Pico Iyer on Celebrating the New Year

Happy New Year! This is a picture taken on the convent grounds of the Vedanta Temple in the hills above Santa Barbara (just south of the city proper). The bell below is also located on the temple grounds. The Vedanta Temple site is home to one of my favorite bookstores, Sarada Convent Books, with titles from all the world's religions. Just to the right in this photo are magnificent eucalyptus trees and an area where one can sit and enjoy the wonderful vistas toward the Pacific ocean, have a picnic, or read a book!

The following is from my friend Pico Iyer in today's Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from Nara, Japan -- New Year's Day is the hardest holiday to make sense of precisely because it's the easiest one to sleep through; as the most arbitrary of designations -- New Year's falls on different days in Nepal or Ethiopia or China or California -- it asks us, even compels us, to find its meaning within ourselves. Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan, Divali: They all follow a larger calendar and come with their own rites and duties. But what to do with a day that, in our Western culture at least, involves mostly snoozing through the bowl games and resolving to remember the resolutions that you know you'll forget by next Tuesday?

My answer is as arbitrary as anyone else's, but it is to see what "new" and "year's" might really mean, by taking myself off to see the grandfather cultures of the world. In Japan, where I live -- old enough to think carefully about new beginnings -- chic girls in kimonos, with stylish stoles around their necks, stream through the orange torii gates of a Shinto shrine soon after a bronze bell tolls in the new year, swains in rock-star suits beside them, to observe the ceremonial first sunrise and to gather sacred fire and pure water from the holy place with which to cook an auspicious first meal. To many in the Westernized nation, though, one of the most popular shrines to visit on New Year's Day is Tokyo Disneyland, where priestly duties may be performed by Mickey and Goofy.

Yet the most crucial rite of what is the most important day of the year in Japan -- even if you begin it in Tomorrowland -- is to go pay your respects to Grandma and root your newness in the old. Like most traditional cultures in the world, Japan knows that "new" is not always the same as "improved" and that "old" does not quite translate as "outdated." [....]

I take care, as my Japanese neighbors do, over my first thought, my first sentence, my first meal; the day itself is for me like the folded white paper that the Japanese collect from shrines outlining their future for the year to come. When, four years ago, New Year's Day found me barreling down a narrow mountain road at 12,000 feet in southern Bolivia and then bouncing and banging around as my taxi rolled over and over -- the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, a victim of New Year's Eve -- I had the distinct impression that the year that followed might not be entirely happy. (I survived with just a scar, though the driver and the only other passenger ended up in the hospital.)

But my most haunting New Year's in recent times -- walking through the Cambodian jungle at four in the morning, surrounded by Khmer Rouge ghosts and the towers of Angkor -- taught me that the calendar's arbitrary markings are really just asking you how much you define yourself by what's shifting or what's still.

This year, as it happens, I plan to mark the new year in California, wondering how much our fresh young president will draw on the ancestral wisdom of Kansas and Kenya to guide him -- and us -- into a new century. You don't have to travel far, my Japanese neighbors remind me, to turn a new page in your life. The only important thing on New Year's -- I should have reminded my Bolivian taxi driver -- is to wake up.

Israeli Bombardment of Gaza, etc.

• I am absolutely convinced that the mass media in this country is constitutionally unable to provide anything remotely resembling fair coverage of what is going on in Gaza (which would include a background knowledge of the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a history of the Middle East, a history of U.S. foreign policy in the region, international law, including humanitarian law, etc., etc.). I recommend--indeed, implore--you to read Juan Cole at Informed Comment and the reports, analysis and commentary at Middle East Online in addition to whatever news sources you may usually rely on.
  
  For background information available online that is relevant to this conflict, please see:
  
  Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights—Gaza
  
  The Arab Association for Human Rights (Association in service of the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel)
  
  B’Tselem---The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory
  
  International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative--International Humanitarian Law in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
  
  The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)
  
  Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
  
  Palestine Media Watch
  
  The following is by no means an exhuastive or comprehensive list of sources but it can be seen as minimally sufficient for a sophisticated introduction to the dynamics of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

• Aruri, Naseer H. The Obstruction of Peace: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.
• Aruri, Naseer H. Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003.
• Asali, Kamil J., ed. Jerusalem in History. New York: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2000.
• Baroud, Ramzy. Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
• Beinin, Joel and Rebecca L. Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, 2006.
• Bowen, Stephen, ed. Human Rights, Self-Determination, and Political Change in the Occupied Territories. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997.
• Boyle, Francis A. Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2003.
• Cheshin, Amir S., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed. Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999 ed.
• Chomsky, Noam. Middle East Illusions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
• Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
• Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
• Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006.
• Davis, Uri. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Press, 1987.
• Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: City of Mirrors. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
• Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: Battleground of Memories. New York: Kodansha International, 1995.
• Enderlin, Charles. Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. New York: Other Press, 2003.
• Falk, Richard and Burns H. Weston. "The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada," Harvard International Law Journal 32, No. 1 (1991): 191-204.
• Farsoun, Samih K. (with Christian E. Zacharia). Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
• Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 1995.
• Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
• Friedland, Roger and Richard Hecht. To Rule Jerusalem. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Gerner, Deborah J. One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict over Palestine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1994.
• Ghanem, As’ad. The Palestinian Regime: A “Partial Democracy.” Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001.
• Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
• Grabar, Oleg. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1989.
• Hajjar, Lisa. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. London: University of California Press, 2005.
• Hiltemann, Joost R. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• Hussein, Hussein Abu and Fiona McKay. Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel. London: Zed Books, 2003.
• Karmi, Ghada. Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
• Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006 ed.
• Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
• Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006.
• Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
• Kimmerling, Baruch, ed. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
• Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. London: Verso, 2003.
• Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
• Kramer, Gudrun. A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.
• Kretzmer, David. The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
• Lockman, Zacharay and Joel Beinin, eds. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Boston, MA: South End Press/A MERIP Book, 1989.
• Lustik, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980.
• Makdisi, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
• Masalha, Nur. The Expulsion of Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
• Masalha, Nur. A Land Without People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
• Masalha, Nur. The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto, 2003.
• Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
• Mishal, Shaul and Avraham Sela. The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
• Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
• Morris, Benny. Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
• Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
• Norton, Augustus Richard. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
• Pappé, Ilan. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
• Pappé, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ed.
• Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
• Pappé, Ilan, ed. The Israel/Palestine Question: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 2 Vols. London: Frank Cass, 1974 and 1977.
• Rodinson, Maxime. Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? New York: Anchor Foundation/Pathfinder, 1973.
• Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Romann, Michael and Alex Weingrod. Living Together Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• Rose, John. The Myths of Zionism. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
• Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
• Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
• Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Vintage Books, 2001 ed.
• Said, Edward W. and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1988.
• Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
• Shlaim, Avi. Collusions across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
• Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
• Slater, Jerome. "What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 171-199.
• Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 5th ed., 2004.
• Tal, David. War in Palestine, 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War. Jerusalem: The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999.
• Tamimi, Azzam. Hamas: A History from Within. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2007.
• Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007.
• Younis, Mona N. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
• Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. New York: The Nation Books, 2007.
• Zunes, Stephen. Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Monroe. ME: Common Courage Press, 2002
• Zureik, Elia. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.

