Formless modernity

Patrick Deneen, in a conversation with Albert Mohler, made the following observation that has, I believe, a great deal to it:

I often think of a line in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America in which he says Americans, that is liberal democrats, will find forms to be abhorrent, they will always be opposed to forms. And what did he mean by that? 

Forms are that which create a shape or are a shape. Forms are all of the ways that, especially in nature but also not in nature, we draw distinctions. So you're [speaking to Mohler] dressed in a nice jacket and tie, I'm business casual, we would say you're more formal and I'm more informal and if I were my students I'd be wearing a hoodie and the tendency is to move toward the more informal in liberal democracy. 

And so the same mechanism that leads us to have informal Fridays or informality in address or not to be addressed as professor or doctor but as Patrick or hey you or dude, all of these are manifestations of the same phenomenon that leads to the decrial of borders, that's a form, the nation is a form; that leads to the decrial of religion as opposed to spirituality; liturgy as opposed to just simply feeling and emotion that I have, or connection or spirituality that I have; and of course it leads to the denunciation of the idea that there is somehow in nature a man and a woman. 

So it seems an odd thing to claim but the move toward informality is not disconnected in its deepest philosophical form.

[From a YouTube video, "Regime Change? A Future Beyond Classical Liberalism and Its Legacy? - With Patrick J Deneen", from 50:28, see here]

In short, a denial of form in philosophy leads, logically, both to informality but also to "formlessness", i.e., to a rejection of distinction. And so we see things "ratchet" within liberal modernity toward both of these things.

Just to underline this connection, consider the etymology of the word "formal". It first made its appearance in the late 14th century:

"pertaining to form or arrangement;" also, in philosophy and theology, "pertaining to the form or essence of a thing," from Old French formal, formel "formal, constituent" (13c.) and directly from Latin formalis, from forma "a form, figure, shape"

So the word "formal" originally had a sense of the form or essence of things, i.e., of the quality that constituted a particular thing. So what then happens when you get an early modern philosophy that stridently denies the existence of forms or essences? You will get a gradual shift to the "informal" and from there an effort to overthrow distinctions that once constituted "form".

Professor Patrick Deneen

This happened very gradually in Western culture but was already being noticed in the early 1800s. Professor Deneen cited Tocqueville describing the US in the 1830s. It was exactly in this decade that the American feminist Sarah Grimke decried the existence of distinctions between the sexes:

We approach each other, and mingle with each other, under the constant pressure of a feeling that we are of different sexes...the mind is fettered by the idea which is early and industriously infused into it, that we must never forget the distinction between male and female...Nothing, I believe, has tended more to destroy the true dignity of woman, than the fact that she is approached by man in the character of a female.

... Until our intercourse is purified by the forgetfulness of sex...we never can derive that benefit from each other's society

Similarly, in 1811 the English poet Shelley wrote a letter to Elizabeth Hitchener in which he prophesied of differences between the sexes that,

these detestable distinctions will surely be abolished in a future state of being

In 1792 the English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote that,

A wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it, though it may excite a horse-laugh. I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society

In 1820, the Austrian statesman Metternich observed of the liberals of his era that,

...one of the sentiments most natural to man, that of nationality, is erased from the Liberal catechism, and that where the word is still employed, it is used by the heads of the party as a pretext to enchain Governments, or as a lever to bring about destruction. The real aim of the idealists of the party is religious and political fusion.

The drive toward "fusion", i.e., toward a kind of oneness, is perhaps also a manifestation of the ratcheting of liberal modernity toward "informality" in the sense of indistinction. 

In recent times, the drift toward informality is clear enough. I can see it in my own profession of teaching. Students now mostly call teachers by their first name; the wearing of uniforms is becoming less common; teachers themselves often dress casually; and some schools have even stopped using the word "teacher" preferring terms like "facilitator". 

You can see the informality too in the way that girls often dress. Fashion is still a major interest to girls, but the way it is expressed is often casual and at least semi-androgynous. Teenage girls might typically dress in hoodies and tracksuit pants. These are clothes that do not express "form" in the sense of highlighting anything distinctly feminine. The lack of feminine form goes hand in hand with a casual sensibility ("relaxing into formlessness").

It's interesting to compare this with the traditional clothes worn in rural Europe ("Tracht" in the German speaking countries). These were very formal in the sense of making distinctions. The particular "Tracht" that was worn might show a person's occupation, marital status, social class, religion and home town, as well as being very distinct in terms of one's sex.

This topic also reminds me of a video I saw a few years ago in which a glamorously dressed woman (showing "form") walked through a shopping mall in a European city filled with very indistinctly dressed people, who looked at her with a degree of perplexity. 

The many and the few

Professor Deneen sometimes talks about a tradition in classical thought (going back to Aristotle) which focuses on the problem any society faces of balancing the influence of the elite and the majority. Aristotle termed a society ruled by the few, but for the common good, an aristocracy, and a society ruled by the few for their own self-interest, an oligarchy. 

Clearly we have drifted in the modern West more toward an oligarchy. Our elites have chosen to define themselves against their own working classes. The elite only allows itself to be distinct, as a class, in terms of having values that the working-class does not. If the working classes are patriotic, they are globalist and so on. 

In the past, the elite were more aristocratic, in the sense that they held to an ethos of noblesse oblige, in which their privilege obligated them to certain responsibilities toward the larger society. And, in a society in which form was still possible, the elite could aim to be distinct through what was called "good form". Good form referred to the polite customs of dress, of speech, of manners and such like that a gentleman was thought to adhere to. This good form could be intricate, and might be thought burdensome by modern standards (an American was able to write an entire book about it in 1888), but it is a better way for an elite to identify itself than to set itself against its own majority, and it reflects something positive, namely that the culture still recognised form, rather than being committed to dissolving things into a formless mass.

Traditional Australia

It is possible that traditional Australian culture was more informal than elsewhere, at least in certain respects. There is a good side to this: it can make for friendly, sincere and relaxed social relationships. The traditionally warm and laid back Australian culture has its appeal.

Perhaps, though, we need to find a balance in this. A healthy society will inevitably have form, and therefore generate some level of formality. This is particularly true in certain social settings, for instance, in the interaction of men and women; in religious observance; in public office; in public ceremonies; in the arts; and in professional settings. 

Individuality

If you lived in nineteenth century England, when formality was still more present in society, it might have seemed that the rules of society were stifling to your individuality. To rebel against form, and to live like a Bohemian or a non-conformist, might have been thought to promote a freely expressed individuality.

But time has proven this false. We now live in a more formless age. And it has not led to a flowering of individuality. Rather, we have become uniformly formless. We have been made fungible: we live as interchangeable units of a mass society. Our sex no longer stands for much, nor does any part of our identity. 

In rejecting form we have jettisoned the aspects of self that connect us to the transcendent and that make us meaningfully distinct in our personhood. 

John Lennon wanted all the world to live as one; Shelley wanted to abolish distinctions; Metternich warned that liberal moderns wanted to abolish nationhood in favour of religious and political fusion. This is not the pathway to genuine individuality. We have travelled far enough down this road to know this. 

Forms represent essence and carry purpose and meaning. There must therefore be degrees of formality and distinctions in a healthy, well-functioning society. To become indistinct is not a welcome fate, but something to be firmly resisted.