Tradition, Traditionalism, and Marriage
There’s a lot that I’d like to say about Rod Dreher’s latest missive in the same-sex marriage discussion, but I’m strapped for time and so will confine myself just to one point.
I agree with Alasdair MacIntyre, and so also with Rod, that modern liberalism lacks a certain sort of moral foundation, and that this lack leaves it unable to formulate, and indeed unable even really to tolerate, understandings of human sexuality and the human good more generally that go beyond the merely self-serving. I also agree with MacIntyre, and so again also with Rod, that liberalism thus “transformed into a tradition” is an essentially particularistic mode of moral and political theorizing whose inadequacies can be shown up and, hopefully, supplanted by a self-consciously tradition-bound mode of inquiry that is not characterized in the same way by these sorts of lacks. Where I – and, I would imagine, MacIntyre as well – do not, however, agree with Rod is in the particular way in which he seems to think this embrace of tradition ought to be effected: for the move to tradition seems, on his way of putting things, to rest primarily on a simple appeal to a set of old verities (“I am a Christian”, he writes, and “I believe in a different source of moral authority” than the merely individual conscience), and so strikes me as insufficiently attuned to what MacIntyre identifies as the need constantly to grapple with the problems and shortcomings that are inherent in one’s tradition as it stands at any point in history.
That is to say, as has been said quite well in recent days, that a tradition, as opposed to a mere ideology, is never something that is static, that it is always something that is ready to modify and adapt itself to the new sets of problems – philosophical, scientific, cultural, political, or whatever – that arise during the course of its existence. (I take it that this is, at least roughly, what MacIntyre is not a Burkean.) A tradition that fails to do this is a dead tradition, which is really to say that it is no tradition at all; hence a tradition, unlike perhaps a constitution, cannot be the sort of thing it needs to be unless it is a living thing, which is to say a growing and changing and always at work at problem-solving thing. But when self-conscious attunement to one’s inescapable place in a tradition becomes, as it does in Rod’s language, a simple commitment to “traditionalism”, to preserving those “ancient structures” that are the only things standing between us and those who wish “radically [to] undermine the foundation of our moral order”, it seems to me to fail in this crucial task. Put somewhat differently, on MacIntyre’s view it is quite possible – and indeed has very often been actual – for even the most established tradition to be shown to have been an inadequate tradition; hence when two traditions come into conflict, it obviously cannot be as tradition simpliciter that either of them triumphs, but only as a tradition that is superior to the other. And showing that this is so obviously requires something quite other than simply shouting “Tradition!” when the time for debate arises; rather, it requires grappling with one’s own tradition’s blind spots and potential inadequacies, and not merely harping on those of its rivals.
And where are the blind spots and potential inadequacies in the “traditional” (which is just to say traditionally Western – he’s equally opposed to polygamy, after all) conception of marriage that Rod is championing? Well, one important challenge that I’ve talked about before and would like to focus on here is that of finding a way to articulate, and achieve a robust social recognition of, what I’ve called the “kinds of nobility” and “standards of perfection” that are characteristic of homosexual relationships in contrast to heterosexual ones. (Note that you can believe in such things even if you think the standards in question demand a quite challenging sort of chastity.) I assume, or at least I think I can assume, that Rod recognizes the need to do this sort of thing, and as I’ve noted before it’s a sad irony that it is primarily those who stand in opposition to same-sex marriage who’ve brought the push for it on themselves by failing so miserably in these crucial tasks. We need to find a way to recognize a certain class of homosexual relationships as the kinds of things they are, and so to articulate what it is that such relationships ought to be like if they are to be exemplary instances of their kind: but if not by calling them “marriages”, then how can this recognition be achieved? Through the language of “friendships” or “partnerships” or “civil unions”? Surely not; those first two categories are laughably inadequate to what is at stake, while the third is just the attempt to use a meaningless legalism to fill what is fundamentally a cultural hole. (Indeed, for this general reason I agree with JL Wall that the common suggestion simply to drop the language of “marriage” from the lawbooks altogether is actually a call for an even more radical departure from tradition than the push to extend the category to same-sex couples.) And so the point is just this: that orthodox Christians and others who share a similar conception of human sexuality and the proper nature of the family, are presently so inadequate to this task constitutes a serious failing – a failing of of the sort that has left many great traditions of the past lying dead by the wayside of history. That need not happen here, of course; but to keep it from happening will require the real work of grappling with this and similar present and future inadequacies and finding ways to adapt our tradition to address them. Extending the title of civil marriage to homosexual couples, while still attempting to retain as much as possible of the Christian conception of sexuality and the nuclear family, would be one way to meet this challenge; and while there are other responses that are feasible in principle, it is hard to imagine many of them working out in practice. If, however, our tradition is nothing more than a traditionalism, if it is something that is living rather than dead, it needs to show itself adequate to recognizing this and similar challenges and finding within itself the resources to address them.
Well, I guess that wasn’t short, though for all those thousand-plus words I still managed to say only a small bit of what I’d have liked to get to. Apologies if (that?) it was excessively dense.
Filed under: conservatism, family, marriage, morality, philosophy
It might be worth adding this small point re: MacIntyre and Burke. The reason a “tradition” that is not constantly at work, solving problems and all that, is no good, is that by refusing to do these things it becomes anti-rational. The line in After Virtue about Burke being an agent of “positive harm” is, I think, concerned with this point. Burke ends up opposing tradition to rationality and thus concedes the crucial territory, from MacIntyre’s perspective: what needs to be said is that tradition is the dwelling place of rationality, and on the Burkean position the battle lines get drawn in a way that makes even the saying, let alone the understanding, exceedingly difficult.
That’s a really helpful observation – thanks, Joe. And by the way, speaking of inappropriately opposing things to reason: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/132554.html.
