Narokobi’s Melanesian Philosophy in the Papua New Guinean Legal System

ABSTRACT

Bernard Narokobi dedicated his career as a law reformer, jurist and parliamentarian to making Papua New Guinea’s legal system a catalyst for a distinctively Melanesian philosophy. This philosophy, ‘the Melanesian Way’, emphasized Papua New Guineans’ embeddedness within their local social worlds, including spirits and the natural environment. The legal foundation for the Melanesian Way was set down in the National Goals and Directive Principles and Basic Social Obligations, which are stated in the Preamble to the Constitution of Papua New Guinea. These make the ideals of social justice, participatory democracy, national sovereignty and sustainable development a legal aspiration and an impetus for formally recognizing the social forms that Papua New Guinean people themselves experience as providing order in their lives. Legislation that Narokobi promoted over the course of his career offered practical mechanisms for operationalizing these ideals in accordance with their original constitutional foundation.     

The Cultural and Historical Openness of Bernard Narokobi’s ‘Melanesian Way’

ABSTRACT

Narokobi’s call for a distinctive ‘Melanesian Way’ was not rigid traditionalism. Narokobi understood Melanesian indigeneity as agentively engaging the foreign, seeking and welcoming it, as opposed to merely acquiescing to it as an unbidden, external force. This understanding was informed by Narokobi’s Arapesh cultural background and his experience of a historic movement led by the visionary Arapesh leader Sir Pita Simogun in the 1950s to modernize the distinctive cultural institution of the Arapesh ‘roads’, which were practical travel passageways as well as valued channels of exchange and social relationships. The modernized Arapesh road facilitated Narokobi’s passage to advanced education just as new scholarships and opportunities were created by Australia’s acceleration of decolonization, positioning him to study law in Sydney and play a central role in planning for PNG’s constitution. It was also a potent Indigenous model that Narokobi built upon in his famous concept of the ‘Melanesian Way’.     

Noble Traditions and Christian Principles: The Integral Spirituality of Bernard Narokobi

ABSTRACT

This article describes some of the major events in the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea (PNG) following the Second Vatican Council, the ‘self study’ of the church in PNG in the 1970s, and the General Assembly of 2003–4. An outcome of the self study was the establishment of a national Catholic council in which Bernard Narokobi played a significant role. The article continues with a reflection on how Narokobi’s promotion of Melanesian spirituality finds links with a Catholic theology of grace and sacrament and how these two contribute to his understanding of the dual pillars of the PNG Constitution with its noble traditions and Christian principles coming together in the ideal of integral human development. The article lays out different ways Bernard Narokobi was formally involved with the church over his lifetime and how his bringing together of Melanesian experience and Christian faith provided a model for the integral liberation he envisaged and expressed – both in his work in the church and in the National Goals and Directive Principles of the PNG Constitution.     

The Legacy of Bernard Narokobi and the Melanesian Way

ABSTRACT

This special issue on the life and legacy of Bernard Narokobi documents and contextualizes Narokobi's life and thought. A central figure in Papua New Guinea's transition from Australian territory to independent nation, Narokobi was a jurist, philosopher, and poet who is best remembered for making ‘the Melanesian Way’ an important theme – if not the guiding ideological principle – in the discourse of independence in Papua New Guinea. In looking closely at Narokobi's biography, the collection also contributes to a growing body of work on political life writing in the Pacific. The collection speaks to Narokobi's role as a theorist of Oceanic modernity more broadly, one who deserves a place alongside two other important philosophers of Pacific independence, Epeli Hau‘ofa and Jean-Marie Tjibaou, as one of the main visionaries of Pacific decolonization and Oceanic modernity of the post-war period.     

‘Which Way?’ Big Man,Road Man,Chief: Bernard Narokobi's Multifaceted Leadership Career

ABSTRACT

Among the topics that Bernard Narokobi addresses in his numerous writings is the place of traditional Melanesian leadership styles in a modern Papua New Guinea. This article explores Narokobi's leadership status to show how far-reaching and multifaceted his leadership career was: he was at once a traditional Melanesian bigman, a chief, and a modern public figure. The actions he took in these roles were for him a matter of the highest principle, something that at times had severe political consequences. Because in Melanesia the scope of the ritual that takes place upon an individual's death is an index of their status, an analysis of the mortuary rituals undertaken upon Narokobi's death provides insight into the significance of his leadership at every level from his clan up to the national level of Papua New Guinean society.     

