Ron,
Re your point that Islam needs "to undergo a rebirth into the modern era", the problem there is that the cultural dictates of Islam are anathema to modernity. In that respect there is the implication of a claim to cultural superiority...on both sides. That claim is where the real problem lies. A solution to it would necessarily involve some compromise from both sides.
As a reference point:
algonet.se
Historical Order, Rational State, or, Moral Community?
Islamic Political Theory and the Challenges of Modernity
S Parvez Manzor
Modernity and its Discontents
Modernity has given us a de-divinized public order. It has suppressed the truth of the Soul for the harmony of the City. It has reduced our mandate for Divine Vicegerency to a commitment to civil morality. Our civilization no longer represents any cosmic truth, it partakes of no transcendent order of being and recognizes no human purpose beyond existence. Indeed, by redefining the End (Eschtion/Akhira) as an immanent social utopia, modernity abolishes the question of transcendence altogether. In place of the bliss of the soul, it offers peace in the City, and for the mystery of the Here-after, it substitutes the promise of the Here-now. Little wonder that modernity causes an acute crisis in the conscience of Islam.
In confronting the challenge of modernity and its secular world-order, therefore, Muslim thinkers have displayed much wrath and little understanding. Apart from the odd, albeit genuinely Islamic, plea for a rapprochement with its humanizing ethos(1), or some pragmatic suggestions for the appropriation of its body of knowledge(2), most of the Muslim effort has been spent in denouncing modernity. In fact, because of the ideological conflict with the West, which is seen to embody all of modernity's evils, there is little inclination to apprehend modernity in its own terms. It is regarded as nothing but a western perversion and a threat. Thus, notwithstanding their craze for modern gadgetry, Muslims have yet to make any genuine encounter with the philosophical side of modernity(3).
For the Muslim, the principal problem with the modern world, a creation of the western man, is its political secularism. In fact, in the axiology of modernity, secularism stands at the pinnacle, just as in its metaphysical realm immanentism reigns supreme. The most distinguishing feature of the Western tradition, of which every outsider is made to become supremely conscious today, is the sovereignty of the political community. Or, as a modern political scientist has chosen to express this fact: 'It is only in Western civilization, commencing with ancient Greece, the state came to be conceived, idealized indeed, as a community worthy of a status that elsewhere attended only religion.'(4). In fact, it was the first Western classic, Plato's Republic, which has had 'the effect of making the ideal of politics, of political power, of the political bond, and of the political community, the most distinctive and the most influential of all types of community to be found in Western philosophy. The intellectual line from Plato to both the democratic and totalitarian states of the twentieth century is a clear and direct one. Whatever the signal differences between the two types of modern state, what they have in common is the ascendancy of the political bond over all others in society; of political role over all roles of kingship, religion, occupation, and place; of the political intellectual over all other intellectuals; of political authority over all competing social and cultural authorities; and, finally, the proffer of the political state as the chief protection of man from the uncertainties, deprivations and miseries of the world.'(5). Needless to say that within Islamic tradition, faith occupies the same sovereign position which is accorded to the political in the West. Or, if we assert that the ultimately values of the Western community are political and existential, we must concede, by the logic of the same argument, that for the Muslim community these are religious and trans-existential.
Within this pre-eminently political Western tradition, modernity represents the impulse to take charge of the world, to rationalize society and to attain self-consciousness and freedom. (Paradoxically, though, it also creates an impasse about the modern man's inability to endure his own impulse to self-consciousness.) 'The principle of the modern world is freedom of subjectivity' and modern religious life, state and society as well as art, morality and science are all embodiments of this principle(6). Further, in modernity the individual is defined 'without reference to history, set values, or God; let alone race, creed, or national origin.'(7). This empty subjectivity is characterized by a drive to master the conditions of life, to seize and systematize the world, or it can only face it in a romantic, ironic or despairing mode(8). Little wonder that even one of the most enthusiastic and cogent defenders of modernity's project has to admit that 'the principle of subjectivity is not powerful enough to regenerate the unifying power of religion in the medium of reason.'(9).
