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Sex, Laws, and Inequality: What India Can Teach the United States

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Sex, Laws, and Inequality: What India Can Teach the United States Comment by Ira Katznelson Evil & politics In the immediate aftermath of the innocents. Behavior is evil when it events of September 11, 2001, it was hard attacks valued goods proffered by West- to know what to say. We seemed bereft ern modernity. of “a terminology,” as Madame de Staël Disputing the integrity and worth of observed after the Jacobin Terror, in a these goods, critics in other intellectual situation “beyond the common meas- circles have focused instead on the evils ure.” In the days that followed, my own of postcolonialism and the exploitative thoughts turned to Hannah Arendt, and relationships characteristic of global the works she had written in an effort to capitalism. It is these iniquities that grapple with another situation beyond should command our attention, not the the common measure. “The problem of acts of terror they consider in a cooler, evil,” Arendt forecast in 1945, “will be sometimes icy, register. the fundamental question of postwar I ½nd the impulses at play in both intellectual life in Europe–as death responses unsettling. Each group is bet- became the fundamental problem after ter at assuming a posture than develop- the last war.” ing ways of acting and living decently in ‘Evil’ is a word one heard with some a world riven by heterogeneous, inter- frequency in the aftermath of the attacks connected, and sometimes conflicting on the World Trade Center and the Pen- cultures. A rote defense of Western lib- tagon, though rarely deployed with eralism could very well authorize a new Arendt’s precision. Within some intel- brand of colonialism, once again making lectual circles, a denunciation of these many non-Western peoples ineligible for acts as evil has been accompanied by a its core values of rights, toleration, par- far too simple justi½cation of liberalism ticipation, and consent. A wholesale and the Enlightenment as decency incar- rejection of enlightened liberalism as a nate. Evil, in this view, implies more mere ½gment of Western imperialism than doing harm or inflicting pain on could very well license an irresponsible and foundationless antimodernism, reinforcing a mirror-image view of ‘us’ Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Sci- against ‘them.’ Intransigently advanced, ence and History at Columbia University, is the each perspective evades asking how we author of numerous books and articles on Ameri- can shade the sensibilities, deepen the can politics, political theory, and social history, capacities, and address the limitations of including “Liberalism’s Crooked Circle: Letters to the liberal tradition in full awareness Adam Michnik” (1996). A Fellow of the Ameri- that credulous notions of human per- can Academy since 2000, he is completing a new fectibility have been mocked by the book on the New Deal, the South, and the origins global diffusion of human superfluous- of postwar American liberalism. ness, the central hallmark of modern Dædalus Winter 2002 7 Comment “radical evil,” as Hannah Arendt argued Any meaningful effort to re½ne the by Ira in The Origins of Totalitarianism. language and institutions that a robust Katznelson Writing in the aftermath of total war liberalism requires must move beyond a and the Shoah, Arendt sought both to thin and often misleading claim to uni- apprehend the appearance of “radical versality; it also can gain con½dence evil, previously unknown to us,” and to from a fresh appreciation for the En- transform the eschatology of evil into a lightenment’s rich, though often neg- systematic tool with which to name and lected, lineage of realism and a recogni- explain the terrible cost Nazism and tion of liberalism’s history of invention Stalinism had exacted. By ‘radical evil,’ and transformation. Kant, for example, she understood the project of erasing the worried about the demagogic uses of moral and the juridical person as a prel- reason and the possibility that a new set ude to physical annihilation. Justi½ed by of ostensibly enlightened “prejudices millenarian ideologies and advanced by [can] serve, like the old, as the leading what Arendt called manufactured unre- strings of the thoughtless masses.” He alities, radical evil literally erased human also well knew that demonic violence plurality by stripping large populations has long characterized human affairs. of their rights as citizens, including the Such realism is quite distinct from the right to a name, as a prelude to mass rosy optimism of those eighteenth-cen- killing. Turning innocents into nonpeo- tury philosophes who supposed that sys- ple, both the Nazis and the Soviets thus tematic understanding would trump tor- elided the liberal tradition’s central puz- ture and barbarism, as if to realize the zle of how to make it possible for incom- title of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s painting mensurable values and identities to of 1798: Darkness Dissipates as Wisdom and coexist, perhaps even flourish, in