A Nonfiction Book
Is there character in “the ethic against forbidding?”
What is character? Is it still with us? If so, is it failing or thriving? If thriving, why is “Absolute Knowing” needed versus just more of that character (reformation is always easier than introducing something completely new anyway)? To make the claim that we need “Absolute Knowing” and corresponding communities, we would need to first establish that our current situation is problematic, which may or may not be the case.
Investigating the possibility and meaning of character in general may help us determine what “paradoxical character” might be like and how we might live together in “A Society of Absolute Knowing.” We have learned from Dr. Hunter that ‘[t]he social and cultural conditions that make character possible are no longer present’: character is now an impossibility.¹ But isn’t there still a moral order? Isn’t it ‘forbidden to forbid’? Isn’t the predominate morality that there is ‘no inhibiting truth?’² Hence, those with character are those who fight against repression, yes?
Character of some kind is still with us, I think, because I do believe that there is a kind of community and moral order still present: “the ethic against forbidding” (which I will call “EAF”), which is basically the ethic of deconstructing “givens.” Under the EAF, it is easier to say what America “is not” versus what America “is”: it is easier to say, “America isn’t a Christian nation” or “America isn’t just for Republicans” versus “America is for whites, blacks, Latinos — everyone.” With A.J. Conyers in mind, the EAF is a radically inclusive ethic, and hence when saying what America “is,” one is left with saying, “America is for everyone” or “America is where everyone can be who they want to be.” This sounds like a plausible and even moral definition, but problematically generalities are not actualities, and often what and who people “want to be” collide and conflict. Furthermore, faced with “the radical possibilities” of profound diversity, many develop psychological anxiety and try to ‘escape from freedom’ (as has already been discussed).³ Lastly, a nation in which “everyone is who they want to be” will not have much of a “center” to hold its people together: what it means to “be American” will be relative and different for each citizen. All the people will have in common is that they each decide for themselves the meaning of their nation, which is a commonality, but it is not a commonality traditionally capable of binding (though it might be different for “Absolute Knowers”).
“Being therapeutic” and defending the therapeutic is the ethic and character of today’s world, as defined and situated in the community of those committed to defending and fighting for the cause. Hence, for Progressives, character isn’t dead, nor is ethics: the conclusions of Hunter in his book The Death of Character more so apply to Conservatives than it does Progressives (unless that is this ethic and character are unsustainable, as Rieff would have argued, but we must address that later). Therefore, when Conservatives discuss the death of community and character, Progressives are likely to think they are wrong and ideological (and in many ways, Progressives are correct): what is gone is their character and community, and hence for Conservatives, character and community themselves are gone. Conservatives and Traditionalists act as if the loss of their community and character is the total loss of both, which for Progressives can be the very thinking which oppresses minorities. And indeed, it can be.
For Progressives, ethics and character are not dead: EAF is still with us. Rieff argued that human beings needed both “yes” and “no” in life (releases and repressions), and EAF provides these: the “therapeutic” releasing of the will is the ethical until the will threatens “the other,” which is for my “yes” to encounter a “no.” If I want to kill, I cannot; if I want to steal, I must abstain; if I want to hate minorities, I must overcome my bigotry. There is a “no” in EAF, and not simply because there is law: EAF consists of an ethical code. But is this ethical code practically as useful and capable of making character possible as were religious systems of the past? Is it practically definable from relativism (assuming any system can be)? That is the question we will soon turn to and consider.
Rieff called EAF an “anti-culture” precisely because it erases the norms, allowances, and remissions necessary for a culture to exist — but perhaps Rieff was just being closed-minded. Perhaps EAF could make possible character which could provide us with “belonging?” Not in Rieff’s mind, no, for the EAF makes “the ethical” indefinable in practice from “the will,” except when “the will” comes in conflict with “the other” — then “the ethical” and “the will” divide from one river into two before merging again and becoming indistinguishable. For Rieff though, this isn’t enough to make EAF “cultural” vs “anti-cultural,” for the repressions of the system have little practical impact on how individuals privately self-regulate and live their lives to themselves. Also, the repressions are ultimately themselves expressions of the will, which makes them therapeutic. Though there is a “no” when it comes to forbidding in EAF, this “no” is practically indefinable from a “yes.”
‘The body, it would seem, is the underlying symbolic of the culture war. This being the case, the politics of the culture war is, in large part, a politics of the body.’⁴ Sexuality and the body through topics like abortion, LGBT rights, race, etc. are upon which EAF is primarily erected, discussed, and debated. ‘Indeed, as Michel Foucault has instructed us, the body is ultimately a reflection of, and a central metaphor for, the implicit order that prevail in a civilization.’⁵ The body of “the other” is the border which divides “the will” and “the ethical”: the body is the “no.” In many ways, this is because we are our bodies and indivisible from them: to not have complete control over our bodies is to lack complete control over what makes us who we are, our will what wills, and so on. And indeed, the body should play a prominent and critical role in our thinking, but can the body function to clearly define “will” from “the ethnical?” If not, the categories of “the therapeutic” and “the repressing” will problematically blur. The “no” of my body to others is in fact the “no” of infringing upon my will: the “no” is affirmation and protection of my “yes.” Consequently, that suggests it is not a pure “no” — it is a “no/yes,” per se, where the “no” is practically indefinable from “yes.” The distinction is there but in deed meaningless (to allude to Wittgenstein). In the EAF, where there is a “no,” there is also a “yes”: there is “yes/no and yes,” not “yes and no.”