Whether modernity is unique or merely a historical moment that may (has already) come to pass is in our days a point of much altercation between the modernists and post-modernists. However, a self-confident modernity continues to define itself as an emancipation of human spirit, an epoch which, in contrast to earlier ages, and other cultures, is more rational, more productive, more civilized, more democratic, more tolerant, more respectful of the individual, more scientific and more progressive(10). Modernity's critics, however, even when endorsing this differentiation, take a less exalted view of its achievements. Modernity, they accuse, 'has lost a world of rich tradition, a secure place in the order of being, a well-grounded morality, a spiritual sensibility, an appreciation of hierarchy, an attunement to nature; and these vacated places have been filled by bureaucracy, nationalism, rampant subjectivism, an all consuming state, a consumer culture, a commercialized world or, perhaps, a disciplinary society.'(11).
The flagship of modernity, however, is secularization: modern science constitutes a Promethean bid for the emancipation of secular reason from revelation and modern state acts as the grand inquisitor of theocracy. Secularization, thus, unfolds by an ever-expanding rationalization of the world, primarily through the capitalist mode of production but also through law, bureaucracy and science(12). Further, modernity is marked by the distinction of economic from politics. The modern individual, having exchanged the warmth and security of Gemeinschaft for the discipline and order of Gesellschaft, it has been argued, feels estranged in the world; his is a 'homeless mind.'(13). The most noteworthy critic of modernity, without doubt, is Nietzsche, under the weight of whose polemics, the grand edifice of Reason as the house of universal 'enlightenment' seems to have collapsed. Nietzsche's unmasking of modernity's discourse on truth as the 'will to power' has led to the establishment of a whole school of postmodernist criticism whose most noteworthy representative is Michel Foucault(14).
Modernity has also replaced the concept of honour with that of dignity, thus unfastening the modern man from all the institutional moorings of history. For, while in a world of honour, the individual discovers his identity in his roles, the individual can only find his true identity by emancipating himself from social roles in the world of dignity. Obviously, the two worlds have a different relation to history. The honour-centered individual participates in history, not only the history of a particular institution but that of society as a whole, through performing institutional roles. The dignity-bound individual must free himself from history to attain 'authenticity'. Little wonder that in the face of this modern tendency, an influential contemporary sociologist feels that 'a rediscovery of honour in the future development of modern society is ... morally desirable.'(15). Equally significant is the judgement of another thinker who predicts that the modern, anti-institutionalist mood is unlikely to last(16).
From the beginning modernity has also been accompanied by an internal critique and an obsession with its uniqueness: 'Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by another epoch: it has to create its normativity out of itself.'(17). Little wonder that this conviction about its uniqueness and the concomitant anxiety to achieve self-understanding creates the problem of the legitimacy of its age'.(18). And secularized modernity also expresses the conviction that not only is it open to the future but that the future has already begun. For it the eschation is already an actuality! In this sense, modernity sees itself as the culmination of human achievement and regards itself as unsurpassable in excellence. Whatever improvements of the human condition that mankind is likely to experience in the future, are bound to take place within the moral, intellectual and social matrix of modernity.
Having drawn to notice some of the significant philosophical assertions and social connotations of modernity, we shall now examine, from the vantage-point of political philosophy, two of its master ideas which were annunciated long after the formulation of the classical Islamic political philosophy. We shall first examine the idea of historical order which is implicit in the Machiavellian doctrine of politics, just as later our concern will be with the concept of the rational state as annunciated by Hegel. The purpose of this exercise is to investigate whether Islamic civilization has acquired these modern insights through some other routes of its own, or whether it is totally unaware of them and needs to assimilate them in its tradition. Whatever the case, the crucial question for us to ask is: Does Islam need to import and transplant the political philosophy of western modernity, or is it possible for it to acquire modernity's moral and practical insights through a dialogue with its own legacy? Can Muslims, in other words, coexist with modernity without renouncing, or drastically modifying, their own tradition? Whatever the answer, it cannot be gainsaid that no future theory of Islamic politics may ignore modernity's 'discoveries' and treat our intellectual geography as if the 'new world' does not exist at all.
