Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art An Approach to Some of the Epistemological Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge and the Sociology of Art and Literature Janet Wolff
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Christian, 1960–
The sacred project of American sociology / Christian Smith. p. cm. — (Philosophische analyse = Philosophical analysis) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–937713–8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–937714–5 (ebook) — ISBN 978–0–19–937716–9 (online content) 1. Religion and sociology—United States. 2. United States—Religion. I. Title. BL60.S565 2014
306.60973—dc23
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
For sociologists more committed to the best possible understandings and explanations of the truth about social life—whatever they may be— than to making social life conform to their predetermined ideological commitments.
“We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”
Mark Twain, Following the Equator
INTRODUCTION
Sociology as an academic discipline appears on the surface to be a secular, scientific enterprise. Its founding fathers were mostly atheists. Its basic operating premises are secular and naturalistic. And its disciplinary culture is indifferent and sometimes hostile to religion, often for what are thought of as rationalistic and scientific reasons. American sociology’s early historical professionalization also involved the intentional marginalization of Christian SocialGospel activists who wanted to claim a place in the newly forming scientific discipline.1 Sociologists today are disproportionately not religious, compared to all Americans, and often irreligious people. 2 And a great deal of sociology is devoted to showing that the ordinary world of everyday life as it seems to most people is not really
1. Christian Smith, 2003, The Secular Revolution: Power, interest, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life , Berkeley: University of Califorina Press, pp. 97–159.
2. Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle, 2007, “Religion among Academic Scientists: Distinctions, Disciplines, and Demographics,” Social Problems , 54(2): 289–307; Martin Trow and Associates, 1969, Carnegie Commission National Survey of Higher Education: Faculty Study, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Survey Research Center; Martin Trow and Associates, 1984, Carnegie Commission National Survey of Higher Education: Faculty Study, Berkeley: University of California at Berkeley, Survey Research Center.
what is going on—in short, to debunking appearances. 3 Thus, for example, ordinary people’s naïve experiences of religious faith and sacred practice ought not to be taken seriously on their own terms, but are better understood through the sociological reinterpretations of their scientific meanings and causes, in terms of concepts like resource exchanges, status struggles, coping mechanisms, gender inequalities, class interests, social control, etc.
My purpose here is to show that, to the contrary, the secular enterprise that everyday sociology appears to be pursuing is actually not what is really going on at sociology’s deepest level. Contemporary American sociology is, rightly understood, actually a profoundly sacred project at heart. Sociology today is in fact animated by sacred impulses, driven by sacred commitments, and serves a sacred project. We might even say that American sociology’s project is “spiritual,” as long as we understand the full breadth and depth of what “spiritual” in this case means. By conducting this selfreflexive, tables-turning, cultural and institutional sociology of the profession of American sociology itself, I show in what follows that this allegedly secular discipline ironically expresses Emile Durkheim’s inescapable sacred, exemplifies its own versions of Marxist false consciousness, and generates a spirited reaction against Max Weber’s melancholically observed disenchantment of the world.4
3. Peter Berger, 1963, invitation to Sociology, New York: Anchor, p. 38.
4. In one way, then, this book can be read as “a sociology-of-religion of sociology-thediscipline,” since this book studies a sacred movement, although in this case a secular sacred movement. Secularity and secularism are areas in which sociologists of religion have increasingly focused in recent years, “the secular” becoming more properly understood as not a neutral, default human position or category, but instead a contingently situated, particular stance and type, the exigencies of which are worth empirical investigation. See, for example, Craig Calhoun, Mark Jurgensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, 2011, Rethinking Secularism , New York: Oxford University Press; Phil Zuckerman, 2009, Atheism and Secularity, New York: Praeger; Talal Asad, 2003, Formations of the Secular, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press; Courtney Bend and Ann Taves, 2012, What Matters?: Ethnographies of value in a Not So Secular Age , New York: Columbia University Press.
American sociology, in short, does not escape the analytic net that it casts over the rest of the ordinary world. Sociology itself is a part of that very human, very social, often very sacred and spiritual world. I write, therefore, to help American sociology break the magical spells that it has cast on itself using incantations conjuring the misrecognition of its own deepest impulses, in order to prompt an honest reckoning with the profoundly sacred nature of its project.
Chapter 1
The Argument
I begin my case by defining the basic terms of my argument, then stating the argument itself, and finally exploring some important qualifications and implications.
DEFINING TERMS
My argument does not turn on a tricky play on words. I mean exactly what my terms ordinarily suggest. By “sacred,” I mean things set apart from the profane and forbidden to be violated , exactly what the sociologist Emile Durkheim meant by the term.1 Sacred matters are never ordinary, mundane, or instrumental. They are reverenced, venerated, and defended as sacrosanct by the social groups that hold them as sacred. Sacred things are set apart from all that is common and profane, as if they were holy. Sacred objects are hallowed, revered, and honored as beyond questioning or disrespect. They can never be defiled, defied, or desecrated by any infringement or
1. Durkheim, 1995 [1912], The Elementary Forms of Religious Life , New York: Free Press.
denigration. Things sacred thus have particular powers to motivate and direct human action on their behalf and for their protection. This is exactly the character of the dominant project of American sociology.
I have also said that sociology’s project might be considered spiritual, when that term is properly understood, and so I will also use that word in what follows in addition to “sacred.” By “spiritual,” I mean that dimension of human life that concerns the most profound, meaningful, and transcendent visions of human existence, feeling, and desires. Spiritual matters as I mean that here concern beliefs, longings, and experiences—both conscious and unconscious— about the greatest and highest good, truth, rightness, value, vitality, meaning, and beauty. Such irrepressible concerns of the “human spirit” speak and respond to what is most worth living for, what purposes merit our devotion, what goods are to be most prized, what ends are worth dedicating ourselves to realize. These concerns and commitments are about life dedication, submission, and steadfastness. Spiritual matters contrast with the more mundane, material, and instrumental affairs of life. Human spiritual questions transcend interests of mere survival or subsistence or routine. They focus the mind, will, and emotions on higher visions, deeper meanings, and more profound aspirations in life. Things “spiritual” of this nature have a quality that transcends instrumental, means–ends rationality. They sustain and guide people with visions drawn from the deepest wellsprings of their lives, what some call the depths of the human “heart,” in ways that actually pre-rationally and a-rationally govern, rather than are governed by, preferences, rationality, and calculated choices.
This is the sense in which I say that American sociology is driven and governed by not only a sacred but also a spiritual project. To be clear, my use of “spiritual” is here decidedly anthropocentric , resting its meaning not on belief in the metaphysical existence of
ghosts, but instead on the experience and motivating force of “the human spirit.” In this usage, “spiritual” need not be concerned with the supernatural, God, gods, spooks, etcetera, or necessarily have anything directly to do with religion. This is just as the contemporary phrase, “I am spiritual but not religious,” suggests. Things spiritual may and often do connect to religion, but they do not have to. 2 People and movements can be devoted to “spiritual” (and sacred) causes that are not substantively religious. 3 One can be both spiritual in this sense and secular. Many sociologists in fact are exactly that, as I aim to show below, as is the discipline of American sociology collectively. At the same time, a sociological view compels us to see that certain factors—sociology’s place in western and American history, and the common American historical and contemporary interaction of human spiritual concerns (as I define that above) with religious traditions—mean that sociology’s spiritual project is indeed in some ways structurally and culturally related to religion, even if it itself is not directly religious in any usual sense of that concept.
