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01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 5
INTRODUCTION Peter Murphy
Collective creation remains one of the most compelling and difficult issues in political philosophy. The two great theories of it – the Greco-Roman Republic and the social contract – remain unsurpassed. Indeed, so much so that state systems erected on the basis of later – 19th and 20th-century – ideologies have not weathered well at all. Nationalist and socialist, liberal and totalitarian states – right across the political spectrum – have pretty much all failed to generate convincing collective identities in the long run. In some cases the failures have been appalling; in other cases, just lack-lustre. One of the things that made Cornelius Castoriadis a great thinker is that he didn’t dodge the question of collective creation. At a certain point in his life, sometime in the early 1960s, he stopped thinking that ‘socialism’ or ‘Marxism’, or any of the other ‘isms’ that the 20th century so liked, had much of any significance to contribute to the construction of great societies. He turned his attention instead to the Greco-Western idea of collective selfcreation. Two versions of this idea echoed in his work. One was the ancient citizen city; the other was social self-creation through the social contract culminating in Rousseau’s ‘modern Sparta’. Both models rejected the idea of representation. Castoriadis stuck firmly by this rejection. Representation equalled alienation of the power of collective creation. In this issue of Thesis Eleven, Jean Cohen offers a sympathetic critique of Castoriadis. She defends the idea of representation, while insisting on the importance of Castoriadis’ notion that societies are capable of knowing self-institution – and that marvellous things, not least robust collective identities, flow from collective acts of creation. Cohen makes a strong case for the proposition that moderns can create and innovate in deep and consequential ways through representative institutions. Indeed, well-formed representative institutions can protect against the inverted absolutism of Rousseau-style popular sovereignty and romantic direct democracy. Cohen’s critique ‘translates’ Castoriadis into an American context. Cohen brings Castoriadis’ theory face-to-face with the presuppositions of the Thesis Eleven, Number 80, February 2005: 5–8 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd DOI: 10.1177/0725513605049121
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
6
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 6
Thesis Eleven (Number 80 2005)
truly great modern experiment in Greco-Roman type social self-creation. Because America was founded on a revolution, its political philosophers are more or less obliged to give an account of the act of foundation. Part of the American genius was to unfold creation through representation. The American innovation in the mode of social creation was to multiply the number and ways of representation: through courts, legislatures, presidential candidates, states, the federal union, and so on. Peter Wagner takes up the theory of collective determination from the standpoint of Europe. In the case of Europe, foundation is not a fact of history but something that Europeans are still groping towards. Europe is an idea that remains to be born. Wagner surveys the prehistory of the Europe to come. He assays its multi-pronged narratives, as well as its dead ends of apolitical individualism, linguistic-cultural chauvinism, deadly totalitarianism and, finally, anti-totalitarian criticism ranging from Adorno to Lyotard via Berlin and Talmon. By the 1990s the long march of the Europeans-to-be through romanticism, nationalism and totalitarianism ended in the philosophical cul-de-sac of anti-politics. As Wagner points out, and as Castoriadis was to concede (despite his hopes to the contrary), the political movements of ‘1968’ turned from the aspiration of collective determination to the antipolitics of protest – or else to a more cautious anti-totalitarian liberalism sceptical of grand political ambitions. On the level of state institutions, periodically revised technocratic compromises between nationalism, socialism and liberalism provided the basis for state management across the European continent. Through all of this, though, it has never been certain that a coherent political Europe with a strong collective identity would create itself. Most recently, anti-Americanism has provided fuel for a collective European selfunderstanding. But all such negative dialectics continue the cycle of antipolitics. Despite this, Wagner is not pessimistic about the future. In his estimate, post-World War II technocratic state compromises of nationalism, socialism and liberalism provide a foot up for European self-creation so long as nationalism can be replaced by a supra-nationalism based on a self-critical hermeneutical relationship to Europe’s troubled history. What is clear from Wagner’s magisterial survey of Europe’s effort at self-creation is just how difficult such movements really are. What Trevor Hogan’s reconnoitre of Christian Socialism indicates is that 19th-century ‘isms’ didn’t in the end convincingly answer the question of social selfcreation. Hogan charts Christian Socialism’s inward movement from socialism to liberalism – a movement that mirrors the larger historic shift from politics to anti-politics. At the same time, when most ideologies turned chaste and individualistic, the ‘Christian’ qualifier of ‘Christian Socialism’ managed in some quarters to remain intellectually robust precisely because it continued to address meta-questions about the collective determination of humankind. Hogan discusses the important work of John Milbank, and
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 7
Murphy: Introduction
7
