Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part III, Chapter 2, "The Indifference of Epicurus's Gods"

Epicureanism sees striving for knowledge as disruptive of human happiness. It tries to tame this striving by showing that all possible explanations of natural events are equivalent in their consequences for man -- hence the actual state of affairs can be a matter of indifference.

Negative valuation of curiosity. Views man as having a natural state of happy obliviousness that is shattered by curiosity about the heavens (contrast with Stoic admiration for and taking comfort in the regularity of the the heavens).

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part III, Chapter 1, "The Retraction of the Socratic Turning"

Blumenberg tells an admitted just-so story about the development of Presocratic philosophy -- an original harmony of the knowing subject and the world it knows, which philosophy disrupts by pulling truth increasingly apart from appearance



Socrates' turning -- rejects natural philosophy (which is portrayed as futile and endlessly disputatious) for philosophy directed at human self-knowledge



But the Platonic Socrates (at least) brings nature back into his inquiries again. Dogmatic myths are provided to fill in what must be believed about nature in order to shore up investigations of human and political life. In any case, the conflict with the Sophists includes the germ of justification for inquiring into nature. The argument against sophism is that knowledge of human affairs is properly directed not towards any one individual's interest, but to what is good for us as humans, by our nature. But human nature is not really seen as separate from the entire natural order.

Aristotle -- severs the bond between theoretical striving and moral knowledge, defends pure theory against suspicion that it is reaching beyond what is suitable for man, into the divine - the highest goal for man is to become more like the gods by seeking knowlege, and this is possible becasue of the reason which is in us

Stoicism - combines dogmatic assertion of the general principle of world's favorability for man with a number of practices which foster a partial or complete withholding of judgment on specific questions about nature.

The Machiavellian Moment

Pocock presents the Florentine civic humanist as the heirs to Aristotle's conception of the nature of the political human being. The core of the problem was to reconcile this view within a Christian context where "secular fulfillment" was impossible. By virtue of Christian doctrine, there were not many ways to define the secular in a morally Christian way. The Machiavellian moment describes that basic tension between the pagan and Christian worldviews as well as the viability of the republic itself. The moment is longer than the moment. Its legacy is long because it plays a part in the development of modern political thought from Medieval modes of thought. Secular political self-consciousness poses problems in historical awareness. These thinkers legacy include "balanced government, dynamic virtue and the role of arms and property in shaping the civic personality."

The Machiavellian Moment

Republicanism is a form of historicism since it deals with sequence of events, events themselves and political interactive relationships. Basic conflict is explaining human sequences. Medieval thought avoided it by not creating a historicism. Rationality dealt with universals. Historicism itself was questionable because it by necessity was about time and contingency which were inherently not rational. With the Greeks, history as a philosophy was not solved or seen as a problem. Aristotle's cyclic view of time based on the perfect sphere served as a metaphor for time in human interactions. It took other modes of thought superseding the Christian one to develop an historical frame of reference for the temporal or human. Christianity discarded the cyclical view because of the obvious constraints it imposed on a God outside and superior to time. Philosophy itself was inadequate to reconcile universals within a temperal context. Political society is time bound, contigent and particular. New modes of thought developed outside of philosphy to deal with this fact. Republicanism revealed the tension by offering universal values for the attainment of human perfection within a politcal context that was time bound. The tension of universal values within an imperfect and changable temporal mode of existence is the heart of the matter.

The goal--a philosophy of history--republicanism is a philosophy of history.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part III ("The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity"), Introduction

inescapablility of science in contemporary world -- questioning the value or consequences of science itself yields a scientific discourse -- moreover, science is necessary for life, in the sense that it has created conditions in which most humans alive today could not continue to live without it

232: "Since ancient times, what theory was supposed to do was not to make life possible but to make it happy."

