<\/p>\n
Shortly after Osama bin Laden was killed by American SEALs in Pakistan, Jonathan Haidt published an opinion in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0entitled, \u201cWhy We Celebrate a Killing.\u201d1<\/u>\u00a0<\/sup>Professor Haidt notes there that, although most Americans agreed that bin Laden\u2019s demise was \u201ca good thing,\u201d many were disturbed by the public \u201crevelry\u201d that followed. Wasn\u2019t the spectacle \u201ca celebration of death and vengeance, not justice\u201d?, he asks. Didn\u2019t it \u201clower us to \u2018their\u2019 level?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d he answers.<\/p>\n Haidt\u2019s chief argument for his conclusion is taken from evolutionary psychology: morality at \u201cthe individual level\u201d is not to be confused with what can and should obtain within \u201cgroups and nations.\u201d When individuals compete, natural selection rewards \u201cselfishness,\u201d Haidt informs us, but when collectives compete, that same selection favors groups that can engender internal \u201cunity\u201d and \u201ccooperation.\u201d Bees are adept at this, and human beings are also \u201cable to become, briefly, hive creatures.\u201d Appealing to Emile Durkheim, Haidt maintains that \u201ccollective emotions\u201d can \u201cdissolve the petty, small-minded self\u201d and \u201cmake people feel that they are part of something larger and more important than themselves.\u201d Such \u201ccollective effervescence\u201d (Durkheim\u2019s phrase) was what was going on after bin Laden was killed, according to Haidt, and it was \u201cgood and healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n Haidt is well-aware that some consider such solidarity an ugly and menacing form of tribalism. He explicitly asks, \u201cWhen celebrants chanted \u2018U.S.A.! U.S.A.!\u2019 and sang \u2018God Bless America,\u2019 were they not displaying a hateful \u2018us versus them\u2019 mindset?\u201d His emphatic answer: \u201cOnce again, no.\u201d We must draw another distinction, he tells us. \u201cNationalism\u201d correlates with racism and hostility to other countries, but \u201cpatriotism\u201d reflects a proper \u201clove of one\u2019s own country.\u201d Nationalism fosters a quest to be \u201cdominant\u201d over others, while patriotism can be an \u201caltruistic\u201d bondedness with one\u2019s fellow citizens. Once one recognizes this difference, one can appreciate the \u201ccommunal joy\u201d that followed, at least temporarily, America\u2019s \u201cbravely and decisively\u201d achieving its goal of terminating a murderous threat. Thus far, Haidt.<\/p>\n In the balance of this essay, I explain why I consider Professor Haidt\u2019s thought-provoking piece gravely misleading. My critique puts Haidt in conversation with Simone Weil, drawing extensively on E. Jane Doering\u2019s\u00a0Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force<\/em>. In this way, I hope both to think through a crucial social issue and to offer a review of an important new book.<\/p>\n As I have suggested, Haidt makes much of the Durkheimian notion that the human species is\u00a0Homo duplex<\/em>, \u201ctwo-level man.\u201d Individuals need to forge personally satisfying relationships with other individuals, but they also need to be bound to larger and more anonymous moral communities. With religion increasingly waning across Europe, Durkheim looked to \u201ccollective emotions\u201d for the natural glue requisite to meet the second challenge. Simone Weil\u2019s analysis of \u201cforce\u201d and its genesis in human nature and impact on human society leads her to a starkly contrasting position. She can be read as emphasizing that our species is, by inclination,\u00a0Homo duplicitas<\/em>, \u201cmendacious man.\u201d We do not merely manage our instincts at two levels; left to our own devices, we are inclined to dishonesty and manipulation in all dimensions of life. We are often self-deceived and other-duping, denying common vulnerabilities and afflicting others by turning them into objects to be exploited for our own egotistical or corporate purposes. Rather than extolling group sentiments as the solution to social fragmentation, Weil typically associates them with the mass proclivity to peck the weak to death. For her, \u201cthe collective is the object of all idolatry,\u201d and she calls it \u201cthe Great Beast.\u201d2<\/u><\/sup><\/p>\n For Weil, no natural inclination is sufficient to overcome the human cycle of domination and destruction, which she associates with \u201cgravity.