1 Learn About the World Before Changing It
Why We Need Sociology
The world could be a much better place, but it could also be much worse. Depending on your personality and your politics, you might be more hopeful about the possibility of making things better or you might be more fearful about making them worse. These hopes and fears likely shape your attitude toward social justice.
The problem, though, is that talk of social justice too often fails to move beyond our attitudes. It fails to move beyond what our personalities or political ideologies might lead us to think about the world and about the possibilities for changing it. It fails to take seriously even the most basic insights of sociology. This is a shame because sociology, properly understood, can aid us in our efforts to make the world a better place. It can help us identify what changes are possible and what their effects will be. I think sociology is necessary, in fact, for effective social justice, and that learning to think sociologically can help us to think better about social justice. Sociology can give us a better idea about what is reasonable for us to hope for and what is reasonable for us to fear.
But learning to think sociologically doesn’t mean accepting every claim made by a sociologist. Taking sociology seriously doesn’t mean always taking sociologists seriously. Sociology is a fragmented field, much of it corrupted by political ideology, and sociologists have often been a source of confusion rather than clarity in thinking about social justice. Social justice activists too often ignore important sociological insights, but at other times they draw heavily from claims made by sociologists or other social scientists even though those claims are highly contested, unsupported by the evidence, or outright false. To think better about social justice, then, we need to learn from sociology, but we also need to learn to identify and avoid bad sociology.
What can we learn from sociology about the pursuit of justice? First, sociology helps us to better understand the world, and we should want to learn about the world before changing it. Without knowledge of the world, we have no reason to think the changes we make will bring about the good results we desire. They might even lead to disaster. Second, we need to acknowledge uncertainty. We need to admit when the science isn’t settled. In a field as fragmented as sociology, we should hesitate to treat any theoretical perspective as the final word on things. Sociology offers us multiple ways of thinking about societies and about human behavior, and we should examine each of them and take multiple perspectives into account. Third, we shouldn’t treat ideology as science. As we ’ re seeking knowledge about the world, we need to take into account how much support we actually have for our ideas. Political ideologies like Marxism or liberalism make claims about social reality, but we need to examine whether those claims have any scientific support. Fourth, we should distinguish between facts and values. We should recognize the limits of sociology and acknowledge that some of the most important questions we have about social justice are questions that sociology can ’t
DOI: 10.4324/9781032616278-1
answer. Though sociology can help us describe and explain the world, and in doing so perhaps help us better achieve our moral goals, we can ’t derive our moral goals from sociology. Fifth, we need to be willing to make tradeoffs. We might be trying to shape social institutions according to our values, but our values are often in conflict with each other, and we have to make decisions about how to balance them. Sixth, we have to recognize that our values aren ’t always shared by others, and that any complex society will have a lot of moral diversity. In trying to improve the world, we need to make room for opposition; we need to be able to manage conflicts in a world of disagreement. Seventh, we need to accept imperfection. Since our knowledge about the world will never be perfect, since we ’ll always have ideals that conflict with one another, and since there will always be people who disagree with us, we have to realize that no utopia is coming. Any social justice rooted in reality cannot have perfection as its goal, only improvement. Eighth, and finally, given all the above, any vision of social justice rooted in sociology would likely value intellectual and moral humility.
Sociology can help us if we ’ re trying to improve the world, but if the knowledge it gives us is imperfect, if it can ’t adjudicate between different moral claims, and if one thing it tells us for sure is that any society we ’d recognize as a perfect society would be impossible, then we should probably be modest about ourselves and modest about our goals. We probably shouldn’t be trying to completely re-make society any more than we should be trying to preserve it in amber. This means, I’ll argue, that we should probably be as skeptical of radical politics as we are of reactionary politics, and in particular that we should look more favorably at classical liberal ideals and institutions.
Many social justice activists have come to see free speech, free markets, the rule of law, and other ideals of liberal democracy as antithetical to social justice. This is especially true of activists who draw from critical theory, a sociological perspective that views the social world in terms of oppression and victimhood. Critical theorists see liberal institutions and norms as furthering injustice toward women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, and many other oppressed groups. In this view the path to liberation is in the dismantling of these institutions and norms, but I argue that this view results from a misunderstanding of society and that policies derived from it are sure to fail. I argue instead that classical liberalism is better than any other political framework we know of at enabling us to pursue social justice with humility.
Again, my argument is that if we ’ re going to think clearly about social justice, we need to do the following eight things:
1 Learn about the world before changing it.
2 Acknowledge uncertainty.
3 Don’t treat ideology as science.
4 Distinguish between facts and values.
5 Be willing to make tradeoffs.
6 Make room for opposition.
7 Accept imperfection.
8 Embrace humility.
These are all corrections to errors that seem especially likely when our pursuit of social justice is informed by critical theory, but they aren ’t limited to that. There’ s plenty of confusion about social justice to go around.
We’ll explore each of the tips for better thinking about social justice in the chapters that follow, but we ’ll start here with the first one: Learn about the world before changing it. First, we ’ll review some attitudes and debates about social justice, then we ’ll
look at definitions of social justice, and finally we ’ll look at the relationship between sociology and social justice. Sociology and social justice aren ’t the same thing, but sociology can help us learn about the world we ’ re hoping to change.
Attitudes Toward Social Justice
When you think about social justice, what do you think about? You probably think about efforts to make the world a better place about efforts to change social norms or institutions but depending on your view of social change, your reaction could be positive or negative. At one extreme, you might be inspired, or at the other, horri fied.
If your reaction is positive, maybe when you think of social justice you think of someone like Martin Luther King Jr. and of his leadership in the movement for civil rights for Black Americans. You may think of the “I Have a Dream Speech” King gave in 1963, during the era of Jim Crow laws in the American South, in which he laid out a vision of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice,” and in which he declared, “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’ s children.”1 You might also think of King’ s calls for peace—“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence”2 and you might marvel at the restraint of King and his followers and at their effectiveness in making progress without bloodshed. You might also be inspired by King’ s personal example, as someone who lost his life in service to his cause, and you might think of his final speech, in 1968 on the night before his assassination, in which he quoted the Hebrew prophet Amos in calling for justice to “roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”3
If your reaction to the idea of social justice is negative, maybe you think instead of someone like Communist leader Pol Pot, whose efforts to transform Cambodia involved the killing of nearly 2 million people, about a quarter of Cambodia’ s entire population. Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea, known as the Khmer Rouge, embraced a version of Marxism that combined xenophobia and primitivism with Marxist ideas of class conflict. 4 They believed Cambodia had been corrupted by foreigners, by urbanization, and by the population of “ new people,” who included ethnic minorities such as the Vietnamese and Muslim Chams, but also urban dwellers, intellectuals, professionals, Buddhist monks, and many others who were part of the majority Khmer ethnic group. These new people were said to be the oppressors of the “base people,” the supposedly uncorrupted Khmer peasants.
From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge tried to completely re-make society, to start a new era beginning with what they called the year zero. And as they tried to transform Cambodia according to their vision of justice, ordinary Cambodians experienced disaster starvation, forced labor, torture, and mass killings. In sharp contrast to Martin Luther King, the Khmer Rouge enthusiastically embraced violence as a means of social change. According to Pol Pot, it was “better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.”5
If Martin Luther King Jr. and Pol Pot are at the extremes for most of us as positive and negative examples of the pursuit of social justice they’ re also outside of our ordinary political debates. Most of us won ’t run into many people who don’thave at least some admiration for Martin Luther King, and we won ’t run into many fans of Pol Pot. But in between those extremes we may have very different reactions to the same people, or the same policies, seeing them either as exemplars of social justice or as warnings of its dangers. Supporters of US President Lyndon Johnson’ s “Great Society” welfare programs, for example, are likely to see them, whatever their flaws, as successful
in providing better lives and more opportunities for the poor and vulnerable, while critics may argue that the programs created relationships of dependency or that they created a bloated administrative state. These kinds of policy arguments also shape people’ s attitudes toward social justice. Those who are hostile to the Great Society programs, for example, may be hostile to the very idea of social justice if that’ s what they associate with it.