Immanentization of Political Consciousness
Modernism cannot be understood other than as a rejection of the classical answer to the political problem. Thus, whereas the goal of political life for all classical political philosophers is virtue, and the order most conducive to virtue is the aristocratic republic, the modern position is to deem the classical solution as 'unrealistic'(19). Indeed, there is a general turn away from transcendentalism to immanentism, from normativism to positivism and from idealism to historicism, all in the name of realism. Obviously, we are dealing with a new conception of 'reality' in modern political philosophy. The modern march away from theocracy to secularism is also a part of this new consciousness. The architect of modern political realism is no other than Machiavelli(20).
In Machiavelli we encounter the first theorist of the modern secular state. He was the political genius par excellence who understood the nature of the new power - 'a body politic that had been created by force and was to be maintained by force' - that has become a permanent feature of our human reality. Machiavelli may justifiably be characterized 'the founder of a new science of politics - the great constructive thinker whose conceptions and theories revolutionized the modern world and shook the social order to its foundations.'(21). For better or worse, Machiavelli has left us a lasting legacy and the modern state and state-system have largely accepted the insights elicited by him about the nature of political power and the art of statecraft. To this extent, the political order of our world is 'Machiavellian'.
Machiavelli has left us a monumental legacy and given us the two basically irreconcilable Machiavellian legends: the legend of love and the legend of hate. More than three thousand studies commenting on his political views have been listed by assiduous bibliographers. Concerning the interpretation of his major works, The Prince and The Discourses, over a score major theories and a host of subsidiary views and glosses have been put forward. Despite all this, there is a startling degree of disagreement on the basic political attitude of Machiavelli or on the central thesis of his notorious tract, The Prince. 'Even now', notes a modern critic, 'after the book (The Prince) has been approached from every angle, after it has been discussed by philosophers, by historians, by politicians and sociologists, its secret has not yet been completely revealed. From one century to another, almost from one generation to another, we find not only a change but a complete reversal in the judgements about The Prince. The same thing holds for the author of the book. Confused by party of love and party of hatred the portrait of Machiavelli in history has varied; and it is extremely difficult to recognize behind all these variations the true face of the man and the theme of the book.'(22). The reasons for this baffling divergence of opinion must lie, insinuates one of the most influential interpreters of the Machiavellian text, in 'The originality of Machiavelli'.(23).
No doubt, The Prince is a profoundly shocking book. There is obviously something everlastingly disquieting about what Machiavelli said or implied there. After all, what other opinions can we have about a work which teaches lessons like these: the exemplary prince ought to terminate the family of rulers whose territories he wishes to possess; the prince ought to murder his rivals rather than to confiscate their property; that men forget the murder of their fathers sooner than they forget the loss of their property; the ruler should be stingy with his property but generous with that of the others, and the like! One would have to admit that its author is utterly and thoroughly evil. Little wonder, this has been the standard judgement on Machiavelli.
Against Machiavelli's excommunication from the synod of moral thinkers, however, stands his canonization as a saint of political morality by German idealists and Marxist materialists. For Herder, for instance, Machiavelli was no traitor to the moral cause but an honest and upright man, 'a marvelous mirror of his age' who faithfully described what others did not admit or recognize. For Hegel, The Prince was not a general treatise of politics but a specific response to the Italian situation and, indeed, a masterpiece of political intuition and humanistic morality. 'One has to read the Prince', wrote Hegel, 'taking into consideration the history of the centuries preceding Machiavelli and the contemporary history of Italy, and then this book is not only justified, but it will appear as a highly magnificent and true conception of a genuine political genius of the greatest and noblest mind.'(24). For Fichte, Machiavelli is a man of deep human insight into the real historical forces that mould men and fashion their morality; a judgement that, by and large, has stood the test of time.
