Plough Feature Interview with Stanley Hauerwas

In which Stanley Hauerwas is mad at @Vermeullarmine and yours truly. https://t.co/ZEekqmhRo9

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) April 27, 2020

Plough: Schooling Hope

Hauerwas:

That’s an indication that we are living in a technologically advanced civilization that is dedicated to efficiency and that has lost the tradition of wisdom. The elderly should be held accountable for helping us become articulate about how to live. That we think their primary task is to return to childhood robs them of responsibility and us of the kind of wisdom that we need to live well. If in a hundred years, Christians are identified as the people who don’t kill their children or kill their elders we will have done well. Terrible things can happen in the name of compassion.

In order to live well, we require people of wisdom who have insight about the goods that make life livable. In craft traditions, there are those who know how to respond to particular challenges in, say, building a house. The answers to those challenges are not always there in a book, but are there in a person who learned how to respond. We must understand ourselves to be people who depend upon others who have learned how to live wisely. The world needs grandparents.

Ah yes, well, what have the Boomers done for those who have come after them? Many of these Boomers do not want to be involved with their grandchildren, preferring to live in their sunny retirement location.

There seems to be a split, too, between postliberals who are more localist and communitarian, aimed at cultivating the virtues, and those who are primarily about politics. In these discussions, it’s often assumed that the state is where the real action is; the idea of wielding state power is what gets people’s juices flowing. Christians, too, fall for this. It’s way easier to get excited about a political campaign or a policy solution than to think about what our calling as Christians is. 

I think that’s very much the case and that’s why patience is so important. Politics so often looks for the quick solution. There isn’t always a quick solution. Patiently living with each other makes it possible for people to discover a common good. In that sense, the kind of localism you mentioned was highlighted by the Catholic social encyclicals in a way that I think makes them very relevant, and the family is, of course, the most local social group of all. The social encyclicals understand that the family is what is capable of bringing life into the world in a morally constructive way. That’s at the very heart of politics.

It reminds me of a book recently written by C. R. Wiley, The Household and the War for the Cosmos:







Even though Hauerwas is a pacifist, as the interview reminds us, I don't think he would disagree with the use of the word "war" in "spiritual warfare."

Hauerwas says about Bruderhof: "The Bruderhof in some ways is an integralist community, and it’s here and now: it’s about the best one we can get in the world in which we find ourselves." Other than the use of technology, how do the Bruderhof differ from older Anabaptist communities that incorporate new technology at a slower pace? How do Bruderhof communities police themselves?

As for whether war or violence is compatible with Christianity, Hauerwas's admonition is correct:

Well, I simply want to understand better what the leap looks like. If you want to be a Just War guy, fine! But be consistent – apply your own criteria. Many people in the Just War tradition seem to hold that on the whole, war is a terrible thing, but sometimes we have to do it, and we decide whether to do it based on whether it meets the criteria of justice, and maybe four out of six of those criteria are good enough to give us the go-ahead. If that’s how you’re thinking about it, I’m not sure you’re thinking seriously about war. Partially just is not just.

And if a war is not just, what is it? Why don’t we call it World Slaughter I, World Slaughter II? To call something a “war” is legitimating discourse: it gives those who are fighting it permission to do things that they otherwise would not be allowed to do; it hides decisions. As a matter of fact, I worry about our president calling the struggle against the pandemic a “war.” That’s a legitimating discourse that I think is deeply dangerous.

 Often defense or protection is just excuses for using war for state- or empire-building, just as other forms of coercion are used to promote the "common good" or "unity." The ideal solution for disagreement would be separation but with sin, violence would still be inevitable.


Also by CR Wiley: Man of the House.