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Plurality and the Rule of Love
Abstract
This article constructs a positive theological case for liberal multiculturalism through a close interrogation of the exegetical methods of Augustine of Hippo (354–430). Drawing out the political implications of the charitable hermeneutics of De doctrina christiana, I suggest that Augustine authorizes political theology to respond generously to multicultural practices of social co-existence and notions of “deep diversity.” In this guise, the Augustinian method of Scriptural reading provides a means of cherishing diverse cultural forms. Yet, alongside these inclusive affirmations, Augustine’s Scriptural politics suggests that liberal multiculturalism should not be an uncontested project for the Church. In place of a politics of separatist autonomy or passive tolerance, Augustine points us towards a radical politics of difference rooted in a fusion of truthfulness and love
Social "development" is a concept taken from the life of individuals "unwrapping" from inexperience into responsibility. It does not always take a smooth way, but mechanisms of coping with inexperience on the social level are yet understudied. This paper aims to fill this void. After discussing the metaphors of development and individual adolescence, the paper argues that related 'end of history' ideas of the 1950s and 1990s were naïve for two specific reasons. First, they ignored the eurocentricity of 'modern' partitioning institutions that can be overcome by applying principles of non-partitioning Civil democracy. Second, they ignored the systematic nature of the European crisis 1914-15 as result of social inexperience, that can be overcome by implementing a Civil democracy manifesto to be signed as precondition for participation. Possible applications include global climate regimes, the institutionalization of transversal hegemony, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
What is, or maybe was, Europe? And might there be a nexus between the fact that specific Western institutions diffused over the globe, and global problems? The paper describes how western Christianity emerged shaping itself in a specific 'groups under roofs' structure of social relations that is described by the partition of society into groups which can easily be represented in overarching institutions. The model allows to explain the medieval European ascent, its specific development of self-governance and industrial society institutions, and the specific two-stage nature of European institutional modernization with a current second (albeit so far much less severe) modernization crisis. In a world that has become more connected and includes societies without 'groups under roofs' cultural traditions, partitioning institutions have to be reconsidered and adequately adapted.
In Contra Academicos 3.11.24, Augustine responds to skepticism about the existence of the external world by arguing that what appears to be the world Ñ as he terms things, the "quasi-earth" and "quasi-sky" Ñ cannot be doubted. While some (e.g., M. Burnyeat and G. Matthews) interpret this passage as a subjectivist response to global skepticism, it is here argued that Augustine's debt to Epicurean epistemology and theology, especially as presented in Cicero's De Natura Deorum 1.25.69 Ð 1.26.74, provides the basis for a much more plausible, realist interpretation of Augustine's argument.
Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O'Connell and His Critics provides first a critical examination of O'Connell's theses in a readable summary of his work that spanned over thirty years. © 2006 The Catholic University of America Press. All rights reserved.
Colección de ensayos, o argumentos filosóficos como señala el título, del filósofo canadiense Charles Taylor, que reflejan -a juicio de sus críticos- la mayoría de las preocupaciones en las que ha estado envuelto su trabajo intelectual: el lenguaje, la participación política, la naturaleza de la modernidad y las ideas del ser, entre otras.
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