Abstract
This article addresses contemporary concerns about critique through an interpretation of the “writing prophets.” This approach draws on Foucauldian genealogy and suggests that alongside Greek parrhesia, Old Testament prophecy is a key forerunner of contemporary critical discourses. Our analysis draws upon Weber’s interpretative historical sociology and Gadamerian hermeneutics but shifts the emphasis from charisma to critique, through a direct engagement with prophetic texts. In particular, prophetic discourse claims to reveal injustice and idolatry and speaks from a position of transcendence within immanent historical moments. Prophets position their own era as a moment of crisis, and themselves as liminal figures, opposed to the delusion of others and “false prophets” which resonates with contemporary conceptions of “ideology.” Rather than focusing on historical individuals, we approach prophecy as a discourse, multiple and hybrid, discontinuous, and contradictory, yet constituting a distinctive precursor which informs contemporary critique.
Weber’s Ancient Judaism (1952) interprets ancient Israelite prophecy in terms of charisma, thus providing a key concept for political sociology. Herein, we shift the focus to critique, which is, inter alia, a secularization of the prophetic tradition. Largely unacknowledged, prophetic discourses and standpoints are redeployed in contemporary critiques, intermingled with other elements, particularly parrhesia, a Greek term which came to mean courageously telling the whole truth in public (Foucault, 2011). Herein, the “truth-production” of contemporary critique is reconsidered by recognizing its hybrid connections to “classical” Hebrew prophecy from Amos to Ezekiel.
Critique pervades contemporary scholarship, from disciplinary identities to the self-designation of journals (Kilminster, 2011). Beyond critical theory, theorists and researchers present their work as “critical,” albeit in complex, nuanced, and diverse ways. For the “critic of critique” contemporary critique could operate ideologically as an unexamined assumption of inquiry and practice that might need to be “unmasked.” At the very least, “critique” covers a profusion of discourses, gestures, and styles of thought, which are deployed in multiple circumstances and are understood differently by numerous interpreters. Certainly, nobody has a monopoly on critique. Critical denunciations and deconstructions exist across political divides or ideologies. Prominent theorists problematize critique: Boltanski’s (2011) pragmatic approach understands critique socially within struggles over legitimacy and the reformation of institutions. Others are pessimistic. Latour (2004) suggests critique has run out of steam and Rancière (2011) describes it as impotent and circular. Within hermeneutical approaches, critique has been positioned as an antimodern narrative (Yair, 2014) or as a mode of interpretation that often short-circuits reading to the revelation of power and ideology (Felski, 2015). These prominent contributions suggest that critics are increasingly ambivalent about critique and that there is a growing need to reexamine critique, perhaps critically, but even more so historically.
There has been renewed interest in Foucault’s genealogy of critique (Folkers, 2016), particularly since the publication of his 1979 course (which identifies liberalism, ordoliberalism, and neoliberalism as forms of critique) and the final 1984 course on Ancient Greek parrhesia and cynicism. Beyond that, there are resources within Foucault for a “non-normative” critique, based on the problematization of power relations without any prior idealistic commitments (Hansen, 2016). Herein, we draw on Foucauldian genealogy by expanding the range from parrhesia to Israelite prophecy in order to make better sense of the contemporary composition of critiques. Foucault acknowledges the religious dimensions of medieval counterconduct against governmentality (Churlew, 2014), without explicitly addressing prophecy. Rather than defining what “critique” is at the outset, critique emerges as multiple, as a hybrid, with prophecy as only one strand of its complex genealogy—with due recognition that prophecy itself is multiple, historically and geographically, and subject to very diverse interpretations.
Our argument contributes to historically oriented sociology by suggesting that “critique” is not transcendent of history: But what such a sociology does not do is pander to the self-conceptions of the period it exists in, flattering its contemporaries with the pleasing illusion that they are somehow completely unique, and that their thoughts and actions are wholly historically unprecedented. (Inglis, 2013: 114)
The genealogy of critique
For some Foucauldians genealogy itself is inherently critical (Koopman, 2013), which draws a genealogy of critique into self-critique. For others, the impulse to genealogy and critique is approximately identical (Folkers, 2016), which makes them both unchanging and ahistorical, thus foreclosing any analysis. Nevertheless, we take up Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge to insist that “critique” must be multiple; there are no settled objects of inquiry because discourses are “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault, 1972: 48). Rather than simply practicing “critique” or “genealogy,” Foucauldians should attend to meticulously unearthing documents and archives which position “critique” as a multiple, promiscuous, varied, vague, and politically contested discourse. Indeed, a genealogy of Foucault’s genealogy or an archaeology of the power/knowledge within “governmentality studies” could be written.