Update 1: Comments to this post are now closed.

Update 2: A succint commentary that hits all the right points from the editors of the Middle East Report (Online): "Cast Lead in the Foundry."

Update 3 (courtesy of Brian Leiter): Gaza Petition and More Resources.

Update 4: A deputy of the political bureau of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook, in the Los Angeles Times (1/6/09): "Hamas Speaks." And Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford: "How Israel Brought Gaza to the Brink of Humanitarian Catastrophe."

Update 5: Mouin Rabbani, "Birth Pangs of a New Palestine." Helena Cobban, "Gaza and Israel's Wars of Forced Regime Change." See too Cobban's blog, "Just World News."

Buddhism: A Basic Bibliography

The last of our bibliographies (in the Directed Reading series) for Asian worldviews covers Buddhism. Thus, two important religious traditions from the Indian subcontinent are missing from our lists: Jainism and Sikhism. As mentioned earlier, this list is rather long, owing to my peculiar worldview orientation and research interests. However, and again, please do not infer from this any comparatively privileged epistemic or metaphysical truth claim for Buddhism in toto over and above other universal (in the sense of scope or ambition) religious traditions. First of all, because I don't believe we can assess the truth of any philosophical or religious worldview qua worldview, in part, for the reason Ninian Smart provides us:

Who can say that Christianity is false because it is supposedly not rational? What if it be rational to expect worldviews to proceed substantially form symbolic sources? What if it is rational to expect revelation from the Beyond if God is ever to address the world that she, having created other than herself, is hidden behind? And if it is not irrational to believe in God, why not the Qur’an, why not Islam? Can the Christian prove her revelation or the Muslim his, over against the other? So [perhaps] it is not rational to think there are clear rational answers to the question of the truth of worldviews. (From Smart's Religion and the Western Mind, 1987, pp. 12-13)

The philosopher Hilary Putnam puts Smart's point this way: "'Is our own way of life right or wrong?' is a silly question, although it isn’t silly to ask if this or that particular feature of our way of life is right or wrong, and 'Is our view of the world right or wrong?' is a silly question, although it isn’t silly to ask if this or that particular belief is right or wrong." In any case, and in many respects, sensitive, empathetic, reflective, and critical global worldview description and analysis is in its infancy, and thus it seems highly unlikely anyone is (at least today) sufficiently well-versed in all the planet's religious and philosophical worldviews to engage in such an enterprise. For we are only now beginning to appreciate the unique logic and forms of rationality found in non-Western worldviews. And we are still in the process of formulating the possible candidates for acceptable cross-cultural and comparative criteria for the analysis and evaluation of worldviews, especially if we grant that the assumptions and methods of modern Western philosophy are not necessarily privileged in such an enterprise, and in fact remain open to learning (about contemporary philosophy's own myths and presuppositions, for example) from this cross-cultural encounter. Another way to put this would be to concede that Western philosophy (or science for that matter) does not possess an a priori monopoly on, or privileged possession of, the truth in any absolute sense. This is not equivalent to denying we can or should strive to make rational and ethical assessments of particular beliefs or practices within worldviews (cf. Martha C. Nussbaum's Sex and Social Justice, 1999, or think of Gandhi's critique of Hinduism and his belief that no religion should countenance in theory or practice the violation of fundamental ethical values and precepts), for we do and should. And this is all the more urgent if we happen to believe religions are first and foremost about "ways of life" and personal conduct, rather than dogmas, doctrine, or orthodoxy (i.e., more a question of orthopraxis). Smart himself argues, and I think persuasively, that it is through the comparative analysis of worldviews that we will generate the normative conceptual resources and categories for worldview evaluation, if only because the process itself will serve to “detribalize Westerners,” that is, enable us to overcome our dispositional tendency to “treat our tradition normatively, either explicitly or secretly.”

In some measure, of course, and particularly in the beginning, we unavoidably treat our own tradition(s) as normative in the comparative study of worldviews. (As Henry McDonald has argued, we 'see' or act and think on the basis of our own norms, rules and values, i.e., 'on the [normative] basis of our own concepts, because they are the logical space in which we move and without which we could see nothing at all.') Smart and others who have thought long and hard about the comparative examination of worldviews, being at the same time pioneers and trailblazers in this enterprise, believe that it will eventually allow if not encourage us to become more self-critical about our own worldviews, and that the result of such encounters and dialogues need not lead to either absolute relativism or radical scepticism.

So while we may be critical of specific worldview beliefs, practices, interests or themes (the latter in the sense perhaps of undue or misplaced emphasis), it is fruitless to make truth claims about worldviews as worldviews. With regard to this more modest critical endeavor, for example, we might assess the potential or capacity of a particular worldview to rationally, ethically, and creatively respond to various urgent issues and problems in our contemporary (and future) world: be it nationalism, uneven or unfettered technological development, public health and general welfare, various kinds of violence, ecological deterioration and devastation, the recognition of basic human rights, the commodification of values, global distributive justice, the awakening and exercise of functions and capacities thought essential for human flourishing or eudaimonia, and so forth and so on. This serves to remind us that, at bottom, our traditions and worldviews are the repositories of our normative conceptions of the good life, and only a clear and deep understanding of such conceptions will enable us to find the evaluative criteria essential to critically assessing ideologies and worldviews in the interests of our shared humanity or individual and collective flourishing.

