What’s Wrong with the World

I think this might be a question of perspective. Serious critical theorists are not interested in supporting or even "fixing" the status quo; they want the status quo to radically change.

The defenders of the status quo are, then, conservative. Both liberals and self-identified conservatives fall under this catagory.

I guess it is the difference between thinking that society is nothing but an aggregate of different ideas and acting individuals and seeing it as a cohesive structure where everything is related to everything else. It's not a question that can be settled empirically.

It is perfectly possible to believe that the political status quo should be changed, radically or somewhat, or anything in between, to the left or to the right, without subordinating one's Shakespeare class, mathematics, constitutional interpretation, and everything else in the world to this end, and without dragging politics into every subject and seeing nothing as worthwhile in itself. The latter behavior turns all worthwhile human activities, with their normal, glorious, and _genuine_ diversity, into a mind-numbing politicized grey tapioca. No, thanks.

The overall point here about the horrific politicization of everything I agree with. I (perhaps unsurprisingly to Lydia) have a comment on this specific point though:

In fact, they [Bork and Scalia] get in trouble on the right as well on the grounds that they are "legal positivists."

That is true, but what is at issue in that criticism is precisely what it is to be a judge: it is the matter of professional integrity in the role of magistrate-as-magistrate, involving precisely the matter of what the positive law is and is not and what it does and does not entail. So the criticism of Scalia and Bork as legal positivists by some (including yours truly) isn't unrelated to the professional integrity of the role: it cuts right to the heart of it.

I think, Zippy, that your position on this point is a good deal more nuanced than that of some other conservatives. (Flattery will get me everywhere, right?) While I disagree with you about the role of the judge in extreme cases, I think there are two ways in which you are refraining from a full-scale insistence that judges come to conservative conclusions. First, as I understand you from other arguments, you think a judge should be reluctant to use his role to overturn a law on the grounds that it contradicts the natural law or to order a remedy not granted by law for the same reason. In other words, it's an extraordinary measure, on your view. Naturally, from my perspective, this makes your position less objectionable than if that weren't the case. Second, and relatedly, I think that you realize the value of a judge's merely interpreting and applying the law at times even when the outcomes this generates do not accord with the outcomes he thinks are best. In other words, you aren't just sitting around reading the news of some recent Supreme Court or other court decision and saying, like some conservatives, "Now, let's see if he's _really_ a conservative judge" based on the outcomes of his decisions.

What I would like to do here is sort of to push on that. I don't think I'll move you much, if at all, on the specifics, but I'd like to make a plea for seeing Bork's or Scalia's conclusions in cases where you disagree with them not as the result of some sort of stultifying or even insane formalism but rather as the result of their own conscientious attempts to be professionals of the highest integrity--a positive character trait rather than a negative one. I think it's possible to disagree with their evaluation of what professionalism requires of them in some given legal case while nevertheless thinking of what they are doing as *at one level* an admirable thing.

I'm trying to think of a parallel for this in my own case in some other profession, but I'm not very creative this afternoon. Maybe something will come to mind later.

I think it's possible to disagree with their evaluation of what professionalism requires of them in some given legal case while nevertheless thinking of what they are doing as *at one level* an admirable thing.

I do agree with that. What is at issue in this case is precsiely the substance of the profession. It is certainly true though that we can argue about what it means to do professional engineering work with an engineer who is himself committed to professional integrity. That is just as it should be, and if that is inherently conservative then so much the better for conservatism.

And yeah, the natural law guys probably wouldn't like me much either if there were any of them around to argue with me. As a general thing moral obligations arising from the positive law are the sort which could be otherwise, but which are contingently made to be thus rather than so by public authority for the sake of the common good. Think driving on the right, or the specific punishment for murder. Natural law obligations don't have that kind of contingency: they arise when to do other than what they require would itself be immoral (not that that cannot be a prudential determination of a sort: in some cases the mere physical capacity to act can oblige one to act even though there may be multiple possibilities pertaining to precisely how one acts). As a practical matter that may make the conclusions I reach in specific cases nearly identical to those of legal positivists, in particular since enforcement of the positive law is generally more a matter of selecting among prudential contingencies any of which could justly be otherwise. But only nearly identical, and when you start throwing in the roles of governors and other officials things start to diverge rather sharply, I think. I've been meaning to get around to thinking and writing some more on the subject, for my own navel-gazing edification if for no other reason.

Magnificent post, Lydia. May I say that I second Zippy's proposal that you be given the entire franchise?

Aw, gosh. Thanks, Paul.

Zippy, whenever you do more ruminating, it will be interesting to read.

I actually do think that the executive branch has much more latitude than is generally attributed to it. For one thing, executive officers can and should ignore silly court orders that aren't real legal interpretations. That idea _alone_--that the executive branch, too, gets to interpret the law and the state and federal constitutions--would make some revolutionary differences to outcomes.

It is perfectly possible to believe that the political status quo should be changed, radically or somewhat, or anything in between, to the left or to the right, without subordinating one's Shakespeare class, mathematics, constitutional interpretation, and everything else in the world to this end, and without dragging politics into every subject and seeing nothing as worthwhile in itself.

But it's not just the political status quo they want changed, right? It's a revolution in thought they're looking for. Everything from the rejection of the onto-theological foundations of western thought to the questioning of liberal democracy itself.

Thought doesn't need to be a ceaseless repetition of the same. I think that's the basic position of the folks you're speaking of.

And that means we must ceaselessly discuss "racism, sexism, and homophobia" or "phallic symbols" or "structures of oppression and hegemony" or....

when we discuss every subject? That's now what the whole gorgeous panoply of Western thought gets reduced to, in order to "reject the onto-theological foundations"?