Indeed, the modern judgement on Machiavelli is quite close to Fichte's assessment of him as a robust and uncompromising 'realist'. Primarily, Machiavelli nowadays is viewed as the surgeon of political science who drove the medicine-men of scholastic utopianism out of the sanatorium of historical thought. It is because of the modern, 'this-worldly', disposition of his thought that both Marx and Engels, indeed Marxists in general, are favourably inclined towards him. Marx is not averse to calling The History of Florence a 'masterpiece' and Engels regards Machiavelli as 'one of the giants of Enlightenment'. The overall Marxian consensus is that this controversial Renaissance thinker had prematurely freed himself from the chains of petit-bourgeois world-outlook, even if the current Soviet attitude towards him remains ambivalent. The most determined Marxian attempt at the exoneration of Machiavelli's honour, however, is by his compatriot Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci not only wrote an updated version of Machiavelli's celebrated treatise, calling it The Modern Prince, but he also assigned to his notorious countryman the role of an intellectual saviour, indeed a prophet of political liberation before Marx. 'Machiavelli', claimed Gramsci, 'intended to give political education to "those who do not know", not a negative political education of hatred for tyrants but a positive education of those who must recognize certain necessary means, even if those of tyrants, because they want certain ends.'(25).
Within these two opposite ends of the Machiavellian spectrum, viz. the strictly moral and Christian and the pre-eminently utilitarian and political, may be located a host of other opinions and judgements. From the liberal vantage-point, the common view of the 'Machiavellian dilemma' is that the Machiavellian insight into the art of statecraft produced a divorce of the province of politics from that of ethics and thereby made political science conscious of an irreconcilable moral dilemma it had previously only faintly suspected. The most eloquent and disturbing expression of this sentiment, however, is by the great German historian Meinecke. Meinecke `Machiavelli's doctrine', wrote Meinecke, `was a sword thrust in the body politic of Western humanity, causing it to cry out and struggle against itself.'(26).
This brief survey ought to sufficiently impress upon the Muslim political thinker about the necessity of familiarizing him/herself with the Machiavellian legacy and its consequences for the theory and practice of politics in our times. Needless to say, the problem of politics in a 'post-Machiavellian' world cannot be dealt with in all its ideational richness in a brief essay of this kind. Hence, our treatment of Machiavelli's political thought will pay special attention to the problem of historical order, and to that of immanentist metaphysics, which, in our opinion, has greatest bearing on the problem of politics in Islam.
Notwithstanding its robust sense of realism and its desperate urge to fix its gaze at 'how one actually does live' rather than 'how one should live', Machiavelli's thought, like all human cognition itself, has its givens and its goals. It is these invisible moorings as it were that impart Machiavellianism its normative character, even if it legitimizes itself in the name of realism. Some of the underlying assumptions of Machiavelli's political philosophy, for instance, may be presented as: Men need order in their social and collective lives and only the State can provide that order. The State, therefore, must be strong and be able to use force for the maintenance of public order. Politics is the technique and art of government and it can be learnt by studying history and by looking at the world realistically.
So far, we would have to agree, there's nothing in the Machiavellian political theory which would make it unacceptable to pre-moderns, viz., the Aristotlians, the later Stoics, perhaps even some Muslims as well. All of them would have willing endorsed this as a reasonable description of the political realm. However, from here onwards, there is a switch in the Machiavellian argument and he abandons an apparently descriptive stance in favour of a tacitly normative one. For, claims Machiavelli, the reason why states and statesmen are led to doom is because they stick to a moral code which does not apply to the real world of evil and vicious men. Accepting this putative incompatibility of the norms of statecraft and those of individual morality as absolute and final, Machiavelli then pleads that statesmen ought to abandon the impracticable norms of Christian ethics in politics and practise statecraft as an autonomous art.
