The Cave and the Light is an ambitious and overall wonderful sweeping historic survey of Platonic and Aristotelian thought in the west. It starts out The Cave and the Light is an ambitious and overall wonderful sweeping historic survey of Platonic and Aristotelian thought in the west. It starts out with the general context of the west in Greece with the Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle, and from there traces the lines of Greek thought throughout western history till the modern era. The book is framed as a pitting of Aristotle against Plato, and the author seeks to show history as a sort of balancing act between Platonic thinkers versus Aristotelian thinkers. This thesis is extremely interesting, but not without its flaws. I don't believe it is quite so easy to understand later developments of thought under this light as there is a lot more complexity happening than can be gleaned through a short survey of the history in a mere chapter. Also, many people were obviously influenced in differing degrees throughout history by both Plato and Aristotle. Herman sets out though to make it as black and white as possible, which is an admirable goal, but is impossible to execute when dealing with history. As, I'm currently wrapping up my first reading of Plato's major works, and I will be moving on to Aristotle, I am glad that I chose this book. I found it to be extremely well executed in showing how the thought of these two titans of philosophy has developed over time, and the histories of how their works were maintained and inspired many people in seemingly every generation in new ways, and I'm glad to count myself as one of them....more
This was my introduction to Wendell Berry's writing, and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Coming from small town USA with family roots in a towThis was my introduction to Wendell Berry's writing, and I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Coming from small town USA with family roots in a town established in agriculture, I was easily convinced by his arguments against big agribusiness vs. small, organic farms centered around family and community. I have seen just within my lifetime the slow and painful decay of small towns with agricultural roots as they deteriorate into poverty, crime, homeless, and drug-filled cesspools because of the ever increasing proposition that these people are not needed, and as Berry expresses that simple (non-specialist) work is 'drudgery' that we look to be freed from.
Where Berry excels in this book though is in his understanding of God's creation and design in this world and it's connection to all aspects of life. His wholistic approach to agriculture based on his connective understanding of creation and the interlaced relationships from land to plant to animal to man to wife to child to house to family to community to nation and finally to the world then cycled back again through the natural revolutions of life and death.
This book is about much more than agriculture. Berry is a philosopher with a succinct understanding of culture in general. If you want to know how the deterioration of the family affects the food we eat, if you want to know how a materialist and consumerist culture effects the kinds of education we receive, how progressive ideals, technology, etc. affect our agriculture and our culture at large negatively, Berry identifies the interrelatedness of these things that most people miss.
“The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common—not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to sell them to us at the highest profit.”...more
“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
Beauty matters! That is the point to this wonderfully slim introd“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
Beauty matters! That is the point to this wonderfully slim introduction to aesthetics, and on that point I stand in complete accordance with Scruton. Although, I didn’t agree with all that he said, and at times I thought his ideas needed a bit of clarification, I thought many of his main points hit home, and I appreciated the mass assortment of references on the subject. When addressing postmodernism’s desire to destroy the sacred so that art becomes less about aesthetics, but more about taking pleasure in the act of destruction it reminds me of Philip Rieff’s “third world culture”. The idea that there are three cultures, first, second, and third world. First and second worlds containing continuity in that they are both based on a sacred order and a higher authority. Third world being characterized by not only it’s divergence from the first two, but of it’s hatred of the sacred and of viewing itself as the higher authority. What Rieff calls an "anti-culture" because it effectively destroys culture through acts that he calls, “deathworks.” These are attempts to tear down the sacred order and wipe out it’s history. A cross pickled in urine for example or explicit pornography as art, etc. According to Scruton these works of art are not beautiful precisely because they lack the sacred and they defile art, in his opinion these are acts of the destruction of art, that give momentary pleasure to the viewer and artist solely in the shock that they produce.
A culture like this that looks to destroy it’s ties to the past and destroy any intrinsic meaning in what was previously viewed by the west as sacred and beautiful, cannot be sustained because it stands against itself. It looks to justify it’s actions based on itself alone, but it is actively cutting the roots that tie it to a culture. Thus it is an “anti-culture”. It is self destructive. I think Scruton is getting at a similar idea if not the exact idea. Our modern world looks at beauty through it’s utilitarian lenses of function and profit. They wish to objectify beauty. What is it’s function? Does it satisfy a desire? This causes consumerism in the modern world to masquerade as art.