Before proceeding in this genealogical task—whether Herculean or Sisyphean—it is worth reflecting on method. Genealogy is often defined by opposition to historicism. While history would locate and define the relevant series of events that lead, inexorably or by chance, to certain outcomes in the present, genealogy exists to problematize, unsettle, and destabilize categories within the present (Foucault, 1977). While genealogy should not be conflated with critique, clearly there are affinities. Certainly, genealogy must be acknowledged as a reflexive method, which is acutely aware of multiple contested fields of knowledge production, most effective in disrupting categories such as “mental health,” “crime,” or even “markets.” However, in Foucault there is no place for “true or false” or simple dichotomies between ideology and critique. Knowledges of various sorts are produced and (re)constitute power relations, institutions, organizations, and situations. Foucault’s work on “neoliberalism,” for instance, goes beyond merely denouncing it as an ideology that creates the mythical “entrepreneurial subject,” but recognizes the consequences of liberal critiques and knowledge production through history which constitute markets, which may be subject to highly politicized markets, but certainly have real consequences.
Therefore, while genealogy is disruptive and critical rather than contributing to the accumulation of facts within settled categories, it should be less corrosive than illuminating. It cannot allow us to “see through” the supposed illusions of the present, but it should enable us to see things. Typically, genealogy should be surprising. For instance, Agamben (2011) argues that the structure of sovereignty and governance derives from theology and that the economy is suffused with notions of providence. However, this does not render these deep-seated cultural codes as illusions or ideologies. Rather, genealogy should restore our sense of how contemporary categories, powers, and discourses emerged over time; were formed as hybrid combinations; and are susceptible to change that may open up new spaces for thought. Thus, a genealogy of critique can even be affirmative, recognizing contemporary practices as part of a tradition of critique (Folkers, 2016).
To describe “critique” as a “tradition” is both problematic and provocative. Critique is almost axiomatically critical of tradition and exposes “tradition” as stifling and authoritarian. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics reverses this objectified notion of tradition by highlighting our “belonging to history” and how tradition constitutes the possibility of our discourse (Gadamer, 2004). At most, critical theory tends to present itself as part of a “minority tradition,” a constant thorn in the side of mainstream thought (Strydom, 2011), and its founding figures, from the Enlightenment through Marx to the Frankfurt school are considered to have revealed the “truth” rather than offered “ways of seeing.” Such critical theorists often draw implicitly and explicitly on theological concepts, from Gnosticism (Voegelin, 2001) to the critique of idolatry (Boer, 2013). Interestingly, the conceptions of transcendence and immanence, which are so important to critical theory, are clearly terms adapted from theology (Agamben, 2011). Furthermore, critical theory may be formed and shaped by its prior involvement in the very structures it critiques or unmasks (Butler, 2004). Contemporary critical theory tends to either overturn any “tradition” in a new critical rupture, or return “radically” to the most penetrating insights of predecessors, a sort of Jeremiad that imagines the past as superior.
This cycle of ruptures within critique is analyzed by both Latour and Rancière. In We Have Never Been Modern, Latour (1993) analyses how “unmasking” is used to constitute identity by contradistinction to others and the past, and is a constantly reiterated modern gesture. Rancière suggests that critique can constantly recycle its critical gesture, leading to a politically impotent sterility. This leads him into a genealogy of critique that takes the form of a new look at the history of the obsessive image…the image, totally hackneyed and yet endlessly serviceable, of the poor cretin of an individual consumer, drowned in the flood of commodities and images and seduced by their false promises. […] the imbeciles who took images for realities and let themselves be seduced by their hidden messages. (Rancière, 2011: 46–48) For they are a rebellious people, faithless children, children who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers ‘Do not see’ and to the prophets ‘do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophecy illusions.’ (Isaiah 30:9–10)
From parrhesia to prophecy
In ancient Athens, parrhesia literally meant “all speaking/saying” (Foucault, 2011). Initially the term may have been an insult for chatterboxes who spoke unwisely or said too much, but eventually it came to designate an ideal of political speech. Parrhesia told the truth about society, publically addressing itself to power at a certain risk to the self. For Folkers (2016), parrhesia expresses the ideal core of critique: speaking truth to power. Further, for Foucault, parrhesia does not invoke the authority of a deity, tradition, or technical mastery, as do prophets, sages, or experts, respectively.