Social Justice and Its Discontents
When talking about social justice, people often fail to understand the other’ s perspective and end up talking past each other. If you think positively of social justice, you might wonder how anyone could object to making the world a better place, and if you think negatively of it, you might wonder how anyone could embrace what has so often led to failure. The use of the term ends up causing confusion if people have different things in mind when they think of it. In 2010, for example, the conservative television and radio host Glenn Beck instructed his radio listeners to look for the phrases social justice and economic justice on their church’ s website, and if they found them, to “ run as fast as you can. ”6 Beck said the phrases were “code words,” apparently for leftist political ideology. Beck represents one reaction to social justice, a reaction seen almost exclusively on the political right to reject the idea of social justice entirely. It’ sno surprise, then, that progressive Christians expressed outrage over Beck’ s comments, but what I find more interesting is that many conservatives also expressed disagreement. For example, Albert Mohler, a theologically and politically conservative evangelical who is currently the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that Beck’ s statements were “hard to defend,” that they “lacked nuance, ” and that Beck had been “reckless.” Mohler affirmed the value of social justice, writing that justice, both social and private, is mandated by God. “God is perfectly just,” he wrote, “and the Bible is filled with God’ s condemnation of injustice in any form. The prophets thundered God’ s denunciation of social injustice and the call for God’ s people to live justly, to uphold justice, and to refrain from any perversion of justice.”7
But while disagreeing with Beck, whose primary concern, according to Mohler, seemed to be political, Mohler also expressed reservations about how the issue had been covered, and about the place of social justice in the lives of Christians. Mohler said that his concern was the “primacy of the Gospel of Christ,” and that “the church’ s main message ” must be the Gospel, which he said is “not a message of social salvation” though it “does have social implications.” He said Christians should seek social reform, but that they may “debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets.”8
The dispute between Beck and Mohler was about the relationship between social justice and Christianity, but it illustrates that even conservatives like Mohler who would otherwise be sympathetic to Beck might still hesitate to reject the very idea of social justice. And this is true of many others who have concerns about the discourse surrounding social justice, whether they’ re on the right or left politically. Many of them even make arguments similar to Mohler’ s that social justice is good, but that it’ s not the highest good. Or they might argue that it’ s not the highest good in every context.
For example, in their book Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education, sociologist Ilana Redstone and public policy professor John Villasenor discuss the trend toward requiring applicants for faculty positions at American universities to submit “diversity statements” detailing their contributions and plans to contribute to diversity, equity, and inclusion key
concerns of many social justice activists. In examining such a requirement at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which assesses contributions to diversity for faculty hiring and for each level of promotion, Redstone and Villasenor say contributions to diversity are worthwhile, but that it’ s a problem for UCLA’ s hiring process to favor “candidates who are studying topics that happen to line up well with diversityrelated issues.”9 They ask us to imagine a Ph.D. mathematics student who has published groundbreaking papers and advanced her field. “Are the best interests of society or a university really served,” they ask, “by placing this person at a substantial disadvantage in the faculty application process because she hasn’t done any of the things that a university wants to see in a diversity statement? ”10
Though faculty who make contributions to diversity might advance social justice, it’ s not clear why this should take priority over academic pursuits in one ’ s field of study. And even if we ’ re going to make moral rather than academic pursuits a priority, it’ s not clear why we would elevate particular social justice goals such as diversity, equity, and inclusion over other moral values. Redstone and Villasenor ask, for example, why faculty are not required to submit “charity statements ” or “community engagement statements.” Surely, they say, “there’ s a strong case to be made that part of being a good citizen and role model is engaging in charity,” and surely “people who devote time and effort to better their communities are vital to the health of any society.”11 But we have diversity statements rather than the others because the university is prioritizing one value above all others, above other moral values as well as intellectual ones. “It is possible to be a strong believer in the value of diversity,” Redstone and Villasenor say, “while also posing the question of why this topic in particular is the one that warrants this sort of social engineering of future faculty members.”12
Similarly, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that social justice should not be the main goal of a university. A university’ s telos, its purpose, should be the pursuit of truth, not the pursuit of social justice. Truth and social justice are both valuable, he says, and universities can pursue both, but because truth and social justice may come into conflict, a university can ’t have a dual telos. In cases of conflict either truth or social justice must give way. And because universities have increasingly implemented the demands of activists to adopt social justice as their telos, Haidt says “the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable.”13
Though they’ re coming from very different places, we might think of Mohler, Redstone, Villasenor, and Haidt as pro-social-justice critics of contemporary social justice activism and discourse. As we ’ ve seen, one argument from such critics is that social justice must be subordinated to other values at least in some situations. But along with this argument that while social justice is good, it’ s not the highest good such critics commonly also make the argument that while social justice properly understood is good, some forms of it aren ’t.
What they usually have in mind is forms of social justice influenced by critical theory Currently much social-justice-oriented scholarship and activism draws from this approach in viewing society as a system of oppression and in embracing a morality focused on liberation. Sometimes the connection is explicit. Occidental College, for example, has a Department of Critical Theory and Social Justice, and “at the heart of the program, ” according to the department’ s website, “is an interrogation of inequality and systems of power. ”14 Education professors Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, in their book Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education, are also explicit about the connection. They argue that most people fail to understand “what social justice is and what might be required to achieve it,” and Sensoy and DiAngelo see themselves as combatting a form of “society-wide social
justice illiteracy” that “prevents us from moving forward to create a more equitable society.”15 Their objective, they say, is to “provide a foundation for developing social justice literacy,”16 and as they make clear, they believe they are providing this foundation with an analysis of social justice based on critical theory.17
We’ll talk more about critical theory in later chapters, but as Sensoy and DiAngelo note, this perspective is rooted in the work of several early-20th-century anti-capitalist German scholars who drew from Karl Marx, Max Weber, and other social theorists to try to understand inequality in contemporary societies. Their insights were later combined with the work of French postmodern philosophers, and then later, in North America, with “antiwar, feminist, gay rights, Black power, Indigenous peoples and other movements for social justice.”18 According to Sensoy and DiAngelo, many of these social justice movements “initially advocated for a type of liberal humanism (individualism, freedom, and peace)” but quickly rejected it because “the logic of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism … was viewed as a mechanism for keeping the marginalized in their place by obscuring larger structural systems of inequality.”19 Sensoy and DiAngelo also note that critical theorists’ tendency to view norms and structures as contributing to inequality applies to science as well. Critical theorists, they say, “raised questions about whose rationality and whose objectivity underlies scientific methods.”20 They even question “the idea that objectivity is desirable or even possible.” The idea is that “knowledge is reflective of the values and interests of those who produce it.”21
The critics of this brand of social justice see it as misguided, even harmful. For example, in his book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, the evangelical Christian scholar Thaddeus Williams says that for the sake of clarity we need to distinguish between two types of social justice, which he refers to as Social Justice A and Social Justice B. Social Justice A might involve efforts to “abolish human trafficking, work with the inner-city poor, invest in microloans to help the destitute in the developing world,” and so on. Williams sees this as real social justice, and he sees it as compatible with and required by Christianity, but he says the term social justice has in recent years “taken on an extremely charged political meaning, ”22 and the new form of social justice, Social Justice B, “has been enshrined in many minds not as a way but the way to think about justice.”23 Williams sees Social Justice B, which is rooted in critical theory, as largely incompatible with Christianity. For example, he says that instead of emphasizing our common humanity, Social Justice B breaks “people into group identities,” that instead of advocating charity, it “inspires in its followers a quickness to take offense, ” and that instead of viewing all human beings as sinners before God, it “credits guilt on the basis of one ’ s skin tone, condemning people because of their group identity.”24 Williams argues, then, for rejecting Social Justice B in favor of Social Justice A, and he points out ways to distinguish between the two.25
As we saw earlier, religious and secular arguments about social justice often resemble each other, and just as Williams argues that Social Justice B which, following Sensoy and DiAngelo, I will call critical social justice is incompatible with Christianity, free speech activist and attorney Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argue that certain aspects of it are incompatible with cognitive behavioral therapy, and separately, Haidt argues that it can be incompatible with ancient wisdom. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a technique for dealing with depression and anxiety by helping people to avoid cognitive distortions such as magnification (exaggerating the importance of something) and mind reading (assuming someone has negative thoughts about you). In their 2015 Atlantic article, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” and in their 2018 book of the same title. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that the ideas derived