What about my other terms? By “project” I mean a complex, purposive endeavor requiring concerted effort sustained over time to mobilize, coordinate, and deploy resources of different kinds to achieve a desired but challenging goal. Projects can range from
2. See, for example, Nancy T. Ammerman, 2013, “Spiritual But Not Religious?: Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , 52: 258–278.
3. In this sense, I mean “spiritual” similarly to how Jerry Muller describes Georg Lukác and Hans Freyer as “spiritual guides” on the left (of the Communist Party) and the right (the state, following Hegel), respectively, in mid-twentieth century Europe—both intellectuals were secular, yet wrote about “transnational, transethnic, universal community,” the “yearning for an intense emotional commitment to a community of purpose,” and “the experience of subordination to a higher, collective purpose,” the realization of which intellectuals were to play the crucial role in promoting—and in that sense they were spiritual visionaries and leaders. Muller, 2002, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought , New York: Anchor Books, pp. 274–278.
building a deck off one’s house’s back step to fomenting a political revolution to establish a social utopia. American sociology is engaged in “a project,” I am saying, one that is deeply sacred in nature.
By “sociology,” I mean the professionalized academic discipline located in the social sciences of most colleges and universities in American higher education, organized in the form of departments that offer academic degrees for undergraduate majors and sometimes through master’s and doctoral programs, whose faculty are expected to teach, research, and publish scholarship. My story may apply to sociology as conducted outside of the United States too—I do not know enough to say for sure. But I do know American sociology quite well enough to make my case here, and so will focus on it.4 What I describe here about sociology is obviously also embedded in the intellectual and moral culture of American higher education and elite, knowledge-class culture more broadly, though I spend little time here exploring that larger context. Also, importantly, by speaking of “sociology” as a whole, I am not claiming that each and every American sociologist is committed to the spiritual project I describe below. Many are, but some are not. Yet some individual sociologists do not matter here, since, as sociologists well know, the collective power of dominant institutionalized sociocultural systems is much more important than this or that individual commitment and possible dissent in particular cases. Many American sociologists are definitely and actively committed to sociology’s sacred project, some are more passively so, and some are not at all. In the end,
4. Other disciplines in the academy also have their own projects, many of which may also be sacred, but addressing them is beyond my purpose here. But see, for example, Robert Nelson, 2002, Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond , State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; Robert Nelson, 2009, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America , State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press; Paul Vitz, 1995, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
that all still adds up to American sociology as a collective enterprise being and having a sacred project. 5
Crucial to my argument is this fact: the sacred and spiritual nature of American sociology’s project is not commonly, if ever, acknowledged for what it is. Sociology misrecognizes its very own project. How instead does sociology typically think of itself? What self-images might American sociology actually recognize? Some sociologists think of the discipline as the “science of society.” Sociology studies human social life using “the scientific method,” just like other sciences study particular aspects of the natural world and universe. Other sociologists who are less comfortable with the idea of sociology being “scientific” think of the discipline more generally as “the study of social groups, institutions, and structures.” These are the kinds of self-descriptions found in most sociology survey textbooks. Officially, the American Sociological Association (ASA) offers a characteristically inclusive 6 approach, taking multiple stabs of self-understanding in its definition of the discipline:
Sociology is: the study of society; a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies; the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes; the scientific study of social aggregations, the entities through
5. I write that sociology both is and has a sacred project. Both are true. Insofar as enough American sociologists collectively possess (have) and pursue this sacred project with such devotion, American sociology has actually become that sacred project, such that it is now impossible to think about the very nature and purpose of American sociology apart from its defining sacred and spiritual project—that endeavor has come to constitute what American sociology itself at heart is .
6. Inclusion—not leaving anyone out, and so possibly feeling bad—itself being a central value in sociology’s spiritual project, even if, in the end, in the case of ASA’s selfdefinition, it comes at the cost of conceptual cogency.
which humans move throughout their lives; an overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics.7
Sociology, by this account, is a “study” (mentioned twice) and a “science” (ditto) focused for its subject matter on society; the lives of people, groups, and societies; human behavior; social aggregations; and all of humankind—this discipline is also said to provide the all-encompassing synthetic integration of all other disciplines concerning humans and their knowledge about humanity. 8 Some of this may be right. But note that none of it admits to advancing a sacred project. In fact, it all sounds quite general, abstract, and neutral—almost antiseptic. That is in part because this definition of what sociology is focuses exclusively, if vaguely, on what sociology does, not, more tellingly, on the purposes or ends for doing what it does. We find no “in order to” clauses in this definition. According to the ASA, then, American sociology is an activity of scientific study, with no particular (stated) purpose or goal in view—at least not one that defines the discipline or can be publicly stated.
I propose, by contrast, that American sociology definitely does have an “in order to” project, one that is sacred . 9 But, if so, then why do not ASA or sociology survey textbooks say so? Two reasons. First, sociology’s spiritual project is so ubiquitous and taken for granted in the discipline that it has become invisible to most sociologists themselves. So deeply is this sacred project lodged in the soul of
7. http://www.asanet.org/about/sociology.cfm (accessed September 24, 2013).
8. Just don’t try to tell that last bit to economists, psychologists, and historians—or anthropologists or political scientists.
9. I intentionally use the language of sociology as a collective actor in this paper (e.g., “sociology is committed . . .”) as a writing convenience. I recognize that human persons are the real actors, ultimately. My following of this convention, however, always involves the qualification noted above, that not all individual sociologists are committed to the discipline’s spiritual project. Readers who are not hard-core methodological individualists should have no problem with this style of discourse.
American sociology, and so obvious is its appeal, that ordinary sociologists find it impossible to make it the independent object of explicit observation and analysis. It is central to sociology’s orthodoxy and habitus, and so goes unnoticed. Second, publicly naming and overtly embracing this sacred and spiritual project would threaten the scientific authority and scholarly legitimacy of academic sociology on which the project itself depends for success. Keeping the sacred project misrecognized, implicit, and unexamined provides an escape hatch of “plausible deniability” that is politically necessary. This of course requires that sociologists carefully exempt their own discipline from their otherwise searching sociological gaze. But, since sociologists are all too humans, that is entirely doable.
THE PROJECT
What actually is the sacred project of American sociology, then? We might start by saying that sociology is about something like exposing, protesting, and ending through social movements, state regulations, and government programs all human inequality, oppression, exploitation, suffering, injustice, poverty, discrimination, exclusion, hierarchy, constraint and domination by, of, and over other humans (and perhaps animals and the environment). This would be accurate. But this formulation does not go deep enough to uncover the more basic and determining assumptions about philosophical anthropology and normative goods that sociology’s sacred project presupposes. If we want to really understand sociology well, we need to dig harder. Sociology’s deeper sacred project is more fully and accurately described as follows. American sociology as a collective enterprise is at heart committed to the visionary project of realizing the emancipation, equality, and moral affirmation of all human beings as autonomous, self-directing, individual agents (who should be) out to live
their lives as they personally so desire, by constructing their own favored identities, entering and exiting relationships as they choose, and equally enjoying the gratification of experiential, material, and bodily pleasures. That is the deeper vision that undergirds and justifies the first description about ending oppression, etcetera. It provides the more positive, constructive account for why all of those bad things need to be exposed, protested, and ended. Without this Durkheimian sacred project powerfully animating the soul of American sociology, the discipline would be a far smaller, drabber, less significant endeavor—perhaps it would not even have survived as an academic venture to this day.
