Dominic has a fascinating post on the scandal of religion. Here are some excerpts, but, really, read the whole thing. Link: Poetix.
If one were to ask a representative of a Catholic adoption agency why they were unwilling to consider gay couples as possible adoptive parents for the children in their care, it is more than likely that their reply would begin with the words “the church teaches…”. It may seem strange therefore that the letter of the Anglican archbishops to the government in support of their right to take this position should refer to “the dictates of personal conscience”, and to the importance of recognising the “rights” of objectors to gay adoption.
What Catholic opponents of gay adoption are espousing is first of all a doctrinal position, which we may choose to identify as homophobic (an instance of “structural” homophobia, if one wishes) without thereby abandoning ourselves to speculation concerning the psychosexual makeup of individual upholders of the faith. But in fact it is in this very elision of “teaching” and “conscience” that the scandal of “religion” resides: the scandal of a heteronomy, which is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal vision of a public sphere composed of discrete choice-making individuals.
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Now, the question addressed by the archbishops’ letter is whether or not the state should use its legal authority, backed implicitly by all the violence of which it is capable, to compel Catholics whose conscience is in accord with the teachings of their church to contravene those teachings. As I have already suggested, individual conscience is not entirely what is at issue here: one doubts that the voices of Canterbury and York would be nearly so loudly raised against the legal disciplining of “rogue” homophobes without a credo to back them up.
In spite of its being couched in the language of liberal tolerance, the archbishops’ letter is not particularly concerned with defending the autonomous consciences of individual participants in the liberal agora. The “right” with which it is most urgently concerned is a paradoxical “right to heteronomy”: the right to locate one’s “conscience” outside the public domain of opinion and negotiation (itself more or less explicitly modelled on the market), to identify intransigently with one’s “faith position”.
It seems to me that this problem of heteronomy returns, once again, to Marx's point in "On the Jewish Question" regarding liberalism's fundamental misunderstanding of religion: the believer cannot be required to act as a believer only in some parts of his or her life and not in others. Differently put, such a requirement is not consistent with liberal claims either to tolerance or to religious freedom precisely because it does not treat the believer as a believer.
Perhaps more radically, the nonsensical status of a claim like that of a right to heteronomy demonstrates the deeply problematic nature of a notion of rights rooted in presumptions of autonomy (a point against liberalism already well rehearsed by conservatives and communitarians).
More promising is beginning from the irreducibility of heteronomy--we are always already determined and configured in ways beyond our choice and control, in ways that produce the fictions of something like a will that is capable of being possessed, claimed, and governed by some kind of agent who is not identical to that will and thus can exercise power over it (a fantasy the tautological structure of which suggests to me the punishing, vicious superego).
And then the hard political questions emerge regarding which determinations to support and attempt to extend and which to attempt to extinguish. I say political because it seems clear that this is not a matter that can be resolved by reason alone but which necessarily involves a decision backed by force.
In so far as a materialist world view sugests its own (contested) discorse, and that of relgion implies another world view, and political visions are manifestly shared (economic and social development) between its adhearents, the divergence evidently makes posible a comlemntary arrangment between the two, with capitalism itself as the third mediating entity. This I think is possible in that none of them realy make ontological claims on capitalism, only negativly. The question is then what force are we talking about? Is'nt the real question that liberalism is now the imposible ally, and not the other way arround.
Please excuse the terrible spelling.
Posted by: thurmond | January 25, 2007 at 08:20 PM
Well I think there is something deeply interesting about this "heady" post. Yesterday in Edmonton I went to a Philosophers Cafe which discussed the emergence of biotechnology, the difficult history of eugenics in Alberta, and the affinities that these issues have with the Holocaust in Europe. Our philosopher host posed the problem as to how eugenics, which is involved in the quest for a better society, or the "good" can have adverse and haunting effects.
Anyhow, although most in the audience were clearly against any interference by government in regulating research (not surprising for the cowboy culture of Alberta, who are resolutely against goverment regulation in general, perhaps pathologically apriori), most people who spoke had clear reservations about controlling populations through biological intervention. So, there was a clear problem operating here: in one breath they (we) have difficulties accepting the fact that governments decide on our behalf all of the time about how we control populations. Yet, on the other hand, there was the worry that endless "democratic" "debate" really has no force to intervene in scientific research that is (always) already happening. There was a definite realization that contemporary practices of birth control, for instance, may have more similarities with the Eugenic experiments in Alberta in the 30's (the sterilization of the mentally handicapped was necessary or "good") than we may think. So, conservative-liberal crowds such as these usually reach towards the same paradoxes: 1) how dare governments intervene through policy, and 2) given that 1 is true no matter the issue, how can individuals' ensure that research is being conducted and applied in an ethical fashion.
So, your post Jodi I think suggests a similar paradox. How are we ever able to keep our personal beliefs seperate from our political ones? Isn't it the case, rather, that we like to believe what we believe, because we think that someone must surely be monitoring these things for us anyways. This way, we can say and believe what we want, without having to be responsible for the implications of what we say. This might be an explanation for why conservative governments, which are all about deregulating government, can be the "heaviest" and most interferring governments of all. Essentially, society does not exist, but neither does government. Since government is seen as a necessary evil (which operates automatically) we really don't have to worry too much about eugenics for example. Afterall, as I hear again and again, "these things have a way of working themselves out." Governments committ holocausts, but not liberal individuals...
Posted by: NotOften | January 28, 2007 at 09:29 PM