How might we make ourselves structurally suited, so to speak, to a better appreciation of the worldviews of others? What reasons might we have, apart from the sheer facts of pluralism, for concluding that our own lifeworlds and worldviews can benefit from a comparative study of philosophies and religions (keeping in mind that in the Asian context these are not always or everywhere discrete categories)? To begin to answer the second question first, we might learn from history that cross-cultural cognitive fertilization, borrowing, lending, trading and raiding has been taking place since the time of the pre-Socratics, and that our traditions and worldviews have historically demonstrated a belief that they could benefit from an encounter with "foreign" traditions and worldviews, even if such learning was purchased at the price of exploitation and imperialism, or took place despite presumptuous, arrogant, or self-confident ideological claims to the contrary. And yet, at least when it comes to the traditions of "the Orient," there exists "an age-old ambivalence in the West’s attitude toward the East:"

On the one hand it has been a source inspiration, fount of an ancient wisdom, a culturally rich civilisation which is far superior to, and can use to reflect on the inadequacies of, our own. On the other, it is an alien region of looming threat and impenetrable mystery, long locked in its stagnant past until rudely awakened by the modernising impact of the West. It is a place which in which imaginative flights and exaggerations of all kinds. On the one hand, according to Voltaire, the East is the civilisation ‘to which the West owes everything,’ and for Arnold Toynbee the West’s encounter with the East is one of the most significant world events of our time. Others have been less enthusiastic: C.S. Peirce spoke contemptuously of ‘the monstrous mysticism of the East,’ and Arthur Koestler dismissed its religions as ‘a web of solemn absurdities.” For some, like Goethe, the relationship is deep and significant and, according to the sinologist Joseph Needham, there has been a dialogue going on for 3,000 years between the ‘two ends of the Old World’ in which East and West have greatly influenced each other. For others the relationship is peripheral and ephemeral, only really conspicuous in the brief neo-Romantic movement of the 1960s when young men and women went Eastwards in search of ‘pop nirvana.’ (J.J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought, 1997, p. 3)

Thus any comparative study brings along with it a bevy of stereotypes and myths that express this historical ambivalence and which must be exorcised or excised lest it preclude any genuine existential and deep philosophical encounter between and among worldviews. Clarke is right to lament the fact that

…[T[here is still a reluctance in the academic world to take traditional Asian thought seriously. Even in times characterised by the globalisation of culture there still remains an endemic Eurocentrism, a persistent reluctance to accept that the West could ever have borrowed anything of significance from the East, or to see the place of Eastern thought within the Western tradition as much more than a recent manifestation, evanescent and intellectually lightweight, at best only a trivial part of a wider reaction against the modern world. For some the Orient is still associated with shady occultist flirtations, the unconscious rumblings of the repressed irrational urges of a culture that has put its faith in scientific rationalism. For others Eastern influences remain little more than the manifestation of the exotic but inconsequential extravagances of New Age mysticism. Many academics continue to feel a certain embarrassment about the whole subject of the East, and not only have histories of philosophy tended to exclude Eastern thought—‘Philosophy speaks Greek and only Greek’ as Simon Critchley ironically puts it—but the role of Eastern thought within the broad Western intellectual tradition has largely been ignored by historians of ideas. (p. 5)

How might we cultivate the possibility of becoming dispositionally suited to understanding and thereby learning from Asian worldviews like Buddhism? We could, with Hilary Putnam, consider an analogical lesson from the Copenhagen School in physics, specifically, Neils Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation, which enables us to appreciate the concept and possibility of complementarity, for "even 'the empirical world,' the would of our experience, cannot be adequately or completely described with just one picture, according to Bohr. Instead, we have to make a 'complementary' use of different classical pictures—wave pictures in some experimental situations, particle pictures in others—and give up the idea of a single picturable account to cover all situations." An appreciation of complementarity may require setting aside or rejecting the more robust versions (what Kitcher calls the 'grander doctrines') of metaphysical realism in science (as distinguished, say, from a more modest and minimal realism like Kitcher's), or we might even go so far as to argue for metaphysical pluralism, as Michael Lynch has done in Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity (1998). For Lynch, such metaphysical pluralism is in fact compatible with realism of a kind, for he argues that we need not be anti-realists in claiming that propositions and facts concerning the nature of reality are relative to conceptual schemes of worldviews. A comparable lesson concerning the value of metaphysical and epistemological modesty might be drawn from Kurt Gödel’s demonstration that one cannot definitively prove the formal consistency of an axiomatic system from within the principles of that system. At any rate, foundationalist epistemic projects and exclusively Euclidean approaches to cognitive systematization are no longer plausible in epistemology. We now realize the significance of categorial and conceptual mediation in our descriptions of the world, a realization that commits us to neither a thorough-going relativism nor a subectivist conception of truth. In the words of my dear friend and former teacher:

To affirm that there can be several different systems all giving us, at the same time, varying and yet legitimate ‘true’ metaphysical descriptions of the world does not…necessarily entail that there are many realities, that nothing is absolutely real, or, put less dramatically, that there is no such thing as a single, context neutral description or account of the world, that is, as the world really is. It only means that no metaphysical description of it can be outside every possible conceptual framework, but Reality itself is. Nor does it follow that any assertions about this ‘real’ or ‘true’ world beyond all conceptual frameworks, are nonsense. We need not accept a very different solution, such as that offered by Kant—that there is a world in which there exists the ‘thing-in-itself,’ but that we can never directly know this world. Indian classical philosophy, since it is always connected with religion, must and does believe with complete assurance in the possibility of human beings actually attaining to a perfect knowledge of Reality—a ‘scientia intuitiva’ that leads to the Divine or the Absolute Truth. The conceptual frameworks we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason. (Nandini Iyer, "It Ain't Necessarily So," in Knut A. Jacobsen, ed., Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson, 2005, p. 123)

A more circumspect expression of Iyer’s principal point is provided by Nicholas Rescher: "For all practical purposes—and for all implementable theoretical purposes as well—a plurality of beliefs about the truth (a plurality of visions) is a plurality of formulations of the true (a plurality of versions). And this fact is something we must somehow come to terms with." The various ways we might speak of pluralism that are distinguished by Rescher: conceptual, logical, ontological, axiological, and practical, for instance, are jointly germane to the study of worldviews. And we have hardly exhausted the possible ways we might come to uphold the virtues of pluralism: with B.K. Matilal, we could infer analogies from Quine’s thesis on the indeterminacy of "radical translation" or Goodman’s "radical relativism" (Matilal in Jonardon Ganeri, ed., The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal, 2002: pp. 175-195 and 218-262); and with both Matilal and Ganeri, we might look to the Jaina doctrine of anekānta, which understands truth to be like a many-faceted gem, each facet possessing “a completeness and coherence of its own” (cf. Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India, 2001: pp. 128-150).