American sociology’s sacred project does not embody one single ideology or program. It is rather an unstable amalgam of variously accumulated historical and contemporary ideas and movements. At its core stands western, liberal individualism in the tradition of John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. That is framed by the larger inheritance of the western (so-called) Enlightenment, received in its more skeptical and rationalist modes, in the tradition of Emmanuel Kant (“Dare to think for oneself”10), Voltaire (“La nôtre [religion] est sans contredit la plus ridicule, la plus absurde, et la plus sanguinaire qui ait jamais infecté le monde ”11), and Auguste Comte (the founder of positivism, of the discipline of “Sociology” as the “Queen of the Sciences,” and of a new, non-theistic “Religion of Humanity” emphasizing altruistic service).12
10. Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, transl. and ed. Mary J. Gregor, 1996, New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–22.
11. Letters of voltaire and Frederick the Great, 1927, transl. Richard Aldington, New York: Brentano’s.
12. Henry May, 1978, The Enlightenment in America , New York: Oxford University Press; Gertrude Himmelfarb, 2005, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments , New York: Vintage; Smith, 2003, p. 54. One dictionary of sociology also refers to the discipline in similar terms, though without direct reference to Comte: “sociology is sometimes seen (at least by sociologists) as a queen of the social sciences,
But American sociology’s sacred project is not simply about bourgeois Enlightenment liberalism. It is also formed by other powerful intellectual, cultural, and political movements. One is the Marxist tradition , central to the discipline’s theoretical canon, which provides sociology an analytically lambasting, teleologically revolutionary, and socially utopian edge that is centrally concerned with establishing equality of material production and consumption among humans (at least those who survive the revolution). Another influence is the progressive social reform movement of earlytwentieth-century urban America, in the tradition of Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and Margaret Sanger, along with Social Gospel activists like Richard Ely and Walter Rauschenbusch—the primordial soup out of which American sociology as a professional discipline evolved—that identified, publicized, and sought through rational and philanthropic social amelioration to correct many social ills.13 A somewhat related influence on American sociology’s spiritual project is American pragmatism , of the John Dewey variety, which disavows metaphysics, takes liberal democracy (or whatever else a community happens to desire) for granted, and focuses on the piecemeal solving of immediate, practical problems, however people define them. Another influence on American sociology’s spiritual project is a therapeutic outlook and culture —focused on individual subjective happiness, good feeling, and affirmation— received from the Freudian tradition of psychodynamics as mediated through twentieth-century psychoanalysis, pop psychology, 13. Cecil Greek, 1992, The Religious Roots of American Sociology, New York: Garland; Dorothy Ross, 1991, The Origins of American Social Science , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See Christopher Lasch, 1991, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics , New York: Norton; Ellen Fitzpatrick, 1994, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform , New York: Oxford University Press.
bringing together and extending the knowledge and insights of all the other (conceptually more restricted) adjacent disciplines.” Gordon Marshall, 1998, A Dictionary of Sociology, 2nd ed., New York, Oxford University Press, p. 630.
and advertisement-driven mass-consumer capitalism.14 Still another formative influence on sociology’s spiritual project is the sexual revolution of the 1960s and after, which has defined sexuality as a crucially determinative aspect of human personhood, identity, and agency, worthy of unbounded enjoyment and requiring political activism to protect and defend.
Added to these are the strong influences of the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s and the third-wave feminism of the 1960s and 70s. More recently (1980s to the present), the cultural and political movement for gay-lesbian-bisexual-transsexual(gender/sexual)questioning (GLBTQ) rights has exerted a massive impact on American sociology’s spiritual project, viewed as naturally following the two previous influences of black civil rights and feminism. In more theoretical terms, the spiritual project of American sociology is also profoundly shaped by social constructionism , an outlook born in Kantian philosophy, bolstered by early Anthropology’s arguments about cultural relativism, encouraged by a particular (mis)reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and finally codified by sociology’s very own Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (although Berger himself repudiated the “constructivist” movement that subsequently developed).15 The pervasive influence of social constructionism as a defining worldview within sociology, even among the many who do not “do” the “social construction of social problems,” cannot be underestimated. Finally, poststructuralism and postmodernism have exerted more diffuse but not insignificant influences on sociology’s spiritual project. Most American sociologists are not disciples of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida,
14. Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud , New York: Harper and Row; Jonathan Imber, ed., 2004, Therapeutic Culture , New Brunswick: Transaction.
15. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, 1967, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge , New York: Anchor Cite.
and Stanley Fish (as many in the humanities have been), but some of the sensibilities of poststructuralism and postmodernism—a detached skepticism about human subjectivity, authorial intent, disinterested knowledge, legitimate uses of power, and western humanism—have nevertheless diffused in sectors of American sociology in ways that shape its project.
If we had to characterize American sociology’s sacred project in brief, therefore, we might say that it stands in the modern liberal-Enlightenment-Marxist-social-reformist-pragmatist-therapeuticsexually liberated-civil rights-feminist-GLBTQ-social constructionistpoststructuralist/postmodernist “tradition.” That odd conglomeration, I suggest, conveys much of the lineage, interest, and energy propelling the spiritual project of American sociology. Again, it does not matter that this or that particular important sociologist is or is not aware of or does or does not believe in or endorse all of the elements of or influences on this spiritual project. What matters is that it in fact animates, though not necessarily consciously and explicitly, the working beliefs and activities of many if not most American sociologists, especially those who are most vocal and activist, and so has come to define the presupposed, default, “obvious” purpose, culture, and institutional orientation of the discipline. In fact, the more that the features of this sacred project are simply assumed, tacit, and unnoticed by its adherents, the more powerfully they can and do operate among sociologists.
I should say here that I personally do not view this sacred project as all bad or all good; in my view, it is a mix of both. But my personal view on that is not what matters most here. I am interested in writing neither a diatribe against nor a manifesto championing this sacred project. My purpose is more simply to name and describe it for what it is and to critically consider some of its larger ramifications. It is less important how sociology’s sacred project does or does not match my own personal standards and sensibilities. What
matters is helping readers to see and acknowledge its reality and influences, and to consider their larger implications and consequences for sociology and beyond.
That said, let me unpack American sociology’s dominant sacred project a bit more. This project is, first, intent to realize an end. It is going somewhere. It is fundamentally teleological, oriented toward a final goal. It is not about defending or conserving a received inheritance, but unsettling the status quo. The project is fundamentally transformational, reformist, sometimes revolutionary. It is about “changing the world” to “make the world a better place.” The change that sociology’s sacred project seeks to effect is also dramatic. The problems of the social world are so big and deep in this view that mere remedial tinkering or prudent meliorism is inadequate. Change needs to be systemic, institutional, and sometimes radical—in the etymological sense of “going to the root” of things.16 So when the new world envisioned by this spiritual project is finally realized, it will be very different from the present world.