Parrhesia fits neatly into Foucault’s conception of the modern critique of governmentality, that is a sort of critique of power, which is not a refusal to be governed at all, but a “refusal to be governed thus, or in that way” (Foucault, 1997: 41–44). Parrhesia is context bound, emerging from a situation of power relations and attempts to resist this governance without any external authority. A parrhesiast gives themselves the “right” to speak. Performatively, by speaking, they designate themselves as a resisting, even critiquing, subject. Subsequent transformations of parrhesia illustrate the complex genealogy of critique. After being problematically confused with rhetoric and sophistry in the arena of politics, parrhesia was adapted within philosophy, so that teachers like Socrates appeared as parrhesiasts because they practiced telling others the truth about themselves, despite the consequences.
Thereafter, Foucault follows parrhesia into subject formation, particularly the ethics of the “true life” espoused by Cynics. Here, parrhesia was not just a critical discourse, but also a way of shaping conduct, so that biological life would be unconcealed and present a permanent challenge to all customs by its stark visibility. To the Cynics, all customs and traditions were extraneous trappings to the true life. Somewhat speculatively, Foucault (2011: 181–189) identifies this cynical, “philosophical militancy” as running through certain forms of religious life, from Saint Francis to the Puritans, in political revolutionaries and in avant-garde artists. Yet, these “usual suspects” are not the only “inheritors” of parrhesia, because the practice of “telling all” also becomes the principle of submission to spiritual authority within monastic Christianity, and eventually influences the confessional and subsequently the psy-sciences of counseling!
Certainly parrhesia is not the single fountainhead of critical opposition to power within modernity. Indeed, certain forms of the idea of parrhesia certainly spread during the pre-Christian centuries into Israel, possibly influencing the later redactors of the prophetic books (Szakolczai, 2003). Rather than attempting to unpack all these diverse influences from the available evidence, let us compare Greek parrhesia and classical Hebrew prophecy typologically as different versions of “critique.” Key dimensions include who is addressed, who is speaking, on what authority, on what occasion, and to what ends.
Before beginning this comparison, we should not overlook a contextual similarity between parrhesia and prophecy; both occurred in urban settings that were centers of agricultural political formations. Critique must either be wholly innovated for these contexts or dramatically reinvent older traditions of judgment, moral reproach, or the assertion of values that preceded the Iron Age. Even if critique has an anthropological base, say in liminal rituals (see Boland, 2013), then these agricultural, metallurgical, warring civilizations are distinctly new contexts for it, utterly alien to hunter-gatherers whose existence preceded it for thousands of years (Szakolczai, 2003). This comparison is necessarily vague, yet positions parrhesia, prophecy, and critique as cultural transformations rather than neurological capacities.
Both these “ancestors” of critique involve a confrontation between critique and power, assuming some separation between the two. Parrhesia addresses “power” in the form of the headstrong monarch or the democratic assembly who are following mass “opinion” which of course, is wrong. Prophecy sometimes addresses political power, various kings, the rich, or the priesthood—for instance, where Nathan reproaches the ethics of David’s politics (2 Samuel 12). More strikingly, prophecy addresses the people as a mass, as exemplified in Jeremiah’s speech at the temple. This is not like addressing the agora, because the crowd does not have the capacity to make specific decisions, whether for good or ill. Rather, the prophet is concerned with their ethical conduct. Broadly, parrhesia concentrates its address on power holders and their decisions, but prophecy addresses all of society. Both may expose similar forms of ignorance or injustice, although the scope differs. Contemporary critique combines the targets of parrhesia and prophecy. Much critique, even on the left, targets the state rather than the population. Yet, popular “consciousness raising” and the call by Marxists, feminists, and other critics for individuals and groups to change their beliefs and conduct reflects the continued influence of prophecy in contemporary critique.
The political parrhesiast is generally a respected member of the community, as are some prophets, while other prophets are outsiders. Moreover, some writing prophets, such as Ezekiel, sacrifice social status through prophecy. The parrhesiast speaks on their own authority; a sort of paradoxical self-inauguration as a subject (Butler, 1997). Generally, they also speak in the name of reason and logic, asserting that the current workings of power are based on irrationality and ignorance, and a more just and effective policy or decision can be achieved through recognizing “the truth.” By contrast, the prophet speaks for the deity, either relaying messages or interpreting the will of God. Effectively they speak from the authority of ecstatic experiences, intuition, charisma, or on the basis of traditions that have been neglected in the present. Neither the parrhesiast nor the prophet insists on “tradition” in a straightforward way but reappropriates traditions, often reshaping them in radical style. However, clear contrasts emerge in the construction of “transcendent” authority as internal in the form of logic and reason, and external in the form of the deity.