from critical social justice, such as the idea of focusing on small slights called microaggressions, go directly against the advice of CBT. They teach people to magnify and to mind read, for example, so many critical social justice ideas are likely to increase depression and anxiety among the people they’ re supposed to help.26
Elsewhere Haidt says the idea of microaggressions “teaches students the exact opposite of ancient wisdom.”27 Ancient philosophies and religions teach that “ we react to the world as we construct it in our own minds,” and that because “ we are overly judgmental and outrageously hypocritical,” we “need to reduce our moral certainty and cultivate generosity of spirit.”28 “Microaggression training,” though, “tells students that ‘life is exactly what you think it is you have a direct pipeline to reality, and the person who offended you does not, so go with your feelings’ . ”29
Others make similar arguments about the incompatibility of critical social justice ideas with other important values and institutions. For example, linguist and political commentator John McWhorter30 has argued that certain critical social justice ideas are incompatible with true antiracism, political scientist Francis Fukuyama31 has argued they are incompatible with liberal democracy, and I, writing along with sociologist Jason Manning32 and elsewhere with psychologist Pamela Paresky,33 have argued that they are incompatible with free speech. And as critical social justice has spread throughout the English-speaking world and to some extent beyond, scholars outside the United States have raised similar concerns. 34 In France, for example, a number of prominent intellectuals and politicians have dismissed the ideas of critical social justice as imports from the United States, and they’ ve seen them as threats to French notions of republicanism and secularism.35
You might wonder why there are so many different criticisms of critical social justice. Can it really be incompatible with Christianity, cognitive behavioral therapy, ancient wisdom, and French secularism? Or is it just that its critics will use any weapon to hand to attack it? I think the right answer is that the critical social justice perspective is incompatible with so many ideas and perspectives because it’ s so comprehensive in its critique of the status quo and of other ways of viewing the world. The idea is that all social institutions and norms are set up so that they enable oppression, so critical social justice activists want to see revolutionary changes in religion, therapy, science, law, and in other institutions and norms. Critical social justice is meant to be radical. It’ s meant to be incompatible with other commitments. It’ s meant to challenge those who want anything other than radical change in some sphere of life.
This includes anyone with a commitment to sociology. To some extent I agree with Sensoy and DiAngelo, since I also think there’ s a lot of confusion about what social justice is and how to pursue it, but as a sociologist seeking scientific understandings of the social world, I think that by relying on critical theory, Sensoy and DiAngelo are actually contributing to the social justice illiteracy they’ re trying to combat. Your social justice literacy will be improved not by learning critical theory, but rather by incorporating the insights of the more scientific versions of sociology that critical theory seeks to undermine. But before we further consider the relationship between social justice and sociology, let’ s do something that should be even more fundamental to social justice literacy: Let’ s be clear about what we mean by social justice.
The Idea of Social Justice
Any discussion of social justice quickly runs into the problem of how to define it. The economist Friedrich Hayek said he had tried for ten years to find out what social justice meant and failed. He concluded that the idea was an “empty formula, conventionally
used to assert that a particular claim is justified without giving any reason. ”36 Similarly, the Catholic journalist Michael Novak said social justice is most often “ an instrument of ideological intimidation,” that it is “ a term of art whose operational meaning is, ‘We need a law against that.’”37
I think Hayek and Novak were exaggerating, but the problem is real. Just try finding adefinition of social justice on the websites of all the various centers and institutes for social justice at American universities. For example, I can ’t find any definition at the websites of the University of Oklahoma’ s Center for Social Justice, Georgetown University’ s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service, Case Western Reserve University’ s Social Justice Institute, or at the University of Tennessee’ s Center for the Study of Social Justice. 38 But is social justice really all that unusual in this respect? People might also be reluctant to give clear definitions of fairness, tolerance, wisdom, love, and other moral concepts, and they might also use the concepts as weapons in political conflicts rather than as tools for serious moral analysis. This is frustrating, but it doesn’t lead most of us to reject these concepts altogether.
The term social justice was coined in the 1800s by the Jesuit scholar Luigi Taparelli and then taken up by other Catholics, other Christians, and eventually, by secular scholars and social movements. Social justice is still important to Catholic teaching, and some of the clearer definitions out there are from Catholic sources. For example, Ron Krietemeyer of Catholic Charities says social justice is “about collective action aimed at transforming social institutions and structures in order to achieve the common good.”39 Catholic publisher Gregory F. Augustine Pierce points to and expands upon the adage that if you give a man a fish, he can fish for a day, but if you teach him to fish he can fish for a lifetime. He says that if we ’ re thinking of social justice, not just individual justice, we need to add that if you “organize a fishing industry that operates justly … the entire society will eat forever.”40 Social justice, he says, is based on the notion that every society’ s “rules and institutions have consequences on the individuals and sub-groups that make up the society,” and that those rules and institutions sometimes “have to be changed or improved so the society can function better, or more ‘justly,’ for all its members.”41
Similarly, Jason Manning and I have suggested that we think of social justice as the idea “that laws, policies, and social institutions not just individual behaviors are part of the moral sphere.”42 If we are concerned with social justice, we evaluate institutional arrangements in terms of how well they contribute to human flourishing, fairness, equality, or whatever else we see as morally desirable, and we try to improve them when we can.
The idea of social justice is older than the actual term, but according to historian David Johnston, even the idea is much more prominent in modern societies than it was in the past. “In the vast bulk of ancient writings that touch on questions of justice,” he says, “the idea that the primary contours the terrain of the social world might be reshaped to conform to human design never arises.”43 The idea gradually began to emerge among Greek and Roman philosophers, but the older idea, that “the basic contours of the social world are determined by nature,” was still a strong competitor, and with the collapse of the Roman Empire, it remained the dominant idea for many centuries.44 As people began to have more confidence in their ability to understand the world, though, they began to think more about how they might change it. Accordingly, in the 18th century reflections on justice began to deal with this question: “How can human beings redesign and rebuild the terrain of the social world so as to make that terrain itself just?”45
Understood this way, social justice is not a particular idea about how institutions and societies should be organized; it is just the idea that the way they are organized is of moral concern. Understood this way, it doesn’t make much sense to reject social justice.
Social justice seems useful as a moral term, and it seems inevitable that anyone who thinks at all about the world sociologically anyone seeking descriptions and explanations of social arrangements would also, when thinking about the world morally, reflect on the desirability of those arrangements and consider how they might be altered.
Sociology and Social Justice
Sociologists have always been divided about what the aims of sociology should be. The key question, according to sociologist Jonathan Turner, has been whether sociology should “be an activist discipline devoted to the direct engagement of social problems or a scientific discipline committed to producing verified knowledge.”46 Though there’ s certainly been a long history of activism in sociology, I follow Turner in thinking of sociology as a scienti fic discipline. If sociology is indistinguishable from social activism, then not only will it fail to contribute to our knowledge about the social world, it will also fail to add anything new to our pursuit of social justice. But if sociology is scientific, the knowledge it produces can aid our reform efforts. In fact, from the beginning of the discipline, there have been sociologists who have argued that effective reform is possible only with sociological knowledge. If you ’ re trying to reorganize society to reduce violence, say, or inequality, you need to know the conditions that lead to peace and violence or equality and inequality. Just as you wouldn’t try building and flying an airplane without first knowing something about physics, it makes sense, as sociologist Axel Van den Berg puts it, “to try to understand the world a little better before rushing off to change it.”47
The idea of sociology as a science of social life was that the old ways of thinking about the social world were inadequate. Humans had already begun to gaze upon parts of the physical world in a new way, using observation and logic to identify patterns such as the rotations of planets and the speed of falling objects. The early sociologists claimed the social world was another part of observable reality and that we could study it similarly. And if the social world could be understood like the natural world, it could be manipulated. The natural sciences provided new insights about reality, and in doing so they enabled new technologies. Technologies manipulate the world toward human ends faster travel, faster communication, deadlier weapons, etc. and if the natural sciences could make such new wonders possible, surely the social sciences could as well. Sociology as a science thus offers the promise of social technology to enable us to live happier lives, to have more peaceful relationships, and to distribute resources more fairly. It raises the hope of social justice.