And how will this be accomplished? Through various means, but central among them in sociology’s spiritual imagination are popular progressive social movements and social-democratic state programs and regulations.17 “The people” (on the left, not the middle and definitely not the right) must demand justice and equality, and then the state must guarantee and accomplish justice and equality
16. Etymologically, “radical,” late fourteenth century, from Late Latin radicalis , “of or having roots,” from Latin radix , “root.”
17. For one explicit statement about the need to unite sociology and progressive activism, see the chapters on “Scholarship that Might Matter,” “Crossing Boundaries in Participatory Action Research: Performing Protest with Drag Queens,” “Building Bridges, Building Leaders: Theory, Action, and Lived Experience,” “Knowing What’s Wrong is Not Enough: Creating Vision and Strategy,” among others, in David Croteau, William Hoynes, and Charlotte Ryan, Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), which explicitly seeks to promote “partnerships among scholars and activists” for “meaningful collaboration” (back cover).
“structurally” through progressive programs and policies. The market, wealthy elites, charitable foundations, moral leaders, and religious organizations are not to be trusted to achieve the goods that sociology prizes—most of those, in fact, are often viewed as sources of the world’s current problems. In general, the wealth of capitalists needs to be redistributed, and the world would be a better place if it were much more secular. So, in the end, most ordinary people cannot be trusted (because they do not “get it”), nor can established institutions and their leaders be trusted. So those who do “get it”—who have a “sociological imagination”—must (somehow) compel the state to socially structure equality, freedom, and justice for all, especially those against whom mainstream society would discriminate.
Emancipation thus also centrally defines sociology’s sacred project. People need to be set free from everything external that oppresses, constrains, and dehumanizes them, whether that takes the form of ignorance, racism, poverty, patriarchy, heterosexism, or any other discrimination or obstruction, perhaps including the institutions of marriage and religion. Thus the archetypically modern devotion to freedom, to liberté , is generalized in this project. A key substantive commitment in sociology’s sacred project is also equality. Nobody is any better or more valuable or important than anyone else. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity for—and probably even an equal outcome in—enjoying material goods and social respect. Significant privileges, status distinctions, and categories of discrimination are therefore bads to be targeted for destruction.
To the more traditional western commitments to freedom and equality, sociology’s sacred project also adds the centrality of moral affirmation . In some ways, this is contemporary American society’s version of the French Revolution’s ideal of fraternité. It is not, for this project, enough simply to set people free from oppression and to treat them as equals. Everyone also deserves to be morally affirmed
by everyone else in their society. Justice and equity are not sufficient: it is necessary to ensure the kind of social and moral approval, validation, appreciation, and approbation that people are believed to need to feel good about themselves. Unacceptable, therefore, is any form of real or symbolic lack of acceptance, exclusion, or moral judgment against another. Every identity and lifestyle must be not only tolerated but positively validated, affirmed, and included.
The focal concern of sociology’s sacred project is the welfare of human beings. Many sociologists are also concerned about the welfare of the natural environment and animals. However, with some exceptions, it is about the rights and well-being of humanity that this sacred project is most concerned—but humanity understood in a very particular way. A highly specific philosophical anthropology is at work here. First, human beings are believed to be (or at least should be) autonomous. This may seem strange for a discipline devoted to showing how individual people are powerfully influenced, if not constituted and determined, by their social environments. But sociology’s sacred project finds a way to finesse this tension. The controlling influencer that society is, which sociology reveals, is associated with the constraining (oppressive, exploiting, discriminating) part of human experience, which the individual needs to resist and overcome if he or she is to be free, happy, and healthy.18 The individual human person, then, is understood as naturally, and thus ideally, autonomous—as a distinct agent (that should be) in charge of its own body, self, decisions, and destiny. The crucial disciplinary contribution to its own project is thus for sociology to discover and expose the many unjust and oppressive ways that “society”
18. This “homo-duplex” model of individual-versus-society was the common assumption of sociology’s founding fathers—see Christian Smith, 2015, To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil , Chicago: University of Chicago Press; also see Jonathan Fish, 2013, “Homo Duplex Revisited: A Defense of Emile Durkheim’s Theory of Moral Self,” Journal of Classical Sociology, May 31, pp. 1–21.
constraints, exploits, and oppresses individuals, so that they can be challenged and surmounted. “The social” is thus construed as essential to humanity’s problem, an all-too-often dehumanizing force that must be subverted and reconstructed to foster individuals’ autonomy.
Human beings ought also, in this view, to be self-directing. People should not be controlled or commanded by anyone but themselves. The direction of action for each person must come from the will of each person. Whatever happens by, with, and to any given person should be determined by that person, and nothing or nobody else. In this vision, human persons are obviously most authentically and rightfully individuals. People are not cells of a social body, dwellers on a Great Chain of Being, or subjects of Kingdom, Church, or Nation. All people of course need to be—as sociology as a project itself is—enlightened and converted and made part of the collective movement animated by this sacred project. But the movement itself must never violate anyone’s individuality, for that would itself violate the vision and commitment of the movement. Solidarity, in short, is instrumental and contractual, not ontological and encumbering. Individuals, by this account, are also conceived of as agents. This means they possess “agency.” Individuals are not fundamentally objects on which other forces act but the subjects of action and interaction of which they themselves are the efficient causes. They thus are and rightly ought to be the capable, empowered, authorized actors who make things happen in the world and in their own lives.
What, then, according to this sacred project, are these emancipated, equal, morally affirmed, autonomous, self-directed, individual agents to be doing with their individual freedom, equality, affirmation, and autonomy? They should be acting to live their lives as they so desire . Here the descriptive and the normative combine. Humans are believed to be creatures both who naturally seek to live as they desire (the descriptive) and who ought to live as they
so desire (the normative). The teleological end in this point follows naturally from the philosophical-anthropology and moral commitments to individual emancipation, autonomy, self-direction, agency, and moral affirmation, as described above. People have lives to live, and the best lives for them are those lived according to the desires generated by each individual’s interests and wishes. The good world envisioned by this sacred project, therefore, is one in which each individual is free to live as he or she so desires—so long, to recite the standard rule, as they do not prevent any other individual from doing the same.
But does this sacred vision provide any more substantive content to what a good human life is likely to be, how individuals should capitalize upon their freedom and equality? Yes. Three somewhat substantive focuses help to define good human ends here. One involves individuals constructing their own favored identities. The question concerns who people are, in their own self-understanding and in the way others understand them. Identities define people and form their experiences. So each person needs to be able to construct his or her own identity in ways that fit their self-determined desires in life. Inherited and ascribed identities of family, religion, race, ethnicity, town, occupation, sexual orientation, and so on may not fit individual desires, so must be ready to be cast off or reconstructed. This of course requires an openness and fluidity in selfunderstanding. It also requires proficiency in the manipulation of symbolic markers of identity—styles of clothing, language, hair style and color, bodily inscriptions (tattoos, etc.), and so on—in order to achieve the desired self-presentation and affirmation. In any case, no other person or institution should be able to tell anyone who and what she or he is. That is a matter for each individual to decide, create, and express for herself or himself.