232-233: "The 'theoretial attitude' may be a constant in European history since the awakening of the Ionians' interest in nature; but this attitude could take on the explicitness of insistence on the will and the right to intellectual curiosity only after it had been confronted with opposition and had had to compete with other norms of attitude and fulfillment in life."

'naive' curiosity - curiosity as an anthropological constant

'reflected' curiosity - curiosity which takes the orientation and direction of inquiry itself as its object

Diderot's Encyclopedia as a project of reflected curiosity, an attempt to understand what is known and direct inquiry on that basis

The encyclopedic ambition itself exposes a key modern predicament: individuals can no longer even hope to orient themselves with respect to the totality of knowledge. The subject which grasps what is known is now a collective or an institution. Under these conditions, it becomes impossible to sustain the ancient identity of complete knowledge and happiness.

Francis Bacon reformulates relation between knowledge and happiness - happiness is the result of humanity collectively knowing enough to take control of nature

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part II, Chapter 5

Separation of truth from theoretical effectiveness corresponds to the decline of anthropocentric teleology.

Copernicus - a regression from the trend who illustrates this correspondence in reverse. He objected to astronomy that was constructed inelegantly with the aim of being good enough for practical use. He objected that it lacked the clarity and precision it should have in order to describe God's design.

Descartes - Science built through hypothetical construction is a different path than truth. Point of Descartes' materialist cosmogony is to illustrate that the world is open to human action and change. World is never complete, it has no end.

Precritical Kant - world is always changing, tending toward perfection.

Critical kant - teleology exists only in human action; 'unfinished' world precondition of human action.

Hobbes as illustration of dissolving political order to ints natural elementsin order to show how human action should shape it in response to those tendencies.

Theme of overpopulation as a natural tendency which is a disorder for human flourishing (Malthus) and as a regulatory princile which makes it possible to describe the biological world mechanistically (Darwin). Both advocate a resignation to laws of nature in culling human population -- a view which Blumenberg has no sympathy for, and celebrates the nineteenth century for finding a way to oppose it through technical progress.

The Machiavellian Moment by J.G.A. Pocock

Chapter 1, Part 1

Temporality, Contingency and Infinity are necessary elements of human political society. Traditionally, philosophy's purview was not the temporal. But, republic/Aristotilian polis as well as Christianity dealt with the universal and its attainment. These universals were timeless. For Aristotle, the universals were values for which the citizens of the polis strove. For Christianity, it is a God who is outside of temporality but a Being for which humans strive to relate. Here, eternity is the goal of human striving.

We live with each other. There are modes of behavior under the rubric of politics. Initially, republicanism was the mode. Since it deals with events and their relationships, which are temporal, they are supra-philosophical--outside of philosophy. Republicanism is an explanation of events as its core which in term makes it a form of historicism.

The problem: How to overcome the republican ideal of universals with secular particularity?

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part II, Chapter 4

Key difference between Epicurean and modern objectification of nature: there is no 'technical implication' for Epicureanism. Epicureanism doesn't posit man's need to dominate nature. Aim is neutralization, not control.

Decartes' radical doubt transforms an existing predicament into a chosen challenge. His evil spirit (genius malignus) is an intensification of Nominalism's 'hidden God' (deus absconditus) who is is not committed to dependabilty except to the elect (who are unknown even to themselves).

William of Ockham - God can produce ideas without objects -- crux of late Nominalist encounter with prospect of radical uncertainty of knowledge.

Peter of Ailly - in ordinary circumstances, certainty about physical objects can be assumed ; otherwise, knowledge of nature would be unattainable.

Heidegger takes domination of nature to be the characteristic attitude of modernity but already had assertion of inviolable agency of judgment in Nominalist thinkers without project of domination.

Gregor of Rimini - man's senses may not correspond to reality, but man need not be deceived because he retains the capacity to withhold judgment about reality. (Note: Decartes also finds freedom from deception in ability to withhold judgment.)

By radicalizing doubt, Decartes undercuts earlier pragmatic formulas for self-assertion provided within Nominalism -- self-assertion after this requires strong subjectivity.