From the Grassroots: Bernard Narokobi and the Making of Papua New Guinea's Constitution

ABSTRACT

Bernard Narokobi's concept of the Melanesian Way was influenced by a variety of factors, including his own childhood in the village, his religion, and the understandings of the people around him. He also drew inspiration from his exposure to the views and opinions of the many Papua New Guineans who contributed to the work of the Constitutional Planning Committee (CPC) between 1972 and 1975 when he served as a consultant to the committee. He shared the belief in a specifically ‘Melanesian’ way of social organization and cosmological understanding with the others who took part in the CPC's work, most prominently its de facto chairman, Father John Momis. With Momis he drew on the people's contributions to formulate PNG's National Goals and Directive Principles, which, at least in part, embody Narokobi's understanding of what it is to be Melanesian.     

Perpetual peace and shareholder sovereignty: the political thought of José de Carvajal y Lancaster

This article contributes to the recent historiography on Enlightenment plans for European peace by shedding light on the political and intellectual work of the neglected Spanish minister and intellectual José Carvajal y Lancaster. The article begins by outlining the intellectual context surrounding the War of Spanish Succession, and proceeds to analyse the ways that Carvajal deployed, both in his texts and in power, Enlightenment ideals to reform the Spanish Empire and achieve perpetual peace in Europe. The ideas of his first work, his Testamento Político, revealed the ways that the logic of joint-stock companies could catalyse the reform of the Spanish Empire. His measures in government, in turn, illustrated how international cooperation could be mutually beneficial, but turned on his fraught relationship with the future Marquis of Pombal. Finally, his text Mis Pensamientos, written in 1753, envisaged a formal commercial and political coalition between the Spanish and the British Empires. Carvajal’s vision for European peace was at once utopian and clear-eyed, and the ideas behind his plan persist as demanding questions for our age.     

Codrington,Keesing, and Central Melanesian mana: Two Historic Trajectories of Polynesian Cultural Dissemination

Much has been said about mana since Robert Henry Codrington's 1891 exegesis based mainly on ethnography from the Banks Islands in northern Vanuatu. In Polynesian contexts, mana has been regarded as a cultural common denominator, with comparatively minor differences within the vast Polynesian cultural area. In Melanesian scholarship, however, consistent with the general emphasis on cultural diversity within the region, it remains a matter of considerable debate whether there is much to gain from approaching mana with generalising ambitions. In his seminal contributions to the discussion, Roger Keesing insists that Codrington mistook mana for a noun and consequently derailed scholarship on Melanesian mana. But Codrington's work is mainly based in the language of the island of Mota, where Codrington spent several years during his almost three‐decade long tenure as a pioneer linguist and missionary with the Anglican Melanesian Mission. And in the Mota language, mana is nominalised. In this article, I argue that this is attributable to regular visits from the Polynesian outlier Tikopia in pre‐Christian times, intensified by the proclivity of the Maori‐speaking first leaders of the Melanesian Mission to identify concepts that were phonemically familiar in their search for adequate translations of theological notions related to spiritual agency. When the language of Mota was chosen as the lingua franca of the Melanesian Mission in the 1860s, the Banks Islands' version of mana, soon explicitly associated with the powers of the Christian God, was disseminated through large parts of the south and central Solomon Islands and northern Vanuatu – including Tikopia. This has provided the islands exposed to Anglicanism with relatively new notions of agency and efficacy and created some common cultural denominators.     

The Theory of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Theory: the Art of Alfred Gell

ABSTRACT Gell's Art and Agency that aimed to articulate the first anthropological theory of art has achieved a near‐cult status among the academic community. Departing from previous semiological and aesthetic approaches, this theory takes it that art is a form of instrumental action, the canonical efficacy of which lies in its power to function as a cognitive trap and to captivate the spectator's mind. In this article it is argued that Gell's theory is not as novel as it is claimed; that it fails to define the specific field of art; and that by excluding the aesthetic properties of art objects, it discards ethnographical data nonetheless necessary for understanding the agency of art in Melanesian local cultures. At a meta‐level, Gell assigned to his theory the same captivating purpose as he did to art, and this probably explains the seductive fascination that his work continues to exert.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

Cromwell’s “spymaster”? John Thurloe and rethinking early modern intelligence

ABSTRACT

As intelligence co-ordinator for the Cromwellian Protectorate, John Thurloe was responsible for securing the new regime against a number of different threats, including Royalist plots and potential uprisings. Through a scholarly rereading of the Thurloe State Papers, this article provides new insights into Thurloe’s intelligence work, and reflects critically on the impact of modern intelligence studies on early modern history. Investigation of the constraints on early modern intelligence, in terms of money, manpower, relationship to the legal system, and legitimacy, reveals how Thurloe actively sought to circumvent limitations, or to turn some of these to his advantage. Analysis of Thurloe’s defence of the ports against the passage of Royalist agents and invasion, an area where he has traditionally attracted criticism, shows a far more sophisticated strategy at work, including his exploitation of security weaknesses to gather more intelligence and disrupting actively a significant number of potential invasion plans.     

