Beyond the Ethical Demand

6. Expressions of Life and Ideas

S I X Expressions of Life and Ideas The expressions of life and the social order If it is the spontaneous and sovereign expressions of life that engender ethics, any attempt to elucidate the relation between ethics and politics prompts the important question of how expressions of life relate to the social order. At first glance, they would seem to be mutually antithetical. The society in which we live is pervasively rationalized and organized. The expressions of life, by contrast, are not susceptible of rationalization and own no organizing power. This does not mean, however, that they are of no political significance, but it does mean—to anticipate the reflections that follow—that their role is something other and more important than that of rationalizing and organizing society. The expressions of life and rationalization In every quarter of the globe and throughout human history rationalization has been a reality, but nowhere on the scale seen in Western culture. 149 Beyond the Ethical Demand 150 Above all else, rationality is the hallmark of modern society. Sociologically speaking, society comprises relatively autonomous sectors such as the judicial system, the economy, public administration, the sciences. So pervasively rationalized are the various domains that the lives of citizens, which are perforce played out within them, become computable; both in what concerns their own behavior and the experiences that they are likely to meet. Each of the institutional systems, which might also be called domains , effects this in its own peculiar way. Rationality is not a question of people being wiser now than they were in earlier times, but in our existence having become maximally computable. The relative autonomy of the various domains does not mean that they are insulated from one another. Not only are they interconnected— they overlap. Rationalization also means that the domains are integrated into a comprehensive social structure, in which everything interacts with everything else. To offer just one example: with the emergence of research as an important source of wealth, there is no avoiding its integration in politics and administration, as so-called research policy shows. Rationality is not a bad thing; we all benefit from it in manifold ways. We benefit from the rule of law. In virtue of the consumer goods with which we are supplied on a daily basis, we are the beneficiaries of rationalized production. Should we fall ill, we benefit from the medical sciences and an institutionalized health care system, and so I could continue. But there are no advantages without drawbacks. There is undeniably a danger inherent in the pervasive rationalization of modern society, which consists, first and foremost, in its depersonalizing effects. Before we are aware of it, rationalization is being pursued for its own sake and becomes increasingly abstract. There is a weakening of the sense of the independence and sui generis nature of the expressions of life that sustain rationality without being themselves susceptible of rationalization. Their content is diluted and they become etiolated, and the awareness of how crucially they sustain a social life of substance and vibrancy is lost. To counter impersonalization, to keep it at bay so that it does not get the upper hand, we need to reflect on and distinguish between what can be rationalized and what cannot. The need for food, warmth, a roof over one’s head, is amenable to rationalization , and is indeed rationalized in the industrial production of goods that supply these needs. And needs multiply. Basic needs may well Expressions of Life and Ideas 151 remain the same but they undergo refinement, and proliferate as they do so. The need for food becomes subject to gastronomic refinements and variation so that it comes finally to encompass a whole cluster of needs. The need for a roof over one’s head is refined aesthetically and allows for varied architectural expression, so that it too comprises an entire cluster of needs. What, by contrast, are unrationalizable are our expressions of life— trust, openness, indignation, compassion, hope. They have persisted unchanged from the beginning of time to the present and are constants in our life. Once apprehended in thought, they cannot be unthought. They are not refinable, nor can they become more numerous. Should an expression of life be lost, no amount of rationalization can compensate for it. They are not irrational: they have a primordiality which precedes any distinction between rationality and irrationality. Taken together, the unrationalizable expressions of life...