Jean de Mirecourt - If God could create ideas without objects, then He could also create actions without supposed agent being responsible. This possibility is rejected on grounds that it would make moral responsibility uncertain. Both moral and theoretical agency inhere in an inviolable subject which cannot be deceived by an external force.

196-197: "Under the enormous pressure of the demands made upon it by theology, the human subject begins to consolidate itself, to take on a new overall condition, which possesses, in relation to the ambushes set by the hidden absolute will, something like the elementary attribute of an atom, that it cannot be split up or altered. Absolutism reduces whatever is exposed to it, but in the process it brings to light the constants, the no longer touchable kernels.
The ius primarium [primary right], the primeval right to self-assertion, becomes comprehensible long before Decartes and Hobbes as the essence of the modern age's understanding of iteslf -- that is, as the anthropological minimum under the conditions of the theological maximum. This beginning does not come about as the formulation of anew concept against an old one, as the constitution of an epoch after the old one has broken off, but rather as the mobilizing of motives toward the definition of an opposing force, precisely while the attack is being intensified; not as the negation of the premises rather as a condensation under the pressure of their exaggerated power."

Withdrawal from world of guarantees of certainty and consequent treatment of its character as hypothetical -- condition for modern attitude of natural science

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part II, Chapter 3

So, you've surely been asking yourself why modern self-assertion emerged at the end of the Middle Ages and not earlier -- say, in response to the Gnostic challenge of late antiquity. Oh, you haven't then? Not to worry. Hans Blumenberg, clever man, has been pondering the question for you.

typically odd deployment of erudition to introduce a theme without seeming responsible for bringing it up himself ... an account of the Leibniz-Arnaud debate deployed to bring in (smuggle in) the theme of the comparability of Epicureanism and Nominalism

beats Macintyre's name dropping of the Scottish Enlightenment, for instance

***

I read the chapter a second time, and the segue into the comparison of Nominalism and Epicureanism felt more natural.

Perhaps this comparison really isn't to the point, however. What is supposed to be elucidated is the difference between the epochal crises that ended antiquity and the middle ages, respectively. (The chapter is entitled "A Systematic Comparison of the Epochal Crisis of Antiquity to That of the Middle Ages.") Blumenberg had already assigned Gnosticism the role of instigator in the crisis of antiquity, however, as he acknowledges again here (p. 148). Blumenberg motivates his chosen comparison by noting that the patristic tradition borrowed the Stoics' arguments against Epicureanism (and indeed borrowed much of Stoic cosmology) for their battle with Gnosticism. Still, this puts Epicureanism at one remove from a truly parallel function to Nominalism's role in the Medieval crisis.

Three points of comparison of ancient Epicurean atomism and medieval nominalism

1. The arbitrariness of what exists.

Epicureanism - The world is not created in accordance with any model, or even created at all; it is the outcome of chance. There is no special significance to this world, so we can take an attitude of detachment and indifference to it, or at least to knowledge about it. Subjective consequence: repose.

Nominalism - There is no model for anything in creation, because God's power must not be bounded even by the existence of a pattern or form. Subjective consequence: uncertainty, instability.

2. The plurality of worlds.

Epicureanism - That chance has thrown up many worlds illustrates that there is nothing ordained about this world. One's situation in it is not a matter of cosmic justice and order. So we can take an attitude of indifference to what fate has in store for us, because there is no design to it. Note that to make this indifference plausible, Epicureanism does depend implicitly on cosmological guarantees of the dependability of the world. At the same time, it destabilizes the heavenly bodies by bringing them into the same order of chance as everything else, thus undermining any attempt to seek meaning in contemplating the order of the heavens.

Nominalism - There must be a plurality of possible worlds, because God's power to create something new and different cannot be bounded. Shows that nothing is binding on God about this world; He could always change the world, end it, or create a new one.

