prefer to be counted as a common law conservative. Perhaps some elaboration is in order.
Go here to read a useful essay by Paul Gottfried in which he demonstrates how the Left of the turn from the 18th century (the high-water mark of the so-called Enlightenment) to the 19th century (often called the age of revolutions) was united by its belief in a deracinated human equality. Whether individualist or collectivist, whether democratic or elitist--in other words, whether libertarian or socialist--the Left was united in its rejection of the hierarchically and socially situated world that came to an end with the Age of Revolution. As Gottfried writes: "The Left [rejects the long-standing social consensus that had begun in the Middle Age] out of a sense of fairness, a passionate commitment to the advancement of equality, and a universalist conception of human beings."
Moving from the free individual, the desire for equality proved unstoppable politically. But wherein did that equality exist? Merely the ability to reason apart from delivered truths is too thin a gruel on which to live. For the socialist Left, equality consisted in political power; for the libertarian Left, it was economic consumption. Both were equally corrosive of a social order in which corporate actors--Church, guild, family, etc.--provided the glue that held society together.
Thus, for Gottfried the true Right barely exists today. This is not surprising when you consider only those few who, like Gottfried himself, "1) defend inherited authority, 2) appeal to (now broken) traditions as the source of community, and 3) emphasize rooted identities" are really on the Right.
Is it possible to get to the right of Gottfried? Well, consider this post in which my Regent University (albeit School of Divinity, not Law) colleague Dale Coulter channels his inner Christopher Dawson to proclaim that the "mind of the bourgeoisie is inherently opposed to the mind of Christ." Actually, I suspect that Gottfried would agree; after all, today's bourgeoisie in his classification would generally be of a Left-libertarian bent. Yet, Dawson find the origins of "the Left" before the Enlightenment. Dawson argues that the roots of a bourgeois mentality can already be found in the rise of the medieval merchant class.
What are we to make of this? First, while I find it curious to classify libertarians as a party of the Left, I nonetheless have explained why I'm not one. Second, the radical secularity of this age, taking off, so to speak, with the Enlightenment, has certainly acted in concert with the collapse of the hierarchically structured forms of society that preceded the nineteenth century; everyone's an egalitarian of some sort now. Yet, to identify the source of the problem with the Enlightenment or late medieval times does not get us very far. Time and history move on and we must come to a modus vivendi with our time. This not mean we are captive to the Spirit of the Age; there is much about contemporary culture we can and should resist. It is nonetheless the case that we cannot repristinate the past. We must take the best of a socially-structured past and deploy it in the present. We are all in a world of Gottfried's Left now, even those who choose to manage to live a sort of Conservative past.
And here's where Coulter has proposed a solution. As a card-carrying Pentecostal holiness guy, he's of a piece with some of the most radically egalitarian Christians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Coulter recruits the very Catholic Dawson to--in my words--a joint project with charismatic wing of contemporary Christianity to resacralize the world. On the one hand,
Second, is the obvious correlation between Pentecostalism in the developing world and the mentality of the bourgeoisie. Getting ahead in the world of economic activity is a key result of association with the modern day renewal movement in South America and Africa. And, if I may hazard an unsubstantiated opinion, I suspect that the Pentecostal/charismatic experience of "deeper communion" ends at the edge of the camp meeting. The Spiritual quickly fades into the rational-technical in the world of economic activity.
We thus find ourselves for the foreseeable future in a world of the bourgeoisie Left, oxymoronic as it may sound. Those who long for restoration of the conservatism of Gottfried (much less Dawson) are bound to be disappointed and filling egalitarian individuals with the Spirit is not likely to make a discernible difference.
Go here to read a useful essay by Paul Gottfried in which he demonstrates how the Left of the turn from the 18th century (the high-water mark of the so-called Enlightenment) to the 19th century (often called the age of revolutions) was united by its belief in a deracinated human equality. Whether individualist or collectivist, whether democratic or elitist--in other words, whether libertarian or socialist--the Left was united in its rejection of the hierarchically and socially situated world that came to an end with the Age of Revolution. As Gottfried writes: "The Left [rejects the long-standing social consensus that had begun in the Middle Age] out of a sense of fairness, a passionate commitment to the advancement of equality, and a universalist conception of human beings."
