Surprised By Sin

Last night I couldn't go to sleep right away, so I picked up a copy Surprised by Sin, Stanley Fish's classic monograph on Milton's Paradise Lost. Yeah, yeah, I know, a little 'light' bedtime reading.

In the "Preface to the Second Edition," Fish devotes a section to "THE POLITICS OF BEING AND POLITICAL CRITICISM" in which he stresses that the "distinction between plot-thinking and faith-thinking is the key to understanding...the question of Milton's politcs" (li). Milton, of course, is a 'faith-thinker' who advocates a politics of being. And what might that be? Read the essay yourself, if you really care. For now, I just want to draw attention to the following gloss that Fish provides.

"The politics of being is the politics of styling, of affirming the real with no support except for the support provided by the strength of your affirmation ('On other surety none'). The politics of faith-thinking which refuses the lure of plot-thinking, the lure of allowing the accidents of time and history to define meanings and define obligations" (lviii).

Is it just me, or does this description capture the difference between Bush (politics of being) and Kerry, who was tagged a flip-flopper for "allowing the accidents of time and history to define meanings and obligations"?

This is not to suggest that either Dubya's intellectual powers or his faith are even remotely close to those of John Milton's. But I bet a lot of Bush voters would like to think so.