I just finished Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. I enjoyed the book very much -- many interesting insights. Among these was a lovely point that Lewis made about polyphony. Lewis has an extended discussion of the comparative lack of influence which Western music has had on Middle Eastern culture -- compared, that is, to Western art or Western literature. He then discusses the idea of polyphony as foundational not only to Western music, but to Western culture generally. In music, of course, polyphony means more than one melodic voice at the same time, interweaving with the others. Polyphonic music was at one time long ago officially banned from the Catholic liturgy, but men of genius like Palestrina were influential in rendering polyphony acceptable in, for example, magnificent settings of the Mass. The rest is polyphonic history (as the Masses of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, inter alia, attest). For me polyphonic music reaches its apotheosis not in the symphony (voices together) but in the concerto, where melodies are not only multiple, but clashing and rivalrous.
Lewis makes the elegant point that the concept of polyphony plays a central role not only in music but in many Western cultural forms. In literature, for example, in the form of novels and, more especially, plays. In sports, particularly the team sports which flourished first in England and then blossomed spectacularly in the United States. And -- and this is Lewis's real target -- in politics, where the ideal of polyphony is manifested in parliamentary political systems -- multiple competing voices which can seem at times cacophanous but in the end (God willing) produce the harmonies of the modern polity.
The advantage of monophony is that if there is a voice which it is especially important to hear, one maximizes the chances that it will be heard; polyphony makes this less likely and it is for this reason that religious leaders of the past, Muslim and Christian, were troubled by it. Now of course few people give polyphony a second thought. I recommend the book (which I listened to, in splendid monophonic solitude).
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Recently I attended a conference at which one of the commenters disagreed intensely with the ideas in someone's presentation. The commenter at one point said something like this: ‘We are morally responsible for the consequences of our theories!' The comment was intended as a rebuke to the presenter, an admonition that his theory, and by implication he himself, were not morally serious because of his inadequate attention to the "consequences" of his ideas.
It is no great insight to observe that every theory or idea about the law has consequences, and it is certainly right to say that people who champion theories are remiss if they do not think about the consequences that might follow from them. Usually these points do not need stating: even avowedly non-consequentialist interpretive theories are often guided by the power of consequences. When one makes an argument for the broad protection of religious liberty, for example, it is important and worthwhile to reflect on the costs (likely and possible) of that position and to acknowledge those costs frankly. And when one argues for the converse, the obligation to think hard about losses and costs is the same. My own view is that this should be no less true for courts than for anyone else (though I recognize the difference between the rhetoric of a judicial opinion and the bases of judgment). But this is a straightforward way in which the criticism can be true (though not, in my opinion, in the specific case in which it was made).
But there is also a way in which the criticism is deceiving, uncharitable, and ultimately unconducive to the kind of self-critical assessment that it exhorts.
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
In this New York trial court decision, People v. Louis, the court held that a defendant's abusive, vulgar, and (in my opinion) threatening phone messages to an assistant district attorney in Nassau County constitute protected speech under the First Amendment. Over a two-month period, the defendant left screaming expletive-laden phone messages directed specifically at the ADA that included these statements: ""I will rain hell on your office and make sure heads roll"; "I'm coming at you with fury" (but really, check out the case -- I'm not doing it justice). The defendant was charged with Aggravated Harassment in the Second Degree. The court ruled that this series of messages did not rise to the level of a true threat (e.g., Chaplinsky) against the ADA, and held further that the harassment statute was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
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Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Here is the complaint of American Atheists, Inc. and several individual taxpayers against New York City and other entities demanding the removal of the so-called "Ground Zero Cross" from the planned September 11 "Memorial and Museum." The cross was actually a historical part of the rubble itself. Perhaps in light of anticipated standing difficulties, among the individual plaintiffs' allegations is that the cross has caused them "dyspepsia, symptoms of depression, headaches, anxiety, and mental pain and anguish." Paragraph 47. It seems from paragraph 48 that plaintiffs are also, or perhaps in the alternative, asking that a memorial to the non-religious who fell on September 11 be added (I cannot imagine that this would be objectionable), though I am not certain about this.