“wanting it for its beauty is not wanting to inspect it: it is wanting to contemplate it—and that is something more than a search for information or an expression of appetite. Here is a want without a goal: a desire that cannot be fulfilled since there is nothing that would count as its fulfilment.”
Scruton believes that beauty is much deeper than that. That it does not have a function other than itself. That making it about desire and satiation is stripping it of what it actually is.
“Beauty is not the source of disinterested pleasure, but simply the object of a universal interest: the interest that we have in beauty, and in the pleasure that beauty brings.”
What shines forth to me in this book is Scruton’s understanding that beauty carries transcendence into the eternal. That beauty feeds man’s soul. That it takes us out of ourselves and our desires and has us reflect on something greater than ourselves.
“Nobody who is alert to beauty, therefore, is without the concept of redemption—of a final transcendence of mortal disorder into a ‘kingdom of ends’. In an age of declining faith art bears enduring witness to the spiritual hunger and immortal longings of our species. Hence aesthetic education matters more today than at any previous period in history.”
“Art moves us because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful in part because it means something. It can be meaningful without being beautiful; but to be beautiful it must be meaningful.”
Overall a wonderful primer on the subject especially due to it’s easily digestible size, and I think Scruton is shooting in the right direction, even if not always on target....more
There are so many moving parts to the western world and its cultural decline. I have read several books now that pinpoint different areas as the main There are so many moving parts to the western world and its cultural decline. I have read several books now that pinpoint different areas as the main cause, and these books have convinced me that it is a combination of coinciding or connecting factors that culminate into our cultural deterioration. The Reformation alongside the printing press had us rearrange our values and shifted the cultural emphasis from authoritative structure and community to individualism and egalitarianism, which led to freedom fueled revolutions and the valuing of all human life as equal, but has brought along with it a selfish, narcissistic, and consumerist society. The enlightenment, and our switching from a spiritual worldview to a material one, and moving our faith from God directly into "science", "numbers", or the idea of "progress" even if it is but a blind adherence to a mystical God that we have resurrected for ourselves in order to justify whatever life or moral code we wish. Modernism, the industrial revolution, capitalism, the sexual revolution, feminism, LGBTQ+, technology, etc. All birth pangs to a future that most of us imagine to be inevitably better than the here and now. This future, our one hope to finally realize a world the closest we can imagine to heaven on earth in which we don't have any sickness or pain, where we don't have to work, where we don't have to think, where we don't have to do much at all except bask in sensual pleasures.
This book however concerns itself specifically with the transition and transformation of our society going from typography to television. Receiving information from the written word vs receiving information through a televised format, although most everything Postman is referring to can be inferred to be talking about most of visual social media as well. The transition from a society that learns and engages with ideas to a society that is entertained and coerced to believe anything at all.
The way Postman opens the book immediately caught my attention,
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
When I first read 1984 and Brave New World I read them back to back, and my thought was exactly what Postman expressed here. It is also my opinion that Huxley was correct or rather that of the two he was more prophetic in his vision of the future, that the cultural decline will not be forced onto us by some outside force, but by our own choice. We will want an easier life, we will want systems in place that make everything simpler, as Postman claims in this book, “People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”. We will praise the ones who bring about a future that is streamlined so that we can simply enjoy the finer things in life. Sex, drugs, good-tasting food, entertainments and laughs provided to us by the experts.
Postman beautifully articulates several ideas in this book that are even more applicable to our time than to his, although when the blindfold has been taken off concerning the bright shining ideal of "progress" it becomes fairly easy to see it's eventual demise.
“In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?”