Well, maybe so. Maybe, on their view, that's so. Then in that case, if the kind of revolution in thought they want is that nothing beautiful, valuable, or important in itself will be preserved, it will all be torn down, and this near-manic little round of boring obsessions will become the sum total of our thought and endeavour, surrounded by po-mo gibberish and nonsense, then they are what Neil Postman calls Visigoths, and we should fight them to the last ditch and the last gasp. That's certainly what I intend to do.

No, it doesn't mean endless discussion of anything. I've already had a similar discussion over at Right Reason. I guess I don't know what goes on in a majority of universities - maybe many profs are the caricatures you've constructed. But so what? This doesn't change the extraordinary depth, range and beauty of contemporary continential philosophy.

Sometimes I think that listening to "conservatives" speak about continential philosophy is exactly like listening to Richard Dawkins speak about religion.

"No, it doesn't mean endless discussion of anything."

That may be unintentionally more true than you realize.

Well and good. Then why don't you love my post, except for the negative reference at the beginning to critical theory? In other words, if the continental philosophy you advocate, with all its "extraordinary depth, range, and beauty," is entirely compatible with leaving Shakespeare and all the other greats in literature alone to be studied as they understood themselves, to be appreciated apolitically as they were before post-modernism ever came along, if it's fully compatible with apolitical legal theory, if it has nothing to do with dragging race, gender, class, the evils of colonialism, and sexual orientation (not to mention "finding" cutesy sexual allusions in every text that were never there) into all of the different ields, then why not tell me that you're _all in favor_ of the several apolitical essences of all these things, and that continental philosophy and "critical theory" and all the rest are just extra, separate areas of study with their own seperate excellences?

Well, because you aren't a liar. And because you know it isn't true. Because you realize quite well that a "complete revolution in thought" that involves the overturning of the "onto-theological foundations" really _doesn't_ have room for the beauties of these subjects as they were traditionally taught in an apolitical way. It isn't just a separate discipline of its own. It really is trying to overturn all the hierarchies, change the way every field is seen and understood, overthrow everything, and so on and so forth.

Mike, I actually empathize with your complaint, to a degree. The difficulty lies with the American interpreters of Continental thought, who too often reduce it to its most bombastic passages, its most out-there formulations, its most simplistic and contestable applications. If the bottom line of Foucault really is nothing more than an interminable discourse of liberation from various isms, isms which reflect the omnipresence of power and control, why bother? That sort of thing just leads to discussions of homosexuality as a transgressive blow against the power structures of heteronormativity. Who cares? In sum, American academics too often fail to do justice to Continental thought, and those who receive the most publicity are those articulating the most outlandish claims. It is scarcely to be wondered that conservatives turn away.

Then again, I am the one around here who, every now and again, likes to spend some time reading Nietzsche, and about Nietzsche.

Maximos, you can say this, though I'm rather sorry you should do so, _but_ I know for a fact that you have no ambition towards the "rejection of the onto-theological foundations of western thought." Very much to the contrary. And again, if people love the apolitical integrity of the professions, including academic disciplines like literature and philosophy, then why all this talk about overturning the status quo? Why the defense of calling "conservative" (apparently as a negative term) the professors who didn't politicize their classes _on the grounds that_ they were maintaining the "status quo"? In other words, Mike obviously is endorsing some sort of radical critical theory or other, though he hasn't explained exactly what it is, just that it is ostensibly profound and doesn't involve endlessly talking about anything. But it is about overturning the status quo (and not just, mind you, the political status quo), about undermining the onto-theological bases of western thought, and somehow is opposed to professors who don't politicize their academic classes. Then count me out, big time!

While I disagree with you about the role of the judge in extreme cases...

Just how do you two differ in these cases? An example would help.

Jeff, is there something in Foucault to which we should pay attention?

Here y'go, Bill. The long thread in which Zippy and I discussed legal positivism:

http://zippycatholic.blogspot.com/2007/04/justice-following-orders.html

It was a lot of fun. I think Crimson Catholic showed up (though I haven't read back through it).

What it comes down to is a fairly narrow band of disagreement concerning whether a judge could legitimately use his power qua judge to order some sort of remedy or hand down a decision contrary to the positive law where he believed the positive law to contravene the natural law. That's such a brief summary that I hope I haven't done Zippy an injustice in it. The thread had a lot more space for hashing.

I don't have time to re-read all that. So, concerning this: whether a judge could legitimately use his power qua judge to order some sort of remedy or hand down a decision contrary to the positive law where he believed the positive law to contravene the natural law.... I'm going to answer on instinct and say yes, he should; "instinct" means that I reserve the right to change my mind.

Of course, I have something quite different in mind than an affirmation of the totality of the postmodernist/poststructuralist/continental programme, to the extent that there exists one; I mean only that one cannot hope to grasp the logic of the modernity that remains the bete noir of conservatism absent an understanding of what supersedes modernism, and that one cannot understand postmodernism without understanding the modernism it requires as a shadow. Postmodernism informs us of precisely how modernism fails, and to pursue this critique to its limits is to undermine the political philosophies of modernity. If the modern subject is decentered, then political modernisms are without foundation; this, frankly, is a liberation for conservative thought - once we reach this point, it is all onto-theology, for or against. I would argue that it is a question of whose onto-theology, but the point is that clearing away the detritus of modernism enables us to fight to our strengths, instead of embracing a series of compromises that always ratchet leftward.

My remarks, of course, are political. Postmodernism as social thought is what happens when the disillusioning failure and incoherence of political modernism is felt, and then analyzed. Political modernism, the maximization of the autonomy of the individual, the monad, of his scope for self-articulation, is incoherent, as incoherent as logical positivism; the choice this leaves is between tradition and, well, nothing much.