3. Rejection of an anthropic teleology for the world.

Epicureanism -The key consequence is that man is not burdened by debt to the world because of it being made for him. At the same time, Epicureanism defuses the destabilizing consequences of rejecting teleology by holding that nature does in fact provide what man needs (Blumenberg sees this as a smuggling in of providential cosmology). Although the gods are not responsible for the world, they do provide a humanly accessible model of happiness.

Nominalism - Intensifies the medieval trend of withdrawing the tenet that god created the world the world or incarnated his son on behalf of man - because to do anything in reference to man rather than himself confilicts with the Aristotelean conception of divine perfection which increasingly defined Christian dogma.

Blumenberg's philosophy of history:
"Let us not forget that what is written here is not meant as a myth of the 'object spirit,' which plays out its dialectic with and over man. But there are phases of objectivization that loose themselves from their original motivation (the science and technology of the later phases of the modern age provide a stupendous example of this!); and to bring them back into their human function, to subject them again to man's purposes in relation to the world, requires an unavoidable counterexertion. The medieval system ended in such a phase of objectivization that has become autonomous, of hardening that is insulated from what is human. What is here called 'self-assertion' is the countermove of retrieving lost motives, of new concentration on man's self-interest." (pp. 177-178)

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part II, Chapter 2

Scholasticism destroys confidence in the idea of an orderly cosmos congenial to humanity. This 'disappearance of order' provokes a reaction, but not to restore belief in a world that is good for man -- that has been permanently lost. Rather, this reaction accepts the unreliability, the changeability of the world, but therefore sees the world as something which man can act on to make it better .

Blumenberg sees the modern advance in technical matters as a radical break, not as the acceleration of a gradual accumulation that dates to pre-modern times. This is a case that would have to be made in much more detail to convince me.

139: "If the 'disappearance of order' that was brought about by the disintegration of the Middle Ages pulled self-preservation out of its biologically determined normality, where it went unnoticed, and turned it into the 'theme' of human self -comprehension, then it is also the case that the modern stage of human technicity can no longer be grasped entirely in terms of the syndrome of the anthropological structure of wants. the growth of the potency of technique is not only the continuation -- not even the acceleration --of a process that runs through the whole history of humanity. On the contrary, the quantitative increase in technical achievements and expedients can only be grasped in relation to a new quality of consciousness. In the growth of the technical sphere there lives, consciously facing an alienated reality, a will to extort from this reality a new 'humanity.' Man keeps in view the deficiency of nature as the motive of his activity as a whole."

In positing art as a more radical imposition of human will against the world than science and history (which are beholden to the world insofar as they seek truths in it), Nietzsche at least correctly identified what the turning towards modern consciousness hinged on: the rejection of the belief that the world is good for man just as it is.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part II, Chapter 1

We get a brilliant sketch of the development of Western systems of thought from classical antiquity through Scholasticism seen through the lens of the origin of what is bad in the world.

Classical - There is a dualism of Idea or cosmos on one hand and of matter or necessity on the other. The world-forming demiurge attempts to shape matter in accordance with the order of Ideas, but perfect realization is frustrated by the limits of his ability to "persuade" matter into form. The defects of what exists are accounted for by this falling short.

Neoplatonic - posits greater distance between the classical principles of form and matter, and tends towards giving theological values to them. In the particular form given by Plotinus, the world results from the world-soul "falling" and getting trapped in matter; the soul can correct this loss of order by reversing the fall and liberating itself from matter.

Gnostic - radicalizes conflict of good and bad, and posits opposing agents behind them. In the particular form given by Marcion, the world itself is bad, as is the demiurge who creates it. The God who saves souls trapped in the world is not responsible for creating it; salvation in fact consists in the destruction of this world.

Augustinean Christian - Early Christianity is confronted by Gnosticism with the intolerable prospect of an evil world which shows no signs of going away. Augustine salvages the goodness of the creation (and the unity of the creating and redeeming Gods) by assigning responsibility for what is bad in the world to the free will of man, and particularly to the inherited stain from the original misuse of this free will.

