Essays in Republican Virtue Volume 4: The Work of Reconstruction (2025)

This book is available as a paperback.https://www.amazon.co.uk/WORK-RECONSTRUCTION-Essays-Republican-Virtue/dp/B0DDHFGTYJ?ref_=ast_author_dpThe conditions for doing politics well do not exist in present times, for the reason that primary loyalties, commitments, and connections have been eroded and replaced by surrogate ‘communities’ based on sectional interests and identities. We have been living through an age of separation, unravelling social ties and moral bonds, starting with the primary loyalties. The previous three volumes in this set examine the great sundering that has taken place, characterised by the loss of the political and the ethical commons along with the physical commons. Hegel’s irony of history is alive and well, with the economic libertarianism of the Right converging with the cultural libertarianism of the Left to ensure the hollowing out of society and the ruination of public life, with both sides ultimately eclipsed by the external collectivism and authoritarianism of the corporate form.The essays emphasis what needs to be done in order to restore content to our social and public lives. There is a particular emphasis on the character-forming discipline of family, work, civic responsibility, faith and (nationally bounded) polity. This was the dominant theme of the work of Lewis Mumford, who was greatly influenced by Frédéric le Play’s triad of “Place, Work, Family” (Lieu, Travail, et Famille, as presented in his six-volume “Les Ouvriers Europeens” (“The European Working Classes”), published in 1855). Patrick Geddes, another big influence on Mumford, adapted Le Play's triad by changing “famille” to “folk.” It is no small part of our predicament that the word ‘populism’ has come to be applied pejoratively in recent years. The word ‘populism’ is the Latin counterpart of the Greek ‘democracy’ – and would-be universal controllers have no time for either. We are present at the latest clash in the ages-old war between elites and masses – with the elites, bent on ordering and organising the world in its own interests, as ever the instigators. There is a concerted effort being made to de-democratise public life, with common affairs being removed from parliamentary scrutiny and democratic control. The de-democratisers seek to erode ‘folk,’ family, and all such primary loyalties and solidarities, all the better to create a wasteland in which all have been reduced to mere rootless tumbleweed to be blown hither and thither by those blowing from above. It is the disempowerment of the demos and the destruction of democracy.That’s the game that is being played. In organising my work under the title of “Being and Place” I have been concerned to check these diremptive trends and tendencies, understanding that these trends and tendencies are in large part engineered, rather than evolved – any evolution that occurs here is not organic, but comes in response to the inherent logic of a rigged game.There is a need to reconstitute connection around realities, cultivating loyalties and connections in close, proximal relations, and expanding outwards from there. The world is inverted, with the constant expansion of the external shell of institutions serving priorities of their own, and the concomitant diminution and suppression of the inner contents.This volume outlines the contours of a politics that re-establishes proximal relations and expands outwards from there. This politics is as ethical as it is sociological, the restoration of social connection being accompanied by the restoration of the moral compass, rehabilitating both the social and the ethical life, creating a habitus in which the moral and intellectual virtues can be known, acquired, internalised, and exercised in communities of practice, forming the ‘habits of the heart’ crucial to social life, fostering the inner growth that is able to supplant external force by way of personal and social self-governance. The ‘work of reconstruction’ proceeds to by way of virtuous communities of character and practice as forms of the common life, uniting each and all in a consensual commitment to public life. It’s an ancient idea, but not nostalgic: we may call such a republic a modern polis democracy, scaled to human dimensions and proportions.CONTENTS1 BEING AND PLACE 12 THE NEED TO RESOLIDIFY 103 A PROXIMAL POLITICS 134 ENTHUSING THE PEOPLE 165 RECONSTITUTING PUBLIC LIFE 266 A DEEPER FREEDOM 357 REVALUING DEMOCRACY THROUGH A DEEPER FREEDOM 378 INNER GROWTH AGAINST EXTERNAL FORCE 479 REPERSONALISATION, RESPONSIBILITY AND SELF-ASSUMED OBLIGATION 5110 RESPONSIBILITY 6811 REMEMBERING JOEL KOVEL 7212 EMERGING FROM UNDER THE SHADOW OF MODERNITY 7913 THOUGHTS ON TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY, AND TRANSCENDENT STANDARDS 12714 RESTORING THE MORAL COMPASS 14915 REHABILITATING THE ETHICAL LIFE 16016 PASSING ON THE VIRTUES 17317 VIRTUOUS COMMUNITIES FOSTERING HABITS OF THE HEART 18718 THE QUEST FOR COMMUNITY, MEANING, AND BELONGING 19719 THE NEED FOR REFORMATION 19920 THE NEED FOR INSTITUTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION 20621 TIME FOR A TRANSFORMATION 26322 RESTORING TRUST AND CONNECTION IN A NEW COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL ORDER 28623 DIGGING AND HEALING: THE WORK OF RECONNECTION AND RESTORATION 292