Bill, to pull an example out of the hat, I'd suggest that Foucault's discussion of Bentham's Panopticon, for which he actually hoped to receive government funding - so that, as Sub-Regulus of the poor, he could regiment the schedules of his inmates, maximizing their productivity, and enriching himself, of course - is not all that bad. Perhaps - I write at a decade's remove of a reading of Foucault - his makes much more of it that it warrants, but in itself, it is illustrative of how the modern economic and social orders required a radical 'resocialization' of the masses, and how - even short of the Panopticon - this was a politically-driven process, and not a cloudless unfurling of human freedom. People accustomed to an agrarian life had to be forced to be "free".

Sometimes we think men mad because they drag into the light the squalid things we prefer to conceal.

Bill,

I argued that he shouldn't, because it would be a misuse of his power as a judge. In other words, he was made a judge on the understanding that his job was to interpret and apply laws passed by other people, so he's violating a kind of tacit agreement that's part of the definition of the job if he doesn't stick to that. That doesn't mean that he should cooperate in evil. If necessary--if it really got that bad as far as what laws he was asked to interpret and apply--he should recuse himself or quit his job. As you probably know, in virtually all (maybe all) of the cases that really get me riled up so far, I believe that the judges in question could have done the right thing _by_ properly interpreting and applying the positive law, or even just by shutting up and not pretending that the positive law (e.g. the Constitution) addresses some subject that it doesn't.

Maximos, without agreeing or disagreeing right here and now with what you've just said, I want to ask: Would you not agree, though, that what you are talking about can (even should) be left largely to one side when one is doing an enormous amount of extremely important and great stuff in the humanities, sciences, etc.?

Knowing what is happening to the program in which I was educated, I should certainly answer in the affirmative! Of course, each discipline in the humanities possesses its innate excellences, and cannot be what it is unless it is permitted to realize them. All I'm arguing is that there are conservative reasons for reading Continental philosophy, regardless of the implications most interpreters tease out of it; there are reasons for the occasional apoplexy on the hard left about the "dead ends" of postmodernist thought - it is susceptible of conservative applications, though more as a primer, in my opinion.

FWIW, the undertone of Foucault, of resistance to the totalizing regime of discipline, still presupposes something of the modern subject; a decentered subject cannot resist anything, inasmuch as it is a site of plural selves. Only if man possesses a determinate substance can he resist much of anything. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

There are two theses behind the style of thought being criticised here.

1. Everything is interonnected.
2. It is better to create than to repeat.

They aren't conclusions that can be argued for in logical form, anymore than their negations could be. To decide that repetition is better than creation is just as much a life stance or existential comportment as its opposition.

Examples. It is better to create your own perspective on Aristotle than it is to simply memorize his words and be able to repeat them on command. It is better to recognize that art - like Shakespeare - is both created and viewed from a particular perspective than it is to assume there is one "Shakespeare" that is eternally present and that has only one authorized articulation.

Before I go any further, I want to make explicit something that I only touched upon above. I have no experience with American universities, and I certainly don't know what goes on in them. Maybe they are a quagmire of ridiculous stereotypes. Whatever the empirical case may be, I still think we're arguing over the above theses. If American professors spend their lecture time making fun of Bushisms, than you have my sympathy.

What critical theorists are trying to do is root out what underlies perspectives. To say that all that work can be "left aside," Lydia, is only to accept older ways of thinking without even articulating them.

"1. Everything is interonnected.
2. It is better to create than to repeat."

Well, I think these are both false on their faces, except that #1 might be true in some sense utterly irrelevant to the subject at hand: E.g. God created everything other than himself; hence, everything is interconnected in the sense that everything that is not God was created by God. But in the sense I think you mean it, no. And as for the second, it's balderdash. If you can't take the trouble to appreciate the things other people have created--people far better than you are _at_ creating--because you're too busy "creating" for yourself, then you are impoverished.

The silly cliche about "simply memorizing Aristotle's words and repeating them on command" is unworthy of any academic. If you have no better notion of what it means to study an ancient philosopher (or a poet, an historian, or even a fellow human being) and understand him than either merely to memorize him and repeat him on command or to subject him to the tender ministrations of critical theory, then you are missing nearly everything that makes the humanities worthwhile.

Yes, there is "one Shakespeare." To begin with, he was a guy. A person. As real as you or I. He wrote plays and poetry. He lived in the 1500's and into the early 1600's. Second, there is a corpus of his work. There are, of course, textual variants within this, so that we don't always know which words he actually wrote, but there's enough that we do know to make a body of work that can be read and understood. And it is, in fact, worth reading and understanding. It doesn't just exist in our heads. We don't "create" it. "Only one authorized articulation"? What the dickens does that mean? Critics argue constantly about the meaning of various passages. That's no problem, and a scholar should be able to discuss these differences of opinion. But they are opinions _about_ something outside our own heads, or they are not worth the trees killed to make the paper to print them on, if they are just self-stimulating "creations of perspectives."

"Accept older ways of thinking without articulating them"? On the contrary, I am articulating them. I just disagree with you profoundly. Is what I think an opinion? Yes, indeed.

But it isn't a political opinion.

It is better to create than to repeat.

A teacher who comes to the classroom with this approach is suffering from terminal arrogance.

Lydia, how would this - in virtually all (maybe all) of the cases that really get me riled up so far, I believe that the judges in question could have done the right thing _by_ properly interpreting and applying the positive law - have applied in the Schiavo case?

Hey, Bill,

We discussed this once with Zippy, and as you'll recall he said it wasn't a good test case of the differences between him and me. There were so many places at which what I've said would apply to the Schiavo case that I can't even list them all: Judge Greer didn't seek "clear and convincing evidence" that she would wish to be dehydrated to death, though that was the legal standard. The state Supreme Court said that it was against the state constitution for the governor to be allowed by law to reinsert a feeding tube, so they struck down Terri's Law which had saved her life. There was nothing in the state constitution that justified this conclusion. They should not, legally should not, have struck down that law. _Since_ this is the case, and since the executive gets to interpret the constitution of his own state, too (as I said above), the governor would have been legally justified in ignoring the striking down of Terri's Law and continuing to keep her fed.