his neo-Augustinian vision of the city of grace, music, festivity and free association. One cannot help thinking that the update of the late Roman vision of a ‘pilgrim’s progress’ that enriches space through the balancing order of grace and the mutual pacts of strangers along the way might be more informative of the present age than the messianic temporality of highpitched ideologies or their apolitical residues. As Vassilis Lambropoulos points out, what came along with such messianic fervour at the turn of the 20th century – the high point of the age of ideology – was a horror of form and representation. In social theoretical terms, life was elevated above form. But this notion was not universally adored. The young Georg Lukács resisted the idea, figuring that he could save a version of tragic ethics for modern Central Europe. He intuited, against the current, that the capacity of forms to represent what was essential in life was paramount to the good shaping of the human soul and human society. That Lukács also dropped the veil of tragedy for a much longer-lasting messianic vision is well known. Perhaps this endgame was already implicit in his version of tragedy. As Lambropoulos suggests, the modern habit of transforming tragedy into ‘the tragic’ sets modern tragedy strangely at odds with ancient dramaturgical and political ethics. But, nonetheless, the spellbinding passages in Lukács’ early essays arguing for form against impressionistic life, and for representative essence against unique identity, remain compelling. This is especially so when the course of collective self-creation has so often come to such a sorry end-point when measured against the anticipations of the last century or so. Remember the expectations that people once had for the Soviet Union, or for the newly independent countries of the ‘third world’? Many critics now even approach the promises of European selfinstitution with undisguised scepticism, and it is hardly reassuring when celebrity theorists, like Slavoj Zˇizˇek, equate politics with the authentic acts of great (read: ruthless) leaders. Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey dissect such deluded nonsense with appropriate slashing vigour in this issue. Zˇizˇek may be taken as a metaphor for where the practice of collective institution has ended up: in the psychoanalytic waste-bin. It is for this reason that Jean Cohen’s conclusions in her article are important to take note of. She sketches there a model of politics that operates through multiple, overlapping, and sometimes antagonistic representations. One of the most crucial debates in modern life has been about the nature of creativity. Is it mimetic (does it re-present something) or is it authentic? Cohen points out how American institutional design, through much iteration, has relied faithfully on representation rather than authenticity. Many voices speak and act for the sovereign people, yet at the same time a balancing order makes something roughly coherent out of this complex mimesis. Perhaps just as the day for the messianic temporal acts of authentic identities has exhausted itself, the art of imagining that comes
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
8
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 8
Thesis Eleven (Number 80 2005)
when we represent something is due for a dusting off. It is the art of mimetic imagining that binds the legislators of Cohen’s Arendt-style America with the actors in Lambropoulos’ tragic drama, Hogan’s Augustinian pilgrims, and Wagner’s absent agents of collective determination. All of these characters act not for themselves but for something else and someone else.
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 5
INTRODUCTION Peter Murphy
Collective creation remains one of the most compelling and difficult issues in political philosophy. The two great theories of it – the Greco-Roman Republic and the social contract – remain unsurpassed. Indeed, so much so that state systems erected on the basis of later – 19th and 20th-century – ideologies have not weathered well at all. Nationalist and socialist, liberal and totalitarian states – right across the political spectrum – have pretty much all failed to generate convincing collective identities in the long run. In some cases the failures have been appalling; in other cases, just lack-lustre. One of the things that made Cornelius Castoriadis a great thinker is that he didn’t dodge the question of collective creation. At a certain point in his life, sometime in the early 1960s, he stopped thinking that ‘socialism’ or ‘Marxism’, or any of the other ‘isms’ that the 20th century so liked, had much of any significance to contribute to the construction of great societies. He turned his attention instead to the Greco-Western idea of collective selfcreation. Two versions of this idea echoed in his work. One was the ancient citizen city; the other was social self-creation through the social contract culminating in Rousseau’s ‘modern Sparta’. Both models rejected the idea of representation. Castoriadis stuck firmly by this rejection. Representation equalled alienation of the power of collective creation. In this issue of Thesis Eleven, Jean Cohen offers a sympathetic critique of Castoriadis. She defends the idea of representation, while insisting on the importance of Castoriadis’ notion that societies are capable of knowing self-institution – and that marvellous things, not least robust collective identities, flow from collective acts of creation. Cohen makes a strong case for the proposition that moderns can create and innovate in deep and consequential ways through representative institutions. Indeed, well-formed representative institutions can protect against the inverted absolutism of Rousseau-style popular sovereignty and romantic direct democracy. Cohen’s critique ‘translates’ Castoriadis into an American context. Cohen brings Castoriadis’ theory face-to-face with the presuppositions of the Thesis Eleven, Number 80, February 2005: 5–8 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd DOI: 10.1177/0725513605049121
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
6
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 6
Thesis Eleven (Number 80 2005)
