Understandably, people become stressed over rancorous and bitter disagreements. This is one reason why John Lennon was able to captivate so many with the invitation to imagine no religion or possessions, making possible a “brotherhood of man.” Who wouldn’t want that? A generation or two later, in a very different musical genre, Kurt Cobain likewise advocated transcending mere belief, emoting “I don’t care what you think, unless it is about me.” It’s a fair question: why can’t we all just get along?
The desire to be surrounded by laid back and good-natured people seems completely normal and is no doubt coeval with humanity itself. What is uniquely modern is the idea that peace might be achieved through the elimination of commitment to any truth or, barring that, the effective suspension of truth by indefinitely shifting it to the register of the conditional and hypothetical.
We may forthwith acknowledge a degree of rationality in the proposition that disagreement will decrease to the extent that adherence to truth decreases. Since conflict is caused by differences of opinion, the idea that agnosticism and peace will vary proportionally seems to make logical sense. But is this a viable prospect?
James Madison observed that the differing opinions at the heart of political factions arise from both the fallibility of reason and “the connection between one’s reason and one’s self-love.” The causes of factions thus being “sown in the nature of man,” Madison concluded that they could not be eliminated but only controlled. The idea that men could be induced to voluntarily do away with their opinions either did not occur to him or was not thought worthy of serious consideration.
The recalcitrance of opinions accounts for the fact that, rather than the admonishment to give them up, one is more likely to hear the plea to embrace the watered-down ideal of joining in “dialogue,” which will take place in a context of mutual respect where everyone is given an “equal voice.” All participants being open to persuasion by others, surely a workable consensus will result. Unfortunately, what seems increasingly salient about such dialogue, for example in the media, political debates, or in comments sections on the internet, is precisely its vehemence and vituperative character.
Let us posit what seem to be two permanent elements of human life, namely 1) the need for a baseline peaceful social milieu, along with 2) the persistence of differing opinions. I suggest that people take one of two possible “paths” in navigating these elements. As will be explained, both of these are options specifically available within the larger trajectory of the advanced Liberal state, whose ideology determines their ultimate form and foundation.
The first, “soft” path, maintains the “Imagine” ideal, while acknowledging it will never happen. In this approach, there is the acceptance of persistent opinions and the recognition that, indeed, “I myself have my own views.” Such opinions, however, are held shallowly, either with irony and self-skepticism about their “truth,” or in accord with the practical determination to set them aside as needed, so as not to create problems with others. In either case, people on the soft path are not inclined to assert their views in the world. They might say, “I am personally against abortion, but I would not force my views on anyone.” People on the soft path may be conservative or liberal. They want above all to live a successful or comfortable life.
Less commonly, a “hard” path is taken. These are folks whose opinions are central to their life and identity. They are not inclined to compromise and are quite willing to assert their views in either political or social contexts. Their need for tranquility is far less than those on the soft path and is satisfied by associating almost exclusively with those who hold the same opinions. Their social connections double as alliances for practical action. “Hard path” travelers are partisan activists who may be free market, “Christian,” or woke.
To evoke a useful metaphor, let us say that Liberal society is, of its essence, a “stream” of constant dialogue, discussion, and attempted persuasion. Those on the soft path may dip their toes in the stream but in general choose to live on the shore, since the stream tends to reduce their “quality of life.” Individuals on the hard path, again fewer in number, live almost permanently in the stream, beating their oars and fighting the current on a raft of like-minded individuals. On the soft path, one avoids talking about politics and religion as potential sources of conflict, creating unpleasantness, discomfort, or difficulty. By contrast, those on the hard path, even when not actively fighting, continue to refer to their chosen causes and partisan enemies, drawing meaning and vital energy from the battle, even from a distance.
But here’s the thing: whether one is in it, on it, or around it, the stream is false reality, rooted neither in being nor in history. Regardless of the apparent quality of its “dialogue” in terms of technical accuracy or comprehensiveness, it amounts to the superficial blabbering of the least common denominator. It may be high or low brow, with varying degrees of vulgarity. Despite its potential for presenting logical sequences of thought, it expresses an incoherent worldview. Despite claims in the stream to speak of or for authority, this grand dialogue refers to no authority beyond itself, making it the ultimate vacuum of authority. The stream is powerful and all-encompassing. In a Liberal democracy,the stream is “the” truth. Importantly, as we shall see, although it is not rooted in history, it is indeed in time. Its rushing waters are in perfect sync with the silent tick of the digital clock. Insofar as this essay is part of the stream, it is almost worthless.
Of course, these two “paths” are generalizations, and any individual is more complex than such a schema can comprehend. However, I make these observations not to categorize individuals but as a step in attempting to comprehend the pervasive unreality characteristic of Liberal society.