Blumenberg makes passing reference to Gnosticism "reoccupying the positions" of Neoplatonism. But doesn't Blumenberg's account fit better with a scheme rooted in substantive historical constants? Is the recurrence of the issue of what is bad in the world a substantive historical constant?

Blumenberg took issue at the end of Part I with critics of the modern world who looked for some wrong turn in the distant past of Western thought to account for supposedly pervasive defects in the present. Yet in finding the origin of Scholasticism's crisis in Augustine's turn, he pursues an line of analysis which at least looks similar in form. What can be said to distinguishes these cases? Is it that the problems Blumenberg diagnoses in late medieval thought were less pervasive than those seen by contemporary critics of modernity? In other words, does his analysis simply lack the same totalistic pretensions?

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapter 9

We take an excursion through the literary uses of theological language (and vice-versa, for that matter). In brief, using religious vocabulary for dramatic effect shouldn't be confused with expressing religious ideas.


Towards the end, we have a tussle with other indictments of the legitimacy of the modern age; phenomenology and critical theory are brought into the dock for arraignment.

118-119: "Whether people's readiness to entertain assertions of objective guilt derives from an existential guiltiness of Dasein vis-a-vis its possibilities, as Heidegger suggested in Being and Time, or from the "societal delusion system" of Adorno's Negative Dialectics, in any case it is the high degree of indefiniteness of the complexes that are described in these ways that equips them to accept a variety of specific forms. Discontent is given retrospective self-evidence. This is not what gives rise to or stabilizes a theorem like that of secularization, but it certainly does serve to explain its success. The suggestion of a distant event that is responsible for what is wrong in the present -- a suggestion with which the secularization theorem also presents us -- is (not the only, but) an additional reason why the category of secularization is in need of a critique."

Deja vu (Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 240-241)

"Finally, no assessment of Russia's overall capacities in this period can avoid some comments on the regime itself. Although certain foreign conservatives admired its autocratic and centralized system, arguing that it gave a greater consistency and strength to national policies than the western democracies were capable of, a closer examination would have revealed innumerable flaws. Czar Nicholas II was a Potemkin village in person, simple-minded, reclusive, disliking difficult decisions, and blindly convinced of his sacred relationship with the Russian people (in whose real welfare, of course, he showed no interest). The methods of governmental decision-making at the higher levels were enough to give 'Byzantinism' a bad name: irresponsible grand dukes, the emotionally unbalanced empress, reactionary generals, and corrupt speculators, outweighing by far the number of diligent and intelligent ministers whom the regime could recruit and who, only occasionally, could reach the czar's ear. The lack of consultation and understanding between, say, the foreign ministry and the military was at times frightening. The court's attitude to the assembly (the Duma) was one of unconcealed contempt. Achieving radical reforms in this atmosphere was impossible, when the aristocracy cared only for its privileges and czar cared only for his peace of mind."

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapter 8

Even for Blumenberg, the arguments in this chapter tend toward the cryptic.

Carl Schmitt claims the concepts of modern state are secularized theological concepts.

Blumenberg first asks what Schmitt's position (in favor of absolutism, basically) gains from this assertion. Intelligibility by analogy, it appears. For from within the reference point of Enlightenment thought, there is no support for the existence of "exceptional" cases which require arbitrary authority.

Schmitt argues that Blumenberg is defending the legality of the modern age rather than its legitimacy. (Legality (for Schmitt): timeless justification with respect to a structure of norms. Legitimacy: demonstration of foundation within history.) Blumenberg concedes (I think) that the former corresponds to how modern rationality defines itself. He claims, however, that his project is not to defend this self-understanding but to demonstrate how it performs the (necessary) function of self-assertion against what preceded it.