The Promises and Failures of Sociology
Auguste Comte, the 19th-century French philosopher who coined the term sociology, envisioned sociology as a science that could aid our efforts to redesign the social world. Comte actually preferred the term social physics, which hints at his idea that sociologists would discover general laws of social life just as physicists had discovered laws governing objects in the natural world. Comte thought of sociology as a science that could be as successful as the natural sciences, and in fact he saw it as the “ queen of the sciences” because it had come along last, as the culmination of our turn to science as a way of understanding things, and because it promised to help bring about a new and better society.
In one sense Comte is an exemplar of thinking about sociology and social justice. He was right about the difference between sociology and social justice and about the connection between them. Knowledge of the world is different from evaluations of the world or from efforts to change it, but we need accurate knowledge about the world if we ’ re going to effectively change things. As Comte put it, “Man’ s study of nature must furnish the only basis of his action upon nature; for it is only by knowing the laws of phenomena, and thus being able to foresee them, that we can, in active life, set them to modify one another for our advantage.”48
In another sense, though, Comte serves as a warning of how wrong sociologists can go in their pursuit of social justice. Comte’ s life was not what you might expect of someone who had warned of the need to center efforts at social change around an understanding of general social laws that would be discovered by sociologists. In what seems like a rejection of his own advice, he ended up behaving more like a prophet than a scientist, and he set about trying to re-make the world despite having made little of the intellectual progress he had envisioned for sociology.
Comte valued progress and order, and his comprehensive vision for a new society involved a restructuring of every institution, including the family, the government, the economy, and religion. In the new society those involved in production would control the government, while scientists would control the new religion with sociologists as its high priests. Some of Comte’ s ideas and decisions toward the end of his life may have resulted in part from madness or dementia, but it’ s clear that his religious ideas were also connected to his longstanding sociological ideas.49
Comte believed that a new positivist stage of human development, in which science would be the predominant form of knowledge, was replacing the metaphysical and theological stages, which were based on philosophy and religion. But he believed that something like religion a new positivist “Religion of Humanity”—would need to provide the kind of social order that the Catholic Church had provided in the Middle Ages. We can better understand where Comte was coming from, according to sociologist Andrew Wernick, if we compare Comte’ s concerns about modern society to those of Friedrich Nietzsche, a thinker most of us are more familiar with. In his book Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity, Wernick says that “Comte’ s positive faith in Humanity is suspended over the abyss which Nietzsche inscribed with ‘the death of God’ , to which it can be interpreted as both a panic reaction and a strategic response. ”50 Comte and Nietzsche were both atheists who were concerned about what they saw as a crisis of nihilism occurring along with the loss of religious belief. For Nietzsche, this meant that people had to learn new ways to live in a world without meaning, and he envisioned exemplary individuals, overmen, who would create new values. For Comte, though, the crisis caused by the decline of theistic religion was temporary, and a new, nontheistic, scientific religion could provide meaning and order. As Wernick puts it, “Rather than pushing perspectivalism or nihilism all the way, Comte strenuously reacts, in the medium of a traumatized ex-Catholic sensibility, against the threat of ‘anarchy’…. Comte followed the ‘secularising’ path of those who sought to extract from Christianity indeed from all religions Love as the rational kernel of its ethic, and Humanity as the truth of its God.”51
Part of Comte’ s design for a new society, then, was a design for a new religion, which involved a calendar, sacraments, sermons, saints, holidays, and priests, all centered around the worship of Humanity. This new religion was to be the means by which scientific and moral knowledge were transmitted, and it would inspire people to lives of service. And though it was “ a complete, even preposterous failure,”52 and though it certainly never became a widespread movement, much less a major social institution,
Comte did in fact found this new religion. He even declared himself its high priest and spent the rest of his life lecturing “to rag-tag groups of laypersons, sending decrees to his disciples and even missives to the Pope in Rome.”53 At this point he was “widely regarded as a fool,” and he was thought to have given “ a bad name to the very field of inquiry that he had named.”54
Turner says that “Comte’ s biography might be seen as a precursor to what would happen in the history of American sociology, as science was abandoned increasingly in favor of a quasi-religious zeal.”55 He also says, though, that despite Comte’ s failures we should still take seriously his vision of the “development of theory … that could be used to remake the world.”56 “Radical ideologies, personal biases, intuition, being a humanist, and many other motivating forces,” Turner says, “will not really help people; applications of the principles of social science will.”57
If Comte was right about this, though, how did he go so wrong in acting upon his vision? I think we can identify flaws in Comte’ s approach flaws that were perhaps there from the beginning that can serve as a warning for us as we think about how to pursue social justice. Comte was out over his skis, so to speak, in acting as if his hopes for sociology had already been achieved. Sociology was in its infancy, but he thought the smidgen of sociological knowledge he had discovered was enough to guide a redesign of society. And his vision of what sociology could do was always too grandiose. I don’t think he was wrong to think that sociology could be a science in the same sense as the natural sciences, but the natural sciences themselves often proceed slowly and laboriously, and the knowledge they produce is often partial and provisional. Sociology can help in our social justice efforts, but the kind of knowledge sociology gives us will rarely be comprehensive enough or certain enough to justify any effort to completely re-make society. It would simply be impossible to know all the effects so many changes would have, and many of the changes would be irreversible. And even when we ’ re making smaller changes and our knowledge gives us a good idea about their likely effects, it’ s unlikely we ’d ever have agreement about social change. Even if we can agree on the facts, we ’ll always have different values different ideas about how to make tradeoffs between competing values and different ideas about what our goals should be. Comte’ s vision of sociology is inspiring, and much of it is correct, but he seems to have lacked an awareness of how limited our knowledge about the social world is always likely to be, and of the limits of science itself. An awareness of these limits might have led him away from the idea of any grand redesign of society and toward patience, humility, and restraint in his social justice efforts.
Comte said we must learn about the world before changing it, but then he set about trying to change it without having actually learned very much. Fortunately, we can learn from what Comte got wrong as well as from what he got right. And perhaps as we try to avoid what was comical or pathetic about Comte while embracing what was brilliant, we should try to do the same with the discipline he named. Sociology can be as bizarre a discipline as Comte was a person, and its practitioners often behave like they aren ’t sure whether they want to be scientists or prophets. Sociologists today don’t declare themselves the high priests of Humanity, but some do refer to themselves as “activist-scholars” (or “scholar-activists”), an indication that like Comte they are on a mission to change the world.58
In many ways the American Sociological Association (ASA) also tends to display a bent toward activism over science. Some of the themes of recent ASA meetings, for example, were “Real Utopias,”“Interrogating Inequality,”“Is Another World Possible?,”“Rethinking Social Movements: Can Changing the Conversation Change the World?,”“Engaging Social Justice for a Better World,” and “Emancipatory Sociology.”
And perhaps this is no surprise considering the activism of some of the ASA’spresidents. Mary Romero for example, called for activist scholarship in her ASA presidential address,59 and former ASA president Joe Feagin is the co-author of a book called Liberation Sociology, a term apparently intended to bring to mind “liberation theology,” a Marxist-inspired movement within the Roman Catholic Church.60 Similarly, another past ASA president, Michael Burawoy, has called for a public sociology,a “sociology” intended “to transform the world.”61 Burawoy hasn’t always been consistent about what public sociology is, but it seems clear that he means for it to advance leftist political goals. Public sociology is “part of a strategic plan,” sociologist Mathieu Deflem writes, “to subsume sociology under one ethico-political vision.”62 Sociologist Christian Smith comments similarly on the “conspicuous absence of … internal diversity and pluralism” and says that “nearly everyone who is attracted to ‘public sociology’ appears committed to one basic outlook on reality: a liberal, progressive, leftist view.”63
It may seem like a stretch to compare the ideological commitments of contemporary sociologists with Comte’ sefforts to found a Religion of Humanity. Today’ s activists tend not to be fans of Comte or of his positivism, after all, and his concern for social order isn’t driving their commitments. But in both cases we see activism getting way ahead of the pursuit of knowledge. And just as Comte’ s religion was a secular one an attempt to have a sense of the sacred without any belief in the supernatural the activism of contemporary sociologists, though secular, also tends to have sacred sensibilities.
