Author: Ophelia Benson

Did you read this article at Dissent by Nadia Urbinati? I find it a little baffling…because she’s a professor of political theory at Columbia, but the article seems to me to be just startlingly bad. It reminds me of several I read the other day at Comment is Free. It goes like this: first a lot of straw man stuff, then a lot of pointing out the obvious, then mixing the straw man stuff with the obvious stuff, then it winds up with a resounding contradiction.

Am I missing something?

(Probably not, actually, because Michael Walzer in his reply says much the same thing except far more politely, but then Urbinati is a friend of his.)

[O]n the one hand, there are those who, questioning what they regard as a naive liberal ideal of toleration, acknowledge the existence of cultural and religious differences within a democratic community, but with one exception—Islam. On the other hand, there are those who question this exception insofar as they suggest we should be careful to articulate our judgment on the Islamic culture and think it is a mistake to regard it as a whole, as if it were a homogeneous world with no internal differences.

That’s your strawman stuff, along with a lot more like it. Complete nonsense. Who on the Left thinks it’s not a mistake to regard ‘the Islamic culture’ (whatever that is) as if it were a homogeneous world? No one. Then she makes an inane comparison with the Cold War, then goes on to say how much cleverer about these things European intellectuals were during the Cold War – thus talking about European intellectuals as if they were a whole, and she does the same with other large groups.

As a matter of fact, once the Italian Communists agreed to discuss their doctrinal principles with a liberal theorist according to the method of “arguments and counter-arguments,” they were actually agreeing to put their dogmatic system on trial, and to risk acknowledging its limits and flaws.

‘The’ Italian Communists? Hardly! She’s talking about the leadership there, not all Italian Communists, who of course didn’t agree to any such thing.

Dilip Gaonkar and Charles Taylor…emphasize, correctly, the important implications that [this theoretical contribution] has today in the face of the rebirth of new Manichean attitudes amidst Western reformist intellectuals…[I]t assumes that within each culture there are minorities (which the liberal rights of the “exist” and “voice,” as elucidated by Albert Hirschman, should guarantee)—in other words, that no culture is monolithic.

That’s the mixture of straw man and obvious. No culture is monolithic – gee, no kidding! Who knew?

The philosophy of dialogue is based on these premises, both of which Manichaeism radically rejects.

No doubt, but there is no such Manichaeism; that’s an invention, a fantasy.

Then she charges Paul Berman with ‘Manichean Occidentalism,’ which is more straw, then she recommends internal criticism and contextual criticism, which is more banging on an open door. Then she identifies two visions of democracy, one being the politics of the will: “ideological, quasi religious in kind, based on a nucleus of values that are identified with the West as an organic whole (it corresponds, more or less, to a Wilsonian conception of democracy as a mission and that not only many American neo-conservatives but also some revisionist liberals such as Berman identify with.”

While it acknowledges democracy as the highest value and peace as its corollary, the politics of the will betrays the democratic principle of self-determination, which is the necessary condition for the creation of democracy, and violates the principle of sovereignty without which neither democracy nor peace can exist…The other vision is identifiable with a politics of judgment. It is better rooted than the other one in the idea that citizens’ consent is the fundamental requirement for a democratic political order.

Well there’s some block thinking for you, and it’s block thinking that makes a complete nonsense of what she seems to want to say. What is this self-determination? What is this sovereignty? The politics of the will is clearly enough another name for liberal interventionism, so the subject is apparently why democracies should not force non-democracies to become democracies. There certainly are arguments for that view (although I think they’re stronger in some cases than in others – she said, stating the obvious herself) – but self-determination and sovereignty? Self-determination of whom, by whom? What does self-determination mean in the case of an authoritarian regime? Not much! If the people aren’t asked, then it’s determination by an elite or an autocrat – in an authoritarian regime, self-determination is a cruel oxymoron. And the same goes for sovereignty. If the ruler is there by force, what’s the sovereignty worth? Not much. Who cares about Hitler’s sovereignty, or Pinochet’s, or Mugabe’s? Yet Urbinati cites them as if they should make us choke up with emotion. Of course it’s true that people generally don’t like being invaded, but that has to be spelled out; just calling it self-determination and sovereignty fails to do that. It’s blocky.