Those are just a few examples in that case. There are even more that cd. be given.

Well, I think these are both false on their faces, except that #1 might be true in some sense utterly irrelevant to the subject at hand: E.g. God created everything other than himself; hence, everything is interconnected in the sense that everything that is not God was created by God.

So popular entertainment and popular morality are not connected to each other in anyway? Popular notions of Evolution aren't connected to anything in culture? Be careful that you don't overstate your case, because I'm pretty sure that you'll readily argue for the interconnection of some things. All I'm insisting on is that the connections are both more pervasive and more subtle than you might be willing to grant.

If you can't take the trouble to appreciate the things other people have created--people far better than you are _at_ creating--because you're too busy "creating" for yourself, then you are impoverished.

What an odd accusation. It's almost as if you think I'm saying that we don't need to study others. If I thought that, why would I repeatedly argue for the value in studying certain philosophers?

"You have to have tradition within you to hate it properly." So said Adorno. Hate, in the sense of Jesus' "If you don't hate your family..."

The silly cliche about "simply memorizing Aristotle's words and repeating them on command" is unworthy of any academic.

Umm... why the polemic tone? I said X, and you seem to be saying "No, it's X, you idiot!"

The kind of interpretation I'm speaking of would be exemplified by Heidegger's Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. The standard view of Kant is that of an epistemologist, that he was primarily and only searching for a foundation for mathematics. Heidegger, on the other hand, would insist that Kant was actually developing an ontology of the subject. Heidegger developed his own reading of Kant.

It's obvious this discussion is not going to go anywhere; we've strayed well into the land of ambiguity and idle chatter. If we're going to have a serious discussion about all this, a particular text needs to be chosen.

why the polemic tone?

I've wondered that. I'm beginning to think being right means being belligerent around here. I know this is off-topic, but it's a bit overbearing. Apparently you are an enemy if you are not an author. Polemics is more important than pedagogy when truth is the banner.

If we're going to have a serious discussion about all this, a particular text needs to be chosen.

Agreed.

I just finished reading some Dooyeweerd on the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought.

Aspects of experience
An indissoluble inner coherence binds the numerical to the spatial aspect, the latter to the aspect of mathematical movement, the aspect of movement to that of physical energy, which itself is the necessary basis of the aspect of organic life. The aspect of organic life has an inner connection with that of psychical feeling, the latter refers in its logical anticipation (the feeling of logical correctness or incorrectness) to the analytical-logical aspect. This is in turn connected with the historical, the linguistic, the aspect of social intercourse, the economic, the aesthetic, the jural, the moral aspects and that of faith. In this inter-modal cosmic coherence no single aspect stands by itself; every-one refers within and beyond itself to all the others.

"So popular entertainment and popular morality are not connected to each other in anyway? Popular notions of Evolution aren't connected to anything in culture?"

Huh? Mike, do you really not know that "Nothing is connected to anything else" does not follow from denying "everything is interconnected"?

Logic.

KW, that bit of abstruse prose could surely be written more comprehensibly. That, in fact, is one of the gravest problems with continental philosophy. But I see no argument there for the apparently desired conclusion--that logical thought is somehow not "independent." Is the argument supposed to be that because it's a rational animal (as Aristotle said), a creature with a physical body, doing the thinking, there is no such thing as direct apprehension of a priori truths? The inference is scarcely obvious.

But in any event, it's rather hard to see how we are to conclude from this that we cannot rightly discuss (say) English literature without discussing contemporary U.S. politics. After all, if you make the thesis that everything is interconnected sufficiently grand, it becomes practically pointless. We cannot possibly be obligated to discuss every subject while discussing every other subject, or we could never discuss anything. In other words, the claim that everything is interconnected becomes just an excuse to pull together some _particular_ subjects that one person wants to insist be discussed together and that someone else (like me) wants to keep apart.

I for one would appreciate a specific statement of just what MikeWC objects to in Lydia's post.

In other words, the claim that everything is interconnected becomes just an excuse to pull together some _particular_ subjects that one person wants to insist be discussed together and that someone else (like me) wants to keep apart.

Radical holism - that is, the refusal to think analytically at all - seems to me to be every bit as useless as radical reductionism. (Well, it is useless unless what you would like to do is stop talking and have a beer. Conversation-terminators are quite useful for that purpose).

I'm with Paul: what is the specific beef?

KW, that bit of abstruse prose could surely be written more comprehensibly.

Ha! Now I'd like to post an image of the pot and kettle. It isn't just a problem in continental philosophy.

But back to the point. Will you be answering Bill Luse? I think he's headed in the right direction.

I'm sorry, I just now reading your response above.

I don't recommend dissuading anyone the study of literature apart from contemporary U.S. politics if such a conversation helps understand the subject at hand.

There's a fad now to give us Aristotle and Kant through contemporary musicians, something I think usually ends with a greater satisfaction with the musician than understanding of the philosopher. But if the instructor can pull it off, pupils will have been able to see the light. We know the the real question is, what is the right direction?

In short, I would argue that integrity isn't a matter of being apolitical, per se.

Well, integrity isn't a matter of being apolitical in politics, or on a political blog! I'm _very_ political, myself. But it can be a matter of that in many other contexts.

By the way, I concur with the guys in saying that the real question for Mike is what he dislikes in the main post _besides_ the fact that I obviously don't like continental philosophy (which, by the way, I didn't name in those terms--I used "critical theory" instead).

It's of course no secret that I dislike continental philosophy. But if the continentalists would study their texts and leave the many other disciplines alone, rather than being radical post-modern overturners of "onto-theological bases," I'd leave them alone and just not bother with their texts. Pretty much the way I do with, oh, say, Buddhism or something. And continentalism does come in various shades of pushiness.