The following websites I have found useful for explorations in Buddhism: Buddhanet.net, a "Buddhist education and information network;" Access to Insight: Readings in Theravada Buddhism; the Journal of Buddhist Ethics; and this page of links from the Buddhist Studies program at the Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Please note: The bulk of this bibliography was completed by 2005. I have only added titles sporadically since then, so if you know of any conspicuous omissions, by all means send them along to me so they can be included in the next edition.

The Good Samaritan Hesitates

Today's Los Angeles Times has an opinion piece by Patt Morrison well-timed for the holiday season: "No Room for a Good Samaritan":

Uh, gentlemen? You three wise men? As your lawyer, I'm advising you not to go there.

No question, the family really needs help, especially with a newborn and all. But why take a chance? And the gifts? Honestly, you might just be opening yourselves up to a lawsuit. Frankincense? Myrrh? Somebody might be allergic. You know what those Roman attorneys say: abundans cautela non nocet -- better safe than sorry.

Crazy notion, isn't it?

Back then, certainly. Maybe not now. The California Supreme Court has given fresh meaning to "no good deed goes unpunished." It ruled last week that a woman who yanked a co-worker from a crashed car four years ago, and may have made her injuries worse, can be sued because what she did wasn't medical care.

The 4-3 decision goes to the heart of another biblical reference: the good Samaritan.

It was Halloween 2004 when several co-workers took two cars to go out for a night on the town. After one car, the second car stopped. Its passenger, Lisa Torti, leaped out to help. Torti, who said she thought the wrecked car was about to catch fire, grabbed Alexandra Van Horn and pulled her out.

Pulling her out "like a rag doll" allegedly made Van Horn's spinal injuries worse. The court's ruling allows Van Horn, now a paraplegic, to sue Torti. It also indicates that the provision that shields good Samaritans from liability, enacted by the Legislature in 1980, applies only to people giving medical care in an emergency.

There's a stink about this, and there should be. The implications for all of us are enormous. It's another chilling effect in a society where we're already freezing each other out.You don't dare hug a hurting child who's not your own -- someone might call you a molester and call the cops. You don't ever apologize for anything, even if it's your fault; you'd be laying the groundwork for a lawsuit.

And now, when you see an accident or a crime, what will pop into your mind? "I have to help"? Or, "Will I get sued for trying to help?" Whatever your inner Samaritan is telling you, your inner Lawyer might be suggesting you just drive on past.

If everyone feels this way, we could be damaging a social compact that's deeply rooted -- the impulse to help others in trouble, even strangers. [....]

The California Supreme Court's ruling (4-3) is here. I'm in accord with the following from Rod Brouhard, which is more or less the position of the dissenting opinion:

California's Good Samaritan Law is part of Division 2.5 of California's Health and Safety Code. Among other things, Division 2.5 covers emergency medical services for the state. Because of that, the appellate court plugged the word "medical" where it doesn't exist.

From Division 2.5 of the California Health and Safety Code:

1799.102. No person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission. The scene of an emergency shall not include emergency departments and other places where medical care is usually offered.

According to the ruling, the existence of the word "medical" in the last sentence, and the statute's location near other sections regarding emergency medical services means that only medical care is covered by the law.

Why is that important? Because of the court's decision that moving a victim to a safer location is not medical care.

From the decision, written by Justice H. Walter Croskey:

"There may be circumstances in which moving someone from their current location is a matter of medical exigency, such as where a carbon monoxide poisoning victim needs to be moved to a source of fresh air. We do not hold that the act of moving a person is never the rendition of emergency medical care, only that it was not in this case."

The problem with this thinking is that untrained rescuers - the very population this law is intended to protect - are supposed to make a determination as to whether the care they are rendering is medical in nature in order to benefit from Good Samaritan protection.

The California Supreme Court heard arguments on this case and agreed with the appellate court -- barely. In a 4 to 3 split decision, the Supreme Court paved the way for Alexandra van Horn, the injured accident victim, to sue her rescuer, Lisa Torti.

An important point: the 3 justices in the minority felt that while Torti may have made mistakes bad enough to be sued, they didn't see any reason to completely reinterpret the law. I agree, and wish at least one more justice had sided with them.

The next time I'm lying in a car, unable to move, I want a Good - nay, Great - Samaritan to pull me free of the burning mass of twisted metal. Even if it turns out, as it may in this case, that the smoke was just from the airbags being deployed.

I teach, and will continue to teach, that positioning and location are part of medical care at the scene of an emergency. I don't know if the defendant in this case jumped the gun, but she - and all the other potential Good Samaritans to come after her - deserve to have this ruling overturned.

For more discussion, see here, here, and here.

Classical Chinese Worldviews: A Bibliography

As promised, our next bibliography in the Directed Reading series concerns another religious worldview, rather, several religious worldviews under the heading of "Classical Chinese Worldviews: Religious, Philosophical & Aesthetic Dimensions." Among the traditions treated within this bibliography are Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as other traditions not as well known in the West, such as Mohism. Buddhism in China is better covered in the forthcoming compilation for Buddhism, so there aren't as many titles here on Buddhism as there might otherwise be. Of course Daoism, Confucianism and Mohism are indigenous to China, as Buddhism arrived sometime during the 1st century CE, probably by way of the Silk Road or from the maritime route along the southeastern seaboard.

Religious worldviews in China are characterized by an emphasis on orthopraxis rather than orthodoxy and thus the discrete lifeworlds (recall the distinction between 'lifeworlds' and 'worldviews' in our previous post) of individuals in China may contain elements from all three principal traditions as well as from folk and lesser-known religious and medical (sub-)traditions. I might live my life, say, by Confucian norms of social etiquette, learning, and filial piety; Daoist cosmological or metaphysical principles and processes; while believing in Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth. In other words, these worldviews don't ask of their adherents exclusivist loyalty and identification, despite the occasional historical clashes and tensions between followers of various schools and traditions, particularly when it came to seeking the favor of those in power. It may therefore be the case that one is at the same time a Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist! Is it any wonder that those thoroughly socialized into Judeo-Christian traditions have had a difficult time accurately and fairly portraying or understanding these Asian worldviews?