Then in the last para there’s the contradiction. The first sentence says X, the second and last says not-X.

Now, too, we are witnessing perhaps the need to emancipate the individual from the identification with the culture and/or the religion she or he belongs to. The issue here is not a conclusion that culture and religions are fictions and illusions, but the emphasis that culture and religion are expressions of—and originate in—the individual search for meaningful life.

I see. [wanders off, scratching her head]

Now it’s the pope’s turn to tell us what’s what. He met with some ‘academics’ at the Vatican and told them “that science is not capable of fully understanding the mystery of human beings.” No doubt implying that the Vatican by contrast is.

[It is important not to ignore anthropological, philosophical and theological research, which highlight and maintain the mystery of human beings, because no science can say who they are, where they come from and where they go.

Theological research? Into…what? And what does it tell us about the mystery of human beings? Well, other than the fact that they believe in peculiar and usually nasty gods.

Man, said the Pope is “characterized by his otherness. He is a being created by God, a being in the image of God, a being who is loved and is made to love. As a human he is never closed within himself. He is always a bearer of otherness and, from his origins, is in interaction with other human beings”. Contrary to the Darwinian concept of man, Pope Benedict said that “man is not the result of mere chance, of converging circumstances, of determinism, of chemical inter-reactions.”

And the Pope knows this how? On the basis of what research?

“In our own time, when the progress of the sciences attracts and seduces for the possibilities it offers, it is more necessary than ever to educate the consciences of our contemporaries to ensure that science does not become the criterion of good, that man is still respected as the centre of creation…”

And that mysterious humans go on thinking the Vatican is as important as they always have so that the pope can go on wearing the embroidered outfits. Sure.

Another thing about the archbishop. He suggests, you remember, that we should ‘exercise a little imagination’ about the Muslims in West Yorkshire who were angry about Salman Rushdie’s book – who “know only that one of their most overpoweringly significant sources of identity is being held up to public scorn.” Well I think it’s the archbishop who needs to exercise some imagination here, or perhaps rather some rational thought along with some knowledge. He phrases that as if all West Yorks Muslims or at least West Yorks Muslims in general knew only that, but in fact 1) he doesn’t know that and 2) in fact it isn’t true, because the anger was political: it was Islamist anger, not Muslim anger, and it’s not reasonable or sensible to assume that all Muslims shared the Islamist view of the matter. You can’t just assume that if some people in X ‘community’ are angry about something that means that actually all people in X ‘community’ are angry about that something but most of them are too busy or distracted or tired or apathetic to go outside and scream about it. That’s not reasonable, it’s not fair, it’s not good epistemology, it’s not good politics, it’s not good anything. That’s especially important to remember when the thing that some people are angry about is not a thing it is reasonable to be angry about. The archbishop’s argument here rests on the assumption that this feeling was pervasive if not universal and therefore should be treated with sympathy even if it was unreasonable. Well – he doesn’t know how pervasive it was, and it was utterly unreasonable, so it shouldn’t be treated with sympathy.

Bad archbishop, no archbishop biscuit.

One or two thoughts on the Archbisop of Canterbury’s speech. One thought is that he’s a sly bastard. If you read the speech slowly and carefully, it’s clear enough what sinister nonsense he is talking, but he embeds it so deeply and thoroughly in layer upon layer upon layer of episcopally dignified verbiage that it’s very difficult to convey how nonsensical and sinister it is by for instance quoting passages. In this he is very unlike the many other people I get so much innocent pleasure from teasing. He’s just as wrong-headed they are, but he makes it much less obvious. That’s not fair! If he’s going to talk obsequious churchy bullshit, he ought to be obvious about it.

Actually – I thought that was a joke, but in fact I think it’s true. I think he is talking sinister stuff, and in fact I do think he should make it plainer what he’s saying. I don’t think he should do an elegant and profoundly boring seven-page minuet in order to prevent people from fully grasping his meaning. The guy has a lot of power, to put it mildly; that imposes a certain obligation on him to make himself crystal clear.