truly great modern experiment in Greco-Roman type social self-creation. Because America was founded on a revolution, its political philosophers are more or less obliged to give an account of the act of foundation. Part of the American genius was to unfold creation through representation. The American innovation in the mode of social creation was to multiply the number and ways of representation: through courts, legislatures, presidential candidates, states, the federal union, and so on. Peter Wagner takes up the theory of collective determination from the standpoint of Europe. In the case of Europe, foundation is not a fact of history but something that Europeans are still groping towards. Europe is an idea that remains to be born. Wagner surveys the prehistory of the Europe to come. He assays its multi-pronged narratives, as well as its dead ends of apolitical individualism, linguistic-cultural chauvinism, deadly totalitarianism and, finally, anti-totalitarian criticism ranging from Adorno to Lyotard via Berlin and Talmon. By the 1990s the long march of the Europeans-to-be through romanticism, nationalism and totalitarianism ended in the philosophical cul-de-sac of anti-politics. As Wagner points out, and as Castoriadis was to concede (despite his hopes to the contrary), the political movements of ‘1968’ turned from the aspiration of collective determination to the antipolitics of protest – or else to a more cautious anti-totalitarian liberalism sceptical of grand political ambitions. On the level of state institutions, periodically revised technocratic compromises between nationalism, socialism and liberalism provided the basis for state management across the European continent. Through all of this, though, it has never been certain that a coherent political Europe with a strong collective identity would create itself. Most recently, anti-Americanism has provided fuel for a collective European selfunderstanding. But all such negative dialectics continue the cycle of antipolitics. Despite this, Wagner is not pessimistic about the future. In his estimate, post-World War II technocratic state compromises of nationalism, socialism and liberalism provide a foot up for European self-creation so long as nationalism can be replaced by a supra-nationalism based on a self-critical hermeneutical relationship to Europe’s troubled history. What is clear from Wagner’s magisterial survey of Europe’s effort at self-creation is just how difficult such movements really are. What Trevor Hogan’s reconnoitre of Christian Socialism indicates is that 19th-century ‘isms’ didn’t in the end convincingly answer the question of social selfcreation. Hogan charts Christian Socialism’s inward movement from socialism to liberalism – a movement that mirrors the larger historic shift from politics to anti-politics. At the same time, when most ideologies turned chaste and individualistic, the ‘Christian’ qualifier of ‘Christian Socialism’ managed in some quarters to remain intellectually robust precisely because it continued to address meta-questions about the collective determination of humankind. Hogan discusses the important work of John Milbank, and
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 7
Murphy: Introduction
7
his neo-Augustinian vision of the city of grace, music, festivity and free association. One cannot help thinking that the update of the late Roman vision of a ‘pilgrim’s progress’ that enriches space through the balancing order of grace and the mutual pacts of strangers along the way might be more informative of the present age than the messianic temporality of highpitched ideologies or their apolitical residues. As Vassilis Lambropoulos points out, what came along with such messianic fervour at the turn of the 20th century – the high point of the age of ideology – was a horror of form and representation. In social theoretical terms, life was elevated above form. But this notion was not universally adored. The young Georg Lukács resisted the idea, figuring that he could save a version of tragic ethics for modern Central Europe. He intuited, against the current, that the capacity of forms to represent what was essential in life was paramount to the good shaping of the human soul and human society. That Lukács also dropped the veil of tragedy for a much longer-lasting messianic vision is well known. Perhaps this endgame was already implicit in his version of tragedy. As Lambropoulos suggests, the modern habit of transforming tragedy into ‘the tragic’ sets modern tragedy strangely at odds with ancient dramaturgical and political ethics. But, nonetheless, the spellbinding passages in Lukács’ early essays arguing for form against impressionistic life, and for representative essence against unique identity, remain compelling. This is especially so when the course of collective self-creation has so often come to such a sorry end-point when measured against the anticipations of the last century or so. Remember the expectations that people once had for the Soviet Union, or for the newly independent countries of the ‘third world’? Many critics now even approach the promises of European selfinstitution with undisguised scepticism, and it is hardly reassuring when celebrity theorists, like Slavoj Zˇizˇek, equate politics with the authentic acts of great (read: ruthless) leaders. Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey dissect such deluded nonsense with appropriate slashing vigour in this issue. Zˇizˇek may be taken as a metaphor for where the practice of collective institution has ended up: in the psychoanalytic waste-bin. It is for this reason that Jean Cohen’s conclusions in her article are important to take note of. She sketches there a model of politics that operates through multiple, overlapping, and sometimes antagonistic representations. One of the most crucial debates in modern life has been about the nature of creativity. Is it mimetic (does it re-present something) or is it authentic? Cohen points out how American institutional design, through much iteration, has relied faithfully on representation rather than authenticity. Many voices speak and act for the sovereign people, yet at the same time a balancing order makes something roughly coherent out of this complex mimesis. Perhaps just as the day for the messianic temporal acts of authentic identities has exhausted itself, the art of imagining that comes
01 Introduction 049121 (JB/D)
8
4/1/05
1:35 pm
Page 8
Thesis Eleven (Number 80 2005)
when we represent something is due for a dusting off. It is the art of mimetic imagining that binds the legislators of Cohen’s Arendt-style America with the actors in Lambropoulos’ tragic drama, Hogan’s Augustinian pilgrims, and Wagner’s absent agents of collective determination. All of these characters act not for themselves but for something else and someone else.