To this end, consider the following passage from Levinas:
All the concrete relations between human beings in the world get their character of reality from a third term. They are a communion. When these relations begin to circulate from person to person directly, we begin to feel that these persons are inconsistent; they turn into phantasms.[1] (Emphasis original)
Now, as a description of the intersubjective dynamic of Liberal society, it would be difficult to do better than to say that it is where relations “circulate from person to person directly.” After all, according to the Liberal ideology human beings are merely equal points in a milieu of mutual persuasion.
But more than this: because Liberalism designates individuals as possessors of equal rights based exclusively on the presence of rationality and freedom, it cannot fathom the “asymmetrical” structures arising, for example, between individuals with complimentary intrinsic qualities. The result is the inability to apprehend others in their irreducible otherness. As Levinas observes, “The rights of man … is the right of an I. Man is conceived of as an I or as a citizen – but never in the irreducible originality of his alterity, which one cannot have access to through reciprocity and symmetry.”[2]
Taking a clue from Levinas’ analysis (which is all that can be done in an essay such as this) we can say that Liberal society, despite its claim to provide for human flourishing through the continuous and robust expression of a multiplicity of points of view – which it may more or less accomplish on a material level – it creates a structure that impedes the ability to relate to others as unique realities. In short, it tends towards a stream of dialoguing “phantasms.”
What, we may ask, would the contrary look like? How can reality be approached? According to Levinas:
It is through participation in something in common, in an idea, a common interest, a work, a meal, in a ‘third man’ that contact is made. Persons are not simply in front of one another; they are along with each other around something.[3]
Crucially, this participation in something common includes the “institutions” that “put us into relationship with persons, collectivities, history, and the supernatural.”[4]
The bad news for travelers on the hard path is that, although they arguably “commune” around ideals or a shared agenda – from which they admittedly derive a certain sharpness and energy – the intense “symmetry” of their activist combat determines the structure of their experience. Right or wrong, allies or foes, human beings are at the core opinion-possessors. Only secondarily, and in an insubstantial manner, are they fathers and sons, husbands and wives, elders and young, teachers and students. Likewise, for them, institutions are not for life per se but are rather vehicles for furthering points of view and achieving concrete goals. Thus, despite “agreement” with others of the same views, they live fully in the unreal alienation of the stream, wherein relations “circulate from person to person directly.”
For those on the soft path, the commitment to avoid ideological disputes allows only “third terms” oriented toward enjoyment, safety, and pleasant company. We observe these are things valued by all mammals. Unfortunately for them, communion around these goods can be frustrated insofar as what is distinctly human reasserts itself, disrupting what was thought to be the supreme practical settlement. The hope was that problems of truth and goodness could be avoided through prior agreement on universal principles like equality, freedom, justice, and mutual respect. As it turns out, however, “freedom” and “equality” mean different things to different people and manifest in incompatible ways of life. In practice, protecting the right to life and the right to abortion, or the right to religious expression and the right to be free from discrimination, is simply not possible. Closer to home, the ideal of “unconditional acceptance” of family may not be compatible with the imperative to protect children from harmful influence.
Now, the only solution to the unreality of the stream is to make a full and radical exit. This is because, as the Greeks saw, there is in the nature of things a reciprocity between the political regime and the souls of citizens. In modern philosophy, the analysis of intersubjectivity shows how and why this is the case. We might say that it takes a polis to know (and live) the truth. This means that breaking free from unreality will require communion with others around “third terms” that are truly real. For those of us born into a world fully shaped and permeated by the Liberal stream, such an undertaking will be simultaneously an exploration and restoration.
Making an exit from the Liberal stream can be a surprisingly delicate matter. For it is not a matter of conflict – still less of rebellion – in the usual sense of those words. We note in this regard that the Liberal stream itself claims to hold “being different” and “not going with the flow” as the greatest of virtues. The work of an exit must be done on a deeper level. All the same, a decision in favor of reality will almost surely put one in the position of being “divisive.” Jesus warned:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.
Reality requires a “third term,” and communion around it must invite division with those who reject it. As Levinas states, “To have a falling out with someone is to find that one has nothing in common.”[5]
Let me return to the claim above that those in the stream do not live in history. We are now in a position to see the reason, for, emphatically, living in continuity with a shared conception of history is communion with a “third term” in the most profound degree. Of course, it is not a question of particular facts (e.g., “the Magna Carta was signed in 1215”) but rather with a community’s shared understanding of the meaning of history. For those in the stream, occupied with enjoying their quality of life or engaged in the fight for institutional power, the here and now is all-important. History may be useful, enriching, or an ideological tool, but it is not for living in and it does not matter. Communion around the true meaning of history is at once a movement toward reality and an exit from the stream.
