American freedom: Plato or Hegel?

Ibrian,

Multumesc pentru comentarii. Mai jos este un eseu scris de mine mai demult care prezinta mai clar punctul meu de vedere. Cu scuzele de rigoare adresate pentru folosirea limbii engleze pe site.

Beholding the desk used by Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence at the Smithsonian, the bill of sale of one of his girl-slaves being on display next to it, calls to mind Kierkegaard’s definition of paradox as dangerous understanding. The not-so-dangerous common understanding of the American paradox, inspired by Edmund Morgan, who also coin-phrased the ideograph, is that of a logical conflict between the Declaration of Independence and slavery, explained, if not excused, by historical circumstances. I will argue (more dangerously) that the true conflict is that between the revolutionary aims of the Declaration of Independence and the alleged timelessness of its moral axioms, easily turned into an argument for the status quo.

The Declaration is a revolutionary manifesto framed in Platonic language: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The argument begs the question of “why are these truths self-evident” and the answer is “because they looked self-evident to the Founding Fathers”. Then the question arises “what else looked self-evident to them”? The answer would be: “that the Rights women, children and non-Europeans are not as ‘unalienable’ as those of ‘all men’”.

The revolutionary shows up in the next paragraph: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”. The hidden core of the American paradox is the tension between perceiving the Founding Fathers as the philosophers of Plato’s Republic, leading by their ability to discern timeless Truth from the shadows of history, and the Founding Fathers as Hegelian heroes, leading in change by their ability to discern the Zeitgeist and seize historical momentum. The broad common ground of liberty and slavery in American history is the tragic result of this ambivalence.

Two examples, one from the civil war, the other from the civil-rights movement, will illuminate the statement above. “Reverend Devereux Jarrati, an Anglican priest, represented the widespread view that slaves… were born to a certain station and role in life by God’s design”¹. Devereux’ God was the God of the Declaration of Independence, because he was “the God of nature”² who gave all men the Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Slavery was the natural state of blacks, just as liberty was the natural state of “all men”. It was their own way in the pursuit of happiness.

Moreover, as the “God of nature” was the watchmaker of Newton and Paley, and nature itself was understood as an intricately perfect mechanism, any change in the natural order, slavery included, was harmful to humanity and rebellious toward the Creator.

Lincoln, however, issued the Proclamation of Emancipation with a note at the God of history. “God has decided this question in favor of the slave”³. He did not infer timeless truth from the unchanging ways of nature. His was the argument of the prophets in Israel: God speaks through war. History was to Lincoln what nature had been to Jefferson: the milieu of truth. Yet this time truth was not self-evident unless brought home by canons and blood.

It is noteworthy that Charles Darwin published his findings about the same time. He put an end not only to the concept of timeless nature, but also to that of timeless truth. “Read monkey for preexistence” was his answer to Plato. Lincoln did not probably have time to read the Origins of Species, but he certainly captured the Zeitgeist.

The conflicting views will persist through the civil rights movement, one century later. Reverend Jerry Falwell brought the constitutional separation of Church and State as an argument against the clergy being involved in the civil rights movement⁴. His entering the political fray in the post Roe era was not a matter of inconsistency. In both cases, Falwell abode by the letter of the Constitution, which he deemed as inerrant and timeless as that of the King James Bible. On the other hand, Martin Luther King, who followed Hegel and Gandhi rather than the Bible, turned to the “God (read the dialectics) of history”⁵ for new truths and rights, not embedded in the old letter. There was no self-evident truth about voting rights to the Founding Fathers. Moreover, there’s no Platonic truth about minimum wage. Yet King’s universe was no longer the perfect clock of the pre-Darwinian era. He felt compelled to change the world.

The American paradox continues to subsist as a conflict between the promise of unalienable rights, in the Declaration, and things as they are, grounded in a Platonic understanding of rights. Such status quo implies “those political and economic forces that indirectly contribute to inequality”..⁶ The worst of them is a new inner city culture where being “street smart” or participating in underground economies become surviving adaptations⁷. A civil right activist, for instance, could raise the issue of police profiling minority teenagers for stopping and frisking. Nevertheless, the true issue is not profiling, but rather a culture of permanent danger and mistrust in authority, shaping the teens into reasonable suspects.

Yet the typical liberal will defend that very culture, and challenge profiling, in a way that is basically not different from the one used by reverend Devereux to defend slavery, when they turn race, culture and tribal identity into “self-evident” rights. History is blind to Platonic absolutes.

Întâlnire cu Viața

Orice slujitor al amvonului/altarului cu IQ mai sus decât media, (nu foarte mulți), și informat, (foarte puțini), are dileme. Cel cinstit recunoaște că le are. Mântuirea vine atunci când recunoști în dilemele tale dilemele veacului. Atunci ”trebuie sa proorocești din nou”. Atunci, și numai atunci, are loc întâlnirea cu viața, indiferent dacă ești Vasile Voiculescu sau Emil Cioran. Toți ceilalți sunt profeți mincinoși.

Dezamăgirea mea față de Cornel nu are cu nimic de a face cu viața lui personală. Nici nu sunt de acord cu clișeul ieftin „urâm păcatul, dar iubim pe păcăctos”, sau, „cum ai căzut luceafăr…”. Familia lui e problema familiei lui. Punct și de la capăt.

Dezamăgirea mea față de Cornel are de a face cu faptul că a ratat întâlnirea cu viața.  Așteptam de la el să admită că altarul familial nu rezolvă problemele unei familii disfuncționale, că credința nu este un panaceu pentru probleme mentale, că rugăciunea ( și sucul de țelină) nu transformă un primat hipersexual într-un înger beat de agape, că ce mergea la un trib barbar în epoca bronzului nu mai merge la noi.

Cornel putea face ca Levi Matei: să înceteze a fi bișnițar la Speranța TV și să devină apostol. Spre dezamăgirea mea, nu numai că s-a așezat încă odată dincolo de dileme (e păcat/ nu e păcat), și „nu am făcut sex cu cu Monica Lewinsky”, dar și-a mai și lăudat marfa („cred tot ce am spus”).

Termeni ca „viața la superlativ” sau „întâlnire cu viața” au ceva în comun cu pictura kitch a lui Kinkade, – cu saturația de lumină și culori pastel, în care cineva încearcă să se ascundă de umbrele lumii reale, și falsa evadare din modernitate a regionalismului american în scene bucolice (firește, fară mucnitori agricoli mexicani și culturi modificate genetic). Este expresia grafică a non-teologiei born-again, în care Cornel a căutat rezolvare la diemele religiei legaliste în care a crescut și ale veacului.

I-ași recomanda lui Cornel să reia lucrarea lui de doctorat: „Păcatul la Români”, a cărei rezoluție pe scurt ar fi că Ion Creangă ar fi trebuit să rămână popă, sau, mai exact, ar fi trebuit să devină predicator baptist și să scrie povestiri biblice pentru copii, mai degrabă decât Povestea lui Stan Pățitul și Ivan Turbinca. Țăranii traco-români știu ceva despre sex și păcat care nu se admite la Speranța TV.

Ar fi șansa unei „întâlniri cu viața” la „superlativ”.