Comments on: What holds us together http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/01/11/what-holds-us-together/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:09:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Avi Bernstein http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/01/11/what-holds-us-together/#comment-247 Avi Bernstein Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:09:39 +0000 http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/01/11/what-holds-us-together/#comment-247 In the 1940s and 1950s Mordecai Kaplan, an American Jewish philosopher, rabbi, and Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, argued that Jews should see themselves as members of two religions--Judaism, to be sure, but also the religion of democracy. For Kaplan, who took Durkheim and sociology very seriously, the point of invoking the category of religion in democracy's case was precisely to make readers consider the solidarity function of religion. For Kaplan "the religion of democracy" would aim at building solidarity with an international movement, and to strengthen a human rights regime which would protect minorities, and non-conformists. “The inner weakness of the democratic peoples," Kaplan insisted, "have been a factor in fanning the ambition of agressors.” In 1945 in the context of the then well-known “Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in their relation to the Democratic Way of Life,” a major gathering of political intellectuals in the United States, Kaplan also sought to devise an Aristotelian "cultural esperanto" in order to provide a philosophical anthropology for this vision, as an international vision of cultural reconstruction. This makes Kaplan's concrete efforts all the more interesting for this reader, as his Aristotelian interests recall the more recent writings of MacIntyre, Taylor, and Robert Bellah himself. Kaplan also took the trouble to try to move beyond what Robert Bellah alludes to as an "abstract consitutional patriotism" (Habermas) in realizing his distinctive brand of Durkheimian thinking. In <em>The Faith of America</em>, which he edited with J. Paul Williams and Eugene Kohn, he actually gave us a liturgy for the American civil-religious calendar, and challenged Americans to cultivate a democratic piety, an appreciation of these days and their liturgical meanings as sources of self. Certainly, many people looking at <em>The Faith of America</em> today would find it unbearably quaint, dated, and provincial; and, alas, this is just the sort of difficulty that becoming concrete, in the way Kaplan did, brings to mind. This is not, to be sure, an argument against the undertaking--Jeffrey Stout's recent exploration of Emersonian piety comes to mind as an exceedingly modest, if interesting, beginning at cultural concreteness in its enthusiasm for Emerson's "Divinity School Address" and Ralph Waldo Ellison's <em>Invisible Man</em>; but taking a proposal like Kaplan's into consideration can be a sobering reminder of the challenge of concreteness. Avi Bernstein Hebrew College Newton Centre, MA In the 1940s and 1950s Mordecai Kaplan, an American Jewish philosopher, rabbi, and Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, argued that Jews should see themselves as members of two religions–Judaism, to be sure, but also the religion of democracy. For Kaplan, who took Durkheim and sociology very seriously, the point of invoking the category of religion in democracy’s case was precisely to make readers consider the solidarity function of religion. For Kaplan “the religion of democracy” would aim at building solidarity with an international movement, and to strengthen a human rights regime which would protect minorities, and non-conformists.

“The inner weakness of the democratic peoples,” Kaplan insisted, “have been a factor in fanning the ambition of agressors.”

In 1945 in the context of the then well-known “Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion in their relation to the Democratic Way of Life,” a major gathering of political intellectuals in the United States, Kaplan also sought to devise an Aristotelian “cultural esperanto” in order to provide a philosophical anthropology for this vision, as an international vision of cultural reconstruction. This makes Kaplan’s concrete efforts all the more interesting for this reader, as his Aristotelian interests recall the more recent writings of MacIntyre, Taylor, and Robert Bellah himself.

Kaplan also took the trouble to try to move beyond what Robert Bellah alludes to as an “abstract consitutional patriotism” (Habermas) in realizing his distinctive brand of Durkheimian thinking. In The Faith of America, which he edited with J. Paul Williams and Eugene Kohn, he actually gave us a liturgy for the American civil-religious calendar, and challenged Americans to cultivate a democratic piety, an appreciation of these days and their liturgical meanings as sources of self.

Certainly, many people looking at The Faith of America today would find it unbearably quaint, dated, and provincial; and, alas, this is just the sort of difficulty that becoming concrete, in the way Kaplan did, brings to mind.

This is not, to be sure, an argument against the undertaking–Jeffrey Stout’s recent exploration of Emersonian piety comes to mind as an exceedingly modest, if interesting, beginning at cultural concreteness in its enthusiasm for Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” and Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man; but taking a proposal like Kaplan’s into consideration can be a sobering reminder of the challenge of concreteness.

Avi Bernstein
Hebrew College
Newton Centre, MA

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