Love, reason and the future of civil society

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Love, reason and the future of civil society
Michael Edwards
22 - 12 - 2005

The foundation of a healthy civil society, reflects Michael Edwards, is a marriage of two human faculties often undervalued or misunderstood: reason and love.

What does it mean to “build a civil society?” Given the frequency with which these words are thrown around these days (even appearing as a rationale for war in Iraq), one might think they signify something clear and unambiguous. Yet “civil society” has been appropriated by politicians on all sides of the spectrum to suit their own, very different agendas.

For me, the most important of these capacities are love and reason, each essential both in and of itself and as a counterweight to an excess of the other. Love and reason make possible a principled negotiation of our differences, and although rarely described in these terms, I believe that civil society is best understood not as a “thing” to be created by outsiders but as a constantly-unfolding marriage between these two sets of capacities. The importance of reason to democracy has been central to public debate since the Enlightenment, love much less so. Talk of love, at least in public, is considered embarrassing, flaky, and even ridiculous. Nevertheless, I want to make the case that love should be a central topic of our conversation. The absence of love from the public sphere has become a terrible, defining characteristic of contemporary society.

For example, official versions of the truth are penetrating ever more deeply into the public imagination. “The new game”, writes journalist Nicholas Confessore, “is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issues ads to phony grassroots pressure groups.” (“Meet the Press”, Washington Monthly, December 2003). Reality can then be manufactured in the public mindset to suit the interests of those in power. Regardless of whether you were “for” or “against” the war in Iraq for example, the absence of a full and transparent discussion of the rights and wrongs of the case for war should be of great concern to all good citizens.

find this article: openDemocracy - http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/love_3149.jsp#