In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 7 Affirming Structure: The Amen Category What we call the beginning is often the end And to ma,ke an end is to ma,ke a beginning. The end is where we startedfrom. -T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding" Somewhere to Stand Recall how the book began: we use ideas both as tools to make sense of our experiences and as weapons to control people by persuading them to model the world as we want them to model it, which presupposes different ways to see the same world and makes room for choice and debate. Second, standing outside the debaters and the various models they uphold, there is a reality against which models can be tested, but only up to a point. That limitation exists because, although there are conclusive tests for some propositions-hands warmed in the fire is my boilerplate example-for most propositions about social interaction the test and its results are less immediate and more open to debate. I also said that no one model can be the sole conveyer of truth. Truth is not the issue; usefulness is, and where one model's usefulness fails, another may do what is needed. It is surely good to preserve that spirit of pragmatic, open-minded inquiry: there are different ways to see the world. To put it unrelentingly into practice, however, turns out to be not just difficult, but impossible. Some things must be taken for granted. The unexamined life, Socrates said, is not worth living. That may be the case; if you are reading this book, you probably believe it, even if sometimes you wish it were not so. But for sure you leave much of your life unexamined. You could not do otherwise: incessant critical examination, questioning everything, having no presuppositions , taking nothing for granted, would mean a life not only without 132 Agency and Rhetoric rest, but also without action (other than asking questions). Some things must be made to stand still, assumed to be true, taken on faith. "Give me somewhere to stand and I will move the world," said Archimedes. Everyone needs a place to stand. One place to stand is that ubiquitous attendant on human interactions that I have variously labeled conscience, duty, morality, community , collectivity, society, or structure, all of them matters that rest on faith, not on reason. These words suggest an entity that commands not only faith but also obedience. For this feature there is a convenient word, numen, which translates variously from the Latin texts (in an order of increasing majesty) as nod, assent, command, authority, supreme authority, divinity, divine will. I will use the word (and its adjective numinous) to encompass whatever terms (conscience, duty, morality , the community, the collectivity, public opinion, and the like) are antonyms to the utility set, which includes the old Adam, expected utility, expediency, rational choice, economic man, individualism, and so on. Reason and calculation shape the utility set; numen foregrounds faith and uncalculating obedience. Numen always attends encounters between social beings. There are no unmonitored encounters, except the homo homini lupus kind, which, by definition, take place in a state of nature, not in the framework of a society. Numen is the quality ofbeing sacred, and I choose the word to draw attention to the part of our social life which we do not think to question or are reluctant to question. (People do not use sacred for conduct that has become second nature, but if the conduct is brought into the open and questioned, they are likely to exhibit surprise, even shock, and perhaps to say that the questioner is unbalanced or evilminded .) Numen is not itself any particular structure. Rather it is a quality that structures require: they demand faith; they are promoted at least as presuppositional. If structures are not taken on faith, there can be no way to comprehend, in any communicable way, what goes on in social systems. Structures have no firmer existence than as saving lies, but they make social life possible because they make it understandable ; ifeverything is modeled as in flux, nothing has meaning. To oppose structure and nonstructure is also to oppose structural time, which repeats itself, to linear or historical time, which does not. Structural time is timeless-it is time that does not pass. The idea permeates our daily life and our culture. There is a passage in Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) which no one can read-or, better, no one can hear-without being moved by the beautiful...

Share