Somewhat like the parrhesiastic appeal to “reason,” the prophet speaks in the name of a transcendent truth. “In all times there has been but one means of breaking down the power of magic and establishing a rational conduct of life; this means is great rational prophecy” (Weber, 2003: 362). Yet, Weber (1992: 37) also points out that “rationality” has multiple meanings and historical manifestations. There are contradictions between instrumental and value rationalism that challenge any simple narrative of secularization via rationality, which historically has had dialectical and paradoxical dimensions (Goldstein, 2009). So, like Foucault’s (1972) emphasis on plural knowledges, Weber challenges us to acknowledge and analyses multiple rationalities. Old Testament prophecy, in particular, deploys ideas of transcendent truth, insisting on interpreting political events and personal ethics in regard to an omnipotent deity and the covenant, broadly hostile to certain forms of ritual designated as “idolatry” and so forth, the constitutive “others” to this mode of producing truth.
Both parrhesia and prophecy conceive their own time as an occasion of injustice and potential catastrophe, generally connected to ignorance and delusion on the part of power holders or society as a whole. The Greek word krisis aptly describes a moment wherein a decision or judgment must be made, and thereafter things will be decisively different (Koselleck, 2006). The ideal parrhesiast is timely, arriving and delivering their message before it is too late and making a decisive difference—although the problems of hubris in democracy and monarchy mean that they are often ignored or unrecognized. Similarly, prophecy describes the present as a crisis, but beyond the Greek krisis, the situation is taken as an incipient or even ongoing breakdown of social order. This breakdown is due to the breach of the covenant but extends into a liminal war of all against all, a sort of undifferentiated liquidation of the social body. Responding to krisis, prophecy has the quality of kairós, that is revelatory timeliness (Boer, 2013). Both of these conceptions of crisis are visible in contemporary critiques—for example, the krisis of the growth of inequality, which will produce catastrophe unless reversed, or the breakdown of community and growth of individualism which dissolves social order and can scarcely be remedied.
While political parrhesia is concerned with social and political problems, philosophical parrhesia is concerned with the good life. Similarly, prophecy combines dire warnings about political events and demands for ethical transformation. However, even though each addresses relatively distinct areas of politics and ethics, there is still a different scope of ends involved. Greek ethics ensure a good life in the polis, but prophecy concerns a good life before God and with neighbors, irrespective of the political situation. As such, the “true life” promoted in each of these critiques may well overlap, but entail different emphases: from focusing on the political consequences of action, participation or critique, or in the cultivation of an ethos even if there are no positive political consequences. Thus, these harbingers of contemporary critique provide modes of subjective being; ways of conducting conduct, which range between relative engagement and detachment, and stretch from political partisans to bohemians.
These comparisons and contrasts are merely typological. Indeed, reifying prophecy or parrhesia would ironically be intellectual idolatry. The aim is to observe the varied historical elements in diverse cultural repertoires, which inform contemporary critique. Excavating the critical dimensions of prophecy begins to connect critique to judgment, tradition, religion, and morality in ways that trouble secularist conceptions of critique. Further, this restores connections—and not just oppositional connections—between critique and power. Indeed, the deployment of critique—through “logic” and other implicitly transcendent place-holders—has been one of the most powerful forces within modernity. This is evident in multiple areas from liberal transformations in the name of the sovereign individual, socialist transformations toward equality, the utopian projects of science and secularization in the name of “reason” that are produced by modern prophets from enlighteners to the “new atheists.”
Problems of method and hermeneutics
While much of Foucault’s work concerned unearthing recondite and obscure documents from the archive in order to enrich our understanding of the interconnections of different discourses, this genealogy of critique concerns two of the most intensely researched moments in history—Greek parrhesia and Israelite prophecy. Should sociologists of critique simply despair? While due respect for textual scholarship is maintained, the point is not to provide an exact history of parrhesia or prophecy. Rather, our concern is a genealogy of critique as a multifarious and promiscuous discourse in the present. Indeed, both Greek and Hebrew thought have been very thoroughly reread and reinvented—not “distorted,” as that implies a single “true” reading—in the late Renaissance and Reformation, respectively. There is no historically neutral position from which to understand prophecy or anything else. Foucault (1977) distinguishes the genealogist from curators of historical facts and positions them as an intellectual engaged in contemporary struggles over knowledge and meaning. So, critique, parrhesia, and prophecy can only be understood from concrete situations and are inevitably reinterpreted on an ongoing basis—with interpretations building upon each other, so that the modern interpretation of prophecy is strongly prefigured by various forms of Monasticism, Millenarianism, Protestantism, and Puritanism.
