The State of First Things, May 2011

Another entry in the Continuing Series. 

A. Must Read Articles

1. McClay, “The Moral Economy of Guilt”

This is why First Things is worth reading.  An article like this one covers a multitude of sins.  McClay’s article is one of the most thought-provoking reflections on guilt and the modern world I have ever read.  Starting with Freud, guilt has been displaced; if you throw out those traditional Christian moral codes, why should you ever feel guilty?  Freud wants to liberate you from guilt.  But, nobody felt liberated.  I’m OK, You’re OK, except I don’t really feel OK.  So, I transfer my guilt to grand causes.  Starving people in the world!  Environmental disaster!  Slavery two centuries ago!  As a part of the human race, I am Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!  Except, that doesn’t really work either because, well, if I really feel guilty about a starving kid in Africa, how can I justify my Netflix subscription?  That monthly payment could feed a kid for the month—so should I watch movies and let some kid starve?  Not a very comfortable question.  So, my guilt gets transferred again.  Now I want to sympathize with suffering.  Since I sympathize with The Suffering, I can feel outraged about the suffering, not guilty for it.  That’s hard to pull off too.  So, then I just have to figure out how I too am a victim.  And what do you know?  Everyone’s a Victim!  So, I can revel in my status as a victim, blame the Others for the problems, transfer my guilt to Them and lo and behold, the scapegoat takes away all my guilt.  Sounds good, but sadly it doesn’t work either.  As hard as I try to get those rich, conservative, heterosexual, pale-skinned, American Males to bear all my guilt, I still feel guilty.  Somehow, the human psyche desperately needs genuine forgiveness.  Now Where Oh Where can humans find Genuine Forgiveness for all their sins? 

2, Franck, “Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage”

It’s unfortunate that articles like this one are so necessary, but they are.  There is nothing particularly new in the argument here, but it needs to be said again and again.  This is not an entry into the debate over same-sex marriage.  It is, instead, another documentation that the “debate” is not really a civil discussion.  The demonization among the intellectuals of opponents of Same-sex Marriage is stunning to behold.  We aren’t talking here about  non-intellectuals engaging in name–calling as if they were kids on a playground.  We are talking here about intellectuals, those who assert that they are reasonable, civil participants in civic discourse resorting to name calling as if they were playground bullies.  It should be embarrassing, but oddly, they aren’t embarrassed.  Why is it so hard for people to imagine that there exists a principled, rational argument against same-sex marriage?  It’s not as if nobody has ever written one.  See for example, “What is Marriage?” by Girgis, George and Anderson.  Now, it is not hard to see that people will disagree with the argument in that paper, but there is no doubt that the argument merits a civil, reasoned opposition and not name-calling.

B: Worth Reading Once

1. Hart “The Trouble With Ayn Rand”

An amusing cri de coeur about the forthcoming Atlas Shrugged movie—or more properly movie trilogy—yep, a three part movie of the novel.  Think Lord of the Rings—well, without he depth of plot, characters, setting, and philosophy.  I wanted to put this article in the first category, but sadly Hart is suffering under the burden of the fact that Whitaker Chambers got there first.  Chambers’ review of Atlas Shrugged (the novel) was the Review to End All Reviews.  “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber—go!’”

2. Glendon, “The Bearable Lightness of Dignity”

The article raises, but does not answer, an interesting question.  How can we define the idea of human dignity?  The problem of a lack of definition is becoming more acute.  Once we decided that human dignity is really important, the lack of a definition has allowed everyone to rush in and declare their pet projects enhance human dignity.  Killing off the elderly?—is that destroying the dignity of life or allowing death with dignity?  The echoes of Justice Holmes in a Supreme Court decision run throughout the question: “ It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”  Is that enhancing the dignity of life?  It’s hard to see how, and yet, Holmes’ heirs have appropriated the mantle of “dignity” in their every proposal for reshaping society.  But, we have no real way to define the concept of dignity—try writing down a definition.

3. Skidelsky, “The Emancipation of Avarice”

This is a deeply flawed article, but in a really interesting way.  Skidelsky wants to blame the recent financial crisis on greed.  And he goes back to the source material, pre-Enlightenment figures, to show that that an acquisition of wealth is the sign of greed.  But, this raises what has been a question about which I have been pondering much of late—there is a future article in this somewhere.  If we use Roman or Scholastic definitions of Greed, then everyone living in modern society is greedy.  We all have levels of wealth which Aquinas would have found to be staggering.  Indeed, long-term economic growth, using the old definition of greed, inherently produces greed.  Therein lies the problem—the old definitions of greed were developed in a society which was at least believed to be zero sum.  If I get more wealth, I am depriving someone else of wealth.  But, what if economic relations change, so that if I get more wealth, everyone else gets more wealth too?  Is it still greedy to get more wealth?  Which leads immediately to the problem of judging others.  Undoubtedly, some Wall Street bankers are greedy.  But, also undoubtedly some of those very wealthy individuals are motivated by things other than greed—they enjoy the work, or they think they are doing good, or they desire power or the women that money can buy, or they are simply competitive.  And for all I or Skidelsky know, some of them are motivated by altruism and charity—for all I know some of them are amassing great wealth so that they can be the next great Philanthropists.  Who am I to judge?  Greed needs to be separated from the acquisition of wealth.  One can be greedy and poor just as easily as one can lack greed and be rich.

4. Smith, Review of Evans’ Contested Reproduction

Smith rightly takes apart Evans’ desire to create a debate about abortion in which the opponents of abortion enter the debate giving up their absolutist moral arguments.  Evans wants to create a space for debate about the issue.  But, as Smith notes, there is a serious error in thinking of debate as a goal and not a means to a goal.  In the end, if opponents of abortion are opposed to abortion because they believe that abortion is murder, then surely the goal is to persuade others to help end the slaughter of the innocents and not simply to have a discussion in which the word “murder” is never uttered.

All in all, a really good issue—5 of the 7 big articles were worth reading, and the two that weren’t were short.  (Counting China’s Christians?  Really, now?—that was worth a paragraph, not the lead article—and if you want to make it a full article, then it would have been nice to have some measures of significance and so on.  Econometrics involves statistics for a reason.  And the history of infighting among Lutherans?  Really?  Yawn.)  The book review section still needs work, but the magazine is clearly getting better under Nuechterlein’s interim editorship.  And therein lies a problem.  Why is Nuechterlein still the interim editor?  At the website, Reno is listed as editor, so presumably some day we will get an issue he edited.  Things sure do move slow at First Things.