Now, the question is not whether we can find some particular continental philosophy text that some people think is saying something true and/or important. The question is what this has to do with conservatism and the integrity of the professions, the politicization of the professions, and so forth. If it _is_ supposed to be negatively related to my position on those subjects, then that's a locus of disagreement in this particular discussion. And then the argument for or against some particular thesis should be made.

Well, integrity isn't a matter of being apolitical in politics, or on a political blog! I'm _very_ political, myself. But it can be a matter of that in many other contexts.

May I suggest, then, to address the integrity of a profession, rather than all of them? One of the remarks I made over at rightreason.com is that the individual professions are more or less politically significant.

The other points were that the logical distinction between political and apolitical is a logical distinction; that the integrity of anything is vouchsafed in part by the culture of the polis; that a disruption of the societal order puts that integrity into jeopardy.

I would also entertain a broader notion of the political to recognize all societal relations, not just those between individual citizen and government. The university, for example, although it seems ravaged by all the causes you've noted, may only be using these as a means for profit in cash and recognition.

KW, what's your thesis and what's your argument? Is your thesis that _every_ profession is at least a little bit political, and that therefore there can be no point in bemoaning the politicization of the professions? Well, I think that's false. Nor does it follow from the claim--which is to some extent correct--that the relevance of politics to different professions may come in degrees. The legitimate relevance of contemporary politics to, say, the proper practice of nuclear physics remains highly questionable, in my opinion. And the same is true to a very great extent of the majority of the most valuable activities around.

Now, if you're going to define "politics" as "anything having to do with people's relations to each other," then that's a different matter. Obviously, the literature teacher shouldn't be nasty to his students nor the physicist to his assistants, and if you're going to say that that's a political proposition, you're welcome to do so, but we'll then be straying from the obviously intended meaning of "political" in the post.

I tried to respond to what you've said about how things get called into question and how this makes things more political than they were before (at least, this was what I took you to be saying) over at Right Reason. But let me say here, again: I do not concede that people can just _make_ something political by getting het up about it or by demanding that you do it or don't do it. The teaching of Milton doesn't suddenly _become_ political just because there are touchy feminists around.

This point reminds me of something the homosexual activists used to do at Vanderbilt University. Every year they would declare a certain day "jeans day," and the posters put up around campus said, "Wear jeans on ____ if you support gay rights." Guess what? They might have thought they could just make it the case that wearing or not wearing jeans was now a political act, but they couldn't.

You impute a thesis to me about every profession, just after I suggest that you address the integrity of one profession, rather than all of them?

No, I asked. You can just say, "No."

I guessed that this might be where you were going from the following facts:

a) You say this: "The individual professions are more or less politically significant." This might be taken to mean that all of the different individual professions have at least some degree of political significance.

b) You seem to think I've erred somewhere, and I'm trying to come up with a thesis that would contradict something I've said, or even would tend to do so.

Why do I not just stick to one profession? Because what I'm saying here applies to so many, because so many of those are important, and because the integrity of so many that should be apolitical is under attack. That's why.

Jeff, sorry to take so long getting back to you. I asked the question because I'm not inclined to listen to a man on any matter who advocates the decriminalization of "all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen."

Lydia - Judge Greer didn't seek "clear and convincing evidence" that she would wish to be dehydrated to death, though that was the legal standard.

In fact, Florida State law permits such dehydration with or without 'clear and convincing' evidence, as long as a court-appointed guardian makes the request, and the diagnosis of 'hopeless' has been confirmed by medical authorities.

The state Supreme Court said that it was against the state constitution for the governor to be allowed by law to reinsert a feeding tube, so they struck down Terri's Law which had saved her life. There was nothing in the state constitution that justified this conclusion. They should not, legally should not, have struck down that law.

Actually, since Terri's Law contravened existing state law, it was not at all surprising that the Seven Dwarfs would strike it down. I knew they would, and they did. On a purely positive law basis, they were justified in doing so.

...and since the executive gets to interpret the constitution of his own state...

Maybe you know something I don't, but I've never heard of such a thing. In any case, the root of all evil was not a separation of powers issue, but a section of the Florida statutes that makes it legal to murder severely diabled people. This statute is given the umbrella of federal protection by the existence of Cruzan, which preceded it. That is why, in my previous writings on the subject, I have maintained that a judge of true integrity, on either the state or federal level, would have been one who neither resigned nor recused himself, but who stood up to say that "I find these proceedings repugnant to the laws of God and to any merciful concept of the dignity of human life; and the law of man...which allowed them to go forward to be hereby unconstitutional on the ground that an unjust law is no law at all."

Many, probably most, conservatives have reviled such counsel as 'judicial activism', while I call it a desperate (and probably futile) but upright attempt to return the law to its former condition, one in which innocents find its protection rather than its enmity. I would say the same of abortion law.

Bill, you may have legal info. that I don't have, but here is Judge Greer's own opinion:

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder02-00.pdf

In it he expressly states that he is summarizing "the controlling legal authority in this area"--he says that it is the Browning case. He then also expressly says, "The Florida Supreme Court established the clear and convincing evidence test as a requirement..."

This point was brought up again and again in the discussions of the legal aspects at the time. The 2nd District Court of Appeals expressly stated and emphasized at length that the wishes that were being carried out were *Terri's own wishes* and that they would be enforced upon _any legal guardian_ she happened to have, given the court findings of "clear and convincing evidence." Legally, the fiction was that, because Judge Greer had established this by "clear and convincing evidence" at the initial court level, she was in essence taking the feeding tube out herself!

