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{"id":18523,"date":"2016-11-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=261"},"modified":"2016-11-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T00:00:00","slug":"natural-gessa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/11\/natural-gessa\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural gessa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I<\/span>n a critique of Locke\u2019s theory of consent (and more extreme varieties), Stephen RL Clark (Civil Peace and Sacred Order<\/em><\/a>) invokes the ancient Irish system of gessa<\/em> (s. geis<\/em>). These are obligations placed \u201cchiefly on great chieftains and warriors, to do or forbear, with the mythological sanction that a violation of gessa<\/em> will lead immediately to death, and the psychological that such violation precisely violates the individual\u2019s own sense of self-worth, courage, identity. A chief is known to be doomed if his weird leads him into situations where one geis<\/em> or other must be violated: he must refuse to share a meal with a chance-met companion\u2014which is forbidden to him\u2014or else eat the flesh of an animal that is forbidden him.\u201d Since identities \u201care discovered or created precisely in our acceptance of objective obligation,\u201d the violation of an obligation is a disturbance of identity (77\u20138). Gessa<\/em> are the Irish equivalent of South Pacific taboos.<\/p>\n

The theoretical payoff: \u201cWe grow up among such gessa<\/em>, such obligations, spells, and dares. So far from being a literal \u2018superstition,\u2019 something left over from a metaphysical or religious system that gave it sense, it is the geis<\/em> which gives birth to the system, or to many systems!\u201d It\u2019s impossible to \u201cjustify the everyday moral and legal practices of our society on the basis of the liberal intuition, the doctrine that we can only be obliged to obey those authorities that we have consented to obey or that we ourselves see present reason to obey\u201d (78).<\/p>\n

Clark realizes that he\u2019s slipping toward Filmer (Locke\u2019s great opponent) but he doesn\u2019t mind. He sees nothing absurd in Filmer\u2019s suggestion that \u201ckings, princes, and governors are in fact given reverence by virtue of their being presented as natural authorities of the same kind as parents or heroes, magical figures on whom our attention is focused quite apart from any choice of ours\u201d (79). Filmer, he thinks, is the better historian than Locke, since \u201cour \u2018natural state\u2019 was never an accidental congress of unobligated strangers who must somehow create for themselves the possibility of mutual trust and respect for law.\u201d Locke\u2019s examples are all \u201cgatherings of deracinated, exiled bandits, \u2018a handful of adventurers brought together by necessity,\u2019 and so lacking any sense of obedience to sacred law\u201d (80).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not where most of us start our lives: \u201cWhat is natural to us is to live in families, alliances, and clans where particular figures stand out as our authorities and are themselves laid under gessa<\/em> not of their own contrivance to take care of their subjects. If there were no such experienced obligations our obedience could only ever be a forced obedience, a laying down of arms for fear of the stronger sword. Political authority would always rest . . . simply with the most powerful group\u201d (80). It doesn\u2019t follow that these obligations are absolute or unlimited, but the limits are not determined by consent: \u201cthe limitations on princely or parental authority are themselves taboos, gessa<\/em>, obligations which do not rest on any explicit contract.\u201d Clark even thinks that Lockean liberalism is successful only because it borrows such obligations, only because it is founded on something other than consent. That Englishmen were able place limits on the power of kings showed that they had the power to lay a geis<\/em> on him or remind \u201chim of a geis<\/em> laid by a superior\u201d (80).<\/p>\n

Clark, like Paul Kahn, puts liberalism in its place by showing that liberalism cannot provide a liberal defense of its own foundations.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"