Abstract
What role should the Kuyperian idea of creational ordinances play in a Reformational understanding and evaluation of the contemporary social order? This essay attempts a critical retrieval of that idea for an architectonic critique of Western society. After describing several problems with the idea of creational ordinances, the essay maps three societal macrostructures that organize much of contemporary social life—civil society, proprietary economy, and administrative state. Then it discusses solidarity, resourcefulness, and justice as societal principles that can sustain a critique of societal macrostructures. Next, it identifies normative deficiencies within and between these macrostructures. On the basis of this architectonic critique, the essay concludes by calling for a normative and emancipatory transformation of Western society as a whole.
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The Dutch title of Kuyper ’s speech is “Het sociale vraagstuk en de Christelijke religie” (The Social Question and the Christian Religion) (Amsterdam: J.A. Wormser, 1891). A more recent translation by James W. Skillen has the title The Problem of Poverty (Washington, D.C.: Center for Public Justice; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991).
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“[I]mprovement undoubtedly lies—I do not shrink from the word—along the socialistic path, provided only you do not mean by socialistic the program of Social Democracy; but merely express this idea, in itself so beautiful, that our national society is … a God-willed community, a living, human organism” (Kuyper 1950, 41).
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For succinct and illuminating accounts of these categories and distinctions, see Chaplin (2011, 62–70, 86–155).
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See the chapter on “Relational Autonomy” in Zuidervaart (2011, 207–240).
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In prepared comments on the conference paper from which this essay derives, Govert Buijs suggests that I portray two of these macrostructures—economy and state—in a negative light and that my adjectives “proprietary” and “administrative” have negative connotations. Although my descriptions of these macrostructures are not “neutral”—no architectonic critique could be neutral—my criticisms are directed toward all three macrostructures and their interrelations, and I do not intend my adjectives to be pejorative. “Proprietary” points to the fact that organizations and transactions in the economic macrostructure follow principles of private ownership and private profit. “Administrative” indicates that the primary political power within the states and suprastates of contemporary Europe and North America (elsewhere too) resides in the agencies of administration and not in the legislature or judiciary. There are both advantages and disadvantages to the proprietary and administrative character of these two macrostructures. I am especially interested in normative deficiencies that affect all three macrostructures.
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In thinking about the proprietary economy, administrative state, and civil society, I have drawn most heavily on the work of Bob Goudzwaard and Jürgen Habermas. From Goudzwaard I have gained a better understanding of the religious underpinnings to these macrostructures and their normative distortions. See especially Goudzwaard (1979). From Habermas I have learned to reflect more systematically about the pressures that economic and political systems exert upon civil society—what Habermas describes as “the colonization of the life world.” See especially Habermas (1984, 1987). My attempts to think through dialectical relations among societal macrostructures and among social institutions derive in part from a critical engagement with Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1991).
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As will become apparent, however, I do not share Habermas’s view of these systems as congelations of “norm-free sociality” that we can access only in the objectivating attitude of the social sciences. See Habermas (1984, 1987, vol. 2, 171–179).
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As important or perhaps more important is the intersection between proprietary economy and administrative state, as Bob Goudzwaard rightly pointed out in comments from the floor after I presented this paper in August 2011. Habermas recognizes this as well, as can be seen from his work on “crisis tendencies” during the years leading up to The Theory of Communicative Action. See especially Habermas (1975). Although I acknowledge this point, it would require a separate treatment beyond the scope of this chapter.
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This description resembles the concept of justice as “tribution” that Jonathan Chaplin, drawing from a proposal by Paul Tillich, offers as a refinement to Dooyeweerd ’s understanding of justice as “retribution.” See in particular Chaplin (2011, 192–193).
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This is not intended as an exhaustive characterization of normative deficiencies in civil society. Because civil society is not a system, its normative deficiencies tend to be more varied and diffuse than those one can identify in the proprietary economy and the administrative state. In Art in Public I describe three sets of pressures—external, internal, and technological—that create or reinforce normative problems in civil society, and I discuss these pressures, respectively, as economic hypercommercialization and administrative performance fetishism, cultural balkanization and exclusion, and technologically induced pastiche and neomania. Tendencies toward balkanization and exclusion, in particular, hinder solidarity in civil society by pointing its institutions and organizations away from intercultural dialogue and social inclusion. See Zuidervaart (2011, 176–190).
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These concerns add complexity to the debate between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) about whether socio-economic justice requires redistribution, recognition, or both, and in which order of priority.
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Goudzwaard derives the idea of a simultaneous realization of norms from the work of economist T. P. van der Kooy and the philosopher and legal theorist Herman Dooyeweerd .
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If our focus were the public sphere, we could also point toward what I have called “hidden elements of a social polity—a tendency toward genuine democracy—in both of these macrostructural systems” (Zuidervaart 2011, 236).
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Here I disagree with Hauke Brunkhorst, who claims that differentiated social systems “use human substance without replacing it” and that “functional systems like the market economy or sovereign state power, taken in themselves, represent new forms of social integration without solidarity” (2005, 82–83).
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James Skillen asked from the floor, Who is responsible for bringing about the change I envision? and my response was “All of us.” Clearly there is more to the issue than that. Structural transformation occurs both via and despite intentional human effort, and human effort occurs in many different contexts and ways. My main point is that all the inhabitants of a social order are in some sense responsible for that order and in some sense capable of contributing to the change of that order, not simply as individuals but as members of organizations and institutions and as participants in traditions and communities. Moreover, these organizations, institutions, traditions, and communities also should and can contribute. Both an individualist “You can make a difference” and a collectivist expectation of a vanguard class or sector are insufficiently nuanced on the topic of large-scale social change—as are privatist resignation and structuralist determinism. See in this connection the chapter on “Widening Ways of Economy, Justice, and Peace” in Goudzwaard et al. (2007, 169–205).
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According to Adorno, the telos of the social order both required and prevented by the capitalist economy lies in “the negation of the physical suffering of even the least of its members, and of the internal articulations [Reflexionsformen] of such suffering. This negation is the interest of everyone, [and] ultimately to be achieved only by a solidarity that is transparent to itself and to every living creature” (Adorno 1973, 203–204; my translation).
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This essay began as a keynote lecture given at the conference on “The Future of Creation Order” at the VU University Amsterdam in August 2011. I wish to thank the conference organizers for their invitation, Govert Buijs for his informative and probing response to the lecture, the conference participants for a lively discussion, and two anonymous referees for their instructive comments on an earlier version of the essay. Much of this essay appears within the journal article “Critical Transformations: Macrostructures, Religion, and Critique,” Critical Research on Religion 1.3 (2013): 243–269, published by SAGE Publications Ltd. I thank the journal editors and publisher for permission to republish these materials.
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Zuidervaart, L. (2018). Macrostructures and Societal Principles: An Architectonic Critique. In: Buijs, G., Mosher, A. (eds) The Future of Creation Order. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92147-1_10
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