Moreover, later state laws can contravene all or parts of earlier state laws, though not state constitutions. Even if there was an earlier state law allowing a guardian to have a feeding tube removed, Terri's Law would then be, in effect, an amendment thereto. The argument by the State Supreme Court was not that it contravened statutory law but rather that it contravened the separation of powers set out in the state constitution by giving too much power to the executive branch! This was absurd. They also argued that, since a court order had been given for her death, the separation of powers somehow required that court orders be set in stone and that no subsequent act of any other branch of the government could contravene the final effectiveness of a court order. There was nothing that said this in the state constitution, and bloggers at the time brought up plenty of obvious counterexamples. The Magnificent Seven simply claimed to get it from the abstract concept of the separation of powers!

As for Cruzan, the only good thing one can find to say about it is that it _permits_ states to have a "clear and convincing evidence" standard, which Florida's Browning decision _claimed_ to uphold. Cruzan was based on the supposed right of people to refuse "treatments" for themselves. We all know that this is a legal fiction, but it does mean that the states are not required by Cruzan to allow somebody else to make the decision _without_ any evidence as to the person's own wishes. The states _may_ require such evidence, and apparently Browning--which Judge Greer called the "controlling legal authority" in Terri's case--did.

What is possible is that a new Florida state law had been passed that loosened this standard between the time of Judge Greer's initial decision and Terri's death. That seems implausible, though, as it seems that Michael would simply have made a new application under the new law. But in any event, the law/precedent that was supposedly being followed in her case supposedly did require clear and convincing evidence that this was her own wish, and that was a keynote of the case from start to finish.

I know, Bill, that you were talking on your own blog about a particular person (I can't recall his name, but I believe he was a priest) who wrote on this subject, and you indicated then that what I was saying reminded you of what he had been saying. My impression from your summary was that he, too, did not regard her murder as having been carried out legally.

As to the executive's having the right to interpret the constitution for himself, that is an area in which I disagree with some other conservatives. The idea that the judiciary branch must and should be the sole and final arbiter of the meaning of the constitution (at the state or federal level) is by no means set in stone, and I think it is legally questionable and the source of many unnecessary evils.

But I have even _more_ bullets in my gun, here: Terri was subpoenaed by the U.S. Congress. A subpoena carries protections. Federal marshalls could and should legally have been sent out to rescue her after the subpoena was issued and Judge Greer continued to order her dehydration. Or try this one on for size: By some minor legal mix-up, there was a period of some three hours after one of Judge Greer's court orders had expired when her dehydration was not ordered by any court order. Governor Bush sent state troopers to rescue her, but on their way they called ahead to the sheriffs' men there to tell them what was up. The sheriffs' men said (as they were by no means legally required to say, since the court order had expired) that they would resist her being taken away! The state troopers backed off. This little-known story was on Yahoo news, not even on some conservative blog. Unfortunately, I didn't save the URL.

The Fl. Supreme Court no doubt erred in its reasoning as to why it struck down Terri's law. What I'm saying is that if it had used a different kind of reasoning, it could still have done so and done so legitimately (under positive law). And the Browning case must have been decided subsequent to the initial legislation, although I don't know why, since the laws on the books were already quite permissive and Browning would seem to be a constriction of that. (I am also quite aware of Bush sending the troopers in, and his subsequent cowardice, so don't worry about the link.)

My impression from your summary was that he, too, [the priest] did not regard her murder as having been carried out legally.

Probably it was not. But it could have been, without all the shenanigans that outrage you. What I am asking you to suppose is that all the particulars of the positive law had been met to any reasonable person's expectations, but that you found the results morally abhorrent; e.g., suppose that Terri had left clear and convincing evidence that she wished someone to pull that tube, and that the legislature had refused to enact Terri's law. My stance is that a judge of integrity would attempt to interrupt the death march by refusing to acknowledge any law or judicial decision that grants to the state (or any of its citizens) a right to murder its subjects. In other words, I still maintain that the root of all evil was a law on the books that upheld the judiciary's apparent indifference to Terri's fate, and all their machinations to achieve that end.

I've never studied, or even read the Florida constitution, but I do think a general principle of republican theory holds that the Executive does indeed have some power of constitutional interpretation. The executive does not possess potential of an almost democratic vindication of justice like the old monarchs, who were idealized as champions of the poor and oppressed, but there is still some sense in which the office entails a bit of authority to shield the vulnerable from wicked law.

So maybe (at least in republican theory) Bill and Terri's savior should, legally, have been the Governor.

Mike is correct: it is imperative that a particular text be discussed. For my part, I suspect that there has been a certain amount of overstatement in this thread. Conservatives have no difficulty in conceding that, for example, J.S. Mill was not a disinterested political philosopher, but one motivated by an antipathy for the Christian civilization that was known to him, whose political thought, to the extent of its reflection in policy, was calculated to subvert that civilization. Some conservatives, at least, have no difficulty in conceding that Locke was not that disinterested political philosopher, assiduously striving for the truth of man's rights, and the nature of political authority, but rather an apologist for the Whig ascendancy, and a whitewasher of the era of the enclosures. More generally, conservatives have no difficulty in perceiving that the moral commitments of their adversaries often shape their productions; it stands to reason that Foucault's moral corruptions influenced his History of Sexuality.

Why this sort of cross-fertilization would not occur in other fields is not exactly clear to me. Any Christian or conservative who has read any Reformed thinkers on culture will have to acknowledge that this type of analysis is a staple of the genre. To be sure, it remains a matter of the textual and historical evidence, but we are not going to be dealing with "The Faerie Queene as Key to the Geopolitical Machinations of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz". However, are we really going to argue that there is no political content in any of the poems of Yeats, or Eliot, for example?

I believe that I have an intuitive handle on what Lydia objects to, and I find it objectionable myself. But these objectionable forays into pseudo-scholarship violate the boundaries and inherent goods of the disciplines because they mishandle the actual evidence, whatever that may be. Hence, we really ought to discuss a discrete text. Mike?