Although I agree with Postman on almost all accounts, and I think his penetration into the truth of this matter is extremely well executed, I do not agree entirely that the entirety of visual media or audible media is inferior to typography. I do believe that these things have their place. I, for one love the addition of audiobooks into my routine, and I also enjoy a well executed film that brings a story into the visual world, but as he points out the sort of capitalist and consumerist spin on these things is the issue. I do wonder, had we not created these technologies and our society had progressed the same, (using only the written word instead of television) if it would have eliminated all of these issues. I doubt it. More likely, we would have adapted the written word to fit into our entertainment-centered consumerist prerogative.
As a father with a 2 year old boy and a new baby on the way though, this book has me thinking more about screen-time and it's effects on children, and I will be monitoring screen-time more closely because of it. I do believe that a balance needs to be achieved in the way that we receive our information, and as a parent it is my duty to implement a structure into my children's lives that will allow them to grow intellectually, and take the power of entertainment away from the experts and put it back into the hands of the consumers. That way my children will not be helplessly dependent on the entertainment industry, and will be able to more readily provide for themselves....more
It’s hard to say exactly which of Plato’s dialogues is the most relevant to the modern reader, but I think Gorgias would be a major contender. This PlIt’s hard to say exactly which of Plato’s dialogues is the most relevant to the modern reader, but I think Gorgias would be a major contender. This Platonic dialogue takes place between Socrates and a small group of sophists as well as some other guests at a dinner party. What starts off as a defining of what rhetoric is and what its purpose is turns into a philosophical discourse on the Socratic view of natural morality, absolute truth, and self-control as opposed to relative morality, relative truth, and the pursuit of pleasure and excess as the ultimate good as held by the Sophists.
Socrates begins by comparing the techne versus what he calls a knack in rhetoric. He uses the example of medicine versus cookery to demonstrate this idea. The doctor uses pleasant and unpleasant means to bring about health in a person. Surgery is generally unpleasant and painful but brings about health. It is not about the gratification of one’s desires, but rather about one’s health. The Baker on the other hand makes cakes and sweet breads to fulfill personal gratification and desire, but does nothing for the health of the person. Socrates in this Dialogue is the doctor. He is the true politician and philosopher who is ready to use both pleasant and unpleasant means to bring about a healthy soul.
Socrates denies that pleasure can be equated directly to good. He argues that this is demonstrated by the natural world. There are good and pleasant things that can kill us, and there are unpleasant and painful things that can save our lives. In saying so Socrates is claiming that there is a natural morality at play here. That when something is good and pleasurable there is a point when that good and pleasurable thing reaches an excessive point where it becomes bad or harmful. A little bit of alcohol once in a while for example, gladdens the heart and is pleasurable to the body, but the excess of alcohol intake leads to alcoholism and destroys our body, life, and soul. A little bit of sugar here and there is good and pleasurable for the body, but excess causes obesity and disease. Socrates says that the one who places pleasure and desire as the end all goal is harming his own soul and other souls around him. He likens the person to a man with a bucket that has holes in it. That the more the man fills the bucket the more he becomes a slave to keeping it full, and the more he fills it the more holes appear and the faster he has to fill it. This is like the soul of the carnal or hedonistic man.
These two views battling it out here in this seemingly inconspicuous platonic dialogue have massive philosophical implications in the real world. Especially in the political sphere. In many ways this argument has echoed through the ages and continues to be an argument of great importance to anyone and everyone whether they know which side of it they’re on or not. It portrays two views of freedom. One, being freedom as liberty, and the other freedom as autonomy. The sophist view is that of freedom as liberty, that any restriction whatsoever on a person creates repression and unhappiness because true happiness is found in the accumulation and satiation of desires, (this view is represented by many thinkers responsible for the modern mentality in the west, Freud, Nietzsche, etc.) and the Socratic view of freedom as autonomy that argues that true freedom is man’s ability to know restraint and govern himself based on man’s ability to reason and seek virtue.
It portrays two views of truth and ethics. That of the sophist’s relative idea of truth and morality. That you can make an argument for anything by appealing to human emotion and desire. That you can persuade people to whichever view you want as a rhetorician because no view has actual truth. All truth is only perspective. Or the Socratic view of a truth that is true apart from rhetoric, and a moral law that can be found in nature by use of man’s ability to reason.