The gray and meticulous work of genealogy is here supplemented by a Weberian approach to historical sociology, which places greater emphasis on meaning and interpretation. Weber (1991: 280) emphasizes how different religions deal with the question of suffering in terms of a “weltbild” or “world image.” Metaphorically, such world images act as “switch-men,” changing the underlying ethic which guides social action and thereby society as a whole. For Weber (281), these “world images” are specifically provided by charismatic visions which responded to the demand “that the world order in its totality, is, could and should somehow be a meaningful cosmos.” There are complications here, because what counts as “charisma” or a “world image” is not easily delimited, and context, for instance, the background of the “carrier strata” for new religions is a very important factor. However, by focusing on the inherently symbolic “world image,” Weber places the task of historical understanding on an interpretive footing, albeit with a somewhat intellectualist framing of religion, focusing on prophetic writing over visionary epiphanies or spiritual experiences. Despite the limitations of Weberian typologies, what we are concerned with here is discourse, symbolic “truth production” that is central to contemporary critique.
Revealing prophecy as “hidden” within critique or decrying critical theory as a secularized religion of critique would ironically reinscribe the critical gesture once again. Therefore, our approach must be “uncritical”—which may be an academic scandal!—an approach that acknowledges our tradition as paradoxically critical and our critique as part of the prophetic tradition. Yet, the critical rupture with the past or others and the claim to articulate transcendent truth cannot be ignored. Critique is not a “traditional” tradition, and our critical apparatus is not supplied by traditions that are dogmatic and unchanging, but by a series of breaches within the production of truth, by oppositions, discontinuities, and disavowals.
Mutual constitution through conflict is cogently theorized in Bateson’s idea of schismogenesis, whose relevance to social theory has recently been recognized (Horvath and Thomassen, 2008). Critique operates through schism. It creates a rupture with the past, others, tradition, oppression, ideology—as imagined through critical discourse. Yet, critique only exists in relation to other elements (Butler, 2004). Of course, it is problematic within genealogy to reduce the relationship of forces to a single gesture that then in turn becomes universalized. A genealogy of schisms is another challenge, taken up by Koselleck (2006) and Latour (1993) in different ways. Apparently, the paradox is irresolvable: Critique is a tradition of tradition breaking. Therefore, it is precisely by observing the specificity of different forms of critique, in parrhesia, prophecy and beyond, that we can begin to reflexively investigate our own critical impulses.
Describing prophecy as a form of critique entails making sense of the dense heritage of three or more millennia of interpretation and reinterpretation of prophecy within the Hebrew and Christian traditions. Historical sociology joins the study of prophecy after centuries of theological and rabbinical study, and has different orientations, primarily to understanding how modern “secular” society is partially formed by prophetic influences. No discussion on prophecy can avoid the reception dynamic at work across the disciplines. Indeed, classical sociology seems acutely aware of this dilemma (Weber, 1991; Voegelin, 2001). Given the crisis of critique and continuous attempts to understand the historicity of critique, eventually critique may become “self-conscious” of its own historical conditionality. Thus, critique, like all forms of understanding, occurs against the backdrop of our prior involvement in a tradition. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore this dynamic in detail, it is helpful to comment on the broader dynamics that inform the interpretive lens of this discussion.