Bill,

I'll say more later--prob. tomorrow--on the hypothetical case you raise. (I still disagree about the Supreme Court in the real case. Again--one positive statutory law can of course supersede an earlier one.) I'll just say here that _nothing_ I've said precludes major civil disobedience on the part of private citizens. I think all the private citizens involved should have protected Terri--from the doctors and nurses at hospice on down. There's no such thing as a "professional citizen" such that citizenly integrity requires you to obey wicked court orders. And there was no moral requirement for the judges to issue those court orders, nor would there be in any hypothetical. The judge can always quit and go join the protestors.

Paul, when I say that the executive has the right to interpret the state constitution (or federal, if he's the federal executive), I don't actually have in mind anything specific about protecting citizens from wicked laws, though that might arise if the wicked laws were also unconstitutional. What I chiefly have in mind is ignoring court orders and judicial opinions that arise from a twisting of the meaning of the constitution. Again, as I've said above, this alone would make an enormous difference in practice. Suppose, for example, that every President and governor had said of Roe v. Wade, "The court has made its ruling. Let it enforce it." The executives of the states would--knowing Roe to be totally bogus as constitutional interpretation--have gone on arresting abortionists according to the laws on the books in their states. And the federal executives would not have sent in the marshalls to rescue the abortionists from jail. The Supreme court couldn't do a thing about it.

Maximos, I want to emphasize yet again that my thesis here was not, "All continental philosophy is junk." I actually may think that _true_, mind you, but that wasn't what I wanted to defend here. What I'd rather see myself from Mike is a specific _statement_ as to what he thinks I believe about the integrity of the professions that is _incorrect_.

As for your example, well, yes, of course you discuss political issues insofar as that is really *what the text is about*. Heck, Book V of the Faerie Queene is all about 16th Century Englisn politics vis a vis Ireland. (And a darned boring book of the Faerie Queene it is, too!) But explaining that to the students has nothing to do with politicization. Now, if one then went on a rant about how Northern Ireland nowadays _should_ be reunited with Southern Ireland, how the IRA has some good points, and so on and so forth, _that_ would be politicizing.

Thank you, Maximos and Bill.

A discussion of a specific profession or a specific text will help clarify what we are up against.

Bill, I understand your perspective on Foucault, since I have long been aware of that fact concerning his advocacy; in fact, it came up when Foucault was discussed back in my college days. I would anticipate such predilections to have been influential in the composition of The History of Sexuality. I don't know how such manifest depravity could have impacted the treatment of Bentham, though perhaps that is not your point. I do respect the aversion.

Bill,

You ask what I think would be right for a judge to do if all the legal requirements in some case and in some state were really met and someone applied to dehydrate a person to death. Perhaps the even more relevant question is what I think it would be wrong to do. I certainly do _not_ think it would be wrong for the judge to refuse in one way or another to cooperate with the murder of the person. In fact, it seems to me that the obviously right thing would be for the judge either to recuse himself for that one case or, if for some reason that was not an option or that sort of case were likely to come up often, to quit being a judge altogether. And if he wanted to give the speech you suggest as part of his reason, "I refuse to be a party to this because..."--something along those lines--then I think that would be fine, too.

I am never saying that professional integrity requires that one do evil.

So what am I saying would be breach of judicial integrity in that case? I think it would in that scenario be a breach of judicial integrity for him, knowing that this was directly contrary to all the relevant positive law, to issue a court order that the person be protected. In other words, he should not use the power and authority that were given him as a judge in a direct attempt qua judge to contravene the law. That's because I view him as having received that power only on the understanding that he would use it only within the positive law. So it would be a kind of cheating for him to try to issue court orders contrary to it or outside of the authority granted to him by it.

In the case of abortion law, scenarios are harder to come up with, because unfortunately while born people can sue for having been arrested under existing abortion laws, and thus can try to get them overturned, it's harder to think of a scenario where a judge would even have the opportunity to require on behalf of the unborn child that abortion law be stricter. Judges can only rule on the cases before them.

So to give an example that concerns the possibility of striking down an unjust law, I'll use this: Suppose that parents sue their state in federal court over compulsory school attendance laws on the grounds that they have a fundamental right to control the upbringing of their child. In other words, they sue to have these laws struck down and for the declaration of a right to home school. Suppose that I'm a federal judge and that I believe that in fact the laws requiring attendance at public school are indeed very wrong. Unfortunately, there's nothing in federal law or the federal constitution that makes them illegal. What would be contrary to professional integrity would be for me to declare that nonetheless these laws must not be enforced against the parents, that they must be regarded as null, because they contravene the unwritten natural law which gives parents a fundamental right to control their children's education. And it would be contrary to professional integrity for me to order some sort of remedy--the parents must be let out of jail, fines must be refunded to them with interest, etc.--on this basis. Again, this would be using my power qua judge to enforce something that I was not given the power to enforce. It would be going beyond the power I was granted in being given the job, while at the same time trying to use the prestige and authority of the job for a purpose I deem right.

I want to reiterate that none of this says anything against civil disobedience by private citizens in any of these areas.

KW, if you have specific examples of things you think would _not_ be wrongful politicizing that you think I _would_ condemn as such, you're welcome to bring them forward. I've already expressed, on the brief RR thread, dubiousness about the relevance of the oppression of disenfranchised women to the history of characterization in the short story! Of course, again, I haven't read the book in question, but that does I'm afraid sound like the sort of dragging in of politics that I deplore. I'm sorry if this bothers you, but I think it would be more appropriate for you to bring up your own supposed counterexamples to the thesis that politicization of English teaching is a bad thing. For goodness' sake--the politicization of English classes is a byword!

As you see, I am in no way unwilling to address the highly specific issues Bill is raising about professional integrity and politicization in legal theory. In fact, I've thought a lot about them and find them very interesting.

