[FRA:] Review-a-Day: The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought Since September 11 [FWD]

[Ralph Dumain]

Review-a-Day

Wednesday, November 7, 2007
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San Francisco Chronicle

The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought Since September 11
by John Brenkman

John Brenkman on our Post-9/11 Plight
A Review by Michael Roth

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What counts as "political thought" in the six 
years since 9/11? John Brenkman addresses this 
question in The Cultural Contradictions of 
Democracy by turning to the political language 
used by the government, its opponents, 
philosophers and policymakers. He is interested 
in how the United States developed a rhetoric to 
legitimate its "war on terror," particularly its 
invasion of Iraq. Not surprisingly, he finds 
contradictions and incoherence almost everywhere.

He is also interested in the political language 
of those who deplore the Bush administration's 
actions. Here he finds thinkers attempting not 
only to undermine the arguments of the American 
regime but also attempting to secure the 
theoretical status of their own alternative 
ideas. Brenkman sees that the critics, too, often 
fall into contradiction and incoherence.

Philosophers and policy experts often look for 
answers by drawing strong conceptual oppositions. 
The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy, 
however, shows the shared dilemmas of writers who 
may themselves think they have nothing in common. 
This book-length essay tries to make sense of 
these philosophical and political contradictions 
by seeing them as necessary tensions in our 
attempts to reconcile competing values. For 
Brenkman, the contradictions of our political 
discourse reveal aspirations for freedom and 
democracy, for liberty and community. When we 
strive for freedom, we must learn to live with contradictions.

In the first sections of his book, Brenkman runs 
through some of the ugly hubris and ignorance 
that lay behind our government's decision-making 
after the attack on the United States in 
September 2001. This is depressingly familiar, 
but the author covers the subject from the 
perspective of a political philosopher interested 
in the tension between policy based on realism 
(associated here with Thomas Hobbes), and policy 
based on principle (associated here with Immanuel Kant).

Brenkman is a helpful guide because he is not 
trying to have his reader choose philosophical 
sides. Instead, he wants to show that the tension 
between realism and principle is necessary and 
that it can be a tragic mistake to opt for one 
these poles. The author reminds us that Hobbes 
and Kant already knew this, even if some of their 
contemporary self-described followers forget this lesson.

Brenkman is that rare academic who can write well 
about both contemporary political practice and 
theory. His description of how the Bush 
administration was seized by power is insightful, 
and his critique of contemporary theory star 
Giorgio Agamben is concise and compelling. Like 
many theoretical radicals, Agamben seems to 
justify a refusal of modern politics by 
identifying its foundation with violent 
irrationalism. If the modern state is rooted in 
arbitrary violence, then why talk about 
principles at all? Brenkman exposes the errors of 
building a general theory on "states of 
exception," and thus opens a possibility for 
thinking in a nuanced way about the possibilities 
of legitimation in modern politics.

Legitimation is the key issue troubling political 
thought since Sept. 11. Democratic regimes must 
find a way to articulate reasons for their 
actions that can be persuasive to diverse 
constituencies, people who may not share all of 
our assumptions. The American decision to go to 
war without more general international support 
was an example of the refusal to articulate 
principles, at least ones that would be 
persuasive beyond our borders. Might was supposed 
to make right. It is not only the dismal failure 
of American power that leads Brenkman to question this strategy.

"Bush's bad reasons were more than a drawback of 
the intervention," he writes. "For when a 
democracy takes up arms, the failure to 
articulate the reasons, whether through inability 
or, worse yet, refusal, destroys the validity of 
the war itself." Many readers of this newspaper 
may have never doubted that the war was invalid, 
but Brenkman also believes that the United States 
and Europe are indeed faced with an enormous 
military, political and cultural challenge. He 
calls this Islam's geo-civil war, a global 
conflict to which the West must respond. The West 
must face up to this war, and we can't pretend it 
doesn't exist as a military, political and economic challenge.

Cultural Contradictions deals insightfully with 
some of our most pressing geopolitical issues 
through the lens of political philosophy. 
Brenkman is more interested in Hobbes and Kant, 
Agamben and Carl Schmitt, Jürgen Habermas and 
Peter Sloterdijk, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah 
Arendt, than he is in George Bush and Osama bin 
Laden. His philosophical considerations tease out 
the common concerns between opposed pairs of 
thinkers because he is trying to open new modes 
of political thinking that go beyond the current 
infatuation with intellectual smackdowns.

"Democratic commitments always express themselves 
in a universal principle," Brenkman writes, "yet 
no single universal principle unequivocally expresses democratic commitment."

He concludes that modern democracies cannot 
abandon their search for legitimate universal 
principles, but neither should they ever be 
certain to have found them. He calls this the 
"ordeal of universalism," by which he means an 
open-ended political striving for shared criteria 
of judgment leavened by the realization that our 
striving always takes place within our particular 
national, religious and historical contexts. We 
are situated in specific circumstances, but we 
don't have to remain anchored to some core 
identity, creed or history. As modern members of 
democracies, we are permitted to hope for a 
cosmopolitan, peaceful future, even as we learn 
to face the particular challenges of our 
crisis-filled present. Living with productive 
contradictions is the condition of political thought after 9/11.

Michael Roth is a historian and president of Wesleyan University.
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