Not My Will, But The Movement's, Be Done

By a campaign, I mean something finite, something that can be recognized to have succeeded or to have, so far, failed. Movements, by contrast, neither succeed nor fail. They are too big and too amorphous to do anything that simple. They share in what Kierkegaard called 'the passion of the infinite.' They are exemplified by Christianity, nihilism, and Marxism.

Membership in a movement requires the ability to see particular campaigns for particular goals as parts of something much bigger, and as having little significance in themselves. This bigger thing is the course of human events described as a process of maturation. By contrast, campaigns for such goals…can stand on their own feet. They can be conducted without much attention to literature, art, philosophy, or history. But movements must levy contributions from each of these areas of culture…

The epigraph of Howe's early book Politics and the Novel is taken from Max Scheler: "'True tragedy arises 'when the idea of "justice" appears to be leading to the destruction of higher values.'" Someone whose identity is found within a movement, either cultural or political, hopes to avoid that kind of tragedy by purifying his heart, by having only one yearning and only one fantasy. Such an aspirant will repeat over and over "Not my will, but the movement's, be done."

Rorty, Richard. "Campaigns and Movements." Editorial. Dissent Winter 1995.