Now, if history flows, it should be evident that the exit we are considering has nothing to do with a cessation of motion or becoming frozen in time. Rather, is more like entering a very different “stream.” I would like to argue that the very antithesis of the Liberal stream may be found in the “stream” of the Tradition of the Catholic Church, for in it we find the ultimate “third term.” Specifically, it is an historically enduring institution with a massive worldly footprint, both intellectual and material, whose basis is a supernaturally united community extending from time into eternity, and whose ultimate Author is God Himself. Above all, working within Tradition, the Church proposes infallible truths that are not subject in any measure to “dialogue.” Previously, the Church clearly saw an antipathy between Tradition and the Liberal stream. More recently, an attempt has been made at reconciliation.
Now, at the very heart of the Tradition is a highly peculiar action instituted by God and repeated faithfully throughout the ages, namely the Mass. It is therefore no surprise that Liberal Catholics would seek to introduce fundamental changes aimed at effacing its historical character and significance. This was substantially achieved in the Novus Ordo under the rubric of “discarding” those parts of the Mass which were considered to have been “added with but little advantage.”[6] Consciously or unconsciously, culpably or innocently, the Mass was “simplified” (that is, reduced) to what select individuals deemed “essential” (that is, ahistorical). With the stream-like concreteness of the Mass thus weakened, the tension between the Church’s practice and the Liberal stream would be lessened and the Faith made more palatable to “modern man.” Henceforth tradition, taken as bits of “content,” could circulate freely in the stream.
In matters of religion, the soft path is manifested in the “false ecumenical mindset,” wherein those who believe the fewest specific theological doctrines (or just as good, are willing to regard them as severable) are the most charitable, since they have the greatest luxury of being “kind” and most willing to join in communion with others. It is easy to see that the ecumenical mindset, which seeks to build on agreement about what is most fundamental (e.g., “Jesus is the Son of God”) and resolve the remainder at a future date through ecumenical dialogue, conforms perfectly to the Liberal ideal of starting from universal principles (e.g., “freedom and equality”) and settling the rest though democratic activism.
One need not go back far into the Church’s history to find the rejection of such an approach. Consider, for example, the following passage from Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Mortalium Animos:
In matters of faith, it is not permitted to make a distinction between fundamental and so-called non-fundamental articles of faith, as if the first ought to be held by all, and the second the faithful are free to accept or not accept. The supernatural virtue of faith has, as its formal cause, the authority of God the Revealer, which suffers no such division.
The point here is not that Catholics are obliged to enter onto a “hard” path of religious disputation, nor is it, on the contrary, that no attempts should be made at persuasion in matters of religion. Rather, what I would focus on is the inescapable significance of authority in such questions. Specifically, as a divinely inspired stream, the Tradition is authoritative ut totum and therefore radically independent of any process of dialogue or human consensus building. (We might contrast this to the Ecumenical Councils which united east and west at Lyons and Florence, in which Catholics and Orthodox indeed “dialogued” but with the goal of a common subordination to the authority of Tradition.)
Objection: “Is it truly not possible to live in both the Catholic Tradition and the Liberal stream!? Are you not being utopian?” The question returns us to the meaning of the political in the fundamental sense, which has been obscured by Liberalism but was alive enough in Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Hobbes to cause them to reject Catholics as acceptable citizens.
In his analysis of the immense power of the democratic press, Tocqueville observed that a newspaper “speaks to each of its readers in the name of all the rest, and the feebler they are individually, the easier it is to sweep them along.”[7] Now, I find this formulation highly pertinent because, first, in depicting its power to “sweep people along” it evokes the image of the stream that I have chosen. Beyond this, however, it clarifies that the stream, which eventually issues in laws and governmental actions, is authoritative insofar as it is a dialogue carried out “in the name of” the people (that is, “all the rest”). In America, the people are sovereign. Yet the Church has traditionally rejected such a conception. For example, in the encyclical Diuturnum, On the Origin of Civil Power, pope Leo XIII states “as regards political power, the Church rightly teaches that it comes from God.”
The two streams are the expressions of two different ultimate authorities or sovereigns. Certainly, it is possible to recognize a degree of democratic legitimacy within the stream of Tradition. Likewise, it is possible to allow a degree of religious authority to exist within the Liberal stream. However, if God and man cannot both be ultimate authorities, it would not seem possible to live in both streams. We are now at the crux of the matter, for it will be said that it is precisely the genius of modern Liberalism to allow man to pass from one stream to the other as he chooses, thus facilitating peace and prosperity. This claim invites us to delve a bit deeper into the idea of a “stream.”