The passing of time often allows for fertile interpretations to emerge of any given subject matter (Grondin, 2003). Weber and Foucault reinterpret prophecy and parrhesia, respectively, precisely because of the apparent disparity and distance from modernity. Throughout his philosophical hermeneutics, Gadamer grapples with this inevitable, virtuous tension. The hermeneutical “problem” emerges through a feeling of distance. Something “distant has to be brought close, a certain strangeness overcome, a bridge built between the once and the now” (Gadamer, 1976: 22–23). Historicism presents the past as a problem to be overcome by placing oneself in the mind-set of an era. Hermeneutics, by contrast, holds that one can never access the past directly. Thus, interpretation involves placing oneself in relation to the past and with this, perhaps, comes the painful realization that the past is no longer directly accessible. In Truth and Method, Gadamer argues that this temporal distance is the realization that the past and present are firmly connected. The past, then, is not something that must be painfully recovered in each and every present: Time is no longer primarily a gulf to be bridged because it separates; it is actually the supportive ground of the course of events in which the present is rooted. Hence, temporal distance is not something that must be overcome. This was, rather, the naïve assumption of historicism, namely that we must transpose ourselves into the spirit of the age, think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own, and thus advance toward historical objectivity. (Gadamer, 2004: 297)
Gadamer’s appeal to temporal distance equally helps solve the “question of critique in hermeneutics” or our ability to distinguish between “the true prejudices, by which we understand from the false ones, by which we misunderstand” (Gadamer, 2004: 298). As well as forming a supportive ground for meaning, our distance equally unmasks false or misleading interpretations. Grondin (2003) points to examples of this in the biases of historiography, especially regarding conquered or colonized peoples. Likewise, scripture requires critical interpretation. The benevolent image of Yahweh can be used for good and bad, functioning either as an icon or as an idol that vindicates a prior ideological position (Boer, 2015). Critique, then, both inherits and adapts this process, highlighting false prejudices, and false ties to meaning and, by the same token, being the very supportive—and sometimes ironic—ground upon which meaning is realized. Contemporary readings of prophecy are unavoidably grounded in this dynamic.
Seen against this backdrop, our reading of prophecy takes the form of a supportive ground upon which new insights into critique can emerge. Following Gadamer, we can argue that prophecy and critique share common ground precisely because critique demonstrates how the biblical prophets find expression via a new or novel medium, one not immediately related to their historical context or era. Indeed, it is only through this rejection of historicism that the contours of critique become visible. Thus, the prophetic texts, as always, are never entrenched within their own historical world but provide the supportive ground of meaning upon which renewed traditions might emerge. Prophecy straddles the worlds of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; inspires critical, political, and sociological reflection; and thus possesses meaning beyond its seemingly “original” historical, cultural, and religious world(s). Taking this as our interpretive cue, it might explain how, in the paradoxes of secularization, the prophetic vocabulary exerts an influence beyond its historical world(s) and enters into new relationships, thus expanding rather than reducing tradition.
Elements of prophecy
Hebrew prophecy emerged against the backdrop of practices of divination, or the deciphering of divine will, in the Ancient Near Eastern world. Against this complex matrix of cultural, religious, and political ideas, we will highlight a few crucial elements. For Weber (1952: 267), prophecy reacted to “hitherto unprecedented military events” within expansionary empires. The Hebrew historical consciousness was already distinctly formed by the Exodus experience, interpreted as a sign of divine favor, from which emerges the covenant (berith) alongside the Decalogue (Voegelin, 2001). The word “prophet” in Hebrew has two meanings. Nabi can imply both “one who has been called” and “one who calls.” In Greek, the word prophêtês carries a similar meaning, referring to “one who speaks out” or “proclaims.” Similarly, parrhesia roughly translates as “free speech” or “speaking the truth,” with a striking likeness to prophecy.
The most common prophetic theme accuses the people of straying from certain ethical precepts—a sort of moralizing judgment. For instance: They who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, And push the afflicted out of the way; Father and son go in to the same girl, So that my holy name is profaned; They lay themselves down beside every altar On garments taken in pledge; And in the house of their God they drink Wine bought with fines they imposed. (Amos 2:7–8)
Alongside their judgment upon iniquity the prophets frequently explain social evils in terms of power and propaganda: “Your wealthy are full of violence; Your inhabitants speak lies, With tongues of deceit in their mouths” (Micah 6:12). What is condemned here is not simply transgression against the law, but an ethos that legitimizes itself through oppression and lies. What contemporary critical discourses might conceptualize as “ideology” which legitimizes “power” or “hegemony,” are described by Isaiah through metaphor, for instance, drunkenness (Isaiah 5:21–23) or with blindness or groping in the dark (Isaiah 59:9–10).