Steve, with respect, I strongly disagree with your post below. I think that this statement in your post is, quite frankly, startling: "In my view, the Lautsi case shows that the Italian state is secular in name only and that it has purchased that name at the cost of religious frivolity on the one hand and the draining of religion from the primary symbol of the Christian religion on the other."
If the Italian state is not a secular state, I can't see that any nation on earth can claim the title. Its government is run by civil, not religious authorities. It is a constitutional state of human, not divine, laws -- including laws guaranteeing the right to abortion. It is not a theocracy in any sensible interpretation of that word.
What the Lautsi case shows, in fact, is that it is perfectly possible for a state to be both deeply secular in the relevant sense without adhering to the view that it needs to secularize itself and its citizenry -- to remove systematically all symbols of its Christian and Catholic heritage, scrubbing the public square clean of them. It's a lesson that secularists the world over have yet to learn, but (as many secularists are my friends) I continue to hold out hope for them.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Thanks to Rick's Bastille Day post, I read and enjoyed Conor Cruise O'Brien's essay on Burke. In that piece, O'Brien quotes an extended passage from Reflections on the Revolution in France:
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty, in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the gallies, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.
This passage occurs quite early in the Reflections, and "the metaphysic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance" is the sobriquet that Don Quixote assumes (I think Sancho Panza chooses it for him). In the scene referenced and used to great effect by Burke, Don Quixote sees a chain of convicted criminals in manacles walking along the road and guarded closely by several armed officers. When he learns from Sancho that the convicts are being moved "by force," Don Quixote takes action to "liberate them" -- "to put down force and to succor and help the wretched." Cervantes is depicting one of the ways in which madness is manifested: in an unflinching and absolute commitment to an abstract value -- here liberty -- no matter the circumstances or cost.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
This story from today's NY Times raises an issue that I've never been able to understand. Maybe it's my own background as the child of people in the sciences (though I count myself woefully ignorant about science); and to be fair, the story is short and does not provide much detail about what the "supplemental materials" include. Let's set aside the questionable constitutionality of any policy which would take up significant space in the science curriculum "disput[ing]" evolutionary theory. Assuming that the debate is about whether to teach evolutionary theory in the science program of public schools, I do not understand how anyone could sensibly oppose that.
UPDATE: My link seems to go to a different story than the one I found yesterday morning, and I cannot find the earlier one. The new story also indicates that the board itself (including the Republicans on it) was focused on an important but uncontroversial issue, a vote to approve supplemental materials which, it seems, are in any event non-binding recommendations to the individual school districts. Some of the people attending the meeting did wish to discuss the more controversial matters, but that did not occur.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Perhaps folks here will have seen Adam White's fine essay on Justice Alito. Adam focuses on Justice Alito's recent and emerging free speech jurisprudence, and along the way, he notes that Justice Alito has referred to Alexander Bickel as a strong influence on his views, particularly in those writings where Bickel emphasizes judicial restraint and the passive virtues. I've always found Bickel admirably difficult to pin down -- I think easy descriptions of him as a conservative or liberal are mistaken. For at least the early part of his career (including that part where he authored The Least Dangerous Branch), he was a committed political liberal. On the other hand, there are strains of conservatism that permeate his thought, particularly as he became older, though it is not the currently predominant strain of legal conservatism.
Take a look, for example, at this interesting exchange, "On Pornography," from 1971 (toward the end of Bickel's life) in The Public Interest (this is when Daniel Bell was heavily involved with PI, before it moved rightward). The issue is framed by two lead essays by Walter Berns and James Q. Wilson, with shorter "concurring and dissenting opinions" by Stanley Kauffmann, Wilson Carey McWilliams, Marshall Cohen, and Bickel.
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