Possessive Individualism and Human Flourishing: A Christian Theological Response to Globalizing Capitalism Open Access
Persaud, Winston (Summer 2018)
Published
Abstract
In this study I seek to develop a Christian theological and social-ethical critique of capitalism organized around the framework of “possessive individualism. For the purposes of this project, I define “possessive individualism” as a proprietary and acquisitive orientation towards self, world, and the divine.
To carry out my critique, I articulate a boundary between the capitalist imaginary, on the one hand, and Christian understandings of the good and human flourishing, on the other. By drawing this boundary, I argue, we are able to see how Christian understandings of God, God’s relationship to the world, and human beings’ lived responses to God can challenge – and thereby interrupt – the background image of the possessive individual and the wider vision of the good and human flourishing it licenses and normalizes.
My project thus shares concerns found within liberationist and postcolonial theologies, Radical Orthodoxy, and works by Stanley Hauerwas and his disciples. Nevertheless, this study seeks to update the societal analysis pioneered by liberation theologians beginning in the 1970’s, as well as develop a more robust and explicit account of rights indexed to concerns about the global economy. In addition, unlike many postcolonial theologies, the vision of human flourishing I foreground is linked to a notion of the triune God who is wholly otherwise to creation and to the human creature. Finally, in contrast to Radical Orthodoxy as well as the positions of Hauerwas and his followers, I have sought to develop a vision of human flourishing and the life of Christian communities that is attentive to the dynamics of “possession” of Christ and the neighbor within those very same communities, as well as an affirmation of rights as a genuine good of modernity.
By interrupting capitalist practice and its moral and social imaginary, I believe Christian thought and practice has the potential both to recognize the value of and to renew modern commitments, especially human rights, within the contemporary world in a manner consistent with its own Christian witness. In accordance with this belief, I seek to affirm human rights discourse theologically and reclaim it from capitalist practice and its moral and social imaginary so that Christian communities may be enriched by the saeculum, even as the saeculum might receive a helpful critique from those same communities.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Possessive Individualism and Human Flourishing in Globalizing Capitalism 17
I. What is Capitalism? 17
II. The Possessive Individualist Moral and Social Imaginary of
Capitalist Practice 28
III. Possessive Individualism in Fordism and Post-Fordist Finance
Capitalism 41
Conclusion 56
Chapter 2: Interrupting Possessive Individualism: The Triune God, the World, and Human Flourishing 59
I. The Trinity: Ground of Interruption 61
II. Creation as Interruption of Human Dignity Based on Self-Generated Merit 68
III. Creation as Interruption of Absolute, Ontological Independence 70
IV. Human Beings: Created to Flourish through Communion with the Triune God 75
V. Human Sinfulness and God’s Unbending Commitment to Human Flourishing 82
Conclusion 90
Chapter 3: Possessive Individualism, Human Flourishing, and Christian Redemption 92
I. The Contours of Redemption 94
II. Implications for Possessive Individualism 108
Conclusion 126
Chapter 4: Possessive Individualism, Human Flourishing, and the New Monasticism 128
I. The Benedict Option 129
II. Urban Monasticism 139
Conclusion 148
Chapter 5: Possessive Individualism, Politics, and Human Rights 151
I. Basic Definitions and the Historical Critique of Rights 152
II. Thomas Hobbes and Rights 155
III. John Locke and Rights 164
IV. Interrupting a Possessive Individualist Notion of Rights: A Christian Theological Account 173
Conclusion 190
Conclusion 192
Bibliography 201
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