Religion has to be banished from politics not because it teaches morality but because it teaches a wrong kind of morality, the kind that does not enhance the power of the state. To Machiavelli, the alternatives posed by the problem of Church and State - religious rule over secular realm - was inescapably this: 'either the public realm corrupted the religious body and thereby became itself corrupt, or the religious body remained corrupt and destroyed the public realm altogether.'(27). Thus, Machiavelli sees politics as a battle, as a constant struggle for power: all politics, ultimately for him, is power-politics. Little wonder, he has been regarded as the arch theorist of Realpolitik.
Machiavelli's disturbing insight into the nature of politics, it is generally accepted, is also an insight about the nature of man. However, the question about the 'nature of man' is one of those seminal and primordial questions that cannot be settled even with regard to the availability of 'inconvertible empirical evidence' because it belong to the Ought of man's ideal world and not to the Is of his existential reality. Little wonder that a modern philosopher concedes that the problem of man 'is no less a theological question than the question about the nature of God; both can be settled only within the framework of a divinely revealed answer.'(28). If so, the Machiavellian 'insight' about the nature of man is at heart a theological response to the problem of man's existence. And contrary to the commonly accepted view, it is not humanistic but Christian. Indeed, Machiavelli's contemptuous view of man as inherently evil is uncompromisingly and incontrovertibly Christian. Hence, the moral problem which Machiavellian political theory raises with such poignancy falls squarely within the province of Christian ethics.
Machiavellianism therefore is not a central moral issue affecting the whole of humanity but is a historic legacy of the Christian-pagan tension within the civilization of Europe. For, what Machiavelli unearthed by his political philosophy was not any universal incompatibility of 'ethics' and 'politics', but a specific impasse created by the 'other-worldly' demands of Christian conscience. He merely showed that if morals relate to human conduct, and if men by nature are social, then Christianity cannot supply the basis of any normal social existence. Christianity, in other words, is unable to respond to the problem of order in history! Little wonder that, having failed to discover any viable formula of political order within the ethos of Christianity, Western civilization had to embark on the road to secularism and proclaim the separation of Church and State.
An even more distressing reading of Machiavelli is by Isiah Berlin who claims that what Machiavelli discovered was far more disturbing than any inability of Christianity to supply a pragmatic ethics for the state-principle. For Machiavelli disclosed that all ultimate values are not necessarily compatible with each other. More than that, the problem of the incompatibility of values rests not on material and practical difficulties but on conceptual and philosophical grounds. Not only is it possible that there may be more than one set of ultimate values but there are no rational criteria by which to arbitrate them when these come into collision! Berlin continues to reason: 'If what Machiavelli believed is true, this undermines one major assumption of western thought: namely that somewhere in the past or the future, in this world or the next, in the church or the laboratory, in the speculation of the metaphysician or the findings of the social scientist, or in the uncorrupted heart of the simple good man, there is to be found the final solution of the question of how men should live. If this is false (and more than one equally valid answer to the question can be returned, then it is false) the idea of the sole, true, objective, universal human ideal crumbles.'(29). Machiavellian sword, it would seem, is double-edged: it cuts through both the other-worldly morality of Christianity and the this-worldly political Utopia of humanism!
However, even if this were the ultimate implication of the Machiavellian 'discovery', even then, it may be argued, Islamic Reason is not confronted with an 'insoluble' problem, nor is Muslim conscience humbled into self-denial. For the claim about the ability of man's intellect to arrive at the ultimate truth, at a final solution - what an unfortunate choice of words - is a claim of humanism, not of Islam. Machiavellian insight represents the nemesis of the Utopia of politics and not of the eschatological vision of religious faith. Rather than conceiving Machiavellian raison d'état as a moral antithesis of its truth, as does Christianity, Islam subordinates it to the revelatory imperative(30). Islam, everyone agrees, does not renounce the world. But it is equally imperative to bear in mind that it does not absolutize it either, as does the other great philosopher of modernity - Hegel |
