When Inclusion Becomes Erosion: A Philosophical Case for Boundary-Making: One View

A critical inquiry into the moral and philosophical basis for boundary-making in post-liberal societies

"There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it."                                                                                   -   attr: Friedrich Nietzsche

 In the modern liberal imagination, inclusion has become synonymous with moral progress. From civil rights legislation to multicultural pluralism, the moral arc appears to bend always toward broader accommodation, deeper toleration, and the softening of boundaries. Yet the foundational question remains: Can a community endure if it refuses to draw lines around its values, identity, and cohesion?

While inclusion can be a moral good, it is not an absolute one. There comes a point at which the expansion of inclusion without corresponding commitment to shared values becomes not a sign of vitality but of erosion. Drawing from thinkers as diverse as Alasdair MacIntyre, Roger Scruton, and Carl Schmitt, these words which follow make the case for philosophical and practical boundary-making.

I. The Liberal Commitment and Its Limits

The liberal tradition, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism and Christian moral universalism, treats the individual as the fundamental unit of moral concern. Rights precede duties; inclusion is a default posture. Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, critiques this view as a fragment of older moral frameworks stripped of their ultimate grounding, the purpose they serve.  While he calls for the renewal of communities rooted in virtue traditions, he avoids advocating coercive measures against dissenters.

Roger Scruton, similarly, emphasises tradition, continuity, and the shared cultural inheritance of a people. In works like How to Be a Conservative, he warns against liberal overreach that tears down institutions in the name of abstract justice. Yet Scruton, too, remains committed to the language of law, civility, and constitutional restraint.

In both cases, the response to internal erosion is cautious and pastoral: re-educate, re-embed, rebuild. Coercion is viewed as a symptom of failure, not a strategy of survival.

II. The Post-Liberal Challenge

This reluctance to act decisively in defence of a community's identity reflects, arguably, a continued subscription to liberal moral instincts. Post-liberal and realist thinkers argue that this very posture allows for the slow undermining of social cohesion.

Carl Schmitt, in The Concept of the Political, asserts that the defining act of politics is the drawing of the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, communities cannot survive without the capacity to name their enemies, including internal ones. Liberalism, by avoiding such distinctions, becomes unable to defend itself against existential threats.

From this perspective, a society that welcomes all without conditions eventually loses the ability to sustain the very virtues it wishes to preserve. Tolerance becomes self-liquidating. Inclusion, when unbound from reciprocal commitment, functions as erosion.

III. Virtue, Tradition, and the Limits of Hospitality

MacIntyre's emphasis on "practices" and "narrative unity" offers an important clue: a community is not a collection of strangers but a shared moral project. Outsiders who reject or remain indifferent to the purpose of the community do not simply extend diversity—they fracture intelligibility.

Hospitality, in traditional societies, is always bounded. The Benedictine model, for example, welcomes the stranger as Christ—but also expects the stranger to join the rhythm of the monastery. Inclusion is contingent on participation. A practice that accepts all but forms no expectations ceases to be a practice at all.

IV. Toward a Philosophy of Boundary-Making

What then constitutes a legitimate act of boundary-making?

Moral Deliberation: The community must define its values clearly, not abstractly. Without a defined ultimate goal or purpose, no inclusion or exclusion has meaning.

Reciprocity: Inclusion must involve commitment from both sides. A unilateral tolerance is not a moral victory; it is political suicide.

Proportionate Action: Coercive or exclusionary measures may be justified, but only when persuasion has failed and the integrity of the community is under sustained threat.

Cultural Self-Awareness: The community must discern whether its openness stems from virtue or from a lack of conviction.

V. Conclusion: From Sentiment to Survival

The liberal impulse to include springs from noble sentiments—compassion, openness, remorse for historical exclusions. But sentiment must be ordered by reason. Communities that refuse to name limits, set expectations, or defend their moral and cultural inheritance will not be more just; they will simply be more fragile.

Inclusion is not an absolute good. A political and moral order survives only by boundary-making: not the rejection of others per se, but the insistence that membership implies meaning. Without borders—moral, cultural, spiritual—a society becomes an open circuit, unable to hold energy, unable to pass on purpose.

To include rightly, we must sometimes refuse.

July 2025

• A thought experiment produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

Writing in the manner of TSE's Ariel Poems

Sometimes, at the edge of feeling, there is fear -
Sometimes a turbulence appears
And there is madness,
Madness manifested in monstrous and fearful ways
 - Swansea Dec 1973

At the Verge

Sometimes, at the edge of feeling, there is fear—
Not the child's fright at darkened halls,
Nor the candle's twitch at unseen breath—
But the quiet fear that wakes at four,
Where silence hangs like wet linen in alleys of the soul.

The hour is neither dream nor waking,
But the bell between two bells—
A waiting, a weight, a windless turning
Where no angel guards the lintel.

