According to familiar versions of theism, God is Creator, and the world has all and only those features that God (intended to) put there; if there is a certain indeterminacy due to creaturely freedom, that is only because God (intended to) put creaturely freedom in the world. Similarly, according to the view our trio [Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida] wishes to dispute, the author is Creator of the text; it has all and only those meanings that the author (intended to) put there. In other words, it is a very particular kind of human author whose death is being announced, namely, one who never existed in the first place. Real authors do not create meaning in the way God created the world. They are neither the Alpha (pure, unconditioned origin) of meaning nor the Omega (ultimate goal) of interpretation. For this reason interpretation cannot be understood as deciphering, for in deciphering the meaning is already there, fixed and final (author as Alpha), though disguised by code, and the task is to discover and reproduce the author’s meaning (author as Omega).

* * *

. . . the author banished is only the (fictitious) author who is owner of language, the author who in godlike sovereignty is the creator of language but is not conditioned by the language(s) that have always preceded, made possible, and limited the work of the author.

* * *

. . . the finitude of the author will be mirrored in the finitude of the reader, who will be no pure origin of meaning but will be conditioned by prior meanings, including those that stem from the author as well as those that stem from the reader’s own grammatical-historical location.

Here the author and reader are cocreators of textual meaning. This is a genuine threat to hermeneutical objectivism, for there are many readers (including the same reader at different times and in different circumstances) and many traditions of reading, so the notion of the meaning of the text becomes highly problematic. When the text is understood as giving rise to meaning at the site of conversation between author and reader, there will be different meanings because there will be different conversations.

* * *

Having let the reader get a camel-like nose in the tent, let us now ask if we are on a slippery slope to a relativism where “anything goes” and where the text becomes a wax nose that can mean anything to anyone. Undoubtedly so, if that is the only alternative to allowing the author to be Absolute Monarch of Meaning or Divine Dispenser of Determinacy. But we have already learned in Logic 101 not to infer authorial irrelevance from the denial of authorial sovereignty. Or, to use a political analogy, the president of the United States does not rule by divine right with unconditioned authority. He is under constraints by Congress and the courts. But only a muddle-headed monarchist would complain that as president he has been banished to utter irrelevance and plays no significant role in the enactment and enforcement of laws in the United States.

Hermeneutically this means that the death of the absolute author is not the absolute death of the author. Authorial meaning is still important. Although interpretation is not deciphering as the mere reproduction of a prior, fixed, encoded meaning, there will be a reproductive aspect to interpretation. . . . “Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well” [Hans-Georg Gadamer].

– Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church

Just for the record, except for a recent pizza ad, I can’t find anyone who espouses an “anything goes” philosophy. Nietzsche, for example, whose perspectivism is a radical version of relativism, surely doesn’t think Platonism or Christianity are just as good as his will-to-power naturalism. So I propose that we recognize the “anything goes” objection as the bugaboo it is and practice a fifty-year moratorium on the use of that phrase.

– Whose Community? Which Interpretation? Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church

Read the text.

There is a sense in which the Scriptures are the word of God dehydrated, with all the originating context removed – living voices, city sounds, camels carrying spices from Seba and gold from Ophir snorting down in the bazaar, fragrance from lentil stew simmering in the kitchen – all now reduced to marks on thin onion-skin paper. We make an effort at rehydrating them; we take these Scriptures and spend an hour or so in Bible study with friends or alone in prayerful reading. But five minutes later, on our way to work, plunged into the tasks of the day for which they had seemed to promise sustenance, there’s not much left of them – only ink on india paper. We find that we are left with the words of the Bible but without the world of the Bible. Not that there is anything wrong with the words as such, it is just that without the biblical world – the intertwined stories, the echoing poetry and prayers, Isaiah’s artful thunder and John’s extravagant visions – the words, like those seeds in Jesus’ parable that land on pavement or in gravel or among weeds, haven’t take root in our lives.

Lectio divina is the strenuous effort that the Christian community gives (Austin Farrer’s “formidable discipline”!) to rehydrating the Scriptures so that they are capable of holding their own original force and shape in the heat of the day, maintaining their context long enough to get fused with or assimilated into our context, the world we inhabit, the clamor of voices in the daily weather and work in which we live. But it takes more than an hour in the bucket to accomplish what is needed. Lectio divina is a way of life that develops “according to the Scriptures.” It is not just a skill that we exercise when we have a Bible open before us but a life congruent with the Word made flesh to which the Scriptures give witness. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that the word of God originated when “long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. . . . Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard . . .” (Heb. 1:1-2; 2:1; emphasis added). These are spoken words delivered to us by “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1) and now written in our Holy Scriptures. It is the task of lectio divina to get those words heard and listened to, words written in ink now rewritten in blood.

– Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (pp. 88-89)

How prevalent is living alone in America today?
In 1950, there were about 4 million Americans living alone, a little less than 10% of all households were one-person households. And back then, it was most common in the sprawling Western states, like Alaska, and Montana, and Nevada, because single migrant men went there.

Today, there are more than 32 million people living alone—according to the latest census estimates, 32.7 million—and that’s about 28% of all American households. This is an enormous change. Instead of being most common in the West, it’s now most common in big cities, and it’s common in big cities throughout the country. In Seattle, and San Francisco, and Denver, and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and Chicago, there are between 35 and 45% of the households have just one person. In Manhattan, where I live, about 1 of every 2 households is a one-person household.

* * *

You argue that the widespread assumption that living alone is a negative trend is flawed. What are some benefits you’ve noticed for people living alone?
Well, one thing is that we need to make a distinction between living alone and being alone, or being isolated, or feeling lonely. These are all different things. In fact, people who live alone tend to spend more time socializing with friends and neighbors than people who are married. So one thing I learned is that living alone is not an entirely solitary experience. It’s generally a quite social one.

The next thing, I would say, is that we live today in a culture of hyperconnection, or overconnection. If we once worried about isolation, today, more and more critics are concerned that we’re overconncted. So in a moment like this, living alone is one way to get a kind of restorative solitude, a solitude that can be productive, because your home can be an oasis from the constant chatter and overwhelming stimulation of the digital urban existence. It doesn’t need to be—you can go home and be just as connected as you are everywhere else. That’s one of the stories of my book—the communications revolution has helped made living alone possible, because it makes it a potentially social experience. Certainly, the people we interviewed said that having a place of their own allowed them to decompress, and not everyone can do that.

What factors are driving this trend?
The first thing to say here is that living alone is expensive, and you simply can’t do it unless you can pay the rent, or afford your own place. But we know that there are many things that we can afford but choose not to do, so it’s not enough to say it’s simply an economic matter.

I would say that the four key drivers that I identified were, first, the rise of women. Women’s massive entry into the labor force during the last half century has meant that more and more women can delay marriage, support themselves, leave a marriage that’s not working for them, and even buy their own home, which is a big trend in the real estate market. Marriage is just not economically necessary for women anymore, and that wasn’t true 50 or 60 years ago.

The next thing is the communications revolution. Today, living alone is not a solitary experience. You can be at home, on your couch, talking on the telephone, or instant messaging, or doing email, or many, many things that we do at home to stay connected. And that certainly was not as easy to do before the 1950s.

The third thing is urbanization, because cities support a kind of subculture of single people who live on their own but want to be out in public with each other. In fact there are neighborhoods in cities throughout this country where single people go to live alone, together, if that makes sense. They can be together living alone. That helps to make being single a much more collective experience.

Finally, the longevity revolution means that today, people are living longer than ever before. But it’s been an uneven revolution, with women living longer than men, most of the time, and often one spouse outlives the other by 5, 10, 20 years or more, which means that there’s a big part of life—the last decades of life—when it’s become quite common for people to age alone.

* * *

Since the trend is often thought of as a private matter, you argue that its impact on civic life and politics is overlooked. What are some of its effects in the public sphere?
In the book I argue that the spike of living alone has played a large and overlooked role in revitalizing cities, because singletons are so likely to go out in the world, to be in cafes and restaurants, to volunteer in civic organizations, to attend lectures and concerts, to spend time in parks and other public spaces. They have played a big role in reanimating central cities. People who study cities tend to believe that the way to revitalize cities is to create a better supply of public spaces and amenities.

Obama has lost the magic touch. His mostly likely opponent, Mitt Romney, is “managerial to the core,” unable, so far, to persuade the conservative base of the Republican Party and constitutionally adverse to demagoguery. Therefore, Douthat says “the 2012 election is shaping up to be the most wearying sort of American presidential campaign: a clash of two managers, slogging their way toward a prize that a stronger candidate might have taken in a walk.”

