Organising the Chapter on Politics (2) — Monadic Man versus Modular Man

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Continued from here.

Monadic Man versus Modular Man

So, for the time being, I think, I shall start off and indeed enframe the chapter on the role of politics in a free society with the leitmotif of individualism and modular man (see also here for a crisp definition). Actually, I may further expand on the difference between monadic man and modular man in a sequel to the series on Misunderstanding Liberalism, hoping to demonstrate that in later exegeses of classical liberalism, individualism morphs into an ideal of independence from society, quite contrary to its original conception as being embedded in social relationships. 

For as classical liberalism actually presents the matter, rather than being somehow magically conjured into a position of self-subsistence, in becoming an individual, man is not at all disencumbered from strong social influences and new forms of communal ties that condition the terms of his relative autonomy. 

Individualism changes the nature of social relations but it does not mark man's departure from social dependencies into a new realm of self-sufficiency. This cannot be stressed enough. 

Once you put your finger on it, it stands to reason that man is always highly dependent on his social environment, whether he is a slave in ancient Greece or a self-made man of the 19th century or a modern bohemian. 

However, the liberal mystifier of individualism tries to persuade its audiences to follow him into a fantasy world of personal self-containment. This exaggerated notion of autonomy gives rise to a similarly stylised, putatively natural opposition between the individual and the state, from which false premise it is not illogical to deduce that politics — which is inevitably productive of collective decisions overriding personal independence — and personal liberty are at odds with one another. 

Hence the modern liberal's aversion to politics. 

Different Readings of Individualism - Monadic Rights and Relational Rights

Corresponding to this asocial reading of individualism is a monadic interpretation of rights and the law that contrasts with a belief in the relational nature of rights and the law. Viewed through monadic lenses, rights and the law are rooted in the individual, they are possessions of her. If no one interferes with these basic possessions of the individual, people will be at peace and the overall social outcome will be satisfactory. The individual is a world unto itself. Rights — as personal endowments of the individual — are of an absolute nature. 

In reality, of course, rights are relational, that is, they are defined and enforced by human interaction, i.e. through the social relations in which people encounter one another. They are relative (though not a matter of relativism) and relational, depending on how the interactions between people transpire. 

That, of course, implies a conclusion that dogmatic liberals of later generations abhor: liberty is negotiable, changeable, subject to alterations in the relative political, economic, cultural, and ideological power among competing claimants to the meaning of freedom. But that, I would have thought, one should expect and indeed welcome in a society of free and equal agents, in a society capable of accommodating the diverse and changing needs of human beings imbued with initiative and autonomous purposes — rather than a regime where liberty is anchored once and for all in a rigid set of absolute rights vested in the individual.

Sure enough, we will grant the individual a number of virtually absolute rights; however, their stability is not an end in itself, but a vehicle that is supposed to be instrumental in ensuring greater mutual adaptability among free and equal agents. You do not want some people to be protected against unwarranted, arbitrarily inflicted and unprosecuted bodily harm while exempting others from such safety. There are many other such rather absolute rights for the individual to enjoy; but they serve the purpose, among other things, to make fair and rational social negotiations among free and equal individuals on what it means to be free and equal feasible and productive, and they are subject to alterations, conditions, and revised interpretations arrived at by these very negotiations that target the meaning of freedom at a given place, time, and set of circumstances. See more on this issue here.

Rights and other determinations of the law produce a vast and complex network of relationships between legal implications and personal consequences. If these relationships are supposed to improve the lot of free and equal human beings the latter must be allowed to participate actively in discussing, defining, and changing these relationships, a large part of which task falls to what I call politics in a narrow sense.

But I am procrastinating. I should be much farther ahead with my Gliederung, which I shall tackle in the sequel to this post.

Continued here.