Exceptional States and New Habits of the Heart

Nathaniel Williams

We live in a time of uncertainty. A superficial review of history reveals the precariousness of our moment. The future is difficult to imagine; what is known seems unstable; what is emerging, full of challenges. We are faced with the task of grasping enduring questions of the human experience in our own lives even as they make their appearances in the most confusing new forms.

As we look to coming years of unprecedented emergencies and “states of exception,” ideas about the constitutional rule of law must be thought anew. This is particularly important for liberal democratic states. The suspension of constitutional order and the rights they “protect” was traditionally reserved for times of war. In recent years, such suspensions increasingly have a “humanitarian” character. The great variety of emergencies connected to climate change and the ecological crisis, food insecurity, and public health measures have led to many “states of exception.” During the coronavirus pandemic this challenge appeared in bold relief. Clearly, in the coming decades, “states of exception” will be increasingly less exceptional.

One important question is how to face these challenges without normalizing rule by decree. To a certain extent we can sense that the humanitarian nature of these crises justifies the suspension of constitutional rights and requires a trust they will be restored when the danger has passed. This trusting attitude is perhaps possible in some privileged settings, but should not provide a guide. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has emphasized that the “state of exception” cannot be understood as a normal legal status that can be easily integrated into our understanding of a constitutional republic. He characterizes those who think we can rely on the return of constitutional order as naive and deluded. They do not see that they are playing with fire. Agamben senses a vertiginous fall in connection to the “state of exception,” one which never promises a return, especially for those who do not sense its gravity.1 One will surely feel differently about Agamben’s tone of urgency depending on where one lives (consider as examples Switzerland and the Philippines in recent years) and it is instructive to reflect on what this difference can tell us.

Centralizing power in “exceptional circumstances” can be a slippery slope. What makes this slope more or less steep is how deeply a culture of rights, a culture of participation, and various freedoms are alive and well in a given area. Tocqueville famously called these “habits of the heart” in his study of early democracy in the USA. He suggested these habits were formed by many factors. For instance, he pointed out that before the constitutional conventions many colonies had been living by various forms of self-government simply through isolation and the distance from England. He especially credited the widespread and varied voluntary associations of civil society with providing political apprenticeship to the people, from charities to literary groups and libraries, which arose out of grassroots efforts and needs. These examples are but a few that he credits with supporting the experiment of self-government in the USA. Today, in a hyper-connected and globalized world, we certainly cannot count on the buttress of isolation to encourage self-rule, and the decline of voluntary civil associations in the USA has been lamented for decades. How vigorous, how articulate are we when it comes to our rights and freedoms? Given increasingly recurrent “states of exception,” can widespread “habits of the heart” be counted on?

1 See Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and Where Are We Now?: The Epidemic as Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

There is another support to this dilemma which is intimately connected with the task of the Anthroposophical Society and Movement. For a little over two centuries, we can recognize a new orientation toward the spiritual in the human being. We can find it in ourselves and in others.

When we encounter it in others, it requires that we look for their originality, for their individuality. This involves turning all their “parts” into materials that they live through, be they clerk, woman, Christian, or of whatever color. We engage with them with a pictorial orientation: The pigment is not the main point, but what shines through. One hundred years ago, as part of the momentous re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society, Steiner characterized this task:

To a certain extent, when regarding a picture we look through what the senses perceive to its spiritual content. And so is it also in the observation of the human being. If we truly understand the human being in the light of natural law, we do not feel that these laws bring us into contact with the real person, but only with that through which they are revealed.2

At least since Schiller, a general understanding of the importance of this pictorial orientation toward the human being and its connection to modern notions of democracy has been alive. In a general form, it reached a global level of in-

2 Rudolf Steiner, The Life, Nature and Cultivation of Anthroposophy (The Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, 1963), p. 44 (free translation by NW).

fluence through the rights revolution 3 in the past century.

When we try to approach the spirit from within, we are riddled with ourselves; we cannot admit that we do not exist, but what phantoms we are! We know that we interpret and participate in life all day long and sense ourselves as active, but when we try to observe this activity, we end up with “things.” By strengthening the inner life, we are able to lift this otherwise elusive activity to consciousness. We are able to raise the active spirit to awareness, which is always present but under normal circumstances remains unconscious: We bring about an “exceptional state.”4 Here we experience our connection to a great field of life, arced and traversed by ethical presences, which can infinitely deepen our awe for the human being. Here we sense the reconciliation of freedom and love. We feel that in acting out moral intuitions from this field, we are at the same time acting out of a connection with others and the greater world.

These are tasks of the Anthroposophical Society, to develop new “habits of the heart”: pictorial knowledge practices that can accommodate the spiritual human being, and inner participatory practices that lead to an “exceptional state” of creative, ethical freedom. These “habits of the heart” are related to the practical ideas and projects of “social threefolding,” which are not widely understood, despite their impact this last century.5

The disasters of the last century have severely lowered the expectations of many involved in statecraft as well as political theorists, not to mention many in the younger generation. Some see varieties of ecologically justified dictatorships as inevitable (we can easily see climate “refugee camps” as examples of this). One influential group of theorists and politicians sees attempts to speak of the esoteric, of the spirit, in a public way as both misguided and dangerous. They believe that the majority will never deserve respect or be worthy of dignity. Moreover, the majority can be dangerous, especially to the “initiated.” Because they believe it will always only be the few who can achieve any deeper relationship to the spirit, the constitution of any given society is largely irrelevant to them. Such orientations have been recognizable among influential

3 Charles Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

4 See Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern World Conception (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013), Ch. III, “Thinking in the Service of Knowledge.”

5 Dan McKanan’s Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism (University of California Press, 2018) offers an example of this; see especially the chapter “Flowers: New Economics for Environmentalism.” figures in the USA for decades. 6

The Anthroposophical Society, which does not see party politics as belonging within its sphere, includes many who strive to connect the deepest esotericism with the greatest openness, out of a conviction that this is a contribution toward increased brotherhood throughout humanity; out of a conviction that it is relevant for a social, political, and economic life that can accommodate the dignity and spirit of the human being. Many of these active members not only work to foster these new “habits of the heart,” but also to set them to work for the common good.

6 Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Corrected and Expanded Edition, Including the Strauss-Kojève Correspondence (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Nathaniel Williams is currently the leader of the Section for the Spiritual Striving of the Youth, a part of the Independent School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. He is originally from the USA. He studied art and anthroposophy in Basel, Switzerland and Political Science at the University at Albany, where he also taught.