In an article on ABC Religion and Ethics, John Millbank critiques liberalism (in the classical sense) for being paradoxically unliberal. His argument is that liberalism tends to use the freedoms it’s defending as an excuse to curtail and even eradicate those freedoms.

… increasingly, liberal politics revolves around supposedly guarding against alien elements: the terrorist, the refugee, the person of another race, the foreigner, the criminal, and so on. Populism seems more and more to be an inevitable drift of unqualified liberal democracy.

Consequently, the purported defence of liberal democracy itself is often used in order to justify the suspension of democratic decision-making and civil liberties. And so, somewhat paradoxically, it is liberalism that tends to suspend those values of liberality – fair trial, right to a defence, assumed innocence, habeas corpus, a measure of free speech and free [sic]enquiry, good treatment of the convicted – which it has taken over, but which as a matter of historical record it did not invent.

Millbank argues for a more inclusive application of “liberality” — one could also say “generosity” — appealing to premodern legal and social traditions. Marilynne Robinson employs to the same term in her essay “Hallowed be Your Name,” translating the Hebrew word ndb.

Ndb—let us call it “liberality”—occurs in a context that continually reinforces an ethic of liberality, that is, the Old Testament. The many economic laws God gives to Israel as a society are full of provisions for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the stranger. And the abuses the prophets decry most passionately are accumulations of wealth in contempt of these same laws.

What’s interesting about this is that Millbank is a Catholic appealing to premodern traditions, while Robinson is a liberal Protestant who appeals to Modern traditions, particularly Calvinism and American interpretations of the very Liberalism that Millbank decries.¹ Yet both aim their critiques at the same target — Enlightenment conceptions of free-market capitalism — and both look to the same alternative, an ethic of liberality and generosity.

This ethic of liberality that Millbank and Robinson propose bears some resemblance to Thomas Friedman’s “ethic of conservation,” proposed in Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Unlike Robinson and Millbank, Friedman takes the free market as a given and sees it as a good thing. But he’s no libertarian; the best solution to the current energy/economic/ecological crisis is, he argues, the imposition of a floor price on carbon fuels along with other regulatory measures, so that the use of carbon fuels becomes prohibitively expensive and alternatives become economically appealing.

But Friedman insists that an “ethic of conservation” is still necessary, because cheap, guilt-free, green energy will allow people unrestricted use of technology, which could lead to even more destructive behaviors. If we’re to avoid becoming victims of our own success, we can’t rely on the market for guidance. A profound change in the way we think and act must be fostered on a cultural level, much as Millbank and Robinson in the case of liberality.

1. Although it’s worth noting that John Calvin’s theological project was centered on reviving certain Augustinian concepts, and Milbank’s thinking has been strongly influenced by Augustine, so he and Robinson share that foundation underneath their apparently distinctive Christian traditions.

Robinson’s beef is with the dehumanizing effects of “survival of the fittest,” especially through economics by way of free markets.

Rivers flow to the sea — this fact implies no obligation on our part to abet them in it, to eliminate meanders and flood plains. If economics were natural in this sense, presumably moderating, stabilizing mechanisms would be intrinsic to its systems. But economics is simply human traffic in what people make and do and value and need, or think they need, a kind of epitome of civilization. It is the wealth of nations, and also their fraudulence and malice and vainglory. It is no more reliably benign or rational than any other human undertaking. That is to say, it requires conscious choice and control, the making of moral and ethical judgments.⁴

Pursuing this, Robinson launches an involved critique of Darwinism, its progenitors and its defenders. Darwin, Malthus and Spencer are all roundly castigated, but Robinson saves her greatest ire for Nietzsche and Freud, along with the contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett. This may seem like a roundabout way to criticize supply-side economics. But Robinson’s point is that “free markets” are only the most obvious manifestation of the general slant of modern thought, which has “declared the death of Adam,”⁵ that is, denied humanity and set aside humane concerns.

The essay ranges wide (one post can’t do it justice,) and, honestly, I’m overwhelmed. I understand it, and agree with it. Her arguments are strong and skillfully woven together, and the prose, likewise. Nevertheless it’s a lot to take in, and I’m at a loss to add anything of value. All I can say is that it’s worth your time to read it.

