Via Damian, a fine review of what looks like a remarkable book. My bits are in italics:
'The author of Icarus Fallen is Chantal Delsol, a professor of philosophy at the Université de Marne-la-Vallée near Paris. Her thesis here is that man has become something of a Sisyphus (my metaphor, not hers). Having pushed the rock of his utopian dreams to the top of the hill, he has had it roll back down over him. The nightmarish ideologies of Nazism and communism, as well as the lesser sins of consumerism and the innumerable other –isms of the 20th century, have all failed to bring happiness. But the longing for utopia still prevails. And unlike previous generations, who lived through wars and depressions and were on close terms with death, modern man has attempted to cocoon himself in a nest of technological and physical comfort. Thus he is appalled when faced with a grim reality: despite all our efforts, human nature has not changed. Tragedy is still a part of life.'
How about this as a credo:
1. Life is short.
2. There are gods out to get you.
3. They will succeed sooner or later.
4. People are stupid.
5. Only loving something outside yourself brings meaning.
'Icarus Fallen does not name names; Delsol assumes that the reader will recognize the ubiquity in our culture of what she calls “the clandestine ideology of our time.” There is no need to finger individuals, she asserts, when the theology of political correctness is in the very air we breathe. It is its own orthodoxy, with a specific idea of what man is—a person cut off from and not obligated to any tradition from the past, someone who can pursue any kind of happiness as long as it does not affect others, a man whose entire concept of self-actualization is based on ever-expanding rights. To say otherwise is heresy. “In our societies,” she writes, “there are a certain number of political, moral and other opinions that the individual contests at the point of being marginalized.” One must be for “the equal representation of both sexes in all spheres of power.” We must consider delinquency the result of poverty. We must “hate all moral order …[we] must equate the Catholic Church with the Inquisition, but never equate communism with its gulags.” The virtuous are to be suspect, because “invariably they must be disguising hypocritical vices.” The clandestine ideology “aims to equalize the value of all behavior.”'
Mentioning the gulags is a red herring in this context. It doesn’t add to the argument, strong enough by itself, which is that Catholic apologists, for instance, are presumed guilty until, by making the right ritual noises, they prove themselves innocent, whereas atheism is treated as though it were a brave and controversial position.
Having said that, it’s time to make some ritual noises:
'Delsol is no ideologue roughly demanding that we blindly return to the old ways, embracing them without question. She defends, for example, the fear of certainty as largely reasonable, at least when based on the fact that certainties about what constitutes the truth have in the past led to pogroms, inquisitions, and even the Holocaust. Yet she admits that man by his very nature hunts for truth and meaning, for something he is willing to die for. Thus we find ourselves stuck: by nature we long for what Delsol calls “reference points” that direct us towards absolute verities, yet by ideology we are suspect of anything that can provide the answers.'
The Golden Rule isn’t called Golden for nothing. ‘Do as you would be done by’ – it’s a Confucian as well as Christian rule, so there’s a prima facie case for thinking it’s as good a universal rule as we’re likely to find. It also provides a strong vaccination against imposing a narrow set of beliefs by means of stake, whip, show trial and concentration camp. Such a rule, if sincerely felt, renders absolute faiths safe rather than poisonous. In fact a Christian should have stronger feelings against Torquemada than an atheist. To the atheist, the Inquisitor is merely a deadly enemy: to Christians, a traitor.
Another huge quote coming up, but I can’t cut anything without losing the thread:
'“Dominated by emotion,” she writes, “[O]ur era overflows with treacly sentiment. It is almost as if the feelings that were once associated with a certain type of piety have contaminated the whole population …. Seeking the good while remaining indifferent to the truth gives rise to a morality of sentimentality. Reactive judgment, deprived of thoughtful reflection, engenders fanatical emotion and an absolute priority of feeling over thought. In fact, it is not actually a question of sentiment, since sentiment supposes a historical and rationally consistent background. We are dealing here less with a reaction of the heart than a gut reaction.
'Anyone who recalls the controversy over “The Passion of the Christ” knows exactly what Delsol is talking about. Yet Icarus Fallen has a flaw. It is the same one that afflicted the late, brilliant Christopher Lasch, whose style and philosophy are so similar to Delsol’s: like Lasch, she lacks answers. Delsol and Lasch diagnose modern ills with preternatural precision, yet both are reluctant, or unable, to prescribe a cure. Towards the end of his life Lasch seemed at last to find an answer, or at least a system that embraced man’s fallen nature and the danger of utopian fantasies, in Christianity—at least if his last book, The Revolt of the Elites, is an example. At the end of that book Lasch made an observation that Delsol echoes time and again in Icarus Fallen: “the key to happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy.”'
Just last weekend, as I wandered through the Warwickshire countryside, I fell to musing on just this point, or rather on the marring of the American Constitution by that odious phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Sheer late-Enlightenment sentimental hogwash: John Locke’s theory was that the fundamental rights were ‘life, liberty and estate’, what we would nowadays call private property. But then Locke lived at the end of the seventeenth century, right at the start of the Enlightenment, before Rousseau and his ilk came along with their drivelling sentimentality. Happiness has nothing to do with politics. The damage done to America’s national psyche (to turn metaphysical for a moment) by that phrase must have been huge. The implication of the phrase is that acquiring private property is necessary to happiness, or contentment – true up to a point –but it can easily be misunderstood to mean that acquisition is sufficient to happiness. No wonder California is awash with head-shrinkers.
To resume the review where we left off:
'The idea (i.e. of the need for renunciation – GSTQ) points to a Christian acceptance of limits and the notion that, as Lasch wrote, “human happiness may not be the be-all and end-all of God’s plan.” We must, in effect, rein ourselves in. We must realize that we are human, that the reality of death hangs over every life, and that if we deny these things and attempt to achieve utopia by continually expanding rights and accumulating more and more toys we will warp and distort the very humanity we ostensibly are trying to achieve.
'Delsol does not go as far as Lasch and, regrettably, does not provide concrete proposals at all Her prescription for what vexes us is a call for “a new anthropology,” which is never very clearly defined, and the acceptance of our human limits—limits that we must admit will never change. (When asked to summarize the thesis of his massive work, Christopher Lasch answered, “limits and hope.”)'
My own turn from know-it-all atheism to critical endorsement of Christianity took a long time but at every stage I found myself drawn further by a realisation that the Christian world-view had more intellectual rigour and emotional depth than any other. It has two big advantages over any other system of thought (two that come immediately to mind: there are probably others).
First, it does not seek to encourage illusions about human nature. What is important is what is inside us; we are not capable of perfection by our own efforts, whether individual or collective (we can improve, but that might take a huge effort for a tiny step); we are here to grow in wisdom and love, but don’t assume that either or both will make you happy – for some of us, such growth leads to be nailed to trees by people who find growing scary. Because human nature has twisted roots. Second, it actually gives us some indications for how we are to live in a practical way. There is no more practical and down-to-earth system of thought than Christianity. Mystical union with the Godhead – absolutely, if you can receive it. But don’t let such blessings make you forget that it’s your turn to wash up.