Novice and seasoned researcher alike will benefit from a handful of Internet sites that specialize in Chinese religions and philosophies. Prior to looking at these however, I would implore anyone with an abiding interest in the issues that arise from the comparative study of Chinese worldviews to read the entry, "Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western," by David Wong from the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. On Chinese philosophy in general, there is probably no better site than Manyul Im's Chinese Philosophy Blog (with links to other sites devoted to Chinese philosophy). Some of the best known scholars in Chinese philosophy blog and comment there. Joseph Adler, who was just ahead of me in graduate school many years ago in the Department of Religious Studies at UC Santa Barbara, is a well-respected professor in the field with a webpage that is a remarkable resource for exploring virtually anything you want to know about China, but especially for further investigation of its religious and philosophical traditions. Professor Paul Gordin has a website devoted to bibliographies and other research tools that puts my bibliographies to shame. In particular, his list for Ancient Chinese Civilization contains some 4,700 entries and is close to 500 pages long. And it's even kept up-to-date! That should keep most of you well occupied and out of trouble for some time. Enjoy!

Hinduism: A Selected Bibliography

With this bibliography in our Directed Reading series we change course, as I plan to post the lists I have for religious (and sometimes in part, philosophical) worldviews. There's been no rhyme or reason to the order of our series thus far, so to stay on topic for several installments will be a bit different as well. Mind you, I don't have all the religions covered, but it's a start. Our first one treats Hinduism. This will be followed by bibliographies for other Asian religio-philosophical traditions, and then we'll cover the Semitic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The lists for Buddhism and Islam will be quite large, reflecting my idiosyncratic personal and research interests: I'm hoping no one draws the inference from their comparative length that I judge these religions more important, closer to the truth, what have you. As is the case with most of the bibliographies, they are subject to two constraints: books, in English. Still, that leaves us with plenty of material and a basis from which the more diligent researcher can embark upon further explorations.

I trust one need not justify the importance of at least a basic knowledge of the worldviews that affect the lives, for better and worse, of most people on the planet. Of course the worldviews adhered to by individuals can differ quite dramatically from their "official" versions. Worldviews--religious or not--are akin to what Wittgenstein called “forms of life,” and thus include “not only our beliefs and the concepts we employ informing our beliefs, but the interests we have that help explain why we have those concepts, the values that guide those interests, and the underlying practices and capacities that limit and define our cognitive production and intake” (Michael P. Lynch).

The systematic, ideological or philosophically coherent quality that is often a conspicuous feature of official, public, or strongly institutionalized worldviews, or worldviews of considerable historical pedigree, or worldviews of universalist orientation or ambition, leaves us with a picture rather abstract and stylized if not rationally re-constructed and on the order of “ideal-types” in contrast to the messy picture of worldviews, as it were, “on the ground,” as they extend or ramify through corporate bodies, social movements and individuals, or the various strata of worldview identity and expression (at the level of individuals, worldviews take the form of ‘lifeworlds’). In short, there’s a gap of descriptive, analytical and evaluative import between worldviews in theory and worldviews on the ground, worldviews in praxis (with its own unique theoretical articulation or justification). Compare, for example (in the manner of Ninian Smart), Roman Catholicism as propagated by the organs of the Vatican with the Catholicism of believers in a small village in North Eastern Spain, or that lived by a Catholic Worker community in Pennsylvania, or as practiced by members of a comunidades de base inspired by Liberation Theology in Columbia (or Peru, Chile…). This gap is widest at the stratum of individual worldview identity and expression in which worldviews are individuated as lifeworlds, the conscious or articulate part of which is like the proverbial tip of an iceberg, as much of the lifeworld is below the surface, subconscious and taken for granted, subject to little or no light of reason, helping to account for the conservative character of traditions. It is with regard to such lifeworlds that Smart suggests the importance of the recognition that “we tend to live in a certain amount of aporia,” asking:

Do we, when it comes to the crunch, really have a systematic worldview? We have an amalgam of beliefs, which we may publicly characterize in a certain way. I may say that I am an Episcopalian, but how much of my real worldview [what I have called here a lifeworld] corresponds to the more or less ‘official’ worldview which tells me nothing directly about cricket, being Scottish, having a certain scepticism about nationalism, thinking there is life on other worlds, shelving the problem of evil, or other matters. Our values and beliefs are more like a collage than a Canaletto [cf. Lévi-Strauss’s use of the term 'bricolage']. They do not even have consistency of perspective.

In lieu of a definition of religion, here is a list of "religion-making characteristics:"

1. Belief in supernatural beings (spirits, gods, etc.), God, or a supreme divine principle or force. A doctrinal, theological, ethical and/or philosophical dimension.
2. A distinction between sacred and non-sacred (or ‘profane’) objects, space, and/or time. An experiential or emotional dimension.
3. Ritual acts centered upon or focused around sacred events, places, times, or objects. This includes such activities as worship, prayer, meditation, pilgrimage, sacrifice (vegetable, animal, or human; literal or figurative), sacramental rites, lifecycle rituals, and healing activities. A ritual and/or praxis dimension.
4. A moral code (ethics) or ‘way of life’ believed to be sanctioned by the gods or God, or logically derived from adherence to the divine principle or force. A doctrinal, theological, ethical and/or philosophical dimension.
5. Prayer, worship, meditation, and other forms of communication or attunement with the gods, God, or the divine principle or force. An experiential or emotional and ritual dimension.
6. A worldview that situates, through (usually mythic) narrative, the individual and his/her community and tradition within the cosmos, world, and/or history. It is a significant, if not primary source of one’s identity, both in its individual form and group aspect. The worldview articulates the meaning—makes sense of—the group’s cultural traditions: its myths, history, rituals, and symbols. A mythic or narrative dimension.
7. Characteristically religious emotions or attitudes: a peculiar form of awe and fear, ‘dread’ or angst, existential anxiety, sense of mystery, adoration, reverence, love, devotion, hope, a sense of guilt or shame, serenity, compassion, etc. An experiential or emotional dimension.
8. A more or less total organization or structuring of one’s life based on an understanding (hence interpretation) of the worldview. Experiential, narrative and philosophical dimensions.
9. A social group wherein personal and collective identity is forged by the aforementioned factors. An organizational, institutional or sociological dimension.
10. Artistic or creative expressions related to any of the above. An artistic and praxis dimension.

Finally, I subscribe to the viewpoint articulated here by the philosopher John Cottingham in The Spiritual Dimension: Religion, Philosophy and Human Value (2005):

Current attitudes to religion among philosophers are highly polarized, some impatient to see it buried, others insisting on its defensibility. But as long as the debate is conducted at the level of abstract argumentation alone, what is really important about our allegiance to, or rejection of, religion, is likely to elude us. There is, to be sure, a cognitive core to religious belief, a central set of truth-claims to which the religious adherent is committed; but it can be extremely unproductive to try to evaluate these claims in isolation. There are rich and complex connections that link religious belief with ethical commitment and individual self-awareness, with the attempt to understand the cosmos and the struggle to find meaning in our lives; and only when these connections are revealed, only when we come to have a broader sense of the ‘spiritual dimension’ within which religion lives and moves, can we begin to see fully what is involved in accepting or rejecting a religious view of reality.

