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1、On the Critique of Secular Ethics An Essay with Flannery OConnor and Hannah ArendtVikki BellWhat then becomes of this category ethics if we claim to suppress or mask its religious character, all the while preserving the abstract arrangement of its apparent constitution (recognition of the other, etc
2、.)? The answer is obvious: a dogs dinner de la bouille pour les chats. (Badiou, 2001: 23)In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness,
3、 its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labour camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber. (OConnor, 1969: 227)IFROM THE relative seclusion of her home in Milledgeville, Georgia where she was forced to retreat by the lupus that would claim her life at the age of 39 the Southern novelist Fla
4、nnery OConnor (192564) followed the controversy surrounding the publication of Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem (letter dated 22 June 1963, in 1979: 526). On 14 September 1963 she wrote:Im reading Eichmann in Jerusalem which Tom Stritch sent me. Anything is credible after such a period in histor
5、y. Ive always been haunted by the box cars, but they were actually the least of it. And old Hannahs as sharp as they come. (1979: 539)One suspects that OConnors admiration of Arendt was due not only to the sharpness of the theorists intellect but also to her capacity to be cutting in critique. Certa
6、inly Arendts coverage of the Eichmann trial was?Theory, Culture indeed, to criticize OConnors4Theory, Culture the revelations that were emerging about the atrocities of the Nazi regime; and the contem- porary US context in which Cold War ideologies were entwined with domestic fears. The central char
7、acter, who in OConnors deliberately curt6rendition thought he was good and was doing good when he wasnt (1979: 490) is the widower, Sheppard, who works during the week as the citys recreational Director and on Saturdays at the reformatory receiving nothing for it but the satisfaction of knowing that
8、 he was helping boys no one else cared about (1965: 1456). His attitude to the world is thoroughly materialistic,anchored in a trust in scientific rationality to explain its ways and wonders. He is, however, a man of high principles and a moralist. His morality, the one he tries to pass on to his so
9、n, is that of an altruistic humanist, based in the confrontation of present inequities. In the opening scene, Sheppard tries to convince his 10-year-old son, Norton, that he is better off than the young boy Rufus Johnson whom Sheppard has invited to come and stay with them since his release from the
10、 reformatory. His assessment of his sons comparative advantage operates only at the level of material situation; the boys emotional life, and in par- ticular his grief for his dead mother, is ignored by Sheppards assessment:You have a healthy body . . . a good home. Youve never been taught anything
11、but the truth. Your daddy gives you everything you need and want. You dont have a grandfather who beats you. And your mother is not in the state peni- tentiary. The child pushed his plate away. Sheppard groaned aloud.A knot of flesh appeared below the boys suddenly distorted mouth. . . . If she was
12、in the penitentiary he began in a racking bellow, I could go seeeeee her. (1965: 146)Sheppard responds to his sons grief with admonishment, advising him to turn outside himself, and with generalized platitudes about helping other people. He judges himself well: Do you see me just sitting around thin
13、king about my troubles? (1965: 147). It is Sheppards parenting of Norton that reveals OConnors judgement of him: Norton may have cake but it is stale; the boy may still have a father who provides for him but his grief for his mother is denied as indeed Sheppard denies his own. He sees neither the em
14、otional needs of his child nor his own irreplaceable role in the childs life, using his son to further his own plan to prove himself a good person. To Sheppard, his own child isBell On the Critique of Secular Ethics501_bell_051663 (jk_t) 30/3/05 8:53 am Page 5materially advantaged and intellectually
15、 average; Norton will be a banker. No, worse. He would operate a small loan company (1965: 143). By contrast, he judges Rufus as materially disadvantaged, emotionally needy and intellectually promising. His judgement, however, is woefully askew. For although, as in so many of OConnors stories, Rufus
16、 enters the family home seemingly the one in need, he quickly emerges as an incarnation of evil. At least this is how OConnor would have us read him. The afternoon he arrives the rain slashed against the window panes and rattled in the gutters; Rufus appears like an irate drenched crow. His look went through the child Norton like a pin and paralysed him (1965: 153). The visitor sets about his invasion of Nortons deepes