98: "From the point of view of all kinds of requirements for legitimation, not only did rationalism make a disturbing and destructive entrance, but when the ground had been cleared and leveled, it proved to be sterile as far as new conceptions were concerned." I don't think I agree with this. Doesn't this read arguments for popular rule out of the content of modern political thought?

Introduction of concept of sufficient rationality, 99: "[T]his book's concept of rationality is neither that of an agency of salvation nor that of a creative originality either. On the analogy of the principle of sufficient reason, I would like to entitle this concept that of a sufficient rationality. It is just enough to accomplish the postmedieval self-assertion and to bear the consequences of this emergency self-consolidation. The concept of the legitimacy of the modern age is not derived from the accomplishments of reason but rather from the necessity of those accomplishments."

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapters 6 and 7

65: "What mainly occurred in the process that is interpreted as secularization, at least (so far) in all but a few recognizable and specific instances, should be described not as the transposition of authentically teleological contents into secularized alienation from their origin but rather as the reoccupation of answer positions that had become vacant and whose corresponding questions could not be eliminated."

'residual needs' as key factor in retention of systems of questions across changes of epochs

67: system of explanatory values of Christianity reaches its 'crisis' in Scholasticism -- an interestingly Hegelian framing

Christianity also was shaped by the requirements of a transition of epochs: it found itself in the position of providing answers to systems of questions inherited from the thought of pagan antiquity.

Example: classical philosophy had well developed ideas about the nature of 'happiness' (and thus, I think Blumenberg is saying, of a complete life); Christianity found itself expected to give content to the 'salvation' promised in immortality, and filled this with the classical philosophical ideal of beatific contemplation.

Questions about originality of the materials of Christian thought were also raised by its opponents at the time of this epochal change. The early Christian response focused on the idea that all true knowledge found in the classical sources was in fact originally borrowed from Biblical revelation. Along with this Christian thought set up a model in which the original ownership of an idea is constitutive of the sole legitimate right to use it. But the modern idea of knowledge as something which any subject can produce -- and, more importantly, reproduce -- dissolves the authority of original ownership, and makes the charge of secularization itself an anachronism.

The attribution of absolute infinity to God, along with omnipotence, created the unbearable contradictions of Scholastic philosophy, and thus led to the self-destruction of the medieval system (forgive me for again thinking of Hegel).

On infinity as an attribute of progress: in this context, it is seen negatively, as a resignation, not positively, as a form of praise, as it was in the medieval conception of god

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapters 4 and 5

Eschatology is itself a secularization of Christianity. Early Christians expected the the end of the world to come immediately -- within their own lifetimes, at least. But the world persisted, and Christians had to come to terms with it, to make a place for it in their thought. Eschatology, which stabilized the expectation of salvation while the actual day of salvation was postponed, was one response. Related to this was the institutionalization of the Church to administer this promise of salvation in the world. Further, this institution was distinguished from the political institutions not concerned with salvation, and the latter were identified as 'worldly' -- thus, 'worldliness' is created from the secularization of Christianity by means of eschatology.


Modern reason inherits a legacy of questions from medieval Christian thought which it is not really suited to answer, and overextends itself trying to answer them anyway. Thus it is that modern thought tries to extend the idea of progress into a philosophy of history to answer the inherited medieval questions about the shape of history (the question to which eschatology was the medieval answer).

53-54: "Augustine's explanation of the bad in the world as the result of human wickedness, as a species-wide quantity, made it necessary for any subsequent notion of progress that would undertake to diminish the bad in the world also to establish man's ability to lessen his culpability by his own efforts. The idea of progress, as was to become evident much later on, requires a reversal of the causal relation between moral and physical evils; it is founded on the assumption that in a better world it would be easier to be a better person."

Marquard - Modern philosophy of history takes on the function of theodicy. Here, Blumenberg's functional analysis of history actually provides a final foothold for the secularization thesis.