The foregoing verses are aimed by the prophets at “the people”; they are critiques of society. “Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city” (Micah 6:9). Yet, elsewhere there is a critique of temporal and religious powers: Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob And chiefs of the house of Israel, Who abhor justice? And pervert all equity, Who build Zion with blood? And Jerusalem with wrong! Its rulers give judgment for a bribe, Its priests teach for a price, Its prophets give oracles for money; Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, ‘Surely the LORD is with us! No harm shall come upon us.’ (Micah 4:9–11)
Addressing power from outside marked the prophet as a liminal figure (Turner, 1969), even though many classical prophets were supported by political factions or appeared as cultural leaders in their own right. Others, however, were outsiders, and abused as fools (Hosea 9) or even symbolically enacted exile (Ezekiel 1). The prophet is one who will address and accuse the people and be constantly misunderstood: “For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the LORD has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jeremiah 20:8). The prophet tells the truth by articulating the words of the Lord, and these words will constantly be ignored or misunderstood, or have their critique contested by false prophets, implicitly ideologues who legitimize political power.
This address to power is similar to parrhesia, although there are differences. Departing from the Greek focus on rationality, where evils can result from ignorance, prophecy tends to explain evil as a deliberate turning away from Yahweh—the scandal of a people who change their gods (Jeremiah 2:12). Isaiah 30, for instance, positions the people as rebellious and childish, deliberately self-deluding and preferring illusion to truth. The prophet, contrastingly, cannot escape the truth, and insists on it despite it being unpalatable. Herein, the position of the prophet approaches that of the critic. Regarding Jeremiah’s critique of idolatry, Voegelin (2001: 494) argues that his discourse is “almost that of an Enlightenment philosopher who wants to dissolve superstition through information.” Yet, such enlightening critiques are often unsuccessful, indicating the limits of “unmasking” illusions and revealing reality, perhaps as a deployment of discourse which fails to grasp the meaning of rituals or behavior denounced by prophets as idolatry.
Of course, preferring palatable illusions to hard truths relates to false prophets who predict a bright and easy future for the chosen people, requiring no ethical transformation—”saying, ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 5:14). Distinguishing between the “true” and “false” prophet becomes problematic. Authentic prophecy overcomes this dilemma through a radical assertion of the covenant. The prophets reject the notion of this bright or easy future by recalling the link between belief and ethics. The “true” prophet, therefore, does not simply predict the future, but denounces those modes of divination or “truth claims,” which ignore the ethical demands of the covenant. Repeatedly, the prophet overcomes the challenges of the false prophets, exposing their pretenses and hypocrisy. From this struggle emerges the metaphor of the whitewash: Because, in truth, because they have misled my people, saying, ‘Peace’ when there is no peace; and because, when the people build a wall, these prophets smear whitewash on it. Say to those who smear whitewash on it that it shall fall. There will be a deluge of rain, great hailstones will fall, and a stormy wind will break out. When the wall falls, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the whitewash you smeared on it?’ (Ezekiel 13:10–12)
False prophecy creates the illusion of invincibility. Similarly, the children of Israel, in their hubris, become cynical. Just as the Lord condemns and accuses his people, they are portrayed as speaking back to him: “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice? Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, And oppress all your workers” (Isaiah 58:3). In this exchange of critique and countercritique, the people are represented as somewhat skeptical of the demands of the covenant, but the prophet replies by a critique of their ethics. Elsewhere the people declare “I am innocent…I have not sinned” (Jeremiah 2:35), which suggests that prophecy is met with resistance or denial: “‘He will do nothing. No evil will come upon us, and we shall not see sword or famine.’ The prophets are nothing but wind” (Jeremiah 5:12–13). The people are inclined to doubt, conceiving the prophet as mere “wind” almost akin to “whitewash.” Uncertainty permeates society: “The days are prolonged and every vision comes to nothing” (Ezekiel 12:22). Unsurprisingly, the depiction of the people varies, reflecting the competing theologies behind each prophetic text as well as the representation of prophecy throughout the “historical” books. Prophecy survived varying cultural, social, political, and religious trends throughout the history of Israel. The people are at once cunning and blind, gullible to false prophets yet skeptical of genuine prophecy. This makes sense, however, if critical discourses were diffused within Israelite society beyond the prophets. It is mainly in the latter prophets that the people appear more skeptical and cynical, perhaps reflecting a diffusion of critique amid the declining fortunes of Judah. Thus, even the contemporary crisis of critique is foreshadowed by the conflict of “true” and “false” prophets and the growing skepticism or cynicism of the people targeted by prophecy.