But he doesn’t, so in the meantime I will confine myself to one passage, near the end. He talks about the reaction to The Satanic Verses and urges us to have some imagination about the state of mind of a powerless minority “with the most limited access to any sort of public voice, [who] were being left at the mercy of a powerful elite determined to tell them what their faith really amounted to” and about the similar situation of Muslims in Denmark. Then he says yes, there has been some violence, and the cartoon outrage was “deliberately exaggerated” (and to his credit he does point out that extra cartoons were added, which a lot of commentators on this subject don’t mention). But.

But what if we exercise a little imagination again? What Webster describes as the insensitivity of an elite means that those who lack access to the subtleties of the English language, to the means of expressing their opinions in a public forum or to any living sense of being participants in their society know only that one of their most overpoweringly significant sources of identity is being held up to public scorn. This feeling may be the result of misunderstanding or misinformation, it may even be in some cases linked to a failure or reluctance to take the opportunities that exist to move into a more visible role in the nation’s life, but it is real enough and part of a general conviction of being marginal and silenced. It is not a good situation for a democratic society to be in.

Notice what he’s saying there. (That’s not easy. This is an example of the embedding thing. He hides it in so many layers of fat that it can go right past you – but it’s there.) “This feeling may be the result of misunderstanding or misinformation” but it’s real anyway and you should fret about it and the laws should be framed accordingly. This feeling may be the result of not having read the book in question, having no clue what it actually says or in what context it says it, of having been worked up by someone else who also hasn’t read the book – this feeling may be just plain factually wrong – but we should exercise a little imagination and then enact illiberal laws against free publication and speech anyway. That’s a remarkable claim.

The grounds for legal restraint in respect of language and behaviour offensive to religious believers are pretty clear: the intention to limit or damage a believer’s freedom to be visible and audible in the public life of a society is plainly an invasion of what a liberal society ought to be guaranteeing; and the obvious corollary is that the creation of an offence of incitement to religious hatred is a way of avoiding the civil disorder that threatens when a group comes to feel that it has been unjustly excluded…I should only want to suggest that the relative power and political access of a group or person laying charges under this legislation might well be a factor in determining what is rightly actionable.

“The creation of an offence of incitement to religious hatred is a way of avoiding the civil disorder that threatens when a group comes to feel that it has been unjustly excluded” – when a group comes to feel – no matter how mistaken it may be in coming to feel that, or in the things it chooses to get enraged about in response, or in the facts of the case when it gets enraged – then it is a good idea to avoid civil disorder by creating an illiberal religion-protecting new law. Well look – people (and groups) can “come to feel” they have been unjustly excluded – or ripped off, or pushed around, or insulted, or disrespected, or outnumbered, or overwhelmed – any time, about anything. White people can do that, gentiles can do that, men can do that, heterosexuals can do that. Anyone can do that. Anyone can work up a grievance about anyone. It does not follow that it is a good idea to make laws requiring prior restraint of publication or speech just in case there might be some public disorder emanating from one or more of these pissed-off groups. If it did follow, the result would be a complete freezing and choking off of all human mental life. That’s what the archbishop is suggesting, in his remarkably covert way.

Gee…that there Archbishop of Canterbury really doesn’t grasp the principle of free speech, does he. Or he does but he doesn’t agree with it and is surprisingly unbashful about saying so.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has called for new laws to protect religious sensibilities that would punish “thoughtless and cruel” styles of speaking…The Archbishop…said it should not just be a few forms of extreme behaviour that were deemed unacceptable, leaving everything else as fair game. “The legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and, even if unintentionally, cruel styles of speaking and acting,” he said.

In other words the legal provision should frighten us out of saying certain things. Yes, that sounds like a good idea; much like Turkey, or Syria, or Afghanistan.

Dr Williams said: “It is clear that the old blasphemy law is unworkable and that its assumptions are not those of contemporary lawmakers and citizens overall. But as we think about the adequacy of what is coming to replace it, we should not, I believe, miss the opportunity of asking the larger questions about what is just and good for individuals and groups in our society who hold religious beliefs.”

Okay, ask the questions. Go right ahead. But the new laws? Not a good idea.