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Traitors to the Enlightenment - Europe turns its back on Socrates, Locke, et al.
National Review Online ^ | October 02, 2006 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 10/02/2006 6:28:07 PM PDT by neverdem







Traitors to the Enlightenment
Europe turns its back on Socrates, Locke, et al.

By Victor Davis Hanson

The first Western Enlightenment of the Greek fifth-century B.C. sought to explain natural phenomena through reason rather than superstition alone. Ethics were to be discussed in the realm of logic as well as religion. Much of what Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and the Sophists thought may today seem self-evident, if not at times nonsensical. But that century was the beginning of the uniquely Western attempt to bring to the human experience empiricism, self-criticism, irony, and tolerance in thinking.

The second European Enlightenment of the late 18th century followed from the earlier spirit of the Renaissance. For all the excesses and arrogance in its thinking that pure reason might itself dethrone religion — as if science could explain all the mysteries of the human condition — the Enlightenment nevertheless established the Western blueprint for a humane and ordered society.

But now all that hard-won effort of some 2,500 years is at risk. The new enemies of Reason are not the enraged democrats who executed Socrates, the Christian zealots who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity, or the Nazis who burned books. No, they are a pampered and scared Western public that caves to barbarism — dwarves who sit on the shoulders of dead giants, and believe that their present exalted position is somehow related to their own cowardly sense of accommodation.

What would a Socrates, Galileo, Descartes, or Locke believe of the present decay in Europe — that all their bold and courageous thinking, won at such a great cost, would have devolved into such cheap surrender to fanaticism?

Just think: Put on an opera in today’s Germany, and have it shut down, not by Nazis, Communists, or kings, but by the simple fear of Islamic fanatics.

Write a novel deemed critical of the Prophet Mohammed, as did Salman Rushdie, and face years of ostracism and death threats — in the heart of Europe no less.

Compose a film, as did Theo Van Gogh, and find your throat cut in “liberal” Holland.

Or better yet, sketch a cartoon in postmodern Denmark, and then go into hiding.

Quote an ancient treatise, as did the pope, and learn your entire Church may come under assault, and the magnificent stones of the Vatican offer no refuge.

There are three lessons to be drawn from these examples. In almost every case, the criticism of the artist or intellectual was based either on his supposed lack of sensitivity or of artistic excellence. Van Gogh was, of course, obnoxious and his films puerile. The pope was woefully ignorant of public relations. The cartoons in Denmark were amateurish and unnecessary. Rushdie was an overrated novelist, whose chickens of trashing the West he sought refuge in finally came home to roost. The latest Hans Neuenfels adaptation of Mozart’s Idomeneo was silly.

But isn’t that precisely the point? It is easy to defend artists when they produce works of genius that do not offend popular sensibilities — Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws — but not so when an artist offends with neither taste nor talent. Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the smile and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn’t that why we must come to the present Pope’s defense — if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?

Note also the constant subtext in this new self-censorship: fear of radical Islam and its gruesome appendages of beheadings, suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices, barbaric fatwas, riotous youth, petrodollar-acquired nuclear weapons, oil boycotts and price hikes, and fist-chanting mobs.

In contrast, almost daily in Europe, “brave” artists caricature Christians and Americans with impunity. Why?

For a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that they can do this without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a Dr Zawahri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.

Second, almost every genre of artistic and intellectual expression has come under assault: music, satire, the novel, films, academic exegesis. Somehow Europeans have ever-so-insidiously given up the promise of the Enlightenment that welcomed free thought of all kinds, the more provocative the better.

So the present generation of Europeans really is heretical, made up of traitors of a sort, since they themselves, not just their consensual governments or some invader across the Mediterranean, have nearly destroyed their won freedoms of expression — out of worries over oil, or appearing as illiberal apostates of the new secular religion of multiculturalism, or another London or Madrid bombing.

Europe boldly produces films about assassinating an American president, and routinely disparages the Church that gave the world the Sermon of the Mount, but it simply won’t stand up for an artist, a well-meaning Pope, or a ranting filmmaker when the mob closes in. The Europe that believes in everything turns out to believe in nothing.

