I was very privileged to be able to attend a lecture by Alasdair MacIntyre at Catholic University here in DC over the weekend. The topic was “Ends and Endings”, and the speech was a delightfully rambling overview of the connections between teleology and literature, ethics and storytelling.
Inevitably, however, the question and answer session rapidly turned to the Big Healthcare News of the last couple of weeks. One questioner demanded to know what Prof. MacIntyre thought of the political situation. “Political situation?” MacIntyre replied with a grin, “the situation is that there is no political situation. What you are observing is a collection of second-order responses to the fact that politics no longer exists.”
This answer may seem cryptic to those not fully immersed in MacIntyreana, but it flows quite naturally from MacIntyre’s earlier stated belief that “in a community without a shared conception of the good, politics becomes civil war carried on by other means.” The idea simply stated is that in a community such as ours where we lack a common idea of what the good entails, and furthermore where agreement about the very means of determining what the good is has shattered (reason vs. revelation, tradition vs. social science); the Oakeshottian model of politics as reasoned conversation and discourse fails entirely. How can one have a reasoned conversation when we lack a shared vocabulary? How can we hope to convince one another that a certain course of action is wise when we disagree fundamentally on desired outcomes? All that is left to do is to rally the troops, win converts wherever possible, and wage a war of attrition.
It’s a simple, convincing narrative, well supported by MacIntyre in his books, and one that I believed up until a short while ago. If we believe the narrative, the only reasonable response is to seek the end of politics by one means or another. I know many who have been made into quasi-libertarian radical federalists by this narrative — after all, if we lower the stakes, surely the fights will grow less vicious — others, including MacIntyre himself, recommend the founding of autonomous communities with a shared vision of what a good life entails. I think to a certain extent even President Obama framed his campaign as an attempt to end politics by means of rational and competent technocratic planning, a sign that this narrative is one that appeals to a considerable segment of the voting public.
The trouble, quite simply, is that the narrative is wrong on two accounts: first, there has never been and never will be a political community that satisfies MacIntyre’s test of shared moral vision. It’s somewhat telling that his own most effective example is of a Benedictine monastery. History is full of communities that were wracked with bitter philosophical divisions as to what the good life meant, and everybody but Aristotle seems to have understood that even when we agree on what goods exist, we may not agree on which ones take precedence when they conflict. The condition of bitter philosophical disagreement with one’s neighbor is a constant of human nature.
Second, and more importantly, reasoned dialogue can continue to exist even in the face of shattered vocabularies. It’s easy to forget in an age when screaming protestors claim that the President is from Kenya while the Speaker of the House dismisses half the country as “un-American” for daring to disagree with her, but at the core of the healthcare debate there is broad agreement about what would constitute improvement of the system. The disagreements are largely about process, implementation, and means — important questions, to be sure, and questions on which I happen to fall towards the extreme right-wing end of the spectrum, but questions with little bearing on the ultimate purpose of our society.
This is not to say that current beliefs about the possibility of democratic reason can go unchanged. Frequent readers of this blog know that I believe that all vocabularies are intrinsically sectarian, and that value-free reasoning is a myth. The solution is not to retreat within our philosophical bubbles, however, but to practice ecumenism and evangelism in the original and deepest sense of those words.
September 28th, 2009 | 12:43 pm
I agree. If we were to take MacIntyre’s criteria seriously, Lincoln should have allowed the South to go its own way in 1861. The challenge for politics in a pluralistic, globalizing world is to find connections across the cultural and values divides, not sequester oneself in one’s own values bubble.
September 28th, 2009 | 1:54 pm
[...] More: Politics without Politics » Postmodern Conservative | A First … [...]
September 28th, 2009 | 1:54 pm
[...] here: Politics without Politics » Postmodern Conservative | A First … Comments [...]
September 28th, 2009 | 2:00 pm
[...] Read the original here: Politics without Politics » Postmodern Conservative | A First … [...]
September 28th, 2009 | 2:04 pm
A third and, in my view, more serious objection is that a community characterized by the kind of consensus Macintyre describes is actually not political. Although it can’t be reduced to conflict, the permanence of division and disagreement within a relatively stable horizon seem to be one of the features that separate the polis from, well, the monastery. I guess that view that discursive mediation is impossible, that there’s only way, is one threat to politics. But so is the demand for unity–whether articulated in nostalgic or technocratic terms.
September 28th, 2009 | 3:20 pm
I have to put on my Yankee symp hat and agree with Sam, only to put on my Confederate symp hat and say, yes, Lincoln really managed to “find connections” with those erstwhile Southerners. Of course, Lincoln wound up knowing better and more fully than anyone how high the cost of putting your money where your mouth is can be. When he told the country about this at his Second Inaugural, he really was being ecumenical and evangelical in the best way. Perhaps only then he achieved true greatness, but it was really, truly great greatness.
September 28th, 2009 | 4:00 pm
while macintyre is indeed a simple narrative, i think your assertion that true discussion despite radical (even fundamental) differences is not always so self-evident. i haven’t really read much macintyre, but i suspect that you might be a little uncharitable in your characterization. macintyre’s a smart guy, smart enough to realize there could be serious debate within a small benedictine community about fundamental goods. but there is, nonetheless, a common goal: community (or perhaps more appropriately, communion, wit one another and God). i believe that the question is one of scale. at what scale does real community cease to exist? to what extent am i in genuine community with nancy pelosi? forgive me for being the typical front porcher, but i really do think wendell berry does have something to add to this question. berry identifies our ability to love our neighbor as the fundamental limit upon community. at the end of the day, i am not in community with nancy pelosi because she cannot love me as a neighbor. she cannot because she does not know me except as a statistic.
a benedictine monastery might not necessarily have all the exact same idea of good, or agree upon an order or goods, but at the end of the day, they live in rooms next to one another and have to sleep at night without driving each other nuts. this sort of living situation, the demand that they are able to live with and love one another 20 years from now does create an order of goods, doesn’t it? it might be practical in nature, but i think that’s something even aristotle would be satisfied with.