Moving from the free individual, the desire for equality proved unstoppable politically. But wherein did that equality exist? Merely the ability to reason apart from delivered truths is too thin a gruel on which to live. For the socialist Left, equality consisted in political power; for the libertarian Left, it was economic consumption. Both were equally corrosive of a social order in which corporate actors--Church, guild, family, etc.--provided the glue that held society together.
Thus, for Gottfried the true Right barely exists today. This is not surprising when you consider only those few who, like Gottfried himself, "1) defend inherited authority, 2) appeal to (now broken) traditions as the source of community, and 3) emphasize rooted identities" are really on the Right.
Is it possible to get to the right of Gottfried? Well, consider this post in which my Regent University (albeit School of Divinity, not Law) colleague Dale Coulter channels his inner Christopher Dawson to proclaim that the "mind of the bourgeoisie is inherently opposed to the mind of Christ." Actually, I suspect that Gottfried would agree; after all, today's bourgeoisie in his classification would generally be of a Left-libertarian bent. Yet, Dawson find the origins of "the Left" before the Enlightenment. Dawson argues that the roots of a bourgeois mentality can already be found in the rise of the medieval merchant class.
What are we to make of this? First, while I find it curious to classify libertarians as a party of the Left, I nonetheless have explained why I'm not one. Second, the radical secularity of this age, taking off, so to speak, with the Enlightenment, has certainly acted in concert with the collapse of the hierarchically structured forms of society that preceded the nineteenth century; everyone's an egalitarian of some sort now. Yet, to identify the source of the problem with the Enlightenment or late medieval times does not get us very far. Time and history move on and we must come to a modus vivendi with our time. This not mean we are captive to the Spirit of the Age; there is much about contemporary culture we can and should resist. It is nonetheless the case that we cannot repristinate the past. We must take the best of a socially-structured past and deploy it in the present. We are all in a world of Gottfried's Left now, even those who choose to manage to live a sort of Conservative past.
And here's where Coulter has proposed a solution. As a card-carrying Pentecostal holiness guy, he's of a piece with some of the most radically egalitarian Christians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Coulter recruits the very Catholic Dawson to--in my words--a joint project with charismatic wing of contemporary Christianity to resacralize the world. On the one hand,
Dawson privileges the mystical element in Christianity as the center of its life. He calls for a replacement of the bourgeois by another type of humanity, a great lover whose burning for union with the infinite thrusts him back into the everyday realities of finite existence.On the other,
I confess glimpses of this humanity in the rustic smells of the camp meeting and the cries, shouts, and dancing of the people, all of whom are pressing in for a deeper communion, a desire but to taste, to touch, and to see that the Lord is good one more time. I have caught it in the fragrance of the incense as the chanter’s voice ebbs and flows with the drama of the liturgy while we all behold with unveiled faces the glory of God and his saints symbolized in the iconostasis.In Coulter's vision we will remain anti-hierarchical while revitalizing the non-rational side of life. I remain unconvinced of the potential traction of Coulter's via media for several reasons. First, Dawson's emphasis was not on the pre-modern affective relationship between people and the world around them but on the virtues of a society in which everyone knew his and her place. Coulter's proposal is thus more Romantic than Romanist. A key social marker of Pentecostal Christianity has been its stress on the freedom of individual Spirit-filled believers from the strictures of churchly structures and certain social mores (thus, the early Azusa Street racial integration).
Second, is the obvious correlation between Pentecostalism in the developing world and the mentality of the bourgeoisie. Getting ahead in the world of economic activity is a key result of association with the modern day renewal movement in South America and Africa. And, if I may hazard an unsubstantiated opinion, I suspect that the Pentecostal/charismatic experience of "deeper communion" ends at the edge of the camp meeting. The Spiritual quickly fades into the rational-technical in the world of economic activity.
We thus find ourselves for the foreseeable future in a world of the bourgeoisie Left, oxymoronic as it may sound. Those who long for restoration of the conservatism of Gottfried (much less Dawson) are bound to be disappointed and filling egalitarian individuals with the Spirit is not likely to make a discernible difference.
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