Two other somewhat substantive features of the individually self-directed good life envisioned by American sociology’s spiritual
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
BOOK I.
CONCERNING LEGAL AGENCIES.
TITLE I. THE LAWMAKER.
I. What the Method of Making Laws Should Be.
II. How the Lawmaker Should Act.
III. What Should be Required of the Lawmaker.
IV. What the Conduct of the Lawmaker Should Be in his Daily Life.
V. How the Lawmaker Should Impart Advice.
VI. What Manner of Speech the Lawmaker Should Use.
VII. How the Lawmaker Should Act in Rendering Judgment.
VIII. How the Lawmaker Should Comport Himself in Public and Private Affairs.
IX. What Instruction it is Fitting that the Lawmaker Should Give.
I. What the Method of Making Laws Should Be.
We, whose duty it is to afford suitable assistance in the formation of the laws, should, in the execution of this undertaking, improve upon the methods of the ancients, disclosing as well the excellence of the law to be framed, as the skill of its artificer. The proof of this art will be the more plainly evident, if it seems to draw its conclusions not from inference and imitation but from truth. Nor should it stamp the force of argument with the subtlety of syllogism, but it should, with moderation, and by the use of pure and honorable precepts, determine the provisions of the law. And, indeed, reason plainly demands that the work be performed in this manner. For, when the master holds in his hand the finished product, in vain is sought the reason for its having been impressed with that particular form. On subjects that are obscure, reason eagerly seeks to be informed by examination; in matters, however, that are well known and established, action alone is required. Therefore, when the matter in question is not clear because its form is unfamiliar, investigation is desirable; but it is otherwise in affairs known to all men, where not speculation, but performance, becomes essential, As we are more concerned with morals than with eloquence, it is not our province to
introduce the personality of the orator, but to define the rights of the governor.
II. How the Lawmaker Should Act.
The maker of laws should not practise disputation, but should administer justice. Nor is it fitting that he should appear to have framed the law by contention, but in an orderly manner. For the transaction of public affairs does not demand, as a reward of his labors, the clamor of theatrical applause, but the law destined for the salvation of the people.
III. What Should be Required of the Lawmaker.
First, it should be required that he make diligent inquiry as to the soundness of his opinions. Then, it should be evident that he has acted not for private gain but for the benefit of the people; so that it may conclusively appear that the law has not been made for any private or personal advantage, but for the protection and profit of the whole body of citizens.
IV. What the Conduct of the Lawmaker Should Be in his Daily Life.
The framer of laws and the dispenser of justice should prefer morals to eloquence, that his speech may be characterized rather by virtuous sentiments, than by elegance of expression. He should be more eminent for deeds than for words; and should discharge his duties rather with alacrity than with reluctance, and not, as it were, under compulsion.[1]
V. How the Lawmaker Should Impart Advice.
He should be mindful of his duty only to God and to himself; be liberal of counsel to persons of high and low degree, and easy of access to the citizens and common people; so that, as the guardian of the public safety, exercising the government by universal consent, he may not, for personal motives, abuse the privileges of his judicial office.
VI. What Manner of Speech the Lawmaker Should Use.
He should be energetic and clear of speech; certain in opinion; ready in weighing evidence; so that whatever proceeds from the source of the law may at once impress all hearers that it is characterized by neither doubt nor perplexity.
VII. How the Lawmaker Should Act in Rendering Judgment.
The Judge should be quick of perception; firm of purpose; clear in judgment; lenient in the infliction of penalties; assiduous in the practice of mercy; expeditious in the vindication of the innocent; clement in his treatment of criminals; careful of the rights of the stranger; gentle toward his countrymen. He should be no respecter of persons, and should avoid all appearance of partiality.
VIII. How the Lawmaker Should Comport Himself in Private and Public Affairs.
All public matters he should approach with patriotism and reverence; those concerning private individuals and domestic controversies he should determine according to his authority and power; so that the community may look up to him as a father, and the lower orders of the people may regard him as a master and a lord.
He should be assiduous in the performance of his duties so that he may be feared by the commonalty to such a degree that none shall hesitate to obey him; and be so just that all would willingly sacrifice their lives in his service, from their attachment to his person and to his office.
IX. What Instruction it is Fitting that the Lawmaker Should Give.
Then, also, he should bear in mind that the glory and the majesty of the people consist in the proper interpretation of the laws, and in the manner of their administration. For, as the entire safety of the public depends upon the preservation of the law, he should attempt to amend the statutes of the country rather than the manners of the
populace; and remember that there are some who, in controversies, apply the laws according to their will, and in pursuance of private advantage, to such an extent that what should be law to the public is to them private dishonor; so that, by perversion of the law, acts which are illegal are often perpetrated, which should obviously be abolished through the power of the law itself.
TITLE II. THE LAW.
I. What the Lawmaker Should Observe in Framing the Laws.
II. What the Law Is.
III. What the Law Does.
IV. What the Law Should Be.
V. Why the Law is Made.
VI. How the Law Should Triumph over Enemies.
I. What the Lawmaker Should Observe in Framing the Laws.
In all legislation the law should be fully and explicitly set forth, that perfection, and not partiality, may be secured. For, in the formation of the laws, not the sophisms of argument, but the virtue of justice should ever prevail. And here is required not what may be prompted by controversy, but what energy and vigor demand; for the violation of morals is not to be coerced by the forms of speech, but restrained by the moderation of virtue.
II. What the Law Is.
The law is the rival of divinity; the oracle of religion; the source of instruction; the artificer of right; the guardian and promoter of good morals; the rudder of the state; the messenger of justice; the mistress of life; the soul of the body politic.
III. What the Law Does.
The law rules every order of the state, and every condition of man; it governs wives and husbands; youth and age; the learned and the ignorant; the polished and the rude. It aims to provide the highest degree of safety for both prince and people, and, in renown and excellence, it is as conspicuous as the noon-day sun.
IV. What the Law Should Be.
The law should be plain, and not lead any citizen to commit error or fraud. It should be suitable to the place and the time, according to the character and custom of the state; prescribing justice and equity; consistent, honorable, worthy, useful, and necessary; and it should
be carefully noted whether its provisions are framed rather for the convenience, than for the injury, of the public; so that it may be determined whether it sufficiently provides for the administration of justice; whether or not it appears to be contrary to religion, and whether it defends the right, and may be observed without detriment to any one.
V. Why the Law is Made.
Laws are made for these reasons: that human wickedness may be restrained through fear of their execution; that the lives of innocent men may be safe among criminals; and that the temptation to commit wrong may be restrained by the fear of punishment.
