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Peter Critchley

The Quest for Community, Meaning, and Belonging


These are the outlines to a work I have written. It is currently in first draft form and needs to be edited and polished.

Morality and Modernity

(548 pages, 196,000 words)

This work is a profound and searching critique of the status of ethics and condition of community in the modern world. I try hard to avoid the nostalgic frame of reference, and acknowledge the extent to which modernity has been a liberation for many. I acknowledge, too, the dangers of reaction. But I still find cogent the critique of modernity as a cutting off of the individual from a sense of community and connections to others, with a concomitant loss of a sense of belonging, of a sense of identity and meaning. The text I have written draws heavily on German writers, particularly Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber. It's a powerful argument. But I intend to add another dimension through the French connection. Tocqueville claimed to have read Rousseau every day. He did so not because he agreed with him, but because Rousseau covered the most important issues and concerns, and did so with unparalleled moral-psychological depth. I'm particularly interested in Rousseau's work on customs, culture and the mores, the patrie, and how he combined this with an affirmation of transcendent truths as against conventionalism. I like this idea very much. I also agree very much with Tocqueville's emphasis on intermediary associations bringing otherwise isolated individuals together and integrating them within the social fabric. I would also emphasise Tocqueville's emphasis on "the habits of the heart," cultivating the character traits that knit communities together and keep them together. I also intend to have at least a section on the Utopian Socialists, starting with Saint Simon, examining Charles Fourier and his notion of universal harmony at length, taking in Proudhon and the notion of self-governing, self-managing societies, and ending with Comte. Comte is an interesting case. He is known best for his Positivism, but his work involves much more than that. Long before Nietzsche's "death of God," Comte saw the implications of the loss of an authoritative moral framework in modern society, and sought to fill the gap. If he was not successful in this endeavour - and no-one to date has been - then his attempts to address this central problem of modernity has great merit. To see the problem clearly is a condition of any effective resolution. From here I would include a substantial chapter on Emile Durkheim and anomie. The core themes I am addressing in this work were all central to Durkheim's work, and he offers a dimension not found in Marx and Weber. I would also look to say something on Frederic Le Play and the emphasis on the character-forming culture of discipline through work, family, and place/community. To some, that will sound conservative, to others, it will sound socialist. It is actually a mixture of both in looking to move to a post-liberal society.

Contents with page numbers

1 Rationale 4

1 Re-enchanting the world 4

2 Approaches 7

morality and modernity 9

the problematic of morality and modernity 11

3 Moral and metaphysical reconstruction 12

2 Community, Individualism, and Modern Society 23

1 Community and Modern Society 23

the search for community 23

2 Modernity and the Quest for Community and Personality 34

Community and Personality – the loss and recovery of form 38

The constitution of communities of identity, meaning and belonging 40

The New Communitarian Vision 47

Recovering personality and community 47

Fostering the politics of self-government 49

3 The Unit Ideas of Sociology and their Antitheses 53

The revolt against individualism 55

Liberalism, Radicalism, Conservatism 57

The critical view of liberal society, abstraction, and alienation 67

The unity of ethics and aesthetics 75

Conservatism, modernism, and nostalgia 82

4 The Loss of Community 103

Rationalisation/Modernism – the loss of community 103

Nietzsche, subjectivism, nihilism 106

Social theory and rationalistic desolidarisation 107

Modernity and its prophecies of doom and disaster 112

God and the moral framework 115

3 Capitalist Modernity and the Rationalization of the World 125

The non-academic philosophy of life against the tyranny and violence abstraction – against the rationalizations of social theory 125

The dialectics of hope and despair 131

The sociological critiques of modernity 131

Modernity and the future 133

Marx, Nietzsche and Weber 134

Marx and Weber on capitalist modernity 136

Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber – convergences and generational differences 137

Weber - rationalisation beyond capitalism – Fleurs du mal 144

Nietzsche and Weber and the fear of ersatz communities 148

Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber as key thinkers 160

Virtuous Communities fostering Habits of the Heart 172

Rehabilitating the ethical life as key to reinhabiting place 183

The tyranny and violence of abstraction 196

Prospects for Re-enchantment 202

4 The Moral Sociology of Nostalgia 207

The Problem of Nostalgia 207

Nostalgia – the story of loss 209

The Sociological Tradition 210

Sociology and the Nostalgic Frame 214

Nostalgia and German Social Thought 220

Nietzsche and nostalgia 222

Nietzsche’s concern with an authentic morality 223

Tonnies 225

Simmel 226

Weber in the context of social theory 228

Critical Theory 230

Martin Heidegger 232

Michel Foucault and Modernism 235

The Religo-moral Problem and the Post-modernist Crisis 237

The relation between society and religion 237

Conclusion on social theory 241

5 Nietzsche, the Death of God; or Nihilism and the Death of Liberalism 241

Why Nietzsche? 241

Nietzsche and the end of the moral and metaphysical standpoint 242

Statement of the problematic – why Marx, Nietzsche, and Weber – Nietzsche’s influence throughout social theory 243

An Overview 256

The universal-transcendent essentialist ethic incarnated in time and place 257

Liberalism, Nihilism and the Loss of Community 258

Ideology, Morality and Values 263

The nostalgic frame – the loss of unity and its recovery 263

Nietzsche against the nostalgic frame 265

Nietzsche and the practical truth of being and knowing 266

Nietzsche and the machine 269

Nietzsche’s life philosophy – Nietzsche’s cultural politics 272

Practical truth against abstract blueprints 273

Morality after god 274

Nietzsche's provocations 278

Organicism as a life philosophy 283

The ethic of embodiment 289

Nietzsche as a critic of modernity 290

The criticism of liberalism and the liberal ontology – the abstract individual and the abstraction of society 292

Personality and the autonomous individual 295

The Doctrine of the Little Things 298

6 God, reason, values, and grounds 301

Modernity and the loss of an authoritative moral and metaphysical standpoint 301

7 Under the Shadow of Modernity 350

Modernity, Subjectivity and Politics 350

Weber’s political sociology and ethics 352

Modernity, Politics, and Max Weber 362

Weber’s methodological individualism 363

The division between fact and value 364

Capitalism 373

Maturity and Politics 378

Politics, means, and force 387

Habermas, Reason and Faith 423

Habermas and authoritative standards 423

Anti-Prophetic Prophecy, Pessimism and Hope 437

8 Philosophical Anthropology and Hope for an Ethical Polity 438

Weber as the perfect interlocutor. 438

The Appropriate Human Regimen - Philosophical Anthropology 439

Weber’s concern with the appropriate human regimen 451

The New Dark Age 453

Refusing complicity with the Beast 455

Alasdair MacIntyre 456

Freedom that Enslaves 478

Transformative Practice and the Good of Human Beings 480

Eudaimonics – the appropriate regimen for the human good - MacIntyre in criticism of Weber and the modern moral condition 480

The Politics of Local Community 490

MacIntyre, ethical polity, the politics of local community 490

Engaging MacIntyre Critically: Flourishing, Modernity and Political Struggle 493

MacIntyre – critique of MacIntyre’s politics of local community 493

Closing Reflections: Politics and Strategy in the Present 495

Politics and community in the aftermath of Weber 495

Key themes 498

Reaffirming transcendent norms, truths and values vs conventionalism and sophism 499

Reaffirming transcendent standards against conventionalism 499

Essentialist politics – responding to criticisms 500

The problematic dualism of local community and public community 510

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