1. p.31
2. pp.30-31
3. p.29
4. pp.28-29
5. p.75

All the essays are, as she states in her introduction, “contrarian in method and spirit.”¹ In other words, they are polemics. This is important to remember, since they will seem hyperbolic if considered otherwise. She is similar in style and temperament to Joan Didion: sober almost to melancholy, but not quite.

The introduction immerses the reader in Robinson’s way of understanding and discussing things. Her views are contrarian, not because she has firmly taken sides in any existing conflict, but because “contemporary discourse feels to [her] empty and false.”² This leads her to attack diverse aspects of American culture, with the overarching goal of saving it from itself.

I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe that there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization, and I want it back.³

Robinson has been strongly influenced by John Calvin, the Puritans and protestant theology, and this informs everything she writes. It is especially important to her critique of American culture, which centers on its neglect of history and its formative traditions.

In several of the essays in this book I talk about John Calvin, a figure of the greatest historical consequence, especially for our culture, who is more or less entirely unread. Learned-looking books on subjects to which he is entirely germane typically do not include a single work of his immense corpus in their bibliographies, nor indicate in their allusions to him a better knowledge than folklore can provide of what he thought and said. I have encountered an odd sort of social pressure as often as I have read him. One does not read Calvin. One does not think of reading him. The prohibition is as absolute as it ever was against Marx, who always had the glamour of the subversive or the forbidden about him. Calvin seems to be neglected on principle. This is interesting. It is such a good example of the oddness of our approach to history, and to knowledge more generally, that it bears looking into. Everything always bears looking into, astonishing as that fact is.⁴

It’s worth noting that the essays in the book were all published in the 1990s. It’s amazing to see how little has changed, the essays aren’t dated or immaterial to America’s present state. They certainly deserve thorough, attentive reading, both for their content and style.

1. p.1
2. p.2
3. p.4
4. p.12

There were two passages that I found especially interesting. In the final chapter, Williams offers a critique of contemporary culture.

One of the oddest things in our culture is that we seem to be tolerant of all sorts of behaviour, yet are deeply unforgiving. The popular media mercilessly display the failings of politicians and celebrities; attitudes to prisoners and ex-prisoners are often harsh; people demand legal redress for human errors and oversights. We shouldn’t be mislead by an easygoing atmosphere in manners and morals; under the surface there is a hardness that ought to worry us.¹

It’s not uncommon to hear such criticism, especially from religious figures. But Williams offers something incisive and constructive. He’s not bemoaning the state of culture out of prudery or superiority, but diagnosing a serious, underlying problem. He goes on to say that the Church’s Creed (and, ideally, the Church itself) is countercultural, not because it’s more moral than the culture, but because it’s forgiving, rather than merely tolerant.

The other interesting passage concerns George Herbert’s poem, “Love (3).” Williams says it’s the “greatest Christian poem in the English language.”² That’s bold, when many others would turn to T.S. Eliot (I would have picked Auden’s Horae Canonicae.) His judgment is influenced by theological as well as artistic considerations, but — after rereading it — I think I may agree.

1. p.152
2. p.149

But the Romantic Age was not all discovery and progress. Holmes knows and acknowledges this; he’s not naive. Nevertheless, screw-ups are relegated to second fiddle; Holmes acknowledge the Terror, but only as a coda to the Wonder. This bothers me because one purpose of the book is to reinvigorate that Romantic attitude towards science. This strikes me as naive atavism. It’s true that the influence of the Romantic age persists, and could be reinvigorated. But what would grow out of such a project would develop uniquely, unpredictably — just as the Romantic Age itself did.

Holmes certainly, however, deserves great credit for even recognizing the existence of “Romantic Science” as something distinct from “Enlightenment Science.” The Age of Wonder also serves as an excellent reminder that science does not stand apart from the rest of human cultural activity. This is not always acknowledged.