Maximos, re Locke--I've not studied his political writings, and I assume that's what you're referring to, so I can't comment on the "Whig version of history." But if someone starts telling me that he's sneakily advocating the Whig version of history in his discussions of innate ideas, the direct apprehension of the connections between ideas, or nominal essences, I'm going to be very skeptical indeed and feel that this is off-track as far as studying Locke's philosophy.

Lydia,
(I still disagree about the Supreme Court in the real case. Again--one positive statutory law can of course supersede an earlier one.)

Probably you've been over this question with Zippy elsewhere, but do you acknowledge the existence of a natural law that supersedes all positive laws?

Brandon, in one sense I do--that is, in the sense that it's always wrong to break the natural law, and it's always wrong to cooperate materially in the breaking of the natural law. The question conerns whether just because you have the name "judge" for your job it is now your job to enforce the natural law. I contend that this is not the case, that your job named "judge" gives you qua judge only the prerogative to use your power as judge to enforce the positive law. This doesn't mean that you can be obligated by your job to disobey the natural law. It means that your power in that job is not supposed to be used to contravene the positive law in pursuance of the natural law. But if you believe it to be your duty to fight directly for the natural law over the positive law, then you can always quit your job as judge and go and engage in civil disobedience as a private citizen to fight against injustices perpetrated by the enforcement of the positive law. In fact, if everybody did this, horrible laws that require murder and such-like (as in the case of requiring the dehydration of innocents) would never be carried out.

Huh? Mike, do you really not know that "Nothing is connected to anything else" does not follow from denying "everything is interconnected"?

I'm pretty sure my paragraph taken as a whole accounts for this.

KW, that bit of abstruse prose could surely be written more comprehensibly. That, in fact, is one of the gravest problems with continental philosophy.

Dooyeweerd was a reformed Calvinist. Not exactly a German metaphysician.

KW, are you suggesting we read something by Dooyeweerd? His stuff can be pretty hard to find. I know it's not in my university's library.

But in any event, it's rather hard to see how we are to conclude from this that we cannot rightly discuss (say) English literature without discussing contemporary U.S. politics.

Does this commonly happen? Like I said, if your English profs are spending their lecture time making fun of Bushisms, you have my sympathy. It is one thing to waste English class time with political science; it is another to look for the gender or class politics in a particular work.

I for one would appreciate a specific statement of just what MikeWC objects to in Lydia's post.

That "professional integrity" can only be maintained by the endless repetition of traditional scholarship. That any sort of academic work can carry on without discussions of the relationship between power and knowledge without being blind to its own functions. That the attempts to deal with these issues by critical theorists are trivial or pushy or corrupting.

Go back to my original response. I am not arguing that Lydia is wrong. (I.e., I said the discussion could not be settled empirically) I am not attempting to refute her. My first post was an attempt to offer an explanation for why "liberals" can be labeled "conservatives," and from that point I've just been trying to point out the (needless) limitations of "conservative" thought.

The teaching of Milton doesn't suddenly _become_ political just because there are touchy feminists around.

This is a good example of what I'm trying to point out. "Touchy feminists" are just the folks that seek out the implied notions of sex and gender in various cultural forms. Sometimes they even do it with Milton! It's a perfectly legitimate academic pursuit.

Hence, we really ought to discuss a discrete text. Mike?

I'm not sure what a proper text would be. I'm really only capable of speaking off the top of my head about modern or contemporary philosphy; not so much critical theory. Foucault might the obvious choice, especially the first Sexuality book.

The History of Sexuality would probably be a poor selection, for reasons which this comment thread has made plain; we'd end up talking about Foucault's proclivities more than about the methods and claims of critical theory or continental philosophy.

Uh, that would be a failing on the part of the participants.

Opinions may vary, but since this is a worthwhile topic, we'd best come up with a different text.

KW, are you suggesting we read something by Dooyeweerd? His stuff can be pretty hard to find. I know it's not in my university's library.

No, sorry, not as a base text. The citation was only there to address the contemporary problem of the autonomy of ideas and actions.

Chaps, I've been trying to find a way of implying this without coming out and saying it, but...

I have no intention of heading off to the library and checking out a piece of postmodernism or continental philosophy in order to continue interacting on this thread. I did my time with that stuff back in grad school and have no duty to do so anymore.

Instead, I'll try to do some responding to Mike's perspective and also continue giving Mike the opportunity of saying more this way:

1) He objects to what he takes to be my implication that "any sort of academic work can carry on without discussions of the relationship between power and knowledge without being blind to its own functions."

2) "This is a good example of what I'm trying to point out. 'Touchy feminists' are just the folks that seek out the implied notions of sex and gender in various cultural forms. Sometimes they even do it with Milton! It's a perfectly legitimate academic pursuit."

Ad #1: Yes, actually, plenty of academic work can carry on very well without discussions of the relationship between power and knowledge. And should. It really _isn't_ all about power, and the idea that there are these "power structures" that somehow are so important to dig up hiding behind every discipline is a major part of the problem in the academy today. So Mike and I disagree here. If he would like to provide an _argument_ that there are _no_ areas of academic work that cannot carry on well without "discussions of the relationship between knowledge and power," I invite him to offer such an argument.

Ad #2: Milton's notions of sex and gender (I have _Paradise Lost_ in mind) aren't implied. They're stated. Very clearly. It doesn't take a brain surgeon or a critical theorist to tease them out of some deep Freudian hiding place. The problem is with treating them a) as the most important part of the work, b) as pervasive in parts of the work that are clearly about some entirely different subject, and c) as chiefly important insofar as they relate to modern feminist ideas of what the relations of men and women should be. This last, indeed, is one of the most tiresome aspects of feminist approaches to literature--the endless implication that someone is either _bad_ because he advocates or somehow gives aid and comfort to traditional notions of gender roles or is _good_ because (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding), he is subtly, ironically, challenging traditional gender ideas. Very few things get more boring more quickly, even (perhaps especially) when they aren't stated nearly as clearly as that but are