Plato’s dialogue asks us to consider then, which side of this argument are we on? Will we take the side of Socrates and pursue knowledge and virtue? Or will we take the side of the Sophists and pursue the accumulation and satiation of our personal desires?...more
Over decades of philosophical meandering the 'new left' have locked themselves in a box that is impenetrable from the outside world, and they look to Over decades of philosophical meandering the 'new left' have locked themselves in a box that is impenetrable from the outside world, and they look to control what is true and not true from the inside. They use subjectivity as a shield to guard themselves from all intellectual discord. Utilizing tactics such as new-speak and circular logic they look to paint an alternate view of reality, one where institutions, traditions, and authorities are all evil and society is to be seen always as victim and oppressor, and when confronted with their logical fallacies they fall back on subjectivism and general consensus within their box. This can be plainly seen played out in the Universities of the United States over the past 30 years. Where by way of the culture wars the left has gained substantial ground in the USA. Going as far as to attempt to create an utterly new conception of American history. Scruton’s description of Newspeak “casting spells” can be seen clearly in the American youth. Where there is no value placed on objective truth and all value placed on the left's idea of "social justice".
to quote Scruton:
There is no point to the old ideas of objectivity and universal truth; all that matters is the fact that we agree.
But who are we? And what do we agree about? Turn to Rorty’s essays, and you will soon find out. ‘We’ are all feminists, liberals, advocates of today’s radical causes and the open curriculum; ‘we’ do not believe in God, or in any inherited religion; nor do the old ideas of authority, order and self-discipline carry weight for us. ‘We’ make up our minds as to the meaning of texts, by creating through our words the consensus that includes us. There is no constraint on us, beyond the community to which we have chosen to belong. And because there is no objective truth but only our own self-engendered consensus, our position is unassailable from any point of view outside it. Pragmatists not only decide what to think; they protect themselves from whoever doesn’t think the same.
and Later:
In place of objectivity we have only ‘inter-subjectivity’—in other words, consensus. Truths, meanings, facts and values are now regarded as negotiable. The curious thing, however, is that this woolly-minded subjectivism goes with a vigorous censorship. Those who put consensus in the place of truth quickly find themselves distinguishing the true from the false consensus. And inevitably the consensus is ‘on the left’. . . .
Thus the ‘we’ of Rorty rigorously excludes all conservatives, traditionalists and reactionaries. Only liberals can belong to it; just as only feminists, radicals, gay activists and anti-authoritarians can take advantage of deconstruction. . . . The inescapable conclusion is that subjectivity, relativity and irrationalism are advocated not in order to let in all opinions, but precisely so as to exclude the opinions of people who believe in old authorities and objective truths. This is the short cut to Gramsci’s new cultural hegemony: not to vindicate the new culture against the old, but to show that there are no grounds for either, so that nothing remains save political commitment...
The final result of the culture wars has been an enforced political correctness, by which the blasted landscape of art, history and literature is policed for the residual signs of racist, sexist, imperialist or colonialist ways of thinking.” Anyone who is paying any attention—to the university, to the media, to popular literature (especially the cesspit of YA), to the arts, and to public commemoration—will recognize the truth in this description. But of course this “enforced political correctness” no longer plays out solely in academic institutions. One wonders what the next stage of this will look like. We are already seeing some of it.
and in Scruton's own gloomy words,
“We have entered a period of cultural suicide.”...more
This book has had a massive impact on western civilization. Many great thinkers have taken inspiration from this book both politically and philosophicThis book has had a massive impact on western civilization. Many great thinkers have taken inspiration from this book both politically and philosophically. There have been several interpretations of the text since it came into being. I, leaning toward the Allan Bloom interpretation tend to see this book as a wonderful tool to teach the reader how to think. Not necessarily a view of the perfect utopian society, but a training grounds for the mind to create arguments and tear them down. To build and dismantle arguments in a logical manner, and seek truth above all else. I also believe that there is lots of wisdom here. I was especially shaken up by the critiques of democracy in book 8 where they are analyzing the four common types of government (Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny) and the degradation of one into another. Although flawed, this idea of a cyclical nature to humanity and it's governance seems to be somewhat accurate. With the United States being born out of the British Oligarchy, and the deterioration of democracy into stupidity through hyper-egalitarianism in our modern day.
