Belonging Again (Book Introduction)
A Theory of Psychohistorical Process and Note on the Language of "Givens" and "Releases"
This book is heavily indebted to Philip Rieff, the genius behind The Triumph of the Therapeutic. I first read Rieff in December 2016, thanks to my dear friend Vincent Zimmern sending me a copy, and I immediately found myself inspired to write Belonging Again between then and March of 2017, which I have added to and edited ever since. I also read Peter Berger and James Hunter, both who also inspired this text. Without these brilliant sociologists and others like Conyers and Arendt, this book would not exist.
Though what I mean exactly will require the book to clarify, I here wanted to draw attention to why I use the language of “givens and releases,” while Rieff himself discusses “constraints and releases” and/or “controls and releases.” I personally feel “givens” captures the spirit and meaning of Rieff’s schema, but I still need to elaborate on why I use “givens.” Basically, it’s because I think “givens” is how Rieff’s work can be used to describe “a psychohistoric process” that we need to understand today if we are to have any hope of overcoming “The Mental Health Crisis” and additional fallout.
Rieff tells us that ‘[d]octrines of release in a culture cannot, of themselves, develop into new modalities of purpose unless they are subtly transformed and institutionally elaborated,’ which begs the question of how this might occur and historically unfold.¹ Rieff warned that ‘[w]henever a releasing symbolic increases its jurisdiction to the point where it no longer serves to support the incumbent moral demands, but rather contradicts them, that culture is in jeopardy,’ and this is what Rieff admonished was occurring in the West.² He put it very well when he wrote:
‘When the cross becomes a symbol of power or beauty, suppressing the historical reminder of a particularly brutal instrument of humiliation and death, then its own moral authority, under the Christian rubric of ‘cross-bearing,’ is threatened.’³
The paradoxical tension of our problem is here pronounced: Calvary becomes beautiful because it saves us, and that is when the power of Calvary to hold society together can weaken and fail. And yet if Calvary isn’t good and beautiful to us, why should we care to follow its “call” and demands? Well, in the past, it was generally because Calvary was “given” and “objectively true,” not because we liked it (or even consciously considered it). But what about today when Christianity isn’t “given” (to make an example of a single religion)? That presents a problem, because that means Christianity must be chosen, which means Christianity must be “individually appealing,” say by being beautiful and/or good, and that means the power of Christianity to bind and compel us must be greatly weakened. Even if we choose Christianity, the Christianity chosen today is not the same sociologically as the Christianity which was “given” yesterday, and it is this critical shift that should be given careful and focused attention.
Rieff was a great mind, and you will hear from me much appreciation of him, but please do not mistake me as believing his work is perfect. Rieff speaks as if the future will lack oppression or repression due to “the triumph of the therapeutic,” and the world today is still full of both. The language of “constraint” is indeed problematic, and I think it inhibits Rieff’s “tragic sociology” from fully flourishing: the language of “givens” is more useful and helps us direct the grand “explanation” of Rieff in the direction of “address” (Part II). Rieff also does not provide us the resources to think Artificial Intelligence, Global Capitalism, or bioengineering, as Rieff does not think Nietzsche and Hegel together (though Rieff’s readings of Nietzsche are valuable). Still, despite all this, I hold Rieff in high regard, and thanks to him I came upon thoughts I otherwise would have never considered. I’m in his debt.
To know where we need to go, we must first know where we are, but it’s also important to know how we arrived at our present moment. And it is on this point that I will highlight further why I prefer “givens” over “constraints” — I feel “givens” better helps the work of Philip Rieff be incorporated into ‘a theory of the psychohistorical process,’ which Rieff suggested at the end of The Triumph of the Therapeutic was needed.⁴ Rieff tells us that his book ‘is a tentative prospect of the revolution, drawing first some implications from various attacks on the failing cultural super-ego.’⁵ He also claims that he is not interested in defending the traditional culture that is today increasingly lost, writing that ‘the classical internalizations of social authority, as an unconscious conscience, may be indefensible anyway.’⁶ Rieff tells us that we are in trouble without “social constraints,” but he also tells us that we cannot be quick to reestablish them. In other words, the loss of “givens” is a problem, but the solution isn’t necessary to bring them back (at least not how traditionally understood). What then should we do?
The hope of Belonging Again is to help address this question, which I believe requires ‘a theory of the psychohistorical process,’ ultimately connecting Rieff with the likes of Hume and Hegel.⁷ Why is this work needed? A fair question, and it’s because I believe we exist in a sociohistorical moment that is hard to understand, and without a proper “explanation,” a fitting “address” will never emerge. In Macbeth, finding the king dead, Macduff mourns:
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.
Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope
The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence
The life o’ th’ building!
Macduff’s declaration parallels the famous declaration of Nietzsche’s madman. In Shakespeare’s time, the King was “the center” up-holding the society, the embodiment of God’s Will. For the King to die was for ‘things to fall apart,’ for Yeats’ falcon to cease hearing the falconer. Regicide was deicide.
As discussed in “The Tragedy of Us” by O.G. Rose, in a conversation with Bill Moyers, Martha Nussbaum describes the tragedy of Hecuba, who suffers herself “confusion’s masterpiece” when she is betrayed by her best friend, rendering everything “untrustworthy” (nothing is “given”). When Hecuba sees her son’s body, bobbing in the waves, murdered by her best friend:
‘And all of a sudden, the roots of her moral life are undone. She looks around, and she says, ‘Everything is untrustworthy. Everything that I see is untrustworthy,’ because her moral life had been based on the ability to trust things and people that were not under her own control. And if this deepest and best friendship proves untrustworthy, then it seems to her that nothing can be trusted, and she [turns] to a life of solitary revenge.’⁸
As Hecuba feels betrayed by her best friend, so people today feel betrayed by their society, precisely because nothing is “given” anymore (the fates of “givens” and “trust” are profoundly connected). And as Hecuba gradually devolves into an animal due to her utter lack of trust, so too people today may devolve into animals because of their utter lack of trust and understanding in the Pluralistic world into which they find themselves “thrown.” ‘What [Hecuba] expresses,’ Nussbaum argues, ‘I believe, is a feeling of complete disorder, lack of structure’; likewise, if a play was written titled America 2016, it is likely the play would express a similar theme.⁹ ‘Revenge attracts because it offers structure and plan without vulnerability,’ Nussbaum adds, ‘[it] sets the world to rights, most of all by making it reveal the hidden nature of its former crimes’ (such as “killing God”).¹⁰ ¹¹ If Nussbaum is correct, what today might be possible? For Shestov, wasn’t “the impossible” supposed to be a source of hope?
How did we get here? What does “here” mean for us? It means much, and how we respond matters, but we will not be able to proceed into history well if we fail to understand our plight. Without a proper “explanation,” there will be little hope for a proper “address,” thus the division of Belonging Again into Part I (Explanation) and Part II (Address). In this book, we will try to understand our problems so that we might better live with them. Then, we might negate/sublate our problems into something true, beautiful, and good.
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Notes
¹Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 203.
²Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 202.
³Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 202.
⁴Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 207.
⁵Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 207.
⁶Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 207.
⁷Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007: 207.
⁸Conversation between Bill Moyers and Martha Nussbaum, as can be found here: http://billmoyers.com/content/martha-nussbaum/
⁹Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991: 408.
¹⁰Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991: 410.
¹¹Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1991: 411.
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