(hopefully more time for the Platonic geometer tomorrow)
What is the spiritual destiny of a state? This might be the proper way to ask in terms of a phenomenology of spirit how to understand the distinction between state and church. The individual gives himself over to more than one kind of common destiny, so that there are destinies which are not ultimate in the way of the destiny of the church. However, the destiny of an individual fits in with the destiny of the church, but the destiny of a state seems not to fit in so nicely. My American upbringing (read “the manifestation of objective spirit which forms in part (which 'part?') the material for my own self-offering destiny,” if you like) makes it horrible for me to think that a nation might simply have no destiny of its own, might be only a collective tool of individuals — unless such a lack were the determinate self-negation of national destiny itself. On the other hand, the state seems to become something monstrous as soon as it lays claim to destiny. Our own history has involved a gradual abdication from a sense of “manifest destiny” learned perhaps only through the wretched enactments of that perceived destiny. On the other hand, this abdication seems to be nothing peculiar to our history — more of a destiny of the whole Western world. Nevertheless, I find it is beyond me to deny that America is something. If anyone has any idea what, please let me know.
IS "the manifestation of objective spirit which forms in part (which 'part?') the material for my own self-offering destiny" available online??? (I feel a bit cheated for not having known about it when it was first released.)
ReplyDeleteAllow me to sling a few ideas around in casual fashion:
I am no scholar of Andrew Jackson, but it seems to me that "Manifest Destiny" just as much as its (perceived) abdication falls under the broader shadow of that great tidal wave --so big that its dimensions rarely receive a proper appraisal, so far reaching that its crash even now still keeps away in the silence of ominous expectation -- that tidal wave known as the Western (scientific) tradition: the United States was quite self-consciously (as even the language of Publius reminds us often) an EXPERIMENT, a trial to test the mettle of Western Rationalism. Wasn't Jackson just clearing the laboratory table in order to extend the experiment, to provide it under optimal conditions (lebensraum, anyone?)? But all of this, along with the industrial and eventually technological infrastructure and machinery which it requires for itself, is as 'European' as the "founding fathers" themselves.
Is it possible that the American Spirit must be characterized in precisely this way, namely as European --but expired, or in other words as NO LONGER EUROPEAN? Is the American Spirit simply a borrowed one --with all of its pragmatism, utilitarianism, etc, is it indeed not better to speak of an American Body haunted by a European Spirit, con-fused in a combination that to the untrained eye looks wholly original, wholly novel --to say nothing of that novel-ty of Mary Shelley's)? This would mean that America's nationality would be its lineage (as in the familiar "what part Irish are you?"); its present nationality would be constituted retrospectively (for even such nationalistic consciousness is an inherited European affair) but its true destiny would not be the destiny of some exclusive people or nationality, but an inclusive non-people and an inter-nationality.