Sometimes a turbulence appears—
Not of the sky, nor sea, nor the city’s restless thrum,
But beneath the ribcage:
A ripple, a grinding, a storm that will not pass—
Madness.

Madness not in flame or thunder,
But in the order of things unhinged—
The tea poured into a shoe,
The child answering the empty chair,
The mother forgetting her child’s name
As if it were never spoken.

And so madness manifested in monstrous and fearful ways:
The eyes that gleam too bright in crowds,
The voice too calm in confession,
The laugh that echoes where laughter does not belong.

Sometimes the world turns inside out—
And we, gentle bearers of reason,
Are no more than cracked vases on the altar,
Spilling the dust of meaning into the wind.

Yet still, the bird sings at the chimney pot,
The clock ticks its futile benediction,
And the bread rises.

So we go, between verse and void,
With pocket-watches and whispered prayers,
Hoping the threshold holds.

DB June 2025

This poem was produced using AI, feeding Co-Pilot with the seed lines from an old poem of mine, and a request to deliver something in the style of TSE.

Here is the original poem, with a critique and illustration by Gemini AI (Click/Tap to view)

A Poem in the Manner of EP

 

The ages fade daily from memory,
but an instant calls to mind,

times thought lost through dull decay.

-- Tours: Nov 1971

Palimpsest

An ink-smudge on papyrus—
ghost-hand of Charax in the margin,
"νοῦς ἀνθρώπου—" and the reed bends.

Clamour of looms in Nineveh,
threads humming patterns
no eye remains to read.

Rust eats the bronze mirror
at the base of the Acropolis;
I see my face in it,
fractured—
half Helen, half the boy from Tyre
whose sandals wore a path to the salt market.

A gull cries.
Concrete breaks its own silence.

Words come in fragments:
"– et in Arcadia…"
"—ye towers of Ilium…"
They lie like bone shards
in the posthole of a vanished hut.

No elegy is whole.

Yet, in a metro tunnel,
fluorescent and wet with transit hum,
I glimpse her—
an eyelash curve,
a gesture from an older grammar.

Time uncoils.
Memory is not kind,
but sudden.

- Oxon: May 2025

Footnotes

1. νοῦς ἀνθρώπου (nous anthrōpou) — Greek for "the mind of man." This phrase reflects classical philosophical thought, especially in Plato and Aristotle, where nous denotes the highest faculty of intellect or reason. The attribution to “Charax” may allude to Charax of Pergamon, a semi-legendary chronicler, here imagined as a marginal commentator in an ancient manuscript. The smudged ink emphasizes textual decay and the ghostliness of ancient knowledge.

2. Nineveh — The capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, famed for its architecture, gardens, and textile production. The "clamour of looms" references the lost industry and domestic life of ancient cities, preserved now only through archaeology and legend.

3. Bronze mirror / Acropolis — Mirrors in classical antiquity were often made from polished bronze. The Acropolis, Athens’s ancient citadel, becomes a stage for cultural erosion, the bronze mirror symbolizing faded self-knowledge and the inevitable corrosion of civilization's reflective capacities.

4. Helen / boy from Tyre — Helen of Troy embodies mythic beauty and destructive desire. The "boy from Tyre" may allude to mythological figures such as Cadmus or Europa's brother, or symbolically to young Phoenician traders, invoking early Mediterranean commerce and cultural diaspora. The juxtaposition suggests fragmented identity across time and myth.

5. Concrete breaks its own silence — A motif where inanimate materials gain agency. Concrete, emblem of modern civilization, is personified as it fractures—both literally and metaphorically—under the weight of history and memory.

6. "Et in Arcadia…" — Latin: "Even in Arcadia, there am I," traditionally interpreted as death’s reminder of its presence even in idealized realms. Associated with Poussin’s paintings and Baroque vanitas themes.

7. "Ye towers of Ilium…" — A line echoing Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, referencing the mythical city of Troy (Ilium). Symbolizes fallen civilizations, often used in literature as shorthand for the tragic arc of empire.

8. Bone shards / posthole of a vanished hut — An archaeological metaphor: postholes are traces left by decayed wooden structures; bone shards suggest fragmentary remains of life and culture. This image mirrors a preoccupation with cultural excavation and lost origins.

9. Metro tunnel / gesture from an older grammar — An allusion to Ezra Pound’s "In a Station of the Metro" ("The apparition of these faces in the crowd..."). The “older grammar” evokes pre-verbal or ancient systems of expression—bodily, symbolic, or mythic—still surfacing in the modern world.

10. Time uncoils / Memory is not kind, but sudden — A nod to involuntary memory (e.g., Proustian recall), where memory erupts unexpectedly. “Time uncoils” may also suggest a serpent or scroll—symbols of both danger and revelation.

This poem and the notes were produced using AI, feeding Co-Pilot with the seed lines from an old poem of mine, and a request to deliver something in the style of Ezra Pound

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