Do you think that part of the problem in this case is that the tradition has to take a rather large bet on the future development of biology and anthropology? That is, the tradition wagers that there is in principle some way to hook up (closely but not too closely) a conception of human biological functions to a conception of what it is to live a good human life. Or do you think some other resources can be articulated to make up the “teleology gap”? I’m doubtful about the latter possibility; some other resources might yield a normative conception of sexuality, but would it match up with a moral prohibition on sex that’s not of-the-sort-that-is-such-as-to-be-generative? Doubtful at best, no? (I don’t know Mac’s later work well enough to guess what his view is on this, but he does recognize that biology has to play more of a role in Dependent Rational Animals, as I recall.)
Not that it would be sufficient to show in general that functions really are normative, but I tend to think something like that is necessary. That’s somewhat far removed from the on-the-ground needs you mention here, but it’s not too far removed, I think. So long as opponents know that those who are defending “the tradition” think there’s something morally wrong with homosexual behavior, then they will tend (with some justification) to be impatient with efforts to use more adequate language to recognize homosexual relationships.
Note that I’m not suggesting that the “futures” the tradition is taking out are predicated on some biology-to-come from which we can just read off an ethic, sexual or otherwise. Just that things will be such that an account of ethical norms that is in some sense grounded on the functions of the human organism will be a viable option, not something to be laughed out of court anywhere other than the Thomist-Aristotelian ghetto.
So my inclination is to say that, no, anthropology and (especially) biology can’t provide many of the resources necessary to work out these sorts of questions. And I suppose that the primary reason I say this is because I think that “human nature” just isn’t fixed in the way that would be required for this to be so; our natures are, especially when it comes to such things as whom we love and how we express that, very much self-created rather than simply given, and so to have a “second nature” in Aristotle’s sense is every bit as natural to us as our having a “first” one. (I don’t think that MacIntyre would disagree with much of what I just said.) And this means in turn that the norms that govern how we ought to shape ourselves simply aren’t going to be found in our biology; they’re essentially cultural, which means that they’re essentially subject to reflection and rational scrutiny and revision (not to mention divine guidance) in the ways that the teloi of other animals simply can’t be.
Does that make any sense at all? And if so, does it seem at all reasonable?
I think I might agree that the “norms that govern how we ought to shape ourselves simply aren’t going to be found in our biology,” but the norms proposed by a certain culture take a certain stance towards our biology – they involve a certain conception of how we ought to relate to our biology. And to the extent the tradition in question endorses norms that discriminate morally between activities based on their relations to biological functions, then that tradition is weakened by the absence of any account of biological functions that is even mildly normative.
Something about your response makes me think this remark might be appropriate: There’s a difference between the view that the ethical norms in question are set by a definite and trans-historical nature that is accessible to our reason in every time and place, so that cultural phenomena are simply irrelevant to this question; and the view that these norms are articulated in and by a culture with a history, but nonetheless embody and propose a view of human nature as something with a definite content. (Think MacIntyre’s concept of truth in Whose Justice?) In the first case, both the nature and the grasp of that nature are proposed as trans- or ahistorical; in the second case, only the nature is. I tend towards the latter, so while I agree that our second natures are highly relevant here, I don’t think one should give up on some general normative basis that at least might at some point hook up smoothly to a superstructure of culturally-attained and -articulated norms.
So the future development postulated is not that biology will tell us how to live, but that biology might cease to be a huge stumbling block to the mere articulation and proposal of a vision of human fulfillment that is integral, and thus includes a conception of how we should live as embodied beings with lower-level functions whose incorporation into our higher lives ought to proceed in certain ways and not in others.
Yes, I’d be quite happy with this, and I think that shows that I overstated (and so misstated) my case in that earlier comment. To put the point slightly differently, one might argue that just as, say, personal-level descriptions of human psychology can’t float entirely free of subpersonal-level accounts of our neurobiological workings, so our first and second natures can’t be utterly divorced; and in the moral case, the proposal is that how we are biologically constrains our “higher” natures in ways that are not just causal, but genuinely normative too. I do think it’s important to recognize this, and to integrate it into a picture of our ethical natures along the lines of the first of the views in your helpful dichotomy; the challenge of actually realizing this is, of course a heady one. Perhaps I should go read Dependent Rational Animals again – it’s been a while …
Through the language of…“civil unions”? Surely not…[that] is just the attempt to use a meaningless legalism to fill what is fundamentally a cultural hole.]
Are you certain that is necessarily the case? As I’ve argued before, it seems to me that the French effort to establish a purely “civil” recognition of the particular union that homosexuals can have–and should deserve!–was a worthy effort, though botched in its execution. How would we fill that “cultural hole,” after all, except with some explicitly political action? Political interventions in civil society can, and often do, after all, generated their own cultural resources. Consider the cultural of racial tolerance which has emerged throughout America in the wake of federal action in the 1950s and 1960s; sure, you can paleoconservative critiques of that “tolerance” as fake or whatnot, but in the lives of most people our age and younger, it is a cultural reality, and to a great extent, we have Brown v. Board of Education to thank for it.
Oops, screwed up the link there. Sorry.
So I certainly agree with you that the cultural hole requires some sort of political response. My only point is that not just any political response will do the trick. (What does one call the two members of a civil union?) And if I’m recalling correctly what you wrote in that post on France, it seems to me to work in favor of what I’m arguing here: it’s precisely because the civil recognition that the government extended wasn’t sufficiently “particular” that it ended up serving just as an outlet for couples who wanted to thumb their noses at marriage. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that this kind of “solution” does considerably more damage to “the traditional institution of marriage” than the same-sex marriage route, and as a consequence should be even less attractive to traditionalist conservatives. Political action, yes: but not political action without cultural significance, and also not political action with cultural significance of the wrong sort.