Marx & Marxism: A Very Select Bibliography

Our next bibliography in the Directed Reading series covers Marx & Marxism. Like Freud, Marx is rather out of favor in the academy today, even among self-described Leftists, for they tend toward a fawning fealty to French intellectual fads (look, I have nothing against the French or French philosophy: I'm just a tad old-fashioned on this score, preferring the likes of Sartre, Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty, to Derrida, Deleuze, Guattari, Lyotard and even, dare I say, Foucault). Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but I sense an utterly appalling and thus inexcusable ignorance of Marx's oeuvre and the secondary literature on Marxism within the academy and among would-be intellectuals. As with all generalizations, there are exceptions, and in this case rather notable ones at that, as the bibliography attests. But there's ample reason why Jonathan Wolff titled his superb little book, Why Read Marx Today? (2002): it highlights the fact that so few of late have thought it necessary to engage the work of one of the intellectual giants of the modern era. Wolff himself says that "we could be forgiven for assuming that Marx has nothing left to say to us." Frankly, I'm not as forgiving of such an assumption, but perhaps that's owing to a peculiar temperament. I've been mining the Marxist literature since my teenage period of postured angst and preening rebellion. Needless to say, I see things differently than back then, but my admiration for Marx remains undiminished, if only because I share Wolff's judgment that "Marx remains the most profound and acute critic of capitalism, even as it exists today." But there are other reasons to hold him in such high regard: Marx was undoubtedly "one of the nineteenth century's greatest philosophers," writes Allen Wood in the Preface to the second edition of Karl Marx (2004), moreover, he "was someone whose intellectual achievements, in economics, history, and social theory, surely deserves to be called 'philosophical' in the most honorific sense of the term, in that these achievements respected no boundaries of discipline or research tradition, but resulted simply from following the empirical evidence, and the paths of independent thinking and theoretical construction, wherever they led." Indeed.

Jon Elster is arguably the greatest living social analyst and theorist, no less than our generation's Max Weber. In fact, I've long suspected he's a philosopher masquerading as a social scientist. Elster concludes his masterful study of the master--Making Sense of Marx (1985)--as follows:

It is not possible today, morally or intellectually, to be a Marxist in the traditional sense. This would be someone who accepted all or most of the views that Marx held to be true and important--scientific socialism, the labour theory of value or the theory of the falling rate of profit, together with other and more defensible views. But, speaking now for myself only, I believe it is still possible to be a Marxist in a rather different sense of the term. I find that most of the views that I hold to be true and important, I can trace back to Marx. This includes methodology, substantive theories and, above all, values. The critique of exploitation and alienation remains central. A better society would be one that allowed all human beings to do what only human beings can do--to create, to invent, to imagine other worlds.

And these snippets will have to suffice as further evidence of the continuing relevance and importance of the Marxist tradition(s) in general and Marx in particular:

"Marx's most original contribution to the theory of belief formation was...his idea that economic agents tend to generalize locally valid views into invalid global statements, because of a failure to perceive that causal relations that obtain ceteris paribus may not hold unrestrictedly. For instance, although any worker may be seen as the marginal worker, not all workers can be at the margin. This is a local-global fallacy that leads to cognitive failures, different from yet related to the local-global confusions that lead to failures of action. This is perhaps the most powerful part of the Marxist methodology: the demonstration that in a decentralized economy there spontaneously arises a fallacy of composition with consequences for theory as well as for practice."

"Both the freedom to change employer and the freedom to become an employer oneself give rise to ideological illusions that embody the fallacy of composition. The first is the inference from the fact that a given worker is independent of any specific employer to the conclusion that he is free from all employers, that is independent of capital as such, to the conclusion that all workers can achieve such independence. It might look as if the conclusion of the first inference follows validly from the premise of the second, but this is due merely to the word ‘can’ being employed in two different senses. The freedom of the worker to change employer depends, for its realization, mainly on his decision to do so. He ‘can’ do it, having the real ability to do so should he want to. The freedom to move into the capitalist class, by contrast, only can be realized by the worker who is [to quote Marx] an ‘exceedingly clever and shrewd fellow.’ Any worker ‘can’ do it, in the sense of having the formal freedom to do so, but only a few are really able to. Hence the worker possesses the least important of the two freedoms—namely the freedom to change employer—in the strongest sense of these two senses of freedom. He can actually use it should he decide to. Conversely, the more important freedom to move into the capitalist class obtains only in the weaker, more conditional sense: ‘every workman, if he is an exceedingly clever fellow…can possibly be converted into an exploiteur du travail d’autrui.’ Correlatively, the ideological implications of the two freedoms differ. With respect to the first, the ideologically attractive aspect is that the worker is free in the strong sense, while the second has the attraction of making him free with respect to an important freedom. If the two are confused, as they might easily be, the idea could emerge that the worker remains in the working class by choice rather than necessity."

"Capital fetishism, like fetishism in general, is an illusory perception of how the economy works. Capital as alienated labour is possible because the workers have an unfounded belief about the entitlement of the capitalist to the means of production. The first is an illusion about causality, the second an illusion about morality."

"In Joan Robinson's phrase, it is 'an essential paradox of capitalism' that each capitalist wants low wages for his own workers, since this makes for high profits, yet high wages for the workers employed by other capitalists, since this makes for high demand for his products. This paradox underlies the crises of effective demand studied by Keynes. Although Marx did not attach the same importance to this variety of capitalist crises, he was fully aware of the contradictions generated by the dual role of workers in the economy: 'to each capitalist the total mass of workers, with the exception of his own workers, appear not as workers, but as consumers.'"

"Clearly Marx was a materialist in the sense of believing that the external world had an existence independent of, and prior to, the existence of man, even though some passages suggest a different view. I do not know of any passage where Marx argues for a materialist theory of consciousness, in any one of the possible variations of such a theory."

"As G.A. Cohen has argued, the relevant antonym for 'material' is 'social,' and not 'mental.' If the productive forces en bloc are said to be material, it is in opposition to the social relations of production, not in contrast to the products and activities of the mind."

