Crisis of Global Capitalism<\/a>, 29) that societies tend to be mixed \u2013 combining a necessary hierarchical element with elements of democracy and oligarchy.<\/p>\nHe begins from the Augustinian premise that \u201csort of human association defined by \u2018the object of its love.\u2019 This permits us to see (against the entire normal run of modern political theory) that any human association (including in reality the state and market) is always at once hierarchical and democratic, involving what antiquity referred to as a \u2018mixed constitution\u2019 of the one, the few, and the many. For initially an association is in some historical fashion \u2018set up\u2019 by the single force of one person or more likely many in combination. This single force must then hierarchically instill the principles of the logic of the operation of the association through a \u2018teaching process\u2019 that is the work of those \u2018few\u2019 (however many they may be in reality) who understand this logic. But right from the outset, the association can only exist at all if it enjoys the \u2018democratic\u2019 consent, however tacit or explicit, of the many who compose it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But social bodies are mixed in another sense. A mythic-religious element has to be brought in: \u201cAn association must \u2018justify\u2019 its existence in order that it have some principles of \u2018just ordering\u2019 which it can continuously effect. And most naturally and fundamentally, this justification must be in terms of how the association is supposed to reflect some \u2018given\u2019 cosmic order that precedes its composition.\u201d<\/p>\n
In sum: \u201cany human association naturally has a hierarchic component insofar as it continuously remembers and repeats its origins. It has a democratic component insofar as it continuously assents to these origins, thereby perhaps also continuously modifying its own constitution. Together, these two components compose the association as \u2018traditioned,\u2019 as a passageway of \u2018handing over\u2019 through time. And any association also has a third, religious component insofar as it must \u2018justify itself\u2019 in order to achieve either initial establishment or continuing consent.\u201d<\/p>\n
On this point, liberal order is a historical outlier, a society that attempts \u201cto evade this mode of justification and discover one that is purely immanent either to mere material nature or to the association itself.\u201d Liberalism tells stories of democratic social contracts, but these only serve to conceal the hierarchical<\/em> reality\u00a0of the origin of all liberal orders.<\/p>\nContrary to the common complaint, religion isn\u2019t mystifying. Liberalism is:\u00a0\u201cit cannot tell the story of its own origins. The price of refusing religious justification because one pretends to non-hierarchy and formally immanent self-constitution is always subscription to a secular myth\u201d (30).<\/p>\n
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John Milbank argues (Crisis of Global Capitalism, 29) that societies tend to be mixed \u2013 combining a necessary hierarchical element with elements of democracy and oligarchy. He begins from the Augustinian premise that \u201csort of human association defined by \u2018the object of its love.\u2019 This permits us to see (against the entire normal run of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":19683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,1075,1179,859],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liberalism","category-political-philosophy","category-political-theology","category-political-theory"],"yoast_head":"\n
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