Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Death and Politics

According to Jody Bottum the Hobbesian-Heideggerian focus on fear or anxiety in the face of one’s own death as the source of political life is a misinterpretation of human experience. The grief that comes with the death of others and "shared dead" are the true foundatons of human community, as well as the source of much of our killling. I actually don’t quite buy much of the article, but it is well worth discussing--maybe especially on Memorial Day.

Discussions - 2 Comments

We are dying the moment we are concieved.

This rejection of the dead is, in my opinion, the rejection of life in general for something that can never be achieved, which is immortality.

The last time I visited San Francisco, it cost $4 to get in over the bridges, and cost $1 to get out over the bridges. That, in my opinion, sums up it up ... reject the new for the status quo, which is ironic for a supposed liberal city as San Franscisco makes itself out to be.

Of course "society rests on the death of men" because every political community must be instituted and faces at one time or other an enemy that threatens its existence. This is an embarrassingly bad essay. All politics is for the living, even Abrahamic politics. It is for the living despite of death! Even Augustine knows this. Jody seems to know nothing about political philosophy. His argument on free will is incoherent. Is even the church really a burial society? Certainly Tocqueville's associations were not! Jody is amazingly erudite and sensitive but he is biting off more than he can chew, as he did some months ago with his capital punishment essay. This is what happens when sensitive theology masquerades as political philosophy. Is it worth discussing?

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