Christian Smith, in his book The Sacred Project of American Sociology, says that American sociologists share a commitment to a moral enterprise, and that American sociology thus acts as a “sacred movement.”64 This moral enterprise which involves support for the equality, emancipation, and affirmation of human beings, along with the belief that radical social change is needed and can be accomplished through “ popular progressive social movements and social-democratic state programs and regulations”65 is sacred for sociologists in Émile Durkheim’ s sense of something that is set apart from the ordinary. Even sociologists who aren ’t political activists tend to see their work as advancing the same moral aims the activists are trying to advance, and they give these moral aims priority. Smith says that American sociology often acts as a kind of secular religion, then, and if he’ s right, then Turner is right to compare contemporary sociology’ s failures to Comte’ s personal failures.
Our positive lesson from Comte, remember, is simple: We need to learn about the world before changing it. But the negative example of Comte’ s later life reminds us not to skip over the first step in our zeal for change. It’ s easy to convince ourselves we ’ ve learned enough, even when our knowledge is sketchy or untested. We need sociology because it can give us insights that can help us think better about social justice, but we have to keep in mind that sociologists can also give us bad ideas that would only make things worse.
Notes
1 NPR, “Martin Luther King Jr.’ s ‘I Have a Dream’ . ”
2 Ibid.
3 CNN, “Here Is the Speech.”
4 Jones, Genocide, pp. 397–399.
5 Quoted in Chanda, “Killing Fields of Cambodia.”
6 Quoted in Siegel, “Christians Rip Glenn Beck.”
7 Mohler, “Glenn Beck, Social Justice.”
8 Ibid.
9 Redstone and Villasenor, Unassailable Ideas,p.72.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 74.
12 Ibid.
13 Haidt, “Why Universities Must Choose One Telos.”
14 Occidental College, “Critical Theory and Social Justice.”
15 Sensoy and DiAngelo, Is Everyone Really Equal?, p. xix.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., Chapter 2.
18 Ibid., p. 26.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 29.
22 Williams, Confronting Injustice without Compromising,p.4.
23 Ibid., p. 5.
24 Ibid., p. 163.
25 The Christian writer and sociologist George Yancey, in his book Beyond Racial Gridlock, also offers a Christian critique of what Williams would call Social Justice B. Yancey examines several models of racial reconciliation, including the “white responsibility” model, which is rooted in critical race theory and emphasizes the role of institutions in perpetuating racism. Yancey sees this model as flawed because it absolves racial minorities of all responsibility for racial reconciliation, because it alienates whites who would otherwise be open to reconciliation, and because it ignores the fact that all human beings are sinful. Yancey also sees flaws in other approaches, including more conservative approaches such as colorblindness, and he proposes what he calls a “mutual responsibility” model that he believes is more compatible with Christianity (Yancey, Beyond Racial Gridlock).
26 Lukianoff and Haidt, “Coddling of the American Mind” ; Lukianoff and Haidt, Coddling of the American Mind.
27 Haidt, “Unwisest Idea on Campus,” p. 176.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 McWhorter, Woke Racism
31 Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents, Chapter 5.
32 Campbell and Manning, “End of Academe” ; Rise of Victimhood Culture, Chapter 7.
33 Paresky and Campbell, “Psychology’ s Language and Free Speech Problem.”
34 Goodwin, “Can Britain Survive” ; John, “The Anti-Woke Crusade” ; Kaufmann, “Canada Is the World’ s ” ; Nagle, “Will Ireland Survive.”
35 Onishi, “Will American Ideas Tear” ; Williams, “The French Are in a Panic.”
36 Hayek, Social Justice, Socialism, and Democracy,p.3.
37 Novak, “Defining Social Justice.”
38 The University of Wyoming’ s Social Justice Research Center is an exception. Though in the past they had a 169-word paragraph about social justice that never got around to defining it (Campbell and Manning, Rise of Victimhood Culture, p. 187, n. 4), they now define social justice as “the advancement of a just society by challenging injustice and valuing diversity so that all people have a right to unbiased treatment and a fair allowance of community resources. ” And they go on to describe what this looks like: “A just society exists when individuals’ well being is not constricted based on gender, sexuality, religion, political affiliations, age, race, belief, disability, location, socioeconomic circumstances, veteran status, or group membership” (University of Wyoming Social Justice Research Center, “What We Do”). Even this definition, with its hodgepodge list of identities that’ s clearly a product of committee meetings, would seem to be, as Hayek put it, an “empty formula.”
39 Quoted in Droel, What Is Social Justice?,p.18.
40 Pierce, “Note from the Publisher,” p. 8.
41 Ibid., p. 7.
42 Campbell and Manning, Rise of Victimhood Culture, p. 188.
43 Johnston, Brief History of Justice, p. 107.
44 Ibid., p. 111.
45 Ibid., p. 115.
46 Turner, “The More American Sociology Seeks,” p. 457.
47 Van den Berg, “Public Sociology,” p. 69.
48 Comte, The Positive Philosophy,p.43.
49 Wernick says that “Comte’ s embrace of a Humanist religious conviction is haunted by madness, ” but he also says “ a psychological reduction of Comte’ s thought would scarcely do it justice. It would bypass his effort to reflect on his own crise cérébrale as source material for a scientific theory of human nature” (Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion, pp. 106–107).
50 Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion,p.6.
51 Ibid., p. 7.
52 Ibid., p. 5.
53 Turner, “The More American Sociology Seeks,” p. 458.
54 Turner, Theoretical Sociology,p.16.
55 Turner, “The More American Sociology Seeks,” p. 458.
56 Turner, “Social Engineering,” p. 108.
57 Ibid., p. 109.
58 See Hern, “Navigating the Borderland” ; Romero, “Sociology Engaged in Social Justice” ; and Weber, “An Activist and a Scholar.”
59 Romero, “Sociology Engaged in Social Justice.”
60 Feagin and Vera, Liberation Sociology.
61 Burawoy, “Critical Turn to Public Sociology,” pp. 317–318.
62 Deflem, “Public Sociology.”
63 Smith, “Comparing Ethical Naturalism,” p. 600.
64 Smith, Sacred Project of American Sociology,p.x,n.4.
65 Ibid., p. 12.
References
Burawoy, Michael. 2005. “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology.” Critical Sociology 31 (3): 317–318. Campbell, Bradley and Jason Manning. 2018. “The End of Academe: Free Speech and the Silencing of Dissent.” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 21. Available at: https://www. chronicle.com/article/the-end-of-academe-free-speech-and-the-silencing-of-dissent/. Campbell, Bradley and Jason Manning. 2018. The Rise of Victimhood Culture: Microaggressions, Safe Spaces, and the New Culture Wars New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Chanda, Kathakali. 2014. “The Killing Fields of Cambodia.” Forbes India, June 10. Available at: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/think/the-killing- fields-of-cambodia/37912/1
CNN. 2018. “Here Is the Speech Martin Luther King Jr. Gave the Night before He Died.” CNN, April 4. Available at: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/us/martin-luther-king-jr-mountaintop-sp eech-trnd/index.html.
Comte, Auguste. 2000. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte Kitchener, Ontario: Batoche Books.
Deflem, Mathieu. 2005. “Public Sociology, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet.” The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology 1 (1): Article 4. Available at: http://digitalcommons.kennesa w.edu/jpps/vol1/iss1/4.