Liberalism is of course founded on the idea of the individual as the fundamental unit of political existence. In a non-Liberal philosophy like that of Aristotle, for example, political life is understood as the culmination of a series of organically interlocking communities: man and woman, the household, the village, and finally the political partnership itself, which is an association based on a common vision of the good life. Aristotle’s formulation that communities are “prior” to the individual is a way of articulating the reciprocity between soul and regime. Hence, Plato speaks of the “democratic soul.” Phenomenology analyzes this dynamic “from the inside,” as it were, elucidating how consciousness is constituted through participation in an intersubjective community.
The problem with changing streams, then, is that consciousness cannot simply be switched like a jacket or sweater on a day that has become too warm. Specifically, authority is not just a belief that is “held” but is something apprehended. One perceives either God or man as the ultimate authority based on a prior formation. A “stream” involves an enduring structure of consciousness. Leaving one stream to enter another entails a revolution in consciousness: that is, a conversion. To say that one holds the people to be sovereign, “but only up to a certain point,” is already to cease to be Liberal. A Liberal who says this either does not really mean it or is failing to grasp the meaning of his own words.
Extending the analysis, consider that a fundamental truth for Catholics about the world is that it is created and subject to the intervention of God in the form of miracles. Based on this belief (and perhaps on an experience of the miraculous) the world is apprehended as such. Unbelievers, by contrast, will likely “perceive” the world as some kind of matter in motion, with no intrinsic meaning or purpose. One might empathize, but one cannot live in both worlds.
Perhaps it will be objected that, qua neutral, the Liberal stream neither accepts nor rejects any authority and neither favors a materialistic nor theistic view of reality. It simply remains silent on such questions. Yet if access to reality is intersubjective, then the authoritative “dialogue” of the stream (it is authoritative insofar as it comes to each “in the name of” the sovereign people) which actively refuses the embrace of any concrete reality, becomes – at least in advanced Liberal regimes – itself a “worldview,” negatively speaking. That is, the Liberal stream becomes a force working to remove the mass of people from meaning and reality.
The position of Catholics within the Liberal state is complex, making it difficult to formulate an approach to political life. By way of conclusion, allow me to suggest what I believe is a helpful distinction between “administrative” and “political” legitimacy. Now, as we have seen, the essence of political legitimacy is a commonly held view of the good life. For Catholics this entails recognizing sources of authority with intrinsic goodness, including the historically identifiable Church founded by Jesus. By contrast, administrative legitimacy refers to rights inhering in a legal system or organization arising from its ability to secure certain goods. Based on this ability, the authority of “administrative laws” should be recognized provided they do not conflict with true order or, in Aquinas’ terms, with reason. Indeed, the relative goodness of the “system” means that participation – and even “love” – for the institutions of the system is appropriate, since the system is intermingled with, and materially sustains, the concrete life of the “political” community (constituted as such in part by its religious commitments).
I realize that describing things in this way may seem counterintuitive since it separates the legal structure from the political community. Such a separation, which comes from maintaining the classical defining of “political,” is likely to strike modern ears as strange, and moreover raises various theoretical questions. Yet I insist that this terminology is necessary for arriving at the truth. Only confusion and blindness will be created by “normalizing” what is in many ways an unnatural situation by altering the meaning of words.
Finally, the current state of communication and travel means that the concrete form of life assumed by any “intersubjective community” may be highly fluid. Hence, despite a certain degree of regular physical proximity being necessary to constitute a “community” in any authentic sense, it would be a mistake to imagine such communities as necessarily geographically settled (although this is possible). With due regard for the attendant linguistic and cultural complexities, “political” communities in the sense we have designated may arise internationally, at least in nascent form, with Liberal nation states being increasingly reduced, according to the ultimate logic of their ideology, to more or less accommodating administrative units, whose tremendous economic and military power cannot be denied.
Catholics in Liberal regimes necessarily endure a certain ambiguity and tension, living as they do under legal structures which, while legitimate in a certain respect, are not always based on true political authority. Conversely, they live in “political” communities that are relatively incoherent, insofar as they lack legal constitutions. As a philosopher I offer no prescriptions. Specifically, I do not say that nascent political communities should give themselves constitutions, thus supplanting what have largely become administrative structures. For one could also argue for the “conversion” of Liberal institutions to real authority. In this essay, I have merely attempted to understand the current situation which, in some ways presenting the most modern of dilemmas, in other ways is as old as the City of God versus the City of Man.
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[1] Emmanuel Levinas, Existence & Existents (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1978), 32.
[2] Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 14.
[3] Levinas, Existence & Existents, 32.
[4] Ibid., 30.
[5] Ibid., 32.
[6] Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Article 50.
[7] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Harper Collins, 1966), 290.
