[D66] Breaking the Social Contract

[Antid Oto]

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/breaking-the-social-contract/

Breaking the Social Contract

Pelin Tan: In Infinitely Demanding, you describe a distinction between 
active and passive nihilism. As I understand it, this description has a 
theological basis. You offer Al-Qaeda as an example of active nihilism. 
However, I have my doubts about this distinction. I think active 
nihilism cannot be explained in terms of local and specific conditions, 
since its meaning is based in Western epistemology. Do you think Western 
thought is capable of explaining oppositional radical movements such as 
Al-Qaeda by way of nihilism?

Simon Critchley: It is a question of the political uses of religion, or 
civil religion in the way Rousseau talks about it in The Social 
Contract. We could think of religion as ideology. My view is that things 
like class, ethnicity, and the rest are hugely important, but the 
question concerns how a polity such as a state acquires legitimacy and 
is able to motivate citizens to act on its behalf. And the answer to 
that question requires some understanding of civil religion. In The 
Social Contract Rousseau comes to the conclusion that politics requires 
a quasi-religious apparatus of rituals, including flags, national 
anthem, pledges of religions, and all the rest. Turkey is a very good 
example. Ataturk basically tried to invent a kind of civil religion 
using nationalism. So for me, all political units, especially states, 
justify themselves and try to motivate citizens by appealing to a form 
of civil religion. Here in the US, that works through the Constitution 
and the way constitutionality begins with an appeal to God—”In God We 
Trust.” And this becomes the basis for a political fight, the question 
of how the civic creed of the United States is to be interpreted. Does 
it justify a Republican or Democratic governmental order? Analogous 
situations exist elsewhere. The French elections took place last Sunday 
and France also has a civil religion, even though the country is 
purportedly secular.

PT: What is your opinion on the relationship between secularism and 
liberal democracy nowadays?

SC: I think that all political units make an appeal to something like 
the sacred, some conception of the sacred. And to me, the history of 
political forms is a history of different forms of sacralization — from 
Mesopotamia through Sumeria to the ancient world, and to where we are 
now. So in my opinion the secular is another expression of the sacral. 
Of course, secularists usually insist that God has no role in the 
political realm, that we cannot appeal to God. This is usually based on 
some progressivist idea of history, which is also religious. Secularism 
takes over the providential narrative of Christianity, changes some key 
elements, and comes up with the idea that liberal democracy is the 
completion of history. The idea is that one is either on the right side 
of history or the wrong side of history—as Saint Obama has said. So for 
me, secularism is another appeal to something sacred, the sacredness of 
human rights, the universality of human rights. This is ideology. I come 
out of a Gramsician leftist tradition that took a very particular form 
in England in the ‘70s and ‘80s, where thinkers like Ernesto Laclau, who 
was very influential for many years, tried to follow Gramsci’s 
insistence that ideology is important. Ideology isn’t just 
superstructure. Marxism is about socioeconomic conditions, class, and 
all the rest—of course that’s true. But ideology, and therefore 
politics, is that field where social groups are articulated. So for me, 
ideology has huge importance. And it’s in relation to that notion of 
ideology that religion takes on this particular importance. So it is not 
religion, ethnicity, or class inequalities that are important, but the 
way in which the articulation of each of those terms also appeals to 
notions of the sacred.


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The interview took place in 4 May 2012, Simon Critchley ’s house, 
Brooklyn/NY.