How the Missionary got his Mana: Charles Elliot Fox and the Power of Name‐Exchange in Solomon Islands

Charles Elliot Fox (1878–1977) was one of the Anglican Melanesian Mission's most emblematic figures, extending its reputation for scholarship and respect for Pacific traditions. Uniquely among the Mission's European figures, however, Fox is also credited with exceptional powers (mana). Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork among the Arosi (Makira, Solomon Islands), I argue that Fox's name‐exchanges with Makirans have contributed in unrecognized ways to his reputation for mana. In so doing, I show how, in contrast with name‐exchange in Polynesia, Arosi name‐exchange implies the internalization of a gap between ontological categories that renders name‐exchange partners two persons in one body, endowed with access to one another's being and ways. Fox's writings indicate that he understood this aspect of Arosi name‐exchange as a prefiguration of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. This understanding, in turn, shaped his mission method and motivated his otherwise puzzling claims that he was a Melanesian.     

Philosophy,Eros, Judaism

Abstract

A careful reading of Caritas in Veritate shows it to be framed and permeated by two principles. The first is that human persons in their consciences and deeds are the principal agents of economic and political life, whether directly in interpersonal relations or mediated through their work in and for institutions. The second is that human persons as citizens are best prepared to promote “integral human development” and “the common good” when they are urged on by charity or love that is lived in truth. In these respects Caritas in Veritate is a clear continuation of the line of thought that Benedict developed in his earlier encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, and before that in his theological writings as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict's work thus underscores the need modern societies and political communities have for charity, and thus for faith and for hope. We explicate this aspect of Benedict's political vision throughout this essay, anticipating and beginning to respond to some objections to the thesis that politics even in a secular age requires theological virtues to flourish.     

‘Le mot déclin est presque trop doux’: Michel Houellebecq’s (Euro)déclinisme

ABSTRACT

Michel Houellebecq’s views on the European Union have been consistently negative, recently declaring in an interview that anti-Europeanism is his ‘only political engagement.’ Houellebecq’s work takes for granted civilizational decline, what Oswald Spengler called the ‘decline of the West’, and regards the EU, described in Submission as a ‘putrid decomposition’, as central to this vision. The only way to revitalise Europe and to reverse this decline, Submission suggests, is by reinstating the traditions and moralities that have been eradicated in Europe by post-‘68 moral and sexual liberalisation. On this view then, only those cultures untouched by progressive politics can rebuild Europe and in Submission only the Muslim Brotherhood can provide ‘the moral and familial rearmament of Europe.’     

Preaching,politics and episcopal reform in Wulfstan's early writings

Putting Wulfstan's earliest legal texts – the Canons of Edgar and the so‐called Peace of Edward and Guthrum – in dialogue with his homilies on the role of the bishop, this article argues that, from his earliest writings, Wulfstan adapted approaches from Kings Alfred and Edgar as well as from the Benedictine reform to make ambitious claims concerning the role of the bishop in the secular sphere. These claims went beyond the contemporary understanding of the relationship between bishop and king both in England and on the Continent, to frame the bishop as the primary authority in the nation because he is the teacher of teachers.     

Genealogical narrative and self-knowledge in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men

SUMMARY

Why did Rousseau cast the substance of the Second Discourse in the form of a genealogy? In this essay the author attempts to work out the relation between the literary form (genealogical narrative, as the author calls it) of the Discourse's two main parts and the content. A key thesis of Rousseau's text concerns our lack of self-knowledge, indeed, our ignorance of our ignorance. The author argues that in a number of ways genealogical narrative is meant to respond to that lack. In the course of his discussion he comments on Rousseau's puzzling remarks in the Second Discourse about his expository method. Further, given the thesis that we lack self-knowledge, Rousseau owes us an account of his genesis as self-knowing genealogist. He attempts to do so in part through his narrative of the ‘illumination of Vincennes’. The author examines that narrative as well, reading it and the Discourse in light of each other. Can Rousseau resolve the problems of self-reference that the philosophical use of genealogy often leads to? The article discusses this complex metaphilosophical problem, along with views about the value of genealogical accounts, in light of recent work by Robert Guay, John Kekes, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Frederick Neuhouser, among others.