Third, examine why all these incidents took place in Europe. Since 2000 it has been the habit of blue-state politicians to rebuke the yokels of America, in part by showing us a supposedly more humane Western future unfolding in Europe. It was the European Union that was at the forefront of mass transit; the EU that advanced Kyoto and the International Criminal Court. And it was the heralded EU that sought “soft” power rather than the Neanderthal resort to arms.

And what have we learned in the last five years from its boutique socialism, utopian pacifism, moral equivalence, and cultural relativism? That it was logical that Europe most readily would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists.

Those in an auto parts store in Fresno, or at a NASCAR race in southern Ohio, might appear to Europeans as primordials with their guns, “fundamentalist” religion, and flag-waving chauvinism. But it is they, and increasingly their kind alone, who prove the bulwarks of the West. Ultimately what keeps even the pope safe and the continent confident in its vain dialogues with Iranian lunatics is the United States military and the very un-Europeans who fight in it.

We may be only 30 years behind Europe, but we are not quite there yet. And so Europe has done us a great favor in showing us not the way of the future, but the old cowardice of our pre-Enlightenment past.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Germany; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: District of Columbia; United Kingdom; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: atheism; culturewars; deism; enlightenment; eurabia; europe; humanism; islam; islamicfascism; multiculturalism; postmodernism; secular; secularism; vdh; victordavishanson; waronterror
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To: Cicero
He put Pythagoras in there which made me think he was thinking early Greek enlightenment.

Pythagoras was 6th century I believe.

21 posted on 10/02/2006 7:19:42 PM PDT by what's up
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To: ChiMark

Not berating him, but misunderestimating him.

"Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the smile and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship. But isn’t that why we must come to the present Pope’s defense — if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not?"

Also, he numbers the Pope with second rate artists and cartoonists, etc.

Sure, he recognizes the Pope's bravery in speaking out. But I think he underestimates his diplomatic intelligence. The Pope didn't say that by accident; he did it on purpose, for very good reasons, to start a dialogue on the problems of rationality without religion and religion without rationality. It has done a great deal to clarify the issues and put it to the Muslims in a way they have found very hard to deal with.


22 posted on 10/02/2006 7:20:59 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: what's up

Europe is controlled by a stiffling, aristocratic elite that imposes groupthink. Just as the Enlightenment thinkers paved the way for the American and French revolutions that deposed that aristocracy, so it may be Fox news by satellite and Rush Limbaugh via internet that opens European thought to new the new people and ideas it needs now.


23 posted on 10/02/2006 7:30:40 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (Have you have gotten mixed up in a mish-masher?)
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To: Cicero
.
"-- he [VDC] appears to have a major blind spot about Catholics and the Pope, in this article at least. I hadn't noticed it before. --

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hansen writes:

"-- Quote an ancient treatise, as did the pope, and learn your entire Church may come under assault, and the magnificent stones of the Vatican offer no refuge.

There are three lessons to be drawn from these examples. In almost every case, the criticism of the artist or intellectual was based either on his supposed lack of sensitivity or of artistic excellence.

The pope was [supposedly] woefully ignorant of public relations.

Yes, Pope Benedict is old and scholastic; he lacks both the smile and tact of the late Pope John Paul II, who surely would not have turned for elucidation to the rigidity of Byzantine scholarship.
But isn't that why we must come to the present Pope's defense- ; if for no reason other than because he has the courage to speak his convictions when others might not? --"


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find him defending the pope, instead of being 'blind' to what he said.
24 posted on 10/02/2006 7:31:33 PM PDT by tpaine
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To: neverdem

What Mr Hansen is describing is the setting of a stage--along the lines of a human tragedy. IMHO, either a new Dark Age is on the horizon, or a bloodbath ala the 1930's/1940's. Either way, it isn't going to be pretty.


25 posted on 10/02/2006 7:43:12 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: tpaine

Well, well. No point in arguing. In any case, I have always admired Hanson and enjoyed reading him, which was why I was a bit surprised.

And he may find the Pope a useful ally in his campaign against the decadence that troubles this age, because the Pope too has been arguing for a return precisely to the thinking of the Greek fifth century, a return to rationality in its deepest sense.