\u201d We are in need of a \u201csupernatural justice\u201d3<\/u><\/sup>\u00a0in which the strong treat the weak as equals, which she associates with \u201cgrace.\u201d Such grace is not explicable on evolutionary or any other temporal grounds. As she avers, \u201cthe (balanced) division of power between the strong and the weak is only possible through the intervention of a supernatural factor.\u201d4<\/u><\/sup><\/p>\n In addition to\u00a0Waiting for God<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Gravity and Grace<\/em>, the three key Weilan texts in this regard are \u201cThe Iliad or the Poem of Force,\u201d \u201cReflections on War,\u201d and \u201cSome Reflections on the Origins of Hitlerism.\u201d The first of the three essays was published during Weil\u2019s lifetime and is much discussed, while the latter two are in her collected works and remain comparatively unknown. Doering discusses all three with immense wisdom and erudition, often translating crucial passages herself. As Doering notes, Weil \u201cwrote the article [on Hitlerism] precisely because she knew that it was human nature to admire the powerful and to want to share in collective glory\u201d (90). We tend to admire technological efficiency and military might and to forget that such prowess has little or nothing to do with moral rightness.<\/p>\n Like Haidt, Weil recognizes the importance of shared history and communal cohesion, what she calls \u201cthe need for roots.\u201d5<\/u><\/sup>\u00a0Her list of \u201cthe needs of the soul\u201d includes \u201ccollective property\u201d and \u201cdisciplined participation in a common task.\u201d6<\/u>\u00a0<\/sup>Weil also appreciates the occasional necessity of using violent force to protect innocent life and preserve essential values. (Doering carefully documents how the Frenchwoman came to reject pacifism.) Yet Weil is far less sanguine than Haidt that one can draw a sharp contrast between patriotism and nationalism, or between just and limited war (including assassination) and unjust and self-perpetuating force (including mob frenzy). She realizes that we all wish to lose ourselves in a large, impersonal reality, but when this reality is a temporal institution or assembly, it inevitably becomes idolatrous. For Weil, nothing finite\u2014neither our own passions nor the nation state\u2014can satisfy the human desire for transcendence. \u201cAt the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.\u201d7<\/u><\/sup>\u00a0\u201cMan would like to be an egoist and cannot.\u201d8<\/u><\/sup>To repeat, Weil grants the importance of temporal traditions and social loyalties, but these must be constantly scrutinized and balanced. Above all, they are not be absolutized. As Doering observes, \u201c[Weil] lamented that because of the contemporary loss of traditional contexts for one\u2019s obedience\u2014the family, the workplace, and the local culture\u2014unconditional allegiance gravitated by default to the state, which in the long run diminished individual freedom\u201d (93).<\/p>\n There is no need to deny a\u00a0theoretical<\/em>\u00a0difference between individuals and groups or between patriotism and nationalism, but these distinctions are blurred in\u00a0reality<\/em>. Human thought and action are often, if not always, practically ambiguous. As Weil constantly reminds us, we are personally and politically moved by both love and force. No doubt, some of the revelers after bin Ladin\u2019s killing were motivated largely by patriotism and a sense of justice; equally indubitably, however, some were fully glorying in death and vengeance. The majority\u2014and I would include myself in this\u2014oscillated somewhere in between. Such is the ambivalence of the human heart: it is pulled simultaneously toward civility and cruelty, compassion and\u00a0Schadenfreude<\/em>. When we are not honest about and on guard against this, abomination happens. For example, some of those fighting for Nazi Germany in WWII were animated by love of country and a sense of duty, while others were committed anti-Semites who affirmed the ongoing genocide. But the majority of Germans were too oblivious to their own half-hearted complicity in hatred to check the slaughter.9<\/u><\/sup>\u00a0If Weil is right, this double-mindedness is a universal human disposition.