Blumenberg responds that philosophy of history as the story of progress cannot actually perform the function of theodicy. Theodicy requires a subject with perfect freedom to absolve God for the responsibility for bad things, but freedom is seen as the end of philosophy of history, not its presupposition. In any case, the functional analysis of philosophy of history seeks only to explain it as an ultimately unavoidable response to the provocation of medieval thought, it does not seek to justify it.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapter 3

Lowith - uses secularization thesis to establish continuity between medieval and modern models of history, which are both linear, thus more effectively distinguishing both from pagan antiquity, and it's cyclical conception - Puts the great epochal shift between pagan antiquity and Christian middle ages

Blumenberg's critique - burden of proof to show a unity of substance between medieval and modern conceptions of history has not been met.

In particular, the modern idea of progress in history -- even in utopian variants -- has obvious discontintuities with Christian eschatology. Eschatology looks forward to an external event disrupting history, while progress is seen as a force immanent in history. Eschatology (by late middle ages) was a matter of fear and dread in the face of the arbitrary, absolute will of God, while the idea of progress expresses hope in what may be achieved by humankind.

32: "[T]he idea of progress is precisely not a mere watered down form of judgment or revolution; it is rather the continuous self-justification of the present, by means of the future that it gives itself, before the past, with which it compares itself."

33: "The idea of method is not a kind of planning, not a transformation of the divine salvation plan, but rather the establishment of a disposition: the disposition of the subject, in his place, to take part in a process that generates knowledge in a transubjective manner." (Consider consequences of replacing disposition with discipline in this sentence.)

Moreover, the idea of progress in history can be satisfactorily accounted for by already existing models -- e.g., the advances of astronomy and the rejection of the canonical status of classical literature in the querrelle des anciens et des modernes. Furthermore, the tranformation of progress in history into an infinite process was not the appropriation of a divine attribute for it; it was instead compensation for the failure of immediate realization of the fulfillment of progress and also a regulative idea protecting against misappropriation of the concept for absolutist projects.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age: Part I, Chapters 1 and 2

diversity in uses of and attitudes towards concept of secularization - some intellectual shadow boxing, as his antagonists here are mostly unspecified and sometimes I can't even guess who they are


descriptive secularization - historical decrease in practice and influence of religion and possessions of religions institutions


interpretive secularization - explaining modern secular concepts and institutions by reference to a supposed religious source


crisis theology - positive valuation of secularization, as a liberation of religion from entanglements of the world


secularization and worldliness - Arendt's distinction between these noted - secularization does not return modern man to immedicacy of classical relationship to the world - instead an intensification of alienation from the world


dispute with Gadamer, who contends that concept of secularization performs legitimate hermeneutic function of revealing hidden meaning of the present - Blumenberg


leads into dispute over significance of secularization (i.e., expropriation) of church property as a metaphorical touchstone for use of secularization as an interpretive concept - reference to background metaphorics

Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet: Chapters 8 and 9

An interesting preliminary note: not only did Abe Fortas argue the case, but John Hart Ely drafted the brief as a summer law school intern.

Leading up to Gideon v. Wainwright, there were a few key Fourteenth Amendment cases bearing on the right to counsel for indigent defendants.

Powell v. Alabama (1932) required provision of counsel for defendants who had been unable obtain their own lawyers. It did not institute a general rule for provision of counsel, however. Leaving open the question of whether there was a universal requirement, it instead relied on a number of circumstances of that case -- a capital crime, a hostile public environment, and defendants incapable of conducting their own defense -- to find that lack of counsel had represented a denial of due process.

Johnson v. Zerbst (1938) required counsel to be provided for indigent defendants in all federal cases.

Betts v. Brady (1942) found that access to counsel for poor defendants was not a fundamental right secured by the due process clause's guarantee of a fair trial, while admitting that in some circumstances providing a lawyer was necessary to ensure fairness. In essence, it closed the door on a more expansive interpretation of Powell, making the existence of special circumstances a prerequisite for a due process entitlement to a lawyer.

Although Griffin v. Illinois (1956) did not directly address the issue of counsel for poor defendants, it invoked the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to hold that a poor defendant could not be denied an appeal because of inability to afford a trial transcript.

The large number of recognized special circumstances under the Betts rule had provided a rich ground for appeals. In the years since Betts, the Court had reviewed a steady stream of indigent counsel cases, almost always ruling to overturn state court decisions where counsel had been denied. Fortas' brief used this history to turn the most potent objection to imposing a right to counsel on its head. He argued that the existing standard, far from being a bulwark of federalism, had instead required constant review and correction of the decisions of state judges. It had thus actually led to more federal interference in state courts than a straightforward requirement of counsel would.

Although overcoming concerns about federalism was the core of the case, there were a number of practical issues raised by a uniform requirement to provide access to counsel. Among these were the scope, timing, and retrospective impact of the requirement.

With respect to the first, Fortas' brief argued that the Court could exempt petty offenses.

When a lawyer should be provided was a more difficult issue, since Fortas thought a defendant really needed a lawyer immediately upon arrest. In the end, however, he only argued only for the necessity of providing a lawyer for the trial.

Finally, Fortas had to address the Court's hesitance to create grounds for overturning a large number of convictions. This was such a concern that it had even been mooted that the Court would prospectively overrule Betts -- that is, that it would let existing convictions stand while requiring counsel in all future cases. Fortas argued that states would still have the option to retry the cases if the convictions were overturned by the Court.

With regard to the concept of prospective overruling, I find it curious that Lewis does not draw the analogy to advisory opinions. In overruling prospectively, the Court decision would not be subject to the restraint imposed by the consquences of the case immediately before it, which seems to have the same dangers as the advisory opinions which the court has always abjured.

Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet: Chapter 6

Here we meet a couple of ideal types of Supreme Court justices. On one side, we have the justice as defender of constitutional liberties, seen as absolute principles before which practical considerations must give way. On the other side, we have the justice as apostle of judicial self-restraint, who temporizes Constitutional principles and defers to political leaders. Hugo Black is put forth as a representative of the former, and Felix Frankfurter of the latter, although the fit is a bit loose in both cases.

Judicial restraint in the mold of Frankfurter takes three forms. In the first place, a justice like Frankfurter grants wide latitude to legislators and government officials. There is not necessarily a faith involved that politicians will do the right thing, but there is certainly an attitude that they are better left to sort out their mistakes for themselves.

Another form of restraint is strict adherence to precedent. For all justices, the Court's past decisions guide their current jurisprudence. But here, that deference is often granted even when the Court's earlier decisions are acknowledged to have been in error. Finality trumps correctness.

Finally, there is deference specifically to state laws and officials. This is the principle of federalism. The key issue here by the time of Gideon's case was how much the Constitution limited the powers of state governments in light of the Fourteenth Amendment. For many decades, the Court declined to use either the amendment at all to impose the restraints of the Bill of Rights on the states. Since a 1925 case which upheld the right to free speech against state interference, however, the Court gradually conceded that some rights are so fundamental that they must also apply to state governments. Such rights were held to have been absorbed into the amednment's due process clause. The Court's advocates of restraint, however, were cautious about which rights could be absorbed.

For his part, Black was not satisified with the doctrine of absorption. He saw no firm principle to distinguish fundamental rights which should be absorbed from the others which should not. He saw too much latitude there for justices to make arbitrary decisions, and favored instead a simple, wholesale incorporation of the first eight amendments into the Fourteenth Amendment.

I don't doubt that Frankfurter is one of the great lights of the Court's history, but I can't muster much respect for his position here. Whatever it's uses for easing the path to enforcing Constitutional rights, the doctrine of absorption strikes me as nonsense on steroids. The privileges and immunites clause plainly applied the existing federal rights of citizens against the states, and if these rights were not those enumerated in the Bill of Rights then there really wasn't anything else for them to be.