a cli- Truth Descend to Earth. Rather than mate of toleration. Prud’hon’s canvas, it is Goya’s etchings Although today’s constellation of of Los desastres de la guerra after the Span- Muslim fervency, fascist-style mobiliza- ish insurrection of 1808 and the Peninsu- tion, and Internet-friendly coordination lar War with Napoleon that might better may be new in some respects, it is mani- be adopted as chastening emblems of a festly as capable of producing radical evil humane realism. as the barbarous offshoots of Western Today’s terror forces, or should force, civilization Arendt addressed, even if an engagement not just with this year’s thankfully it has yet to equal them. Fa- instance of evil but with a proper role for miliar, too, are the challenges that Islam- realistic reason and institutional innova- ic zealotry can pose to the tradition of tion in the face of a persistent human Enlightenment and to the possibilities of capacity for desolation, now enhanced a decent liberal politics. by the legacy and diffusion of twentieth- Given these hazards, we need to century models of radical evil. Times of explore whether the Western liberal tra- turmoil and fear urgently pose two ques- dition can effectively contest radical evil tions: whether liberalism can thrive in without sacri½cing its own best features. the face of determined adversaries and I think it can, though not on its own and what kind of liberalism we should wish only if liberals can ½nd a terminology to have. Answers to ‘what kind’ affect and institutional practices to engage the possibilities for ‘whether’ by offering with nonliberal beliefs and cultures choices not only about doctrines but also without dismissing them too hastily as about institutions and public policies. irremediably antiliberal. The ideals of the liberal tradition, 8 Dædalus Winter 2002 properly appreciated, represent an open nance of an idea may affect its status but Evil & sensibility rather than a ½xed set of not its value or capacity. Even if liberal politics arrangements or ideas. The most impor- political thought is inescapably Western tant moments of innovation and change in origin, it no longer belongs only to the in the modern West’s liberal political West. “Concepts such as citizenship, the tradition have come in circumstances state, civil society, public sphere, human governed by anxiety and alarm. Consider rights, equality before the law, the indi- not only Locke’s institutional formula vidual, distinctions between public and for toleration in conditions of religious private, the idea of the subject, democra- warfare between Catholics and Protes- cy, popular sovereignty, social justice, tants, but his speci½cations for political scienti½c rationality, and so on,” he consent and representation in the con- observes, “all bear the burden of Euro- text of a century of civil war in England. pean thought and history.” These secular Consider, too, the constitutional innova- and universal categories and concepts tions of Benjamin Constant in France were preached “at the colonized and at when faced with a global war and the the same time denied . in practice. But collapse of legitimate kingship. Consid- the vision,” writes Chakrabarty, “has er, ½nally, the development of the twen- been powerful in its effects. It has histor- tieth-century liberal welfare state in ically provided a strong foundation on response to depression, class conflict, which to erect–both in Europe and out- and the rise of Bolshevism, Fascism, and side–critiques of socially unjust prac- Nazism. tices. This heritage is now global.” Especially at moments of danger and Even when contradicted by such deep innovation, the liberal tradition has been injustices as slavery and Jim Crow, Euro- neither self-contained nor homoge- pean imperialism, and today’s spectacu- neous. There have been liberal demo- lar global inequalities, struggles based on crats, liberal socialists, liberal republi- these orientations ensue “because there cans, liberal monarchists–and also lib- is no easy way of dispensing with these eral Christians, liberal Jews, liberal Mus- universals in the condition of political lims. In each instance, the absence of a modernity.” Or at least, one might say, partnership with political liberalism has no attractive struggles are possible whol- proved an invitation to oppression. ly outside their frame. Without a commitment to such a cardi- Both liberalism and the Enlightenment nal liberal value as toleration, even a within which it nestles advance a philo- declared democrat may be tempted by sophical anthropology of rational actors despotism. The liberal tradition is thus and rational action, insisting that human necessary to an effectively decent poli- agents develop the capacity to deliberate, tics. But it is not suf½cient. An abstract choose, and achieve sensible goals. In commitment to universal human rights their effort to cultivate such rational citi- by itself, without depth, passion, and zens, liberal regimes in the past have all historical particularity, cannot possibly too often imposed various limits, draw- contend with radical evil.
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