Intentionality, Human Will, and Power

Last night as I was driving around, I heard a segment on NPR about the death of Christopher Hitchens, renowned atheist apologist.  The very first thing I head when I turned on the radio was a discussion of his debate with Dinesh D'Souza. An excerpt was played that started with D'Souza trying to explain the difference between Christian and Islamic morality.  He said something to the effect of, "In Christianity, intentionality is central to morality.  The Bible says that even if you think about committing a sin, you have already committed the sin in your heart."  To which Hitchens replied, "Thought Crime.  Thought Crime.  That's totalitarianism!"  And the audience cheered.  Now, I know I have said that I think these debates are stupid (to even participate in one requires a certain amount of ignorance of social processes and history), and I also said that I probably would not blog about such things again.  (Once you get started, it's hard to stop?)  But this really isn't about religion.

Hitchens claims that the role of intentionality in the Christian moral framework places it on par with totalitarianism.  If I were participating in the discussion, I would have pointed out to Hitchens that intentionality also plays a significant role in modern legal systems.... more than just "significant," intentionality is actually the fulcrum.  It goes beyond just various sorts of charges for "conspiracy" and "intent to commit a crime," but also hinges on whether or not a person is capable of distinguishing between "right" and "wrong."  So, then, by Hitchen's standards, are all modern states totalitarian?

The problem, as I have pointed out before, is with the word "totalitarianism" itself.  The separation of "democracy" from "totalitarianism" is a false dichotomy.  In fact, to the extent that modern sovereignty and jurisprudence are based on notions of human rights (which include "life" itself), and in so far as the governmental impulse is a force that penetrates individual subjectivity and shapes consciousness, then "seeds" or aspects of totalitarianism very much are embedded in all modern institutions.

And here is where I would circle back to D'Souza.  The fact that intentionality is an important aspect of Christian morality today (though not, I would argue, historically), is merely a reflection of the development of "religion" complementary to, and following the same principles of organization as, other co-depend institutions of modernity, such as law, the state, the capitalist economy, and science.  Thus, intentionality in "religion" mirrors intentionality in, for example, law, because they arose together as part of a single systemic emergence.  If Islam is claimed to lack this interest in intentionality, that is only because Islam and everything else outside of "the West" (culturally or geographically) is represented as the antithesis of modernity - its "Other."

I thought these points were worth elaborating because they provide a demonstration of the way in which the concept of the "subject" (that internal, thinking, willing, feeling part of the human) is vital to the form and character of all modern institutions and relational structures.