The strangest thing about reading this is the image it gives of hippies. Growing up in California, I’ve met plenty of people one might call hippies. In my experience a typical hippie is old, poorly dressed, and not very interesting to talk to. It’s hard to imagine these same people ever being young, much less being typified as children. I was also struck by her assertion that the hippy movement was “evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart” (p.xiii). Now that the major discussion in almost every arena seems to center on rebuilding broken systems, her diagnosis reads as obvious and prescient: the hippy movement was clearly the first sign that America (and the Western World) had lost it’s sense of itself. Or, as Didion writes:

We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create to create a community in a social vacuum….This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. (pp.122-23)

Aside from “Slouching Towards Behlehem,” my two favorite pieces were “On Self-Respect” and “Los Angeles Notebook.” The former is just good sense. The latter, besides appealing to my typically Californian narcissism, is a very good anecdotal portrait of my city. That it is a series of anecdotal sketches is a major part of it’s quality. Los Angeles is too large and various to be properly conceived of in whole. The fractured nature of Didion’s piece is appropriate to LA’s own fractured character.

I bought and read this book, not out of interest, but on recommendation. But Joan Didion is now one of my favorite writers. I suppose I’ll have to go ahead and buy the massive Modern Library collection.

Scarcely anybody believes anymore in capitalism and socialism as value systems. We endure them as ways of social existence, as instruments for physical survival,  but we draw no emotional sustenance from them—except for a handful of archaic fanatics or manipulators of vested partisan interest. So we have found our inspiration and teleologies elsewhere, in cultural systems. Since medievalism much more than classicism incorporates the religious faiths of our grandparents, as well as the artistic and erotic sensibilities of our parent’s generation, and because of the richness and diversity of the medieval world, wherein anybody can find an aspect of special significance and proximity, medievalism sustains itself and flourishes as the cultural structure of a compelling value system. In the strange world of the twenty-first century, when so much of the Victorian and modernist worlds will have been swept away into obsolescence and uselessness, medievalism bids fair to increase greatly its importance in our lives.

….

Like the Roman Empire, the modern age will crumble from the crack of inordinate greatness beyond the interest of the many and the desire of the privileged few to sustain, and in the murky streets of ruined cities and meeting grounds of a billion humble habitations, our heroes and saints will show us how to begin history anew.

I would be suspicious of his assertions, if I had not already encountered them elsewhere. Phyllis Tickle’s deeply flawed but still compelling book, The Great Emergence, also argues that the modern age, having begun with the Renaissance, is now ending. Recent events seem to verify that the systems the modern world was built on are irreparably flawed, and that new political, economic, scientific, and social models will have to be devised. In fact, I recently read an article (I can’t remember where) that used the term “social capitalism.” The author  concluded that capitalism and socialism have both lost credibility, and that people are now looking for a more practical hybrid system.

Cantor makes a few other predictions, too many to list here. It will be interesting to see how accurate he ultimately is. Current events make him pretty convincing so far.

But in history, as in traveling, men usually see only what they already had in thier own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to it’s study.

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

I’m taking History 11 (American History 1) right now, and have been discovering the truth of this daily over the past couple of weeks. Certain issues, most notably immigration, have drawn more questions and opinions from the class than others, and it’s from these topics, concerning which the students have some personal experience and interest, that receive the most thorough elucidation and discussion. For his part, the instructor does a good job of identifying what doesn’t click with us naturally, and stops to spend extra time on those topics that we need to be encouraged to take some interest in.

It’s perpetually astonishing to me how useful seemingly unrelated classes can be to each other. My current reading for my upcoming English class (English Literature 2 – Romantic through 20^th Century) has been especially so for my History class, since they cover much of the same ground. When I read about how the Founding Fathers were influenced by the Enlightenment, I know, thanks to having read works from the Enlightenment, what that really means.

Inner strength comes from the sure conviction that God has placed us in this world to do the work of life, and not of death. (pg101)

He also frequently makes reference to other’s works. One, so far, has stood out to me particularly. From page 100:

In one of his great poems,”Choruses from The Rock,” T.S. Eliot asks,”Why should men love the Church?” This is his answer:

She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they would like
to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constanly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good…

I’m doing all of my reading for Eng 206 — which I’ll be taking in the Fall — right now so I can pursue my own studies in the class when it comes around. Eng 206 is English Literature 2, and much of what I’m reading for the class has been eerily consistent with my own reading on the side. I recently read Eliot’s The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. In a general sense, I’m not surprised at the fact that old works can still be relevant today. When I encounter a particular instance of the fact, however, I never fail to be caught off guard.