26 posted on 10/02/2006 7:47:49 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero
The Pope didn't say that by accident; he did it on purpose, for very good reasons, to start a dialogue on the problems of rationality without religion and religion without rationality. It has done a great deal to clarify the issues and put it to the Muslims in a way they have found very hard to deal with.

Can't disagree with that!

27 posted on 10/02/2006 7:49:50 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: what's up

Yes, it certainly can be extended back. And you can make the argument that the Greeks were the true inventors of literature, back in 10th century BC.

The argument has been made that although written Hebrew was earlier than written Greek, Greek was the first written language in which new literary texts could be widely read. The Hebrew Bible was not pointed in the early texts, so it was difficult or impossible to know how to pronounce or read it unless it was accompanied by an oral tradition of rabbis who could train up new generations to understand what it said.

With the Greek alphabet, on the other hand, you could write a new poem or a play, and anyone could pick it up, read it, and now how to pronounce it, without any oral guidance. That was the necessary prerequisite to the Greek Golden Age, and it happened centuries earlier.


28 posted on 10/02/2006 7:52:25 PM PDT by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Tench_Coxe
Either way, it isn't going to be pretty.

BLOAT

29 posted on 10/02/2006 7:52:43 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: Cicero
Yes, I know that the Greeks "democratized" literature by making it easily read by the masses.

Just going on what the author said, though. You would think that because he mentioned Pythagoras, he would have said 6th instead of 5th century.

30 posted on 10/02/2006 7:56:11 PM PDT by what's up
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To: neverdem
The Enlightenment has come full circle in Europe: where unaided reason is now meaningless and embraces the irrationality of POMO thought and socialism. What does this mean? POMO thought makes reason frivolous, so that language can only point to more language for meaning and never to anything in the real world; and socialism has abandoned reason by never rationally assessing its own miserable failures in the 20th century. Socialism only offers a dogmatic morality that the "grieved" classes need to be compensated through multiculuralism. The irony is socialism started as a rational experiment under Marx -- communism was considered a science -- but it has come to the conclusion that all cultures are equal, that there is no truth and that power is the final end. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not universal and self evident truths to the socialists. Thus the Lockean formulation was just a prejudice of the west -- a west that has sought to colonize and dominate the less powerful peoples of the world.

POMO thought and socialism (often espoused by the same people) go hand in hand with a virulent rationalism that is irrational -- and this is the legacy of the Enlightenment.
31 posted on 10/02/2006 7:57:36 PM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
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To: neverdem
BLOAT

Well, maybe not today, but I have made some folks in the powder business happy in the past.
I read stuff like this and its like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
BTW, a certain C****e W***e is still writing Hardyville articles out there, in case you're interested.

32 posted on 10/02/2006 7:58:55 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: Blind Eye Jones
"...but it has come to the conclusion that all cultures are equal, that there is no truth and that power is the final end. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not universal and self evident truths to the socialists"

The split came apparent when two Revolutions--the American and then the French, occurred. The French went down the wrong path, and (with the help of others) dragged a lot of continental Europe with them.

33 posted on 10/02/2006 8:02:15 PM PDT by Tench_Coxe
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To: ClaireSolt
it may be Fox news by satellite and Rush Limbaugh via internet

Don't forget FR!

34 posted on 10/02/2006 8:04:58 PM PDT by what's up
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To: neverdem
And what have we learned in the last five years from its boutique socialism, utopian pacifism, moral equivalence, and cultural relativism? That it was logical that Europe most readily would abandon the artist and give up the renegade in fear of religious extremists.

Those in an auto parts store in Fresno, or at a NASCAR race in southern Ohio, might appear to Europeans as primordials with their guns, “fundamentalist” religion, and flag-waving chauvinism. But it is they, and increasingly their kind alone, who prove the bulwarks of the West. Ultimately what keeps even the pope safe and the continent confident in its vain dialogues with Iranian lunatics is the United States military and the very un-Europeans who fight in it.

Well said.

35 posted on 10/02/2006 8:14:52 PM PDT by GOPJ ("Everyone is somebody's else's weirdo." -- Scott Adