Letter: On “Our Life-World, Its Enemies, and the Enduring Power of Common Sense”

“Vice President Harris’s phrase could be described as the animating principle behind the whole modern project, as well as much of what we think of as progress: The more we unburden ourselves from nature and history, the more human ideas can determine what can be.”

In his essay last month, “Our Life World, its Enemies, and the Enduring Power of Common Sense,” Alexander Zubatov observes that “the progressive worldview is becoming evermore ungrounded and unmoored from the reality of everyday life.” Our presidential election this past November was a significant rebuke of the progressive worldview. President Donald Trump claimed to represent the party of common sense, while Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to embody the forces of abstraction, the forces of no sense.

Vice President Harris’s frequently invoked phrase, “What can be, unburdened by what has been,” has been dismissed as one more of her “word salads.” However, unlike many of her genuine word salads, this phrase is not a one-off—not a spontaneous response to a given moment. Rather, she repeated this precise phrase dozens of times to all kinds of audiences. It appears to have had much significance to her, and to her campaign. Although never becoming as iconic as successful presidential campaign slogans such as President Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change” or President Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” I believe her phrase does reflect our historical moment, as vividly depicted in Zubatov’s essay.

Vice President Harris’s phrase could be described as the animating principle behind the whole modern project, as well as much of what we think of as progress: The more we unburden ourselves from nature and history, the more human ideas can determine what can be. But all human ideas, ultimately, are restrained by reality—or what Zubatov refers to as the “life-world.” What can be is never unburdened by what has been. Many of the great social catastrophes of the modern world are nothing less than delusional attempts to destroy or escape history.