<\/p>\n This is not to say that Haidt is obtuse or has fascist sympathies. He is an impressive scholar and a civilized man, but he is not a civilizing influence. He is too unwary of mass humanity to be a wise, much less a prophetic, voice. He does not take seriously enough the tendency of violence to contaminate even those who are seeking justice, nor does he sufficiently sympathize with the (possibly unintended) victims of violence. I do not contest the need to \u201cgo after Osama\u201d; condign punishment and deterrence of future terrorism have their place. Weil would insist, however, that, at best, bin Laden\u2019s death was a necessary means to the combating of brutality, rather than a good end to be celebrated. There is a fine line indeed between retributive justice and vengeful will to power. (This is especially true in the era of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, where suspected terrorists were humiliated and denied basic human rights.) But Haidt blurs this line. Moreover, he does not even mention the fact that, in addition to bin Laden, the American raiders killed bin Laden\u2019s son, bin Laden\u2019s courier, a male relative of the courier, and the courier\u2019s wife. One can debate whether the unarmed bin Laden should have been shot on sight or captured and brought to trial\u2014I would have favored the latter, as does traditional just war theory\u2014but the killing of noncombatants like the son and wife is a different matter. If intentional, such killing is always to be forbidden; if unintentional, it is always to be lamented. When we Americans figuratively danced on Osama\u2019s watery grave, we inured ourselves to the \u201ccollateral deaths.\u201d And even bin Laden himself, profoundly guilty and dangerous though he was, still bore the image of God. To deny or overlook this fact risks pandering to injustice.<\/p>\n Again, I do not consider Professor Haidt to be personally unjust, but, to use Weil\u2019s term, he \u201c(mis-)reads\u201d our moral situation in a way that encourages others to be inattentive to evil. By Weil\u2019s lights, he is too optimistic about naturalism and too pessimistic about supernaturalism. Evolution-as-natural-selection is his explanatory bottom line, and this rules out any reference to the divine. Competitive advantage, for individuals and groups, is the engine that drives history and limits moral ideals. Thus Haidt is insouciant about the inclination of groups to annihilate outsiders and anesthetize insiders, even as he seems skeptical of a self-sacrificial love for all human beings. In short, Haidt over-estimates what Weil calls \u201cgravity\u201d and under-estimates what she calls \u201cgrace.\u201d He seems blind to both the Great Beast and God.<\/p>\n This is not to say that only a theist, much less only an explicit Christian, can be a just social critic. But any cultural commentator who encourages us to celebrate a killing based on natural selection and group solidarity owes it to his readers to explain how and where he or she draws the limits of proper force. It is a great merit of Doering\u2019s volume that she helps us see the hazards of a fascination with force and a denial of transcendence. Via a careful reading of both published and posthumous essays, Doering highlights Weil\u2019s wariness of the temptation to dehumanize others. Haidt, on the other hand, allows us to lower our guard. He is silent where he should speak up, and he endorses raucous display where we should be silent.<\/p>\n As the sole remaining super-power, America stands in roughly the same relation to the world as Rome did after it had vanquished Carthage. If America is to conduct a just war against terror, if it is to have a post-Cold War conscience that prevents another imperial fall, Darwin and Durkheim are not enough. We need Doering\u2019s Weil. Simone Weil does not despair over humanity\u2019s fallibility but turns our attention to God\u2019s perfection, while Jonathan Haidt can only encourage us to buzz with the hive. The latter is imprudent, even dangerous, but above all it reflects an inadequate view of reality. Or so we Weilans believe, and so E. Jane Doering\u2019s readers can now more readily understand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Download PDF:\u00a0RV Jackson Simone Weil\u00a0 \u00a0By E.\u00a0Jane Doering Simone Weil and the Specter of Self-Perpetuating Force Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. 296 pages. $30.00. Shortly after Osama bin Laden was killed by American SEALs in<\/p>\n
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