Newt Gingrich, the Lazarus candidate, who has been resurrected from the dead at least twice, currently excels because of his congenital demagoguery. He acts as a conduit to Tea Party rage against political and media elites. A virtue in the primary season can be a severe liability in the general election. Gingrich would have trouble persuading independents, particularly women and minorities, and trouble managing his campaign, which is already under-funded and disorganized. Those who know Gingrich best – Congressional Republicans from the 1990s – describe his managerial style as undisciplined and erratic.

I am mostly in agreement with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, who articulates the four-point agenda of his ideal candidate:

I want to vote for a candidate who advocates an immediate investment in infrastructure that will create jobs and upgrade America for the 21st century — ultrafast bandwidth, highways, airports, public schools, mass transit — and combines that with a long-term plan to fix our fiscal imbalances at the real scale of the problem, a plan that could be phased in as the economy recovers.

On the latter point, I am talking about the Bowles-Simpson bipartisan deficit reduction plan — or something equally serious and with a chance of bipartisan support. President Obama has proposed smart infrastructure investments, but he has not paired them with a credible long-term deficit-reduction plan, and the only chance of passage in Congress is to have both. Mitt Romney is not even close.

Christina Romer, the former chairwoman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, put it best when she told this newspaper on Dec. 31 that the U.S. “faces two daunting economic problems: an unsustainable long-run budget deficit and persistent high unemployment. … Over the next 20 to 30 years, rising health care costs and the retirement of the baby boomers are projected to cause deficits that make the current one look puny. At the rate we’re going, the United States would almost surely default on its debt one day. … We already have a blueprint for a bipartisan solution. The Bowles-Simpson commission hashed out a sensible plan of spending cuts, entitlement program reforms and revenue increases that would shave $4 trillion off the deficit over the next decade. It shares the pain of needed deficit reduction, while protecting the most vulnerable and maintaining investments in our future productivity.  

“But we can’t focus on the deficit alone,” added Romer. “Persistent unemployment is destroying the lives and wasting the talents of more than 13 million Americans. Pairing additional strong stimulus with a plan to reduce the deficit would likely pack a particularly powerful punch for confidence and spending.”

Second, I want to vote for a candidate who is committed to reforming taxes, and cutting spending, in a fair way. The rich must pay more, but everyone has to pay something. We are all in this together.

Third, I want to vote for a candidate who has an inspirational vision, not just a plan to balance the budget. People will sacrifice to make this country great again if they think you have a real plan for American success in the 21st century. And that plan is obvious. We’re not going to be about launching one big moon shot anymore. We need to be building a country where everyone in the world wants to come to launch their own moon shot — their own company, their own start-up — because we have the best immigration policies, regulations, schools and incentives. We can’t tax or cut our way to prosperity and jobs. We have to invent our way there. We need both more “Made in America” and “Imagined in America.”

Finally, I want to vote for a candidate who supports a minimum floor of public financing of presidential, Senate and House campaigns. Money in politics is out of control today. Our Congress has become a forum for legalized bribery. Americans are losing faith in the instruments of government because they think the game is rigged by big money — and they’re right.

What the Right Gets Right
Leading liberal thinkers talk about conservatives are good for.
by Thomas B. Edsall

What the Left Gets Right
Leading conservative thinkers talk about what liberals are good for.
by Thomas B. Edsall

He summarizes his view:

The starting point of religion is that we are children, and we need guidance. The secular world often gets offended by this. It assumes that all adults are mature – and therefore, it hates didacticism, it hates the idea of moral instruction. But of course we are children, big children who need guidance and reminders of how to live. And yet the modern education system denies this. It treats us all as far too rational, reasonable, in control. We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time – and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.

Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people’s lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.

FELIX.  I don’t want to get divorced, Oscar. I don’t want to suddenly change my whole life. . . . (Moves to couch and sits next to OSCAR.) Talk to me, Oscar. What am I going to do? . . . What am I going to do?

OSCAR.  You’re going to pull yourself together. And then you’re going to drink that Scotch and then you and I are going to figure out a whole new life for you.

FELIX.  Without Frances? Without the kids?

OSCAR.  It’s been done before.

FELIX.  (Paces right.) You don’t understand, Oscar. I’m nothing without them. I’m nothing!

OSCAR.  What do you mean, nothing? You’re something! (FELIX sits in armchair.) A person! You’re flesh and blood and bones and hair and nails and ears. You’re not a fish. You’re not a buffalo. You’re you! . . . You walk and talk and cry and complain and eat little green pills and send suicide telegrams. No one else does that, Felix. I’m telling you, you’re-the-only-one-of-its-kind-in-the-world! (Goes to bar.) Now drink that.