Critique and crisis
Koselleck (2006) scrutinizes the dynamics of social change and enlightenment, modernization and reflexive awareness, and critique and crises as an embedded cultural code. Prophecy constantly decries sin, iniquity, and transgression; it repeatedly reveals the origins of decadence, decline, and social crisis and emerges at the vital moment of kairos (Boer, 2013). Clearly, society appears crisis ridden: Put no trust in a friend, Have no confidence in a loved one; Guard the doors of your mouth From her who lies in your embrace; For the son treats the father with contempt, The daughter rises up against her mother, The daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; Your enemies are members of your own household. (Micah 7:5–6)
Resonating with this sense of confusion in the absence of law is an extraordinary sense of inversion, a world turned upside down: Ah, you who call evil good And good evil, Who put darkness for light? And light for darkness, Who put bitter for sweet And sweet for bitter! Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes, And shrewd in your own sight! (Isaiah 5:20–21)
Beyond this, purification occurs through words, admonishments, accusations, and judgments, which reveal or unmask transgressive behavior. Prophets, who take up a “critical” stance toward the people they address, speak these words. While the prophets speak on behalf of a transcendent deity, their accusations react to more immanent situations—namely, the people’s departure from or forgetfulness of the covenant, which is a tradition. The parallels to contemporary forms of critique and utopianism are easily drawn; but there are even resonances of prophecy in complex formulations of contemporary critical theory. Strydom (2011) sees “immanent transcendence” as a key practice of critique. Like prophecy, critique is immanent, it responds to concrete situations of injustice and ideology. Similarly, it is transcendent, pointing toward truths and utopian horizons. Of course, no supernatural law-giving deity is required to validate contemporary critique. Yet, continuing Foucault’s genealogy of truth or “truth-telling,” prophecy should be recognized as a specific deployment of discourse that generates a certain analysis of society, which supposedly has the potential for transformation. Indeed, critique, after the fashion of prophecy, declares that society is in crisis, designates certain aspects as problematic, and exhorts individuals and groups to think differently and change their behavior.
Conclusion
The broader biblical tradition prefigures rationality in the separation of nature from the divine in the creation myths, the desacralization of politics in the Exodus, and the Sinai covenant’s deconsecration of values. As an alternative to Weber’s reading of “charisma,” we have pursued a rethinking of contemporary critique by re-interpreting the “writing” prophets, and rather than simply “unmask” critique, as a mere social construct, our hermeneutic emphasis has been on recognizing connections in a complex genealogy and acknowledging, despite secularizing ruptures, the religious “tradition” of critique.
What have we garnered from this interpretative genealogy? Following Foucault, we take discourse, as a deployment of power/knowledge as productive and constitutive. Therefore, prophecy, as transmitted through innumerable interpreters provides a number of discursive categories and subject positions which contemporary critique draws on, inter alia, that is alongside parrhesia and many other historical precursors, say Gnosticism (Voegelin, 2001), and acknowledging that writing prophets themselves were inheritors of a complex critical tradition, through Elijah or even Moses.
Primarily, prophecy offers a standpoint of transcendent truth, whereby the critic stands as judge over society, positioning their words as ontologically special. Without claiming divinity, critics nonetheless can wield categorical distinctions between transcendence and immanence, either in abstract principles, utopian horizons, or nostalgia for previous ages. Furthermore, this discourse highlights and problematizes immanent social behavior, customs, or beliefs, either in terms of ethics or truthfulness, albeit, an explicit set of normative commitments equivalent to the Decalogue is rarely offered. The special standing of critical discourse is intrinsically connected to its truth production via “revelation” in prophetic terms, or “unmasking,” “exposing,” or “debunking” in contemporary language. So, in tension with transcendent self-positioning as the arbiter of “truth,” critique is peculiarly involved in “revealing” lies, delusions, and idolatry. Within the play of multiple discourses and contestation over politics, meaning, or ethics, critique reserves for itself the position of truth, with all others appearing as “false prophets,” although, ironically, many claim this position.
Beyond these discursive strands, categories and deployments of critique, there is also the subject position of prophet, who may be an insider or outsider, and may address crowds or kings. Implicitly, such figures are special, having privileged access to the truth—even though they suffer through knowing the truth and often becoming isolated, but ethically purified. Crucially, amid all these possibilities, their critical insight and knowledge effectively makes them detached from their society, and even somewhat transcendent. Meanwhile, they interpret society itself as crisis ridden. These liminal conditions giving rise to the need for revelation. Curiously, the critic or prophet is detached from these spiraling confusions, yet understands them perfectly.
Largely unacknowledged, classical prophecy supplies discursive power and symbolic resonance for contemporary critique. Such discourses can be adapted and adopted to many different purposes and may have many unanticipated consequences. Understanding these will require more historical and contemporary analysis.