Droel, William L. 2011. What Is Social Justice? Chicago: ACTA Publications. Feagin, Joe R. and Hernan Vera. 2008. Liberation Sociology (Second Edition). New York: Routledge.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2022. Liberalism and Its Discontents New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Goodwin, Matthew. 2021. “Can Britain Survive the Woke Wave?” UnHerd, July 12. https:// unherd.com/2021/07/can-britain-survive-the-woke-wave/ Haidt, Jonathan. 2016. “Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice.” Heterodox Academy, October 21. Available at: https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/one-telostruth-or-social-justice-2/ Haidt, Jonathan. 2017. “The Unwisest Idea on Campus: Commentary on Lilienfeld. ” Perspectives on Psychological Science 12 (1): 176–177. Hayek, Friedrich. 1979. Social Justice, Socialism, and Democracy: Three Austrian Lectures.Sydney: Centre for Independent Studies. Available at: https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2015/07/op2.pdf. Hern, Lindy S. 2016. “Navigating the Borderland of Scholar Activism: Narrative Practice as Applied Sociology in the Movement for Single Payer Healthcare Reform.” Journal of Applied Social Science 10 (2): 119–131.
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Johnston, David. 2011. A Brief History of Justice Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Jones, Adam. 2017. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (Third Edition). New York: Routledge. Kaufmann, Eric. 2021. “Canada Is the World’ s First Woke Nation.” Telegraph, July 10. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/10/canada-worlds-first-woke-nation/.
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Lukianoff, Greg and Jonathan Haidt. 2018. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. New York: Penguin Press. McWhorter, John. 2021. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America New York: Portfolio/Penguin.
Mohler, Albert. 2010. “Glenn Beck, Social Justice, and the Limits of Public Discourse.” Personal blog, March 15. Available at: https://albertmohler.com/2010/03/15/glenn-beck-social-justice-a nd-the-limits-of-public-discourse.
Nagle, Angela. 2020. “Will Ireland Survive the Woke Wave?” UnHerd, July 13. Available at: http s://unherd.com/2020/07/will-ireland-survive-the-woke-wave/.
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Occidental College. 2021. “Critical Theory and Social Justice.” Available at: https://www.oxy. edu/academics/areas-study/critical-theory-social-justice.
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Paresky, Pamela and Bradley Campbell. 2023. “Psychology’ s Language and Free Speech Problem.” In Ideological and Political Bias in Psychology: Nature, Scope, and Solutions, ” edited by Craig L. Frisby, Richard E. Redding, William T. O’Donohue, and Scott O. Lilienfeld, pp. 149–172. New York: Springer.
Pierce, Gregory F. Augustine. 2011. “A Note from the Publisher.” In What Is Social Justice?,by William L. Droel, pp. 5–8. Chicago: ACTA Publications.
Redstone, Ilana and John Villasenor. 2020. Unassailable Ideas: How Unwritten Rules and Social Media Shape Discourse in American Higher Education New York: Oxford University Press. Romero, Mary. 2020. “Sociology Engaged in Social Justice.” American Sociological Review 85 (1): 1–30.
Sensoy, Özlem and Robin DiAngelo. 2017. Is Everyone Really Equal? An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education (Second Edition). New York: Teachers College Press. Siegel, Hanna. 2010. “Christians Rip Glenn Beck over ‘Social Justice’ Slam.” ABC News, March 12. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/WN/glenn-beck-social-justice-christians-rage-back-na zism/story?id=10085008.
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Learn About the World Before Changing
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sacramental, y que á los quince sabía cuanto podían saber entonces, no sólo las señoras, pero los varones más instruídos. Añaden que solicitó con insistencia de sus padres que la enviasen á Méjico á estudiar en la Universidad, disfrazada en traje masculino.
Sea de ello lo que fuere, es lo cierto que sus parientes, presumiendo «el riesgo que podría correr de desgraciada por discreta y de perseguida por hermosa», la colocaron en el palacio del Virrey, Marqués de Mancera, cuando contaba apenas diez y siete años. Dama de honor de la Virreina, amadísima de ésta y del Virrey, pudo entregarse de lleno al estudio, si bien sin dirección fija y ordenada, abarcando toda clase de materias, principalmente las de carácter profano.
Por lo visto, no se sentía entonces inclinada al claustro. Amores contrariados, ó los consejos é instancias del P. Núñez, jesuíta, confesor de los Virreyes, la llevaron á profesar en el monasterio mejicano de monjas jerónimas, donde pasó el resto de su vida hasta su muerte, ocurrida, á los cuarenta y cuatro años y cinco meses de edad, el 17 de Abril de 1695.
Leyendo los tres abultados volúmenes de sus obras, lo primero que salta á la vista es la diversidad de los géneros cultivados por la Monja mejicana, así en verso como en prosa. Villancicos, sonetos, endechas, sátiras, liras y silvas, loas, autos y comedias, poemas cortos, cartas y comentarios, publican la fecundidad y variedad de su ingenio, así por lo que toca á la inspiración poética, como por lo que respecta á la erudición y la crítica en materias religiosas y profanas. Fénix de México, Décima Musa, Milagro del Parnaso fué apellidada en el pomposo lenguaje de su época. Solamente el primer tomo de sus obras alcanzó cuatro ediciones en cuatro años, de 1689 á 1692, en las prensas de Madrid, Barcelona y Zaragoza.
Después de la diversidad de géneros y materias, lo que más nos sorprende en nuestra escritora es que sus mejores escritos, con ser obra de una Monja, y de Orden ascética, como la de San Jerónimo, sean profanos, demasiado profanos y picantes á veces, hasta el punto que varias composiciones insertas en la edición de Zaragoza de 1692 no fueron reproducidas en las posteriores.
Pero hay que tener en cuenta que las Comunidades religiosas en América disfrutaron siempre excepcionales anchuras, superiores ó diversas de las que gozaban en la Península, en términos de causar verdadera extrañeza y asombro á los viajeros españoles, no sólo religiosos, sino seglares, como Ulloa y D. Jorge Juan.
Sin embargo, no faltaron en el mismo Méjico quienes, escandalizados por algún que otro desenfado de nuestra Monja, trabajaron con insistencia, no sólo para que no escribiese, sino para que ni estudiase siquiera. «Una vez (refiere la misma Sor Juana Inés) lo consiguieron con una Prelada muy santa y muy cándida, que creyó que el estudio era cosa de Inquisición, y me mandó que no estudiase: yo la obedecí unos tres meses que duró el poder ella mandar, en cuanto á no tomar libro; en cuanto á no estudiar absolutamente, como no cae debajo de mi potestad, no lo pude hacer; porque, aunque no estudiaba en los libros, estudiaba en todas las cosas que Dios crió, sirviéndome ellas de letras, y de libro toda esta máquina universal.»
Como nuestra Monja fué poco amiga de vanidades humanas, aun la gloria legítima entró rara vez como fin ó como parte en la composición de sus escritos. «En lo poco que se ha impreso mío (escribía al Obispo de la Puebla de los Ángeles en 1691), no sólo mi nombre, pero ni el consentimiento para la impresión ha sido dictamen propio, sino la libertad ajena..... de suerte que solamente unos Ejercicios devotos para los nueve días antes del de la Purísima..... y unos Ofrecimientos para el santo Rosario..... que se ha de rezar el día de los Dolores de Nuestra Señora, se imprimieron con gusto mío, por la pública devoción, pero sin mi nombre.» Fué preciso que el Virrey, Conde de Paredes, y su esposa, Doña María Luisa Gonzaga Manrique de Lara, le ordenasen la entrega de sus obras, á fin de darlas á la estampa, para que se resolviese á reunir las que formaron luego el primer volumen de sus obras. Salieron éstas á luz, en Madrid, 1689, con el gongorino título, que tanto se prestaba á epigramáticas interpretaciones: Inundación Castálida de la única poetisa, Musa décima Soror Juana Inés de la Cruz; cambiado después por el más sencillo: Poemas de la única poetisa, etc.
