Markus wants to distinguish between the fact that people who act in the public realm always act with ultimate ends in view, and that their actions are either moral or immoral from the notion that there is a neutral public space. The public sphere, he claims, shouldn’t be thought of as “the sum of a multiplicity or a fabric woven of many actions by many people.” Rather, for Markus’s Augustine, the public sphere is “much less personal,” and consists of “practices, customs, institutions.” To be sure, they “may be the cumulative effect of long sequences of human action, shaped by collective behavior over many generations, routinised or institutionalised over time. They have come to form a complex which now helps to shape and condition human action and behaviour, but they determine it no more – and no less – than a language determines what we say in it.”
This is helpful, but it is hard to see how it yields a “neutral” public space. If the institutions and practices of a political community shape action, they shape it in a particular way, toward particular virtues, and away from others. As soon as a practice or custom takes form, that discriminates against alternative practices or customs. How is that neutrality?
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