For Rieff, the repressions found in EAF are not good enough: they are manifestations of “the will” and thus therapeutic, an imprecise “no” which leaves open hermeneutic uncertainty. ‘At worst, impulse — when not embedded in human association and cultural meaning — plunges people, already temperamentally inclined toward estrangement, deeper into the abyss of the psyche.’⁶ A society that lacks clear repressions (in which there is “yes/no and yes” versus “yes and no”) is one in which people will suffer ever-worsening existential anxiety and restlessness. ‘Rieff depicts the struggle as taking place between the individual’s physical, spiritual, and intellectual longings and the nihilism of impulse satisfaction in the absence of context or meaning.’⁷ ‘This hardly means that the modern individual has abandoned spiritual concerns’ (as Charles Taylor discussed in A Secular Age) ‘but rather that they have been recast purely as enhancing personal well-being, instead of serving as a source of love or awe before the great mysteries, or inspiring gratitude for the gift of life.’⁸ ‘The nineteenth century saw the rise of ‘spiritualizers’ who sought to maintain the form of religion without its substance.’⁹ For Rieff, the “yes/no” found in EAF against forbidding is not enough to save individuals from plunging into psychological chaos, and I fear both Trump and Brexit are evidence that he is correct. But this doesn’t necessarily mean EAF cannot provide us with character, ethics, and community: it might just mean that people aren’t always able to handle what’s good for them, or that they condition themselves according to the EAF so that it socially functions. Rieff quipped that ‘[r]eligious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased,’ and Rieff believed we lived in an anti-culture that was only capable of creating anti-characters, but maybe he just wasn’t ready for EAF.¹⁰
In The Listening Heart, A.J. Conyers wrote:
At the heart of EAF is an imperative that it is right to leave people alone to be whom they want to be, and however noble this imperative might be, it is necessarily a threat to community, even as it stresses the importance of community. In his Ethics of Authenticity, Charles Taylor noted that in the past people went out to discover who they really were so that they could return home and fill in their proper roll, but now people go inside to find their true self. Past identities were supported and affirmed by the community, but identities today are realized by the individual, much more fragile, and (feel) in need of confirmation by the community, when the community is precisely that which was left behind so that one could realize his or her “true self.” EAF certainly ascribes to the notion that identity is found “within” (even if those who support EAF might add that we can only realize the identity we find “within” fully in the context of community), and surely there is truth to be found on both sides of the debate. It is true that we should in some ways “leave others alone,” but this brings us back to the difference between “tolerance” and “humility,” as already elaborated on by Conyers. Furthermore, it is not so simple, for if I as a Christian am told to “leave others alone” but it is part of my deepest held beliefs to tell others about Christ, then in you telling me this, you have failed to “leave others alone,” for you have infringed upon my deepest held beliefs. Considering this, is it actually possible to leave everyone alone? This might be an impossible ideal, suggesting a need to deeply navigate relationships and to focus on the proper way by which to interact with people we disagree with, which brings us back to “the substantive democracy” of Dr. Hunter, as is perhaps only possible thanks to humility.
Can the EAF ethic and its corresponding community provide a community and character as robust as the character and community religions in the past (imperfectly) provided? Generally, for Progressives, following the thought of Aristotle, “healthy people” (those who find their place in common life) are those who fight against injustice, who empathetically and nonjudgmentally leave others alone to be who they want to be and who are open to diversity (to name a few attributes). To have character and be moral is to be someone who precisely fights to help outsiders be insiders, but if this destabilizes “givens,” this means that to have character and be moral is to be someone who contributes to making authoritarianism appealing. To have character is to weaken “mediating structures” in the name of justice; to be moral and have character is to contribute to the arising of “the banality of evil” that was argued earlier was only possible with community. It would seem a world utterly devoid of community is impossible, that we cannot trade Hitler for Bonhoeffer. Have we chased a dream?
If it is true that a culture and civilization requires a dialectic of “symbolic boundaries” in order to be itself, then a civilization in which “the therapeutic has triumphed” is a civilization in which it would seem character and “the banality of evil” would be impossible — and yet our troubles are not escaped. The possibility of a “banality of evil”-like situation troubled Rieff, and though we seem free of repeating the horrors described in Hannah Arendt, a threat is still there in our modern cultural revolution. Like Berger, Rieff believed a repeat of the Holocaust or the Great Purge was more likely with “the triumph of the therapeutic,” for as that revolution caused citizens psychological chaos, they would then demand and elect authoritarian forces to restore psychological and existential stability, as seen in Trump and Brexit.
Character, community, and ethics, thanks to the EAF, are still with us in a way, even if it is the case that this ethic is likely to unintentionally contribute to authoritarianism becoming appealing (as has already been discussed). However, just because some fail to accept EAF, it doesn’t follow that EAF is necessarily bad or that we shouldn’t accept it. Determining that requires asking if what we have now is as good as what we used to possess? Is it practically the same? This is the question to which we will now turn, focusing on The Death of Character by Dr. James Hunter.
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Notes
¹Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: xiii.
²Hunter, James Davison. The Death of Character: Moral Education in an Age Without Good or Evil. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000: xiv.
³Do note here that being a Libertarian in regard to the Federal Government isn’t the same as being a Libertarian in regard to local and communal life.
⁴Hunter, James Davison. Before the Shooting Begins. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994: 3.
⁵Hunter, James Davison. Before the Shooting Begins. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994: 4.
⁶Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Introduction by Elisabeth Lash-Quinn. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: VIII.
⁷Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Introduction by Elisabeth Lash-Quinn. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: XIII.
⁸Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Introduction by Elisabeth Lash-Quinn. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: VIII.
⁹Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Introduction by Elisabeth Lash-Quinn. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: XIV.
¹⁰Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 19.
¹¹Conyers, A.J. The Listening Heart. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 2006: 37.
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