Via Negativa

Fear, the Schmitteans remind us, is a primary political emotion, and while I'm pretty unconvinced by the whole enemy/friend dialectic I think that one horizon of political thinking is occupied by what we most fear. I was reminded of this when I came across "Now that the city has fallen", a poem by Andrew Waterhouse. A few lines

The first born of a first born has to give

an organ to God. The rich buy men's livers

from secret markets. There is never a shortage

The idea of humans being used for parts haunts the contemporary imagination. Never Let Me Go used the idea beautifully. Of course it has been around since the eighteenth century, think of the Frankenstein myth. The antipode to the idea of human flourishing that animates liberal culture since the Enlightenment is, I think, this terrible extrapolation from a pathological understanding of liberty as self-possession. Organ trading is legal in at least two jurisdictions. A vision of exactly the kind of polity we would wish to avoid.