October 28, 2011

Imagine that Persons A through Z are asked to play a big game in a large field. The only rule of the big game is that there are no rules. Anyone can play whatever little game he or she likes. The only restriction—and hence the only rule in the larger rule-less game—is that in playing your own particular game according to your own rules, you must not do anything to disturb anyone else's game. In this scenario, then, the entire job of the referees, in calling fair or foul, is to deal with conflicts that arise when one person's game intrudes on another's.

Persons A and B decide to play tennis, Persons C through L opt for soccer, M skips rope, N and O go for horseshoes, and so on. As far as each freely decides to play, the referees can say nothing about what goes on in any particular game—that is left to those playing it. The referees can only step in and cry "foul" when, say, the soccer ball is kicked into a tennis player, or M starts skipping rope in the horseshoe pit.

Note several things about this scenario. Since the only rule is that there ultimately are no rules, the referees' moral language focuses on the right of individuals to play any game by any rules, the freedom to do so, and the ultimate equality of all games and rules. The only rule that cannot be questioned, is the rule that there are ultimately no rules. Insofar as referees can speak in evaluative or "judicial" language at all, they can only say that being a good player or a just player means allowing others to play by their rules so that you can play by yours, and that, therefore, a good player tolerates all other games as long as they don't interfere with his own.

Now imagine that the striped shirts and black pants of the referees are traded for the black robes of judges. According to Steven Smith's The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, that is more or less the situation in our culture today. Our judges are the ones given the task of sorting out the continual conflicts when individuals (each playing by his or her own rules) collide, and the collisions are becoming more and more frequent.

The origin of this difficulty, argues Smith, lies in the cultural dominance of secularism, in particular, the secular assumption that there is no intrinsic goal to human life, no telos defined by God, no end written into the cosmos and human nature itself. Rather, in a purely secular cosmos devoid of a deity and any definite purpose for human beings—a cosmos that has been "disenchanted"—life is a game without any ultimate rules. Consequently, individuals are free to choose, and believe they have the right to choose, any goal they fancy.

That is why our secular discourse (especially in the judiciary) takes the peculiar form that it does, where moral language has largely been reduced to rights talk. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the secular affirmation of rights was taken to its logical—and absurd—conclusion by Justice Kennedy: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…"

The aim of Smith's book, if I read him correctly, is to disenchant secular discourse itself by exposing its fundamental assumptions, its increasing incoherence as evidenced especially in judicial reasoning, and its practice of smuggling in its own particular moral goals under the guise of neutrality.

The first thing we must understand, argues Smith, is that the key moral-judicial terms of secular discourse (freedom, equality, and rights) are empty concepts, devoid of any definite meaning that can do moral work. To assert (with Justice Kennedy) that at the heart of liberty is the right to "define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" means that one should have the freedom, and hence the right, to believe or do absolutely anything. This is the most radical, and self-defeating, affirmation of equality: the equality of any and all views, no matter how noble, base, sublime, trivial, wise, foolish, well-thought-out, flippant, socially and morally constructive, or destructive.

But Smith shows, in regard to various court cases, that secular judges and legal theorists don't leave these concepts empty. They use their alleged neutrality as a way to "smuggle" in their own moral views (usually the views of secular liberalism). This smuggling allows a particular moral view, that of secular liberalism, to advance its cause (most often, by judicial fiat) while avoiding substantive public debate about the actual issues precisely by shifting the debate from substantive arguments to empty concepts. Thus, the non-secular side argues that abortion is wrong because the fetus is fully human from conception (which obviously depends upon a very definite "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life"). The secular judge or legal theorist then replies that you have a right to hold that view personally, but others have an equal right to prefer a "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life" in which the fetus is not a human being and the only relevant right is the right of the mother to get an abortion. The result is that abortion becomes legal and widely available. Secularism wins.

Smith's proposed cure? Unmask the alleged neutrality of secularism, show the emptiness of the concepts of freedom, equality, and rights, and let's get down to serious public debate about the very thing that secularism forbids us to question: whether in fact we live in a purposeless universe, where we are free to define our own concepts of existence, of meaning, and of the mystery of life.