There is a word in Spanish that has no direct translation in English. Empalagoso. The first time that I heard the word I was learning Spanish in Ecuador, and it was pertaining to a pie that no one wanted to eat. The pie was too sweet to eat they said. It was empalagoso. We might say in English that it was too rich or cloying, but we don't have a word to exactly represent that idea. In the USA we might take a closer look at this idea, that something that is good (sweet) can reach a point of repulsiveness due to excess. Freedom and Equality are both good things, but too much egalitarianism might leave us feeling sick.
I'll leave this excerpt from book 8 that stuck with me. One that seemed especially relevant.
"...And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?
What good?
Freedom, I replied; which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State - and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
Yes; the saying is in every body's mouth.
I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.
How so?
When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cup-bearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom, then, unless her rulers are very amenable and give a plentiful draught, she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs.
Yes, he replied, a very common occurrence.
Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her slaves who hug their chains and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honours both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit?
Certainly not.
By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them.
How do you mean?
I mean that the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and the metic is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either.
Yes, he said, that is the way.
And these are not the only evils, I said - there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young.
Quite true, he said.
The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other.
Why not, as Aeschylus says, utter the word which rises to our lips?
That is what I am doing, I replied; and I must add that no one who does not know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy than in any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb says, are as good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and asses have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of freemen; and they will run at any body who comes in their way if he does not leave the road clear for them: and all things are just ready to burst with liberty.
When I take a country walk, he said, I often experience what you describe. You and I have dreamed the same thing.
And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority, and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them.
Yes, he said, I know it too well.
Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.
Glorious indeed, he said. But what is the next step?
The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy - the truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government.
True.
The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
Yes, the natural order.
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?
I read this a few years ago. I thought it was very interesting to see Japanese asthetics from Tanizaki's perspective. Minimalism, Dark aged wood, the I read this a few years ago. I thought it was very interesting to see Japanese asthetics from Tanizaki's perspective. Minimalism, Dark aged wood, the play of shadows, finding things to be more beautiful for their imperfections. The Wabi-Sabi sort of aesthetic that tends to be somewhat of a foreign idea to westerners. If I remember correctly there is a part discussing the aesthetics of new fancy western toilets vs the old Japanese ones. It is apparent that Tanizaki despises western influences, and wishes to hold onto an older Japanese aesthetic. In a way we all feel the sentiment that Tanizaki is expressing. As new things come along and threaten a way of life and thinking that we came to love and appreciate. When I was in my twenties I remember crying when Merle Haggard died, not because he died really, but because for me it signified the death of my grandparents generation and their way of life. ...more
This book was a very interesting analysis of the American education system. It seems that we are living out in a much broader scale many of the thingsThis book was a very interesting analysis of the American education system. It seems that we are living out in a much broader scale many of the things he addresses here in 1987. Bloom tackles the history in this book both culturally and philosophically of the American psyche. Addressing everything from Rock'n'roll to our German philosophical heritage. I was astounded by the depth and width of his argument, and the majority of the time I was compelled to agree with him. His main claim is that the moral relativism or the general "openness" that is prominent in the American worldview due to toxic egalitarianism has caused Americans to close their minds to truth and has pushed us away from a classical education.
We would do well to remember that it was democracy that killed Socrates.
“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency -- the belief that the here and now is all there is.”
"Where the purpose of higher education once was to enable the student to find truth, the modern university teaches that there is no truth, only 'lifestyle.”
“Students have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one. They do not even imagine that there is such a thing.”
