A radical ethos

Horizons

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 7-36

  Brackley, Dean ^a  

^a Central American University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84997553959     PISSN: 03609669     EISSN: 20508557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0360966900016716     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions (New York: Continuum, 1993), 13.
2. Naciones Unidas, “Integración social,” Nota descriptiva 3 (New York: United Nations, 1994)
3. and Naciones Unidas, “Hacia una sociedad para todos,” Documento de antecedentes 3 para la Cumbre Mundial sobre Desarrollo Social (New York: United Nations, 1994).
4. World Summit for Social Development, The Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action (New York: United Nations, 1995), 5.
5. The Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action.8.
6. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (New York: Crossroad, 1995).
7. Richard J. Bamet and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 16–17.
8. A pre-Copenhagen U.N. document summarized the global employment picture like this: “Of a total worldwide work force reaching 2.8 billion, about 30% are not productively employed, according to the International Labor Organization. These figures include more than 120 million unemployed persons and some 700 million underemployed persons. They constitute the bulk of the [extremelyl poor of the world, estimated at 1.1 billion persons” (Naciones Unidas, “El crecimiento sin empleo y el derecho al trabajo,” Documentos de antece-dentes para la Cumbre Mundial sobre Desarrollo Social [New York: Naciones Unidas, 1994], 1).
9. See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, trans, and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson, rev. ed. with a new introduction (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 21, 25, 56–57, 135–40.
10. Gutiérrez argues that Utopian imagination should be grounded in both practice and present reality, and should be rational. For a good example of such realistic-Utopian thinking, see Ignacio Ellacuría, “Utopia and Prophesy in Latin America” in John Hassett and Hugh Lacey, eds., Towards a Society that Serves Its People: The Intellectual Contribution of El Salvador's Murdered Jesuits (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press), 44–88.
11. The use of “utopia” in this sense follows Karl Mannheim, “The Utopian Mentality” in Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World/Harvest, n.d.; orig. German ed., 1929).For Mannheim a state of mind is Utopian when its incongruity with present reality inspires action to transform that reality. The idea has been much developed and refined, especially by philosopher E. Bloch.
12. Gerhard E. Lenski [Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966]) distinguishes among various forms of society which might be called “traditional,” for example, societies based on hunting and gathering, on simple or advanced horticulture or on agriculture. Because of the prevalence of the agricultural form in Latin America, I limit myself to describing that form here.
13. Héctor Pérez Brignoli, Breve historia centroamericana (Madrid: Alianza, 1985)
14. See the penetrating analysis of liberal individualism in C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
15. Macpherson stresses how the changes in outlook and practice depend on the transformation of human labor into a commodity. See also the outstanding analysis of contemporary individualism in the United States by Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).
16. Following Benjamin Constant and others, Isaiah Berlin has distinguished between “negative freedom” and “positive freedom,” that is, “freedom from” and “freedom for” (I. Berlin, “Dos conceptos de la libertad” in Libertad y necesidad en la historia, trans. Julio Bayón [Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1974], 133–182.
17. Compare John Paul II, Evangelium vitae [1995], no. 19). While liberal discourse gives absolute priority to liberty, it is obvious that the supreme economic value, capital, often eclipses liberty in practice.
18. Joe Holland and Peter Henriot, S.J., Social Analysis: Linking Faith and Justice, rev. and amplified ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1983), 36.
19. See Alasdair Maclntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
20. During the past twenty years, “communitarian” theorists like Michael J. Sandel have criticized rights-based “procedural” liberalism by stressing earlier communitarian strains in founding U.S. traditions and the difficult but necessary task of grounding and pursuing values in a pluralistic society. For a critical summary of the communitarian critique, see Christopher Lasch, “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 69 (1986): 60–76.
21. In a similar spirit, philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre has diagnosed the liberal roots of the values crisis and proposed a return to a virtue-based ethic. See Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
22. See John Paul II, Laborem exercens (1979), nos. 14–15
23. building upon John XXIII, Mater et magistra (1961), nos. 91–92;
24. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes (1965), no. 68; etc.
25. Local examples of a “new popular economy” are burgeoning in Latin America. Many stress the need to organize participants in the informal urban economy. See Aquiles Montoya, La nueva economía popular: una aproximación teórica (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1993);
26. Luis Razeto M., Economía popular de solidaridad (Santiago, Chile: Area Pastoral Social de la Conferencia Episcopal de Chile y Programa de Economia del Trabajo [PRT], 1990);
27. and Luis Razeto M., Economía de solidaridad y mer-cado democrático (Santiago, Chile: Programa de Economía del Trabajo y Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, 1988);
28. for a global strategy, see Jorge Casta$eda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin America Left after the Cold War (New York: Knopf, 1993).
29. In The Socialist Decision (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)
30. Paul Tillich criticized self-styled orthodox Marxists for failing to appreciate that the synthesis (to use Hegel's term) of historical dialectic retrieves and transforms the values of past social theses. Not long ago, Harry Boyte stressed the same point for the benefit of new left activists in the United States in his celebration of burgeoning community activism. See Harry Boyte, The Backyard Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980).
31. Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann [The Land [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977], chap. 11) has also criticized a type of biblical interpretation of history which so stresses rupture with the past that it fails to recognize that God also acts to conserve the good of the present and retrieve the lost good of the past, especially the land. Feminist theologians, too, have warned that liberation theology dare not stress liberation to the point of ignoring these themes. See, e.g., Rosemary Ruether, Sexism and God-talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1983), 70–71.
32. Pace Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, Summer 1989, pp. 3–18.
33. “Social and socio-economic life is certainly like a system of ‘connected vessels’ …” (John Paul II, Laborem exercens, no. 20).
34. Holland and Henriot [Social Analysis, 38) use the metaphor of “artistic creation” in this context.
35. Ellacuría, “Utopia and Prophesy in Latin America,” 60–61.
36. If Gil Bailie is right (see n. 5 above), it will become increasingly difficult for violence to bond people together. Governments are experiencing an irreversible legitimation crisis in the use of violence. If Max Weber is also right, this will constitute a radical crisis for the state as such; for Weber defines the state precisely as the organization capable of upholding its claim to a monopoly on the “legitimate” use of force to maintain order in a given territory (Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization [New York: Free Press, 1947], 154).
37. The Puebla Document, nos. 513, 521, refers to politics in this broad sense.
38. In the same spirit, Ignacio Ellacuría notes that “the social should be given more weight than the political” (“Utopia and Prophecy,” 79).
39. Barnet and Cavanagh [Global Dreams) argue that economic forces are relentlessly eroding the political influence of nation-states. On the other hand, space is expanding for activities of non-governmental organizations.
40. On the centrality of solidarity for our time, see John Paul II, Laborem exercens, no. 8
41. and, especially, John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, nos. 38–40.