The Veil, The Policeman and Baumen

Baumen's Liquid Modernity is a stunning book that has resonances with everyday life and culture all the time. One of his themes, emancipation, identifies that society has put the right of the individual over the right of citizen - or as he puts it the search for a 'just society' has given way to 'human rights'. In the search for freedom we have made freedom impotent by making it such a debased currency that it means little or nothing at all.

I can help but make connections between this thought and the current controversy about the veil and the policeman. Is society giving people so much freedom that freedom means nothing? Are we to focused on giving individuals their human rights without focusing on the wider issues in society as a whole?

I'm worried that the ideology of a tolerant society has become a straight jacket that prevents human freedom rather than giving it...I'm still formulating this, and i've had most of a bottle of wine, so bear with me if this is not too coherent!!

Technorati Tags: Current affairs, Baumen, jack straw

Comments

[Mike]

I read that book this summer for a course and was blown away by it. I'm glad to see him mentioned elsewhere.

[James]

I keep seeing that Bauman book in bibliographies - looks like a genuine cross over...its on my amazon wish list, but d'you reckon its worth picking up anyway? I just finished a book by Timothy Radcliffe where his entire conception of the whole post-modern shabang was lifted from Bauman ;)

[Ben Edson]

I think that Baumen is a must read. It's heavier going than some of the other more popular books on post-modernity but it provides a sound background to build on and picks up on the themes of emancipation, community, time/space, work and individualism. i also like it as it's a book by a sociologist rather than a theolgian and therefore you have to make the faith connections!

[philjohnson]

Hi Ben

I noted your comments arising from Bauman regarding just society and human rights. One thing worth bringing into the discussion is the distinction between the "concept" of rights as it is used in the vernacular, and the ultimate justification or grounds for human rights.

While a lot of people use the expression "human rights" the term is often used as a demand for "my wants" to be recognised. And there are various schools of legal thought about the concept of rights and their justification in a pluralist society: Marxist, neo-Kantian, etc. While each of these schools of thought feel warmly about the need for protecting rights, none of them are ultimately able to provide a solid basis on which rights are to be defined and justified (as definition and justification are intimately linked).

It is worth noting that the term rights is intimately connected to the notion of "titles", that is "entitlements". If you are "entitled" to a right being recognised then the very concept takes us directly into relationships: "my rights end at the tip of your nose". Actually if we reflect seriously on the idea of rights as titles, then it raises the question who bestows these rights and how are they guaranteed (so as to not arbitrarily vanish). In our pluralist context there is a cacophony of competing views (roughly 6 billion of them).

So the bigger question is whether there is something that rises above the cacophony and provides some grounds on which rights can receive global recognition without being eroded and without being self-centredly defined. Here one has to go beyond ourselves to what Wittgenstein aphorised: "Ethics is transcendental". In effect we need a transcendent perspective to define and justify rights. That is where the notion that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself pops up as being very pertinent to any reflections and ruminations on the matter.

It is also of interest to note that modern-day human rights movement owes a great debt to people who believed in a transcendental perspective. The modern movement arose in the wake of the Nazi atrocities and the European system was birthed accordingly. One of the principal architects of the European Covenant on Human Rights was Rene Cassin, and he was a Jew who argued that the fundamental basis for human rights is the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). Another key figure in the European system was Arthur Henry Robertson who was a Christian and again saw the grounds for human rights protections as ultimately being sourced in the transcendent.

Alongside the European system came the UN system which included architects like Cassin and Robertson and also with them was Charles Habib Malik (once Lebanese ambassador to the US). Malik was a Christian and author of the A Christian Critique of the University (IVP 1982), and so again he saw the ultimate grounds for rights located in a transcendent perspective.

The European system is by no means perfect, but exists as a way of ensuring that within its member states there is no repetition of Auschwitz. It was shaped in large measure by values that derive from the Justinian Code and the common law which in turn derive from biblical notions of law.

And it is worth noting that under the European system that abuses of religious freedom have mechanisms for redress. Thus in Greece attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to have evangelicals prosecuted for violating an old anti-proselyting law have resulted in convictions against evangelicals sharing their faith. With the European system allowing cases to be appealed to the Court in Strasbourg those convicted evangelicals have had their convictions in Greece quashed by the European Court. So it is helpful to keep this in mind in any deliberations.

The difficulties that you allude to via Bauman suggests that the limits to pluralism are being felt in Europe (for instance), and perhaps points to the tribal, territorial, blood-and-soil primal urges that reassert local identities over against the tidal wave of globalised cultures.