“The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness— and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings —is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”
“There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. These are things you don't think about. The students' backgrounds are as various as America can provide. Some are religious, some atheists; some are to the Left, some to the Right; some intend to be scientists, some humanists or professionals or businessmen; some are poor, some rich. They are unified only in their relativism and in their allegiance to equality. And the two are related in a moral inten- tion. The relativity of truth is not a theoretical insight but a moral postulate, the condition of a free society, or so they see it. They have all been equipped with this framework early on, and it is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional American grounds for a free society.”
“Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even specially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.”
“Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.”...more
I read this book slowly over the course of almost a year discussing each chapter with a friend once a week. In doing so, my reading experience was mucI read this book slowly over the course of almost a year discussing each chapter with a friend once a week. In doing so, my reading experience was much more rich than I generally experience. So, I have a particular fondness of the book in that sense, but I can say even if that were not the case, I would have found this book to be quite excellent. This book was eye-opening for me, and helped to reignite in me a love for philosophy last year that hopefully continues on for some time. Trueman is much more than a mere gatherer of important philosophical thought though he is an excellent one at that. This work is genius in it's accessibility and it's intentionality to help Christians understand the philosophical underpinnings of the modern world. He precisely tackles exactly how we ended up where we are philosophically in a way that is both well executed and easily comprehended. The modern world is a complex subject, and there seems to be a marrying of many philosophical ideas together from which it was born. From Egalitarianism, utilitarianism, idealism, nihilism, existentialism, marxism, feminisms, consumerism, capitalism, and all of the numerous subsequent isms that gave birth to her. The main take-aways for me were Phillip Reiff's ideas of the "anti-culture" destroying culture through "deathworks" in his Sacred Order / Social Order series which I intend to read (hopefully this year.) As well as near the end of the book where he clarified something for me that had been bothering me for some time. Which was that if the Reformers were at fault for placing authority in the hands of the individual, thus destroying the old world of authoritative structures and ushering in a new world based upon democratic egalitarianism. Seeing as how the world that they created is unraveling now before my very eyes, how can I reconcile that as a reformed Christian? Was Chesterton right? Was the reformation a mistake? In it's wake it has caused the unfolding of a world with so many schisms that you can now choose your church as you would a new pair of shoes. Christianity has become another form of individualistic consumerism. I would say that the reformation is far more influential than even Trueman admits in this book to the modern world of the expressive individual. He only dedicates a couple of pages to this train of thought in the concluding chapters, even so what he said rang true and clear for me, and I was relieved that he brought it up,
"None of this is to argue that we should simply lament the situation, for expressive individualism is not an unmitigated evil. In some ways it marks a significant improvement on that which it replaced. One of the aspects of the modern culture of expressive individualism is the emphasis it places on the inherent dignity of the individual. The more strictly hierarchical nature of honor-based societies... contained much that a Christian might criticize, not least the notion that some human beings are worth more than others because of their positions within the social hierarchy... Yet it is here, in the idea of the equal dignity of all human beings, that one of the problems with the modern political project becomes clear. The idea that all human beings are of equal worth is rooted in the idea that all human beings are made in the image of God. The problem with expressive individualism is not its emphasis on the dignity or the individual value of every human being... it is the fact that expressive individualism has detached these concepts of individual dignity and value from any kind of grounding in a sacred order."
For me this is the key. What the reformation set in motion came from a true and biblically supported idea, but just as man corrupted God's perfection in the garden, we have taken God out of the equation and placed ourselves as equals to Him. We have used the idea that all men are equal under God who is the true authority of man, and taken it to mean that we as individuals are equal to God. From this perspective the failings of our modern world can be seen as cyclical to man's sinful history with God. Just as the Jews had different societal structures in the bible all being corrupted and ultimately destroyed by sin. Just as the early church gave birth to the Roman Catholic tradition that had grown corrupt and needed reformation. We forget God, and we raise ourselves up in His place. This is the problem.
Trueman in the end claims that the modern Christian faces a similar world to that of a Christian in the 2nd century. A pluralist society that views Christianity as potentially harmful. His thinking as to how we should live is to imitate those Christians, to maintain close knit communities that are doctrinally bounded, act out our faith in our daily lives, and be good earthly citizens insofar as it is compatible with our faith....more
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