"Human nature, according to Marx, can be described and evaluated in terms of needs and capacities. The development of humanity takes place by an interaction between needs and capacities, as capacities are developed so as to satisfy needs and then in turn give rise to new needs."

"Marx's discussion of alienation only makes sense against the background of a normative view of what constitutes the good life for man."

"[A]t the center of Marxism is a specific conception of the good life as one of active self-realisation rather than passive consumption."

"...[A]lienation prevents the workers from perceiving the injustice of exploitation."

"[Marx] condemned capitalism mainly because it frustrated human development and self-actualization."

"In market economies...classes are characterized by the activities in which their members are compelled to engage by virtue of the endowment structure."

"Liberalism advocates the free choice of lifestyle, but it forgets that the choice is to a large extent preempted by the social environment in which people grow up and live."

"A society cannot guarantee that all individuals will get what they need in order to carry out their preferred project of self-realisation, since it might then be impossible to match the demand for resources with the supply. It can, however, try to create a large variety of opportunities for self-realisation and good mechanisms for matching desires with opportunities. In doing so, however, it will be constrained by the need to favor (a) forms of self-realisation that do not require excessive amount of material resources and (b) forms that tend to the creation of material resources."
---Jon Elster

"Under capitalism life is lived not under the authority of the Good, but under the aristocracy of Capital."

"If Capital is to be able to pursue maximum profits, the labour power of human beings must be treated as a commodity, something to be exchanged, bought and sold solely on the criterion of whether or not a particular exchange increases the profit ratio of the enterprise concerned. [....] Labour power suffers from an inelasticity of supply unlike, for example, manufactured commodities or new material. Labour power is but a quality of a living human being and, as such, is not something that can be simply 'turned off' if demand slumps. Nor, for that matter, can it be 'turned on' readily when demand peaks. Labour power is an abstract property of human beings. It is their potential for producing value when placed in a work situation. For it to remain a property of human beings it must be considered secondary to those properties that constitute human life. If the labour power of humans is given precedence to those properties that constitute human social life, it is no longer a property of humans, for it has then become constitutive, a defining property, of its supplier."

"[W]hen we live in an economy organised under the aristocracy of Capital, our labour power must become our defining property on pain of failure of that economy."

"The main task for socialists must be this. We must rearticulate the criteria, the goals, that define our agency in the social world and which provide the reference groups which alone can carry the traditions necessary for moral life to proceed. We must rearticulate the authority of the Good. In doing this we must articulate the more specific goals and standards for the variety of human institutions we find in modern society and stand these goals in opposition to the market criteria of capitalist success. [....] Socialism is concerned with enabling the re-emergence of the reference groups that carry the traditions of thought and feeling necessary for the good life to flourish. The possibility of society being organized by the dictates of the Good, the possibility that we organize our institutions to bring about moral life in society (a civil society), requires that we inhibit the forces of capital that have dislocated our moral purpose."

"[B]eing negatively free is to enjoy an unrestricted choice of goods and goals, being positively free allows that the subject's choice of goods can be constricted by a conception of the good independent of the subject's recognition of those things as good. In the former, negative sense, freedom consists in choosing goods where what is good is good because the subject chose it. In the latter, positive sense, freedom consists in being able to acknowledge the good which is independent of one's choice. In short, positive freedom arises when one is free from those things that inhibit one's deference to the authority of the good."
---Michael Luntley

"Property is not theft, but a good deal of theft becomes property."
---R.H. Tawney

"It may be thought that with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union, Marx's socialist philosophy and economics are of no significance today. I believe this would be a serious mistake for two reasons at least. The first reason is that while central command socialism, such as reigned in the Soviet Union, is discredited--indeed, it was never a plausible doctrine--the same is not true of liberal socialism. This illuminating and worthwhile view has four elements:
(a) A constitutional democratic political regime, with the fair value of the political liberties.
(b) A system of free competitive markets, ensured by law as necessary.
(c) A scheme of worker-owned business, or, in part, also public-owned through stock shares, and managed by elected or firm-chosen managers.
(d) A property system establishing a widespread and a more or less even distribution of the means of production and natural resources. (On these features, see John Roemer, Liberal Socialism [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994])
---John Rawls

"[If the welfare state represents a phase of capitalism, one] profoundly influenced by the socialists, then it is at least possible that a socialist renewal can take place in the future, much as the original social-democratic compromise itself arose out of the bankruptcy of Karl Kautsky's Marxism."

"I would not...use the phrase 'market socialism'...since it implies that what defines socialism is the market relation, which is a contradiction in terms. What is critical is the use of markets to implement democratically planned goals in the most effective way."
---Michael Harrington

"[A reconstruction of Marx's implicit moral theory] espouses the principle of maximum equal freedom (both negative and positive), which, in turn, can be explicated as the following set of principles:
1. negative freedom (i.e., freedom from the undue interference of others), and
2. positive freedom (i.e., the opportunity to determine one's own life), including
a) the right to equal participation in social decision-making processes and
b) the right of equal access to the means of self-realization, which entails
i. the right to an equal opportunity to attain social offices and positions, and
ii. the right to an equal opportunity to acquire other social primary goods (income, wealth, leisure time, etc.). "

"If both a relatively egalitarian theory of social justice...and a minimal set of Marxist empirical assumptions are essentially correct, then our natural duty to support and promote just social institutions (on both a national and international level) would seem to require us to do our fair share in supporting and promoting various working-class and progressive causes within our own societies and, if possible, on an international scale. (Perhaps the most efficient way to support such causes on an international scale is to monitor and, if necessary, alter our own societies' foreign policy, investment and aid policies, etc.). In any case, this seems to include supporting the struggles of workers and labor unions, the struggles of poor people (and nations) for a just share of the world's wealth, the struggles of oppressed minorities, and the struggle for the liberation of women, as well as environmental movements, and organizations and movements committed to the protection of human rights. If Marxist political theory is correct, however, the most important sorts of movements and organizations we can (and should) support are political parties explicitly committed to eliminating capitalism and bringing into the world a federation of democratc, self-managing socialist societies. The simple truth is that if a relatively egalitarian theory of social justice (and human rights) and the Marxist vision of contemporary social reality are essentially correct, then the only way we can respect other persons as free and equal moral beings--and, consequently, respect ourselves--is to do our fair share in supporting such movements, organizations, and struggles."
---R.G. Peffer

Please Note: Those doing in-depth research should look here, here, and here.

Addendum: See too this post by the political theorist Colin Farrelly at his blog, In Search of Enlightenment.