En estos días en que tanto se habla y escribe en defensa de las mujeres, bueno será recordar que Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz consagró no escasa parte de sus escritos, en prosa y verso, en pro de esta causa; de manera que bien podemos colocarla á la cabeza del movimiento en razón y en justicia. En su estado y en su época era hasta cierto punto heroica la defensa. Refiriéndose á sus hermosas redondillas Contra las injusticias de los hombres al hablar de las mujeres, que excuso dar al pie de este trabajo, se ha dicho que nuestra monja fué por extremo dura con los hombres; pero es no menos cierto que en otras composiciones juzga á las mujeres con bastante severidad, aun en materias de amor, como se ve bien claro, entre otras poesías, en el soneto que comienza:
Al que ingrato me deja, busco amante; Al que amante me sigue, dejo ingrata; Constante adoro á quien mi amor maltrata; Maltrato á quien mi amor busca constante.
Entendimiento varonil, ocasiones tuvo en su vida en que midió sus fuerzas con los hombres más conspicuos de su tiempo. Cuéntase que el Marqués de Mancera reunió un día en su palacio á los ingenios y maestros más distinguidos, con el solo fin de someter á examen las aptitudes y conocimientos de su protegida, y que ésta, que podía tener entonces 17 años, respondió satisfactoriamente á cuantas preguntas le hicieron todos, proclamándose su triunfo con indecible asombro de los examinadores. Baste leer la impugnación que escribió, sin deseo de que se publicase, en carta á uno de sus favorecedores, relativa al Sermón de las finezas de Cristo, predicado y publicado por el célebre jesuíta Antonio de Vieira. Cayó en manos del Obispo de la Puebla de los Ángeles, electo Arzobispo y Virrey de Méjico, D. Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, copia de dicha impugnación, y la encontró tan erudita y atinada, que la hizo imprimir, con otra carta suya aprobatoria, bajo el nombre de Sor Philotea de la Cruz. Con este motivo se promovió interesante y apasionada controversia entre los amigos y adversarios del famoso predicador. La respuesta de Sor Juana Inés, en carta al Obispo, es
sin duda el mejor de sus escritos en prosa, sobre todo por la defensa que hace de la conveniencia de que las mujeres estudien y de la capacidad que tienen para ello.
De la lectura de este trabajo, como de las obras todas de nuestra escritora, se adquiere clara noción de su inmensa cultura. Acaso ninguna otra Religiosa ha dedicado al estudio más largas horas, ni esfuerzo intelectual más sostenido. A 4.000 ascendía el número de los libros de su biblioteca particular, cuando, dos años antes de su muerte, consagró por entero su vida á la oración y la penitencia.
En cuanto á sus aptitudes principales, á juzgar por los escritos que conocemos, tengo por seguro que á la poesía lírica pertenecen sus mejores composiciones, aunque rara vez éstas rayen á la altura de las de nuestros mayores líricos, ni en lo religioso ni en lo profano. Sus loas y sus comedias siguen en un todo la pauta general conocida. La silva El Sueño es imitación desdichada de las desdichadísimas Soledades, de Góngora. El Neptuno alegórico, declaración, en prosa y verso, de las alegorías del Arco triunfal erigido en la Catedral de Méjico en la entrada del Virrey Conde de Paredes, pertenece á la clase de las que Hartzenbusch titulaba Obras de encargo, generalmente malas, como tales. La erudición de nuestra monja tiene en esta obra los caracteres todos de las pedantescas y culteranas composiciones de la época. Fué en su tiempo la más celebrada de todas: hoy debe ser contada entre las más infelices y menos dignas de aplauso. Y lo mismo cabe decir en justicia de las loas, ya las religiosas, como las tituladas La Purísima Concepción y San Hermenegildo, ya las profanas, compuestas para los cumpleaños de Reyes, Virreyes y frailes de campanillas.
Si Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz no nos ha dejado una obra magistral, encarnación íntegra y acabada de su inteligencia, esparcida en tantos y tan diversos escritos; si éstos por la mayor parte tuvieron el nacimiento y la muerte tan cerca, tan unidas como la Rosa de Rioja, el nombre de la monja mejicana y la memoria de su labor artística y científica tendrán siempre merecido puesto en la historia literaria de Méjico y de España, como gloria común de mejicanos y españoles.
LOS AMERICANOS EN EL ATENEO
LA invitación del Ateneo á los americanos para que tomasen parte en sus conferencias históricas, simultánea de la invitación á los peninsulares, no se redujo á los Ministros de la América española, sino que se extendió también, desde su principio, á algunos escritores residentes en el Nuevo Mundo, conocidos por sus trabajos históricos.
De estos escritores, unos, respondieron rehusando, con razones más ó menos valederas, la participación ofrecida, y otros, á quienes, como á los anteriores, les fueron dirigidas las invitaciones por los conductos más seguros, á pesar del largo tiempo transcurrido no han acusado siquiera recibo de dichas invitaciones. Omito los nombres de unos y otros. Baste saber simplemente lo ocurrido. Y sépase también que el Ateneo, al invitarlos, no les pedía que vinieran expresamente á dar sus conferencias, sino que les advirtió que podían escribirlas y enviarlas y que serían leídas por las personas que ellos mismos designasen.
Creía el Ateneo que la ilustración histórica del descubrimiento, conquista y civilización del Nuevo Mundo era tan necesaria para los americanos como para los españoles, y que en América como en España el estudio científico de aquellos grandes hechos distaba mucho de alcanzar hoy día el florecimiento debido. Por lo que á España respecta, recuérdese lo que dije, con entera sinceridad y franqueza, en el primero de los trabajos que comprende este libro. Y por lo que á América concierne, creo que bien puede afirmarse de ella, en general, lo que, en particular, de Méjico, escribía no ha mucho el biógrafo insigne de Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga: «De los hombres que han figurado en nuestro suelo, pocos habrá que hayan
sido juzgados sin pasión, porque el antagonismo de razas, la falta de instrucción, las discordias civiles, y sobre todo las religiosas, han agriado los ánimos y ofuscado las inteligencias;» añadiendo que «entre las víctimas de la ignorancia y del espíritu de partido» se distinguía nada menos que la venerable figura del primer Obispo y Arzobispo de Méjico.
Por fortuna, así como América cuenta con historiadores tan ilustres como García Icazbalceta y Barros Arana, no superados, sin duda, por nuestros mayores americanistas peninsulares, cuenta también, entre los dignos individuos de su representación diplomática en la antigua Metrópoli, distinguidos cultivadores de los estudios históricos, los cuales, comprendiendo la significación y alcance de la empresa acometida por el Ateneo, se apresuraron á aceptar la participación ofrecida, con generoso interés y verdadera eficacia.
Invitó el Ateneo, ante todo, á los Ministros de Méjico y Costa Rica Sres. General Riva Palacio y Peralta, Correspondientes de la Real Academia de la Historia, uno y otro conocidos ya ventajosamente por su probada pericia en materias históricas. Á propuesta de éstos, invitó después á los Ministros de Chile y Colombia, Sres. Vergara Albano y Betancourt, quienes aceptaron su encargo. Ausentes hoy ambos, no han podido cumplir su oferta.
La venida á Madrid de los señores Solar y Zorrilla de San Martín proporcionó al Ateneo nuevos cooperadores. Vicepresidente, el primero, de la República del Perú y Ministro de su país entre nosotros, debía llevar la voz de tan importante nación americana en la obra de las conferencias; Ministro del Uruguay el segundo, venía precedido de gran renombre literario. Los dos respondieron al llamamiento del Ateneo en términos verdaderamente fraternales y honrosos para nuestra patria. Los dos también han desempeñado luego sus respectivos encargos, como igualmente su compañero el Ministro mejicano. No así el de Costa Rica, cuya conferencia fué, con su aprobación, anunciada, suspendida por su encargo después, aplazada para más adelante, y á juzgar por el tiempo transcurrido y la falta de todo aviso, definitivamente abandonada.
Los temas escogidos por los conferenciantes americanos fueron los siguientes:
Sr. Ministro del Perú: El Perú de los Incas
Sr. Ministro del Uruguay: Descubrimiento y conquista del Río de la Plata.
