INTRODUCTION ON CRITIQUING QUIETISM AND APOLITICAL SPIRITUALITY
We are simply not at a stage where we lack power. In the face of arbitrary power, corruption, or tyranny, detachment functions as tacit consent. This is one of the most important and frequently misunderstood issue my project addresses. By quietism is not meant the 17ᵗʰ century Catholic mystical movement, condemned as heresy, but it is meant an attitude of withdrawal from public affairs into inner spirituality or private contemplation, and modern apolitical attitudes. It is not a rejection of spiritual interiority, contemplation, or personal virtue. It is a defense of the integrated republican spirit, or historical understanding that wisdom, illumination, and moral courage must fuel active citizenship if republics are to survive and if citizens were to guard their collective self-rule. Pure detachment is not neutral, even if the government has forsaken its people, or falsely claim to protect them in exchange for security.
The first major decline of the republicanism of Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington and Rousseau in the early modern period occurs in the late 17ᵗʰ-18ᵗʰ century as it weakens with the rise of commercial society and the “professionalization” of political participation. Standing armies begin to replace citizen militias and property and markets become central to political theory. By the mid-1800s after the rise of Locke, Smith and Bentham, liberalism begins to eclipse republicanism. Marxism and socialism and other utopian ideals also eventually fill the void, and comes the cocktail of procedural liberalism, technocracy, managerial governance, consumer citizenship, legalism and neoliberal individualism by the late 20ᵗʰ century.
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