Which comes first, the Principle or the Place?

Caleb Stegall wrote a thoughtful counter to all of the critical reviews of James Cameron’s new film Avatar. It drew a huge response and one of the respondents (# 24 December 2009 at 7:13 pm) brought up a point which delves into a deeper issue for those living on the Porch:

But I think that this sort of rhetoric does serve as a good springboard for some troubling questions of Front Porch Republicanism. The Front Porchers’ reverence for community is admirable; but their reverence for community-above-all-else (as I understand it) is not. Those Front Porchers who are men and women of faith may value their creeds above their communities, but to read their writings, one could draw the conclusion that faith was merely worth preserving as one cog in the communal machinery. This is one issue that Front Porchers should address–i.e. is there a higher good than “community” and are there spheres in which it is appropriate for an individual to act and think as a cosmopolitan rather than a local?

In another post, I discuss Patrick Deneen’s essay “Patriotic Vision” in which he recognizes the tension between Principle and Place. It would be nice to see a fuller treatment of the question on the Porch itself.
And to stir the pot a little, I’ll toss in a quote from that Front Porcher Fav, Edmund Burke: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
(Since pasting parts of this post in the comments section of Caleb Stegall’s article, D.W. Sabin and John Wilson have made some helpful responses # 29 December 2009 at 12:02 pm & # 29 December 2009 at 1:21 pm)

Free and/or Virtuous Society

In a previous post, I presented an example in favor of Patrick Deneen’s thesis that Modern Ideals are inherent to Modern Institutions. The example I gave was India, which has been modernizing technologically, but has also been importing the worst aspects of our culture e.g. hemlines are getting shorter in Bollywood Films. Moreover, the children of Eastern Immigrants to America are cohabitating, contracepting, and divorcing at rates no different from Americans.

Deneen linked that post on Front Porch Republic and Peter Lawler responded in the comment section. He raised some interesting problems which are worth delving into.

1)He says Harvey Mansfield is not a PoMo Con because he is Aristotelian and not a Thomist. But is a commitment to Thomism something all PoMo Cons share? Would James Poulos characterize himself that way? The reason why I associated Mansfield with Postmodern Conservatism is because he is trying to provide an alternative philosophy of man for Modern Institutions.

This seemed to have been JPII’s goal also. He did not oppose the Modern Ideal of Freedom with the Ancient or Medieval Ideal of Virtue; instead, he argued for a “Free and Virtuous Society.”

2) Lawler does not think India is a good example; He refers to their traditional values as ‘creepy’. Having just read Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, I might be inclined to agree. The novel portrays a traditional society in the midst of modernization. Adiga depicts the ‘Old Ways’ in the most unsavory light. The Hindu religion and the hierarchical family structure are sources of injustice in the story; on the other hand, the hero which emerges from it all is a bundle of all the terrible ideals we associate with modernity: a skeptical and rootless individual. The novel could be read as confirming Lawler’s Tocquevillian observation that things in India are “getting better and worse.”

Replacing the Declaration with Darwin

Carson Holloway has an article on Darwin in the Public Discourse. We’re all aware of Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism, which was a political philosophy of the right. What is more interesting is Darwin’s influence on the Left, in this case, John Dewey.

Holloway explains that Dewey welcomed Darwin’s views because it allowed him to reject the fixed standard of “the law of nature and nature’s God” which was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Like President Obama, Dewey could now stress “change” and “hope” in the future. But Holloway goes on to state the following problem:

Dewey’s politicization of Darwinism, however, seems to lead him into incoherence. For him, we must not concern ourselves with “the good” or “the just” in any ultimate sense, but should merely seek incremental progress in goodness and justice. But how can we speak of improvement, or betterment, without some sense of “the good”—without implying that we have some knowledge, however imperfect, of what is simply good? How can we speak of “increments” of justice without some intuition of “the just”?

I would say this is where Darwin’s influence on Dewey ends and Hegel’s German Idealism begins. The moral standard for Dewey is fixed, just as it was for the Founders. Unlike the Founders, however, Dewey does not find that standard in Nature, but History. The Absolute Moment, which will be realized in the future within human history, provides the measuring stick for our practices today.

Tocqueville's take on Private Judgment

Peter Robinson interviewed Paul Rahe, who has just published a book titled Soft Despotism: Democracy’s Drift. The book is an anaylsis of our current state of affairs in light of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In the interview, Rahe discusses the four institutions which shielded Americans from the desire to surrender their liberty to the state in the past:

1) Local Government
2) Civic Associations
3) Family
4) Church

The first two cultivate a do-it-yourself attitude. The third provides a safety net of stability and comfort for individuals who would otherwise experience anxiety. Where Rahe gets Tocqueville wrong is on the fourth institution, religion. Rahe describe it in the same terms as the first two: cultivation of a do-it-yourself attitude. Indeed, he depicts Tocqueville as saying that it encourages skepticism toward authority. I, however, remember Tocqueville’s take on the matter as more akin to his view on the family: a source for certain truths in a world that seemed to be more and more in flux. But don’t take my word on it. Here is a direct quote from Mr. T himself:

General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas above all others which it is most suitable to withdraw from the habitual action of private judgment and in which there is most to gain and least to lose by recognizing a principle of authority. The first object and one of the principal advantages of religion is to furnish to each of these fundamental questions a solution that is at once clear, precise, intelligible, and lasting, to the mass of mankind….This is especially true of men living in free countries. When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to having only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned; and, in despair of ever solving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them…Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude.

For Tocqueville, the skeptic is more, not less, susceptible to surrendering his freedom due to his uncertainty about the biggest questions.