Sr. Ministro de Méjico: Establecimiento y propagación del Cristianismo en Nueva España
Como se ve, los tres temas se refieren igualmente á la historia particular de cada uno de los países representados por los conferenciantes si bien con arreglo á las antiguas divisiones políticogeográficas, como exigía la naturaleza histórica de las conferencias.
El 18 de Enero de 1892 dió la suya el Ministro de Méjico, primer americano que ha subido á la cátedra del Ateneo. El nombre y la persona del General Riva Palacio eran ya bien conocidos por los años que lleva de residir en España el distinguidísimo mejicano. Sus dotes poéticas y sus facultades oratorias han podido ser apreciadas más de una vez, así como su interés vivísimo en estrechar los vínculos de Méjico y España, acreditado especialmente en la participación activa y preferente que viene tomando en todo lo relativo á la celebración del Centenario. Las personas peritas en los estudios históricos tenían noticia de sus trabajos referentes á los Orígenes de la raza mejicana, leídos en la Real Academia de la Historia, que habían promovido interesante controversia por sus conclusiones favorables al autoctonismo de las primitivas razas mejicanas, y conocían también su erudita Historia de la dominación española en Méjico. El insigne General Arteche, en su magnífica conferencia sobre La conquista de Méjico, leída en el Ateneo en la semana anterior, había mencionado repetidamente con elogio esta última obra. Meses antes el Sr. Vilanoba se refirió con frecuencia á la anterior sobre los Orígenes de la raza Mejicana.
La conferencia del General Riva Palacio, así por su abundante y selecta erudición como por la elocuencia de la forma, rivaliza dignamente con las mejores que el Ateneo había escuchado anteriormente. El sentido critico del ilustre conferenciante, informado
en la doctrina de la sociología positivista, puede prestarse á animadas polémicas; pero cualquiera que sea el punto de vista desde el cual se le considere, hay que reconocer forzosamente que estuvo representado á gran altura.
En sentir del Sr. Riva Palacio, existe «extraña semejanza entre el gran cambio religioso de los pueblos de América, y sobre todo de la Nueva España, con el progreso rápido y sangriento del islamismo, no sólo en los días en que Mahoma sujetaba la Arabia, sino durante el tiempo de sus sucesores, cuando Omar gobernaba á los creyentes; afirmando asimismo que no arrancó á los pueblos venidos del culto de los ídolos la predicación del apóstol, sino la espada del conquistador y el hacha y la tea del soldado, que derribaban al Dios de los altares, y ponían fuego á los adoratarios.»
En otro lugar escribe que «los conquistadores españoles sabían también á qué atenerse respecto á la fe religiosa de los vencidos; pero con una política verdaderamente hábil, contentáronse casi siempre con la aparente conversión de los indios, dejando á los misioneros el cuidado de explorar á aquellas conciencias, de cultivar en ellas las semillas del Cristianismo y de entregar á las llamas los templos de los ídolos, y hasta los recuerdos de los tiempos de la idolatría.»
Esta segunda afirmación es más conforme con la verdad histórica, reconocida y consignada ya en publicaciones anteriores por escritor tan competente como García Icazbalceta, quien, á este propósito, escribía lo siguiente: «La Cristiandad se había fundado en México por orden no común. Lo más ordinario en la predicación del Evangelio es que sus ministros se abran paso lentamente, en lucha continua contra el poder de gobiernos despóticos y contra el apego de los infieles á sus heredadas creencias. En la Nueva España fué muy diverso el caso. La predicación evangélica contaba con todo el apoyo del poder civil; las armas le habían allanado el camino, y no podía temer persecución general, si bien no le faltaron contradicciones, nacidas del carácter de algunos gobernantes y de la agitación de los tiempos. Los conversos no arriesgaban, pues, nada en el cambio de religión; antes podían contar por eso mismo con más favor de los señores de la tierra.» Así «el pueblo infiel, lejos
de oponer resistencia al establecimiento de la ley cristiana, abrazaba con gusto sus dogmas, y se complacía grandemente en sus prácticas.»
Es verdaderamente notable por la exactitud lo que el General Riva Palacio decía de los frailes que llegaron á las Indias, los cuales «cifraban todo su empeño y encaminaban todos sus trabajos á sólo dos objetos: conversión de los idólatras á la fe cristiana, y protección de la vida y libertad de los vencidos. Fuera de esto—añade—nada les preocupaba ni llamaba su atención. Ningún anhelo de riquezas, ningún empeño por los honores, ningún cuidado por los títulos ni por el fausto; pobres hasta la miseria, abnegados hasta el sacrificio, ni temían concitarse el rencor y el odio de los encomenderos, ni vacilaban en desafiar el enojo de los terribles conquistadores, ni temblaban al levantar sus quejas, no siempre humildes, en favor de sus protegidos hasta el trono del poderoso Emperador Carlos V.» ¡Qué diferencia—añadiremos nosotros—qué diferencia tan radical entre estos medios empleados por el Cristianismo en el Nuevo Mundo y los usados por los musulmanes para la propagación del Islamismo!
Acabó su discurso el distinguido conferenciante con estas palabras, que el numeroso y culto auditorio recibió con grandes aplausos: «El historiador debe decir que el descubrimiento del Nuevo Mundo era una necesidad de la ciencia; su ocupación un derecho de la humanidad, y la conversión de sus habitantes al Cristianismo una exigencia ineludible de la civilización y del progreso.»
Ocho días después, el 25 de Febrero, dió su conferencia sobre el Descubrimiento y Conquista del Río de la Plata el Sr. Ministro del Uruguay. Imaginación brillantísima, corazón entusiasta, poeta de grandes alientos, arrebató á sus oyentes, desde los primeros períodos, con el encanto y la magia de su elocuencia. Las hazañas de Juan Díaz de Solís, de Ayola, de Irala, de Garay y Ortiz de Zárate, tuvieron cantor inspiradísimo en el Sr. Zorrilla de San Martín; la colonización del territorio argentino, tan distinta de la de otras comarcas, expositor inteligente y discretísimo.
Aparte de estos merecimientos, el Sr Ministro del Uruguay ofrecía á sus oyentes un atractivo mayor en aquellos momentos: el españolismo noble y generoso que rebosaba en sus frases, el entusiasmo con que en nombre del mundo de Colón y de Isabel publicaba muy alto la gratitud americana para con la madre patria. Era aquello un acto tan deseado como oportuno; la correspondencia debida á nuestro cariño, la consagración solemne de la fraternidad hispano-americana.
Y lo que daba más autoridad á sus palabras era el conocimiento que todos tenían de que no las dictaba el artificio retórico, ni las ceremoniosas formas de la cortesía; porque el nuevo Ministro del Uruguay, antes de representar á su país en el nuestro, allá, en su patria, repetidamente en sus discursos, en sus artículos, en sus versos, había hablado igual lenguaje, hijo siempre de sus convicciones y de sus arraigados afectos.
América, antes del descubrimiento—decía—«era un mundo casi vacío; todo era grande en ella menos el hombre; el hombre que allí existía no era ni podía ser un principio; era un término, un último vestigio. Era joven y hermosa la naturaleza: el hombre, decrépito.»
«Colón y sus carabelas no las buscaban; buscaban sólo el Oriente por el Occidente; no fueron, pues, las carabelas las que salieran al encuentro de América, fué ésta la que salió al paso á los heroicos navegantes.....»
Refiriendo las hazañas de los españoles en la conquista del Río de la Plata, decia: «Somos nosotros, más que vosotros, los que heredamos los frutos del árbol regado con su sangre, y los que en primer término estamos en el deber de admirar la memoria de los que la vertieron y de vindicarla siempre con reconocimiento filial.»
En consonancia con estos sentimientos,—añadía al final de su discurso—«Por eso, señores, como el Perú hace la apoteosis de Pizarro; como Buenos Aires da el nombre de Garay á una de sus calles; como Chile levanta la estatua de Valdivia, Montevideo da el nombre de Solís á su principal coliseo y levanta en una de sus plazas, votada por el Parlamento, la estatua de su fundador Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala.
