Community fashioning

Abstract

In the shari‘a seminaries (hawza) of South Beirut, young Shi‘i Muslims articulate a notion of ethics that is realized in and through collective life. Classes on ethics (akhlaq) help them reweave the moral fabric of their neighborhoods by addressing volatile public situations, correcting improper conduct, and emulating virtuous figures. The concerns that animate these classes, and the practices of caretaking shaped therein, illuminate the political work that ethical action can achieve. Understanding how future clerics learn to fashion their community (and themselves) requires a theorization of subject formation that moves beyond conventional views of the self and that enables us to approach the public atmosphere as an ethical force. For this, a powerful starting point is offered by the tradition of political ethics as elaborated in the writings of Antonio Gramsci, Simone Weil, and others.