September 28th, 2009 | 4:23 pm
“everybody but Aristotle seems to have understood that even when we agree on what goods exist, we may not agree on which ones take precedence when they conflict. The condition of bitter philosophical disagreement with one’s neighbor is a constant of human nature.”
Let Aristotle speak in his own defense. “Now while there is agreement that justice in an unqualified sense is according to merit, there are differences, as was said before: some consider themselves equal generally if they are equal in some respect, while others claim to merit all things unequally if they are unequal in some respect” (Politics 1301b 35 ff.).
On the difference between the monastery and the polis, it is interesting to note that from the monastery’s view that difference was also one displayed by the first universities, with their quarrels and contentions.
September 28th, 2009 | 6:43 pm
Dear Mr Wilson,
I think you will enjoy reading Renford Bambrough’s work, especially *Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge* (Routledge 1979).
Viz.,
http://independentindian.com/2008/05/08/main-philosophical-works-of-john-wisdom-renford-bambrough/
Cordially
Subroto Roy
September 28th, 2009 | 6:59 pm
MacIntyre is on record denying that the U.S. can be considered a community, but I forget where.
Size alone would work against any shared way of life on the national level.
I’m also confused by the original post. For those MacIntyreans who believe that politics has ended, it’s not possible to “seek politics’ end.”
Jack Whelan writes: “The challenge for politics in a pluralistic, globalizing world is to find connections across the cultural and values divides, not sequester oneself in one’s own values bubble.”
In other words, doesn’t this mean that the challenge of politics is to make sure substantive communities of the type MacIntyre prefers will never ever emerge again?
As Patrick Deneen noted about the (Benedictine) Belmont Abbey College / EEOC controversy, there is no “Benedict Option” because pluralism is mandatory.
Having wasted plenty of breath and belief on pluralism, I now find I like my “values bubble” very much and would be satisfied with preserving and extending it.
But all the larger bubbles have been popped in the interests of pluralism, globalism and other minor devils. Therefore pluralism and globalism are somebody else’s interests, not mine. I’d prefer a community with as few connections to these ideologies’ engineers as possible.
September 29th, 2009 | 7:24 am
Will is right and Prof. MacIntyre is wrong! However, James’s comments re: Father Abraham gave me the vapors and I had to retire to my bed for a nappy!
My Voegelinian leanings tell me that there can be no “political” community established among a dichotomous citizenry divided by a belief in the ground and an alienation with the ground. One is accepting ’self’ (what it means to be a human being-zoon noun echon) while the latter rejects ’self,’ and consequently represents man who has lost direction, defined by our Stoic friends as agnonia ptoiodes (madness or mania).
September 29th, 2009 | 1:04 pm
I’ll take a “civil war carried out by other means” over an actual civil war, any day.
September 29th, 2009 | 6:37 pm
Before you get too excited for having “refuted” Macintyre, go back and read “Three Rival Versions,” especially the part about Aquinas’ critique of Augustine.
September 30th, 2009 | 1:13 pm
I agree with those who say that M. is no place to look for political wisdom. The best I can say about him that he’s led many to appreciate certain truths about virtue that might have better been learned from someone else. The quasi-Marxism of “left conservatism” seems most indebted to him, and in my view is somewhere between exaggeration and baloney.
October 2nd, 2009 | 9:23 am
[...] excellent, yet in my view problematic reflection here, as well as with some comments of Alasdair MacIntyre here. Ted has taken the step of explicitly couching the historical interpretation of America’s [...]
October 2nd, 2009 | 12:51 pm
…[R]easoned dialogue can continue to exist even in the face of shattered vocabularies.”
I am not at all convinced that this is the case. Taking up James’ example of the American Civil War, while it’s true that North and South strongly differed as to their reconcilation of mutually-recognized goods, I would not characterize them as having a “shattered vocabulary.” The North and South may have disagreed, indeed may even have been enemies, but they occupied the same moral universe. The vast majority of society (i.e. the vast majority of political society, i.e. white men of some means), for good or ill, believed roughly the same things about the nature of God and man. At the very least, their beliefs could mostly be shoe-horned into some sort of WASP framework. Nowhere in nineteenth-century American history do I observe so great a degree of people talking past each other as I do in contemporary society. It’s even becoming increasingly difficult for different factions within the Christian church to talk to each other, even amongst groups which occupy roughly the same ends of various theological spectra.
If anything, I think examples like the Civil War only serve to undermine your argument. Even in a society which largely does agree on the fundamentals of morality it is possible to come to blows. What then are we to believe about a society where any such agreement is fundamentally impossible?
All of that being said, I think MacIntyre is right, but not for his reasons. The solution to the problem of modernity is not to stick one’s fingers in one’s ears and pretend that Kant and Nietzsche never happened, that we never should have abandoned Aristotle. But the idea of an “autonomous community” is, in effect, the idea of the Christian church. It doesn’t have to look as monastic as MacIntyre frequently makes it out to be–it doesn’t have to be monastic at all, actually–but the church was always intended to be a community that operates independently from the rest of the world.
October 5th, 2009 | 10:32 pm
[...] promised before, here is a link to Alasdair MacIntyre’s lecture at CUA on the topic “Ends and [...]
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