Worker "Occupation," or, The Modern Sit-Down Strike?

The following was written (slightly altered here) in response to Joseph Slater's important post at PrawfsBlawg on the "occupation" of a Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago. Professor Slater introduces his post by noting that "Some labor historians have a tendency to romanticize and exaggerate the importance of certain forms of worker 'militancy.'" I used this statement as a jumping-off point for my comment:

In light of the comparative neglect of labor history and historical struggles of working people in canonical general American history textbooks (an exception: The American Social History Project's two volume work, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's History, 3rd ed., 2007), one can easily forgive the "tendency ['of some labor historians'] to romanticize and exaggerate the importance of certain forms of worker 'militancy.'" No doubt such romanticization has its roots in theories that valorize the historical role of workers in social and economic transformation and revolution, as in the more crude but otherwise disparate Marxist and anarchist theories. Yet what truth remains in the Leninist notion of a "vanguard party" or an anarchist appreciation of spontaneous worker rebellion or revolt, might be gleaned from the following observation by the former East German dissident and Green Party founder/political theorist, Rudolf Bahro:

"Right from the beginning, the socialist parties had a double face, and by no means just in Russia: both parties of the proletariat and parties for the proletariat. Their founders and their pre-revolutionary leaders were understandably, with few exceptions, intellectuals from the intermediate strata. It was not the working class who gave itself them as its leadership, but they who gave themselves to the working class. And workers, if they were to take a place among them, had to become intellectuals themselves [Hence the ethical and political logic of the Sartrian 'Plea for Intellectuals' and the theoretical rationale for the Gramscian notion of 'organic intellectuals.' Likewise, as Bahro notes, we can better appreciate why Lenin (in his essay, 'Better Fewer, but Better'), 'instead of appealing to the working class as a whole,...appealed to the most enlightened elements in Russia, meaning the most advanced (most cultivated, most intellectualized) workers and to the minority of intellectuals and specialists inspired by the revolution.'].... [....] The workers--individual exceptions apart--were never Marxist in the strict sense. Marxism is a theory based on the existence of the working class, but it is not the theory of the working class."

Put differently, "[I]n no known historical case did the first creative impulse in ideas and organization proceed from the masses; the trade unions do not anticipate any new civilization. The political workers' movement was itself founded by declassed bourgeois intellectuals, which in no way means that the most active proletarian elements did not soon come to play a role of their own in the socialist parties and tend themselves to become intellectuals." (Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, 1978)

We have, therefore, at least one compelling reason why it is indeed foolhardy to "romanticize and exaggerate the importance of certain forms of worker 'militancy,'" and why workers qua workers cannot be depended upon to articulate the premises and conditions of what the late Rudolf Bahro called "general emancipation" (Please see the above book by him for a definition and explanation of the necessity for a cultural revolution based on such emancipation: in effect, it amounts to renewed appreciation of the Marxist ideal of self-realization, defined, in Jon Elster's words, as 'the full and free actualisation and externalisation of the powers and abilities of the individual' that lies at the heart of the Marxist conception of the good life.). Insofar as contemporary labor is bound to information- or knowledge-production and the boundaries between mental and manual labor are broken down or overcome, the aforementioned generalization must be qualified with the recognition that at least some workers are, at the same time, structurally positioned to be (or have the opportunity to become) intellectuals (i.e., when not simply technicians of knowledge).

As Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers noted some years ago, "There is a characteristic economic rationality to the actions of workers encouraged by capitalism. In the face of material uncertainties arising from continual dependence on the labor market under conditions of the private control of investment, it makes sense for workers to struggle to increase their wages." In the instant case, of course, it's the workers in a defensive fight for their due wages (so to speak). All the same, we should loudly applaud this particular instance of "worker militancy" without hesitation inasmuch as it serves to remind us of the truth of several propositions from Cohen and Rogers' On Democracy (1983):

"As a result of their control of investment, the satisfaction of the interests of capitalists is a necessary condition for the satisfaction of all other interests in the system."

"[T]he welfare of workers remains structurally secondary to the welfare of capitalists, and the well-being of workers depends directly on the decisions of capitalists."

"The interests of capitalists appear as general interests of the society as a whole, the interests of everyone else appear as merely particular, or 'special.'"

Toward Economic Democracy!

Update: Because Professor Slater links to the New York Times story, I thought it only fair that I tilt things toward the other coast with today's article on the sit-in from my "hometown" paper, the Los Angeles Times, the owner of which, the Tribune Co., has filed for bankruptcy protection.

And on a related front, the next (13th!) bibliography in our Directed Reading series will be a "very select" list on "Marx & Marxism."

Further Update: On the settlement of the sit-down strike, see Professor Slater's latest post at PrawfsBlawg. He notes there that he inadvertently deleted his previous post on the occupation that I linked to above and is no longer active.

Who's Afraid of the Shadow Constitution?

There is a tendency in constitutional scholarship to posit the existence of a shadow constitution lurking behind the written constitution. Sometimes the shadow constitution refers to natural law. In other cases, the shadow constitution consists of presuppositions, postulates, or axioms which give the United States Constitution meaning or provide the necessary elements in constitutional reasoning. The basic idea behind the shadow constitution is that the written constitution is insufficient to yield answers except in uninteresting cases in which meaning is never challenged, such as the clear rule that each state has no more nor less than two senators to represent them in Congress. (I have argued in Constitutional Revolutions and elsewhere that no constitutional provision completely defies hypothetical circumstances where their meanings would be radically altered.) That aside, because the Constitution cannot do all we ask of it, constitutional scholars invent theories and concepts to render the actual Constitution viable. Even so-called textualists and originalists cannot escape hypothesizing a shadow constitution. The question usually skirted by shadow constitutionalists is just how we identify the shadow constitution in cases of reasonable disagreement. Without an answer to this question shadow constitutionalists are just whistling in the dark.

Not only does reasonable disagreement apply to controversial constitutional decisions, it also applies to the methodological and theoretical foundations of constitutional law. While there exist relatively easy cases whose truth is fairly obvious, the more interesting controversies involve intractable conflicts in the so-called "culture wars" as well as fundamental disagreements in the philosophy of constitutionalism. Yet, American constitutionalism persists in pretending that there exist right answers--even sometimes one right answer--to constitutional controversies. This blindness is required by the arcane notion that a relatively modest distinction between law and politics warrants a separate branch of unelected, life-tenured, officials to determine the compatibility of legislative conduct and the Constitution.