VI. How the Law Should Triumph over Enemies.
Domestic peace having been once established and the plague of contention having been entirely removed from prince, citizen, and the populace, expeditions then may be made safely against the enemy and he may be attacked confidently and vigorously, in the certain hope of victory; when nothing is to be anticipated or feared from dissensions at home. The entire body of the people being prosperous and secure, through the influence of peace and order, they can set forth boldly against the enemy and become invincible, where salutary arts are aided by just laws. For men are better armed with equity than with weapons; and the prince should rather employ justice against an enemy than the soldier his javelin; and the success of the prince will be more conspicuous when a reputation for justice accompanies him, and soldiers who are well governed at home will be all the more formidable to a foe. It is a matter of common experience, that justice, which has protected the citizen, overwhelms the enemy; and that those prevail in foreign contests who enjoy domestic peace; and while the moderation of the prince insures temperance in the enforcement of the law, so the united support of the citizens promotes victory over the enemy. For the administration of the law is regulated by the disposition and character of the king; from the administration of the law proceeds the institution of morals; from the institution of morals, the concord of the
citizens; from the concord of the citizens, the triumph over the enemy. So a good prince ruling well his kingdom, and making foreign conquests, maintaining peace at home, and overwhelming his foreign adversaries, is famed both as the ruler of his state and a victor over his enemies, and shall have for the future eternal renown; after terrestrial wealth, a celestial kingdom; after the diadem and the purple, a crown of glory; nor shall he then cease to be king; for when he relinquished his earthly kingdom, and conquered a celestial one, he did not diminish, but rather increased his glory.
BOOK II.
CONCERNING THE CONDUCT OF CAUSES.
TITLE I. CONCERNING JUDGES AND MATTERS TO BE DECIDED IN COURT.
I. When Amended Laws should come in Force
II. The Royal Power, as well as the Entire Body of the People, should be Subject to the Majesty of the Law.
III. It is Permitted to No One to be Ignorant of the Law.
IV. The Business of the King shall First be Considered, then that of the People.
V. How the Avarice of the King should be Restrained in the Beginning, and How Documents Issued in the Name of the King should be Drawn Up.
VI. Concerning Those who Abandon the King, or the People, or their Country, or who Conduct Themselves with Arrogance.
VII. Of Incriminating the King, or Speaking Ill of Him.
VIII. Of Annulling the Laws of Foreign Nations
IX. No One shall presume to have in his Possession another Book of Laws except this which has just been Published
X. Concerning Fast Days and Festivals, during which No Legal Business shall be Transacted
XI. No Cause shall be Heard by the Judges which is not Sanctioned by the Law.
XII. When Causes have once been Determined, at no Time shall They be Revived; but They shall be Disposed of according to the Arrangement of this Book: the Addition of Other Laws being One of the Prerogatives of the King.
XIII. It shall be Lawful for No One to Hear and Determine Causes except Those Whom either the King, the Parties by Voluntary Consent, or the Judge, shall have Invested with Judicial Powers.
XIV. What Causes shall be Heard, and to what Persons Causes shall be Assigned for a Decision.
XV. Judges Shall Decide Criminal as well as Civil Causes
XVI. Concerning the Punishment of Those who Presume to Act as Judges, who have not been Invested with Judicial Power
XVII. Concerning Those who Ignore the Letters of the Judge, or His Seal, Calling Them to Court
XVIII. Where a Judge Refuses to Hear a Litigant, or Decides Fraudulently or Ignorantly
XIX. Where a Judge, either through Convenience to Himself, or through Want of Proper Knowledge, Decides a Cause Improperly.
XX. Where a Judge, either through Deceit or Cunning, imposes Needless Costs upon Either, or Both the Parties to a Suit
XXI. What, First of All, a Judge should be Familiar With, in order that he may Understand a Case
XXII. Where the Integrity of a Judge is said to be Suspected by Any One of Honorable Rank, or where a Judge presumes to render a Decision Contrary to Law
XXIII. How a Judge should render Judgment.
XXIV. Concerning the Emoluments and the Punishment of the Judge, and of the Bailiff.
XXV. Everyone who is Invested with Judicial Power Shall Legally bear the Title of Judge.
XXVI. Every Bond which is Exacted by a Judge, after an Unjust Decree, shall be held Invalid.
XXVII. An Unjust Decree, or an Unjust Interpretation of the Law, Prompted by Fear of the Throne, or Made by Order of the King, shall be Invalid.
XXVIII. Concerning the Power, conferred upon Bishops, of Restraining Judges who Decide Wrongfully
XXIX. The Judge, when Inquired of by a Party, should be able to give a Reason for His Decision
XXX. Concerning the Punishment of Judges who Appropriate the Property of Others
XXXI. Concerning those who Treat the Royal Order with Disdain
XXXII. How the Judge should Inquire into Causes by the Ordeal of Hot Water
I. When Amended Laws should come in Force.
In assigning their place to laws which have been amended, we have considered it proper to give them the most important tank, for, as clearness in the laws is useful in preventing the misdeeds of the people, so obscurity in their provisions interferes with the course of justice. For many salutary edicts are drawn up in obscure and contradictory language, and are instrumental in promoting the controversies of litigants; and, while they should put an end to chicanery, they, in fact, give rise to new sophisms and abuses. For this reason, therefore, litigation increases; disputes between parties are encouraged; the judges become undecided, so that, in attempting to dispose of false claims and charges, they are unable to form definite conclusions, as all seems perplexed and uncertain. And
because all questions which arise in suits at law, cannot be disposed of in a few words, except those which have been determined in our presence; we have decided that certain laws should be amended in this book; that doubtful matters should be made clear; that profit should be extracted from those things that are evil; clemency from those that are mortal; clearness from those that are obscure; and that perfection should be given to those that are incomplete; whereby the people of our kingdom, whom our peaceful government alone restrains, may be checked and controlled, hereafter, by the aid of said amended laws. And therefore, these laws as amended, and approved by us, and our new decrees, as set forth in this book and its titles, as well as such as may be subsequently added, shall be enforced from the second year of our reign, and the twelfth Kalends of November, and shall be binding thereafter upon all persons subject to our empire, irrespective of rank. Those laws, however, which we have promulgated against the offences of the Jews, we decree shall be valid from the date when they were confirmed by us.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
II. The Royal Power, as well as the Entire Body of the People, should be Subject to the Majesty of the Law.
The Omnipotent Lord of all, sole Founder and Provider of the means of human salvation, ordered the inhabitants of the earth to learn justice from the sacred precepts of the law. And, because the mandate of Divinity has been thus imposed upon the human race, it is fitting that all terrestrial creatures, of however exalted rank, should acknowledge the authority of Him whom even the celestial soldiery obey. Wherefore, if God should be obeyed, justice should be highly esteemed, which, if it were thus esteemed, would be constantly practised, as every one loves justice more truly and ardently when a feeling of equity unites him with his neighbor.[2] Willingly, therefore, carrying out the Divine commands, let us give temperate laws to ourselves and to our subjects; laws such as we and our successors, and the whole body of the people, may readily obey; so that no person of whatever rank or dignity may refuse to submit to the power
of the law, which the necessity and will of the King has deemed it proper and salutary to inculcate.
FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
III. It is Permitted to No One to be Ignorant of the Law.
All true science declares that ignorance should be detested.[3] For while it has been written, “he need not understand who desires to act with propriety,” it is certain that he who does not wish to know, despises an upright life. Therefore, let no one think that he can do what is unlawful because he was ignorant of the provisions of the laws, and what is sanctioned by them; for ignorance does not render him innocent, whom guilt has subjected to the penalties of the criminal.
FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
IV. The Business of the King shall First be Considered, then that of the People.
God, the Creator of all things, in his arrangement of the human form, placed the head above the body, and caused all the different members of the latter to originate from it, and it is, therefore, called the head; there being formed the brightness of the eyes, by which all things that produce injury can be discerned; there being born also the power of intelligence, through which the members connected with, and subject to, the head, may be either controlled or protected. For this reason it is the especial care of skilful physicians to provide the remedies for the head before treating the other members of the body; which, indeed, may not be thought unreasonable, when properly explained; because, if the head should be healthy, it is reasonable to suppose that the other members can be readily cured. For if disease attacks the head, health cannot be imparted by it to the members which are constantly being wasted by weakness. The most important duties of the prince are, therefore, the preservation of health and the defence of life; so that the proper method may be adopted in the conduct of the affairs of the people; and while the health of the king is cared for, the preservation of his subjects may be the better maintained.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
V. How the Avarice of the King should be Restrained in the Beginning, and How Documents Issued in the Name of the King should be Drawn Up.
Earthly greatness appears the more sublime when compassion for our neighbors is displayed; and, therefore, it should be the duty of every monarch to pay more attention to the safety of his subjects than to his own personal advantage. For the greater the number of his subjects, the greater the benefit to be derived by him from them; as, however much the king may desire to profit by his individual efforts alone, there is little to be gained therefrom. Hence, the wellbeing of the people, whose bounds are not defined by the will of one, but affect the prosperity of all, is directly concerned. Wherefore, that the favor of the prince may not seem to be manifested rather in words than in deeds, he should be attentive to the unspoken wishes of his subjects; and thus unsolicited compassion may often effect what otherwise crowded assemblies would hardly be able to obtain.
For the reason that, in former times, the unbridled greed of princes despoiled the people of their possessions, and the wealth of the state was persistently wrung from the misery of its citizens; as we have already given laws to the subject, we deem it in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Spirit to place restraints upon the exactions of the prince. Hence, after sincere deliberation, as well for our own glory as for that of our successors; God being our mediator; we decree that no king shall, by any means, extort, or cause to be extorted, any documents whatever in acknowledgment of any debt, whereby any person can unjustly, and without his consent, be deprived of his property. And, if by the free will of any one the king should receive a gift, or should openly profit by any transaction, the character of the transaction or contribution should be clearly set forth in the document; by which means either the influence of the prince or the fraud of his accomplice may be readily detected. And, if it should appear that the document had been exacted from any one against his will, either the dishonesty of the prince shall be atoned for, and he shall cancel his corrupt contract, or, if he should be dead, the document shall be declared void as against him from whom it was
extorted, or his heirs, and this shall be done without delay.[4] But the ownership of property whose acquisition is free from all suspicion, shall vest absolutely in the prince, and be his own forever. And whatever disposition he wishes to make of any of these things, he can make according to his judgment. But as sincerity and truth confirm all matters of this kind, whenever any documents are made for the advantage of the prince, the witnesses who have attested those documents shall be carefully examined, and if no indication of corrupt or forcible influence by the prince is apparent, or should any fraud in the execution of the document be detected; according to these circumstances the instrument shall either stand as properly made, or, having been proved to be illegal, it shall be declared void.
Similar arrangements concerning lands, vineyards, and bodies of slaves shall be observed, even when such disposition has been made of them verbally and in the presence of witnesses. In regard to all property that has been acquired by princes since the time of King Chintilanus, or that hereafter shall be acquired by others; and whatever property a king has left, or shall leave undisposed of, when it is proved to have been acquired by the head of the government; we decree that it shall belong to his successor in the kingdom, and he shall have the power to dispose of it according to his pleasure. But property obtained from relatives, or inherited from parents, shall descend to his sons, or, if he have no sons, to his legitimate heirs, as their rights may appear, or as they are acknowledged by the laws of succession: but if it should happen that he has left undisposed of any property inherited from his parents or his relatives, or derived from any contribution, or obtained by any legal contract; it shall belong, not to the successor of the kingdom, but to the sons or heirs of him who has thus acquired it. For whatever the prince is known to have possessed before his accession to the throne, either as his own property, or gained through honorable transactions with others, he shall have absolute power to dispose of according to his will, and his sons shall have full right to its inheritance; but, if he should have no sons, such property as he did not dispose of, shall descend to his lawful heirs. This law shall apply solely to, and shall be observed in, the affairs of the prince, and shall be forever enforced, and no one
shall ascend the royal throne before making oath that he will observe it in all its details.
Whoever, either through an insurrection of the people, or by secret machinations, shall attain to supreme power, shall, with all his adherents, be accursed, and shall be excommunicated from the society of all Christians; and every Christian who shall have any intercourse with him shall undergo the same condemnation and pay the same penalty. And if any one holding an office in the royal palace, shall, through malice, criticise this law, or evade it in any way, or murmur against it; or shall have been convicted of having openly condemned it; he shall be deprived of all his employments and privileges, shall be stripped of half of all his possessions, shall be forcibly restrained of his liberty, and be excluded from the society of the palace. Any one in holy orders who has shared his offense, shall undergo the same confiscation of his property.
FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
VI. Concerning Those who Abandon the King, or the People, or their Country, or who Conduct Themselves with Arrogance.
The extent to which the country of the Goths has been afflicted by domestic strife, and by the injuries caused by deserters and their abominable pride, is not generally known; yet it is evident in the diminution of the population; and these disturbances are the source of more trouble to the country than enterprises against the enemy. Therefore, that such contemptible conduct may be abolished, and the manifest crimes of these transgressors may no longer go unpunished, we have decreed by this law, which shall prevail through all ages, that whoever, from the time of King Chintilanus of sacred memory, until the second year of our reign, has deserted, or shall desert to the enemy; or shall repair to any foreign country; or even has wished, or shall wish, at any time, to act with criminal intent against the Gothic people; or shall conspire against his country; or, perchance, has attempted at any time to conspire against it; and has been, or shall be captured or detected in the commission of any of these offences; and if, either from the first year of our reign has attempted, or, hereafter, any one within the limits of the country of
the Goths shall attempt, to foment any disorder, or cause any scandal to the detriment of our government, or of the people; or, what is unworthy to be even mentioned, may have seemed to have plotted our death or injury, or shall hereafter plot against subsequent kings; or has appeared, or shall appear, to manifest, in any way, the intentions of a traitor; whoever shall be found guilty of all of these crimes, or of any one of them, shall undergo sentence of death; nor shall any leniency be shown him, under any condition, except that his life alone may be spared through the considerate pity of the prince. But this shall not be done until his eyes have been put out, so that he may not see the wrong in which he wickedly took delight, and may henceforth drag out a miserable existence in constant grief and pain. The property of such atrocious criminals shall belong absolutely to the king, and whoever he bestows it upon shall possess it in security forever; and no succeeding king, at any time, shall presume to review the cause, or shall interfere, in any way, with this sentence. But, as many are found who, having been implicated in these, and in similar wicked designs, and have fraudulently transferred their property to the Church, or to their wives, or to their sons and friends, or to other persons; or have secretly conveyed said property to foreign countries, in order that they may claim said property, and demand its possession thereafter; when, in fact, none of said property has been alienated, and the papers evidencing its transfer are fraudulent, making false representations under an appearance of truth; therefore, we have decided to abolish this most iniquitous fraud by the decree of this law; so that, wherever documents have been drawn up with a manifest intention to wrong or deceive, any property owned by a person who has been convicted of such criminal practices shall be confiscated for the use of the royal treasury; and it is hereby declared that all such property above mentioned shall be at the disposal of the king, and he shall hereafter do with it whatever his judgment dictates, but whatever other provisions relating to a fraud of this description are contained in other laws, are hereby confirmed in all their force.
All persons to whom pardon has been granted by preceding kings are expressly excepted from the penalties of this decree; and if, through motives of humanity, the king should wish to bestow
anything upon a criminal, it should not be taken from the property belonging to the malefactor, but must be obtained from such other source as it may please the king; and it shall be only lawful for him to give an amount equal to the twentieth part of the inheritance of the criminal.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
VII. Of Incriminating the King, or Speaking Ill of Him.
As we have forbidden all persons to either plot treason, or to institute violence against the king, so it shall also be unlawful to either accuse him of crime, or utter maledictions against him. For the authority of the Sacred Scriptures does not permit evil to be spoken of one’s neighbor, and declares that he who curses the prince, is an offender against the people. Wherefore, whoever shall accuse the prince of crime or shall utter curses against him, and, instead of humbly and respectfully admonishing him as to his life, shall boldly insult him with pride and contumely; or, in order to degrade him, shall refer to him in ignominious, base, and injurious language; if the offender should belong to the nobility or to a family of high rank, no matter whether he is a member of the clergy or of the laity, as soon as he has been detected and convicted, he shall forfeit half of all his property, which the prince shall have the privilege of disposing of according to his pleasure. If, however, he should belong to the lower classes, or those without dignity and position, both his property and his person shall be at the absolute disposal of the king. And even should the king be dead, these same provisions shall apply to whoever dares to defame his memory.[5] For the living vainly cast the darts of slander against the dead, who, having departed this life, cannot be affected by abuse, or influenced by criticism. But, for the reason that he is evidently insane who heaps detraction upon one who cannot comprehend it; the slanderer shall receive fifty lashes, and his presumption shall be silenced. But the privilege is given freely to all, while the prince is either living or dead, to discuss all matters pertaining to any cause he may have before the legal tribunals and to use such arguments as may be proper and right, and obtain such judgment as he may be entitled to; for, by this
means, we endeavor to establish reverence for human dignity, as well as to maintain faithfully the justice of God.
FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
VIII. Of Annulling the Laws of Foreign Nations.
We both permit and desire that the laws of foreign nations shall be studied for the sake of the useful knowledge that may be obtained from them, but we reject and prohibit their employment in the business of the courts. For although they may be couched in eloquent language, they abound in difficulties; and so long as the methods, principles and precepts contained in this body of laws suffice for the purposes of justice, we are unwilling that anything more be borrowed, either from the Roman laws, or from the institutions of foreigners.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
IX. No One shall presume to have in his Possession another Book of Laws except this which has just been Published.
No one of our subjects, whosoever, shall presume to offer to a judge as authority, in any legal proceeding, any book of laws excepting this one, or an authorized translation of the same; and any person who does this shall pay thirty pounds of gold to the treasury. [6] And if any judge shall not at once destroy such a prohibited book when it is offered him, he shall undergo the above named penalty. But we decree that those shall be exempt from the operation of this law, who have cited former laws, not for the overthrow of ours, but in confirmation of causes which have previously been determined.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS CHINTASVINTUS, KING.
X. Concerning Fast Days and Festivals, during which no Legal Business shall be Transacted.
No litigation shall be commenced on Sunday, for religion should take precedence of all legal matters, and upon that day no one shall presume to subject another to annoyances either for the trial of a case, or for the payment of a debt; nor shall any person be permitted
to bring a suit at Easter; that is, for fifteen days, the seven which precede the celebration of that festival, and the seven which follow it. The days of Christmas, of the Circumcision, of the Epiphany, of the Ascension, and of Pentecost shall be observed with the same reverence; and, in like manner, during the harvest festivals, from the fifteenth Kalends of August, to the fifteenth Kalends of September, the same pious conformity shall be required. But in the province of Carthage, by reason of the constant ravages of the locust, we decree that the harvest festival shall be celebrated from the fifteenth Kalends of July to the fifteenth Kalends of August; and, on account of the vintage, from the fifteenth Kalends of October to the fifteenth Kalends of November.
This provision we decree shall be obeyed by all; so that, during these festivals, no one may be summoned to court, or subjected to prosecution, unless the suit in which he is concerned has already been brought before the judge. For there can be no reason, if the action should still be undecided, that he who has been sued should be placed at any disadvantage on account of holidays. And if either of the parties is a person of credit and honor, he may depart the court, under his promise to return. But if he should be of doubtful faith, he shall provide securities for such time as is necessary; either until the cause has been decided, or until the judge shall appoint a time for it to be heard. An exception should be made, however, against those who have committed a crime punishable with death, who may be arrested upon any of the hereinbefore mentioned days, and kept in close custody, until Sunday or the above-named festivals shall have passed, when they shall be subjected to the vengeance of the presiding judge. The harvest or vintage festivals shall, in no way, interfere with the punishment of criminals and malefactors worthy of death. But the law shall not hold him excusable who, not yet having been brought into court, knows that he shall eventually be summoned there, and who, concealing himself for the rest of the time, appears in the presence of him to whom he is liable, only on the festival days aforesaid, thinking that, through no process of the law, he can be held until the cause is heard: such a person we decree shall be placed under restraint until the case of plaintiff shall have been disposed of. And if there should be any one concerning
whose good faith there may be suspicions, and who cannot find security, he shall remain in custody, until, the holidays having expired, the cause in which he has been summoned shall be decided. And if any one shall presume to act contrary to the decree of this law, and shall come to the judge with a complaint upon the days which are prohibited, as aforesaid, he shall be scourged in public with fifty lashes.
XI. No Cause shall be Heard by the Judges which is not Sanctioned by the Law.
No one has a right to hear a cause which is not authorized by the laws; but the governor of the city or the judge, either in person, or by their messengers, may cause both parties to appear before the king, that the matter may be disposed of at his discretion; and, after this promulgation, such decisions shall have all the force of law
FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
XII. When Causes have once been Determined, at no Time shall They be Revived; but They shall be Disposed of according to the Arrangement of this Book: the Addition of Other Laws being One of the Prerogatives of the King.
Whatever legal proceedings have heretofore been begun, but remain unfinished, we decree shall be disposed of according to these laws. But those causes which, before these laws have been amended by us, have been legally decided, that is, according to the tenor of the laws which prevailed previous to our reign, shall under no circumstances whatever be revived. But, if the judgment of the prince should approve it, and conditions require it, he shall have the right to add other laws, which shall have the same validity and force as those now in existence.
THE GLORIOUS FLAVIUS RECESVINTUS, KING.
XIII. It shall be Lawful for No One to Hear and Determine Causes except Those Whom either the King, the Parties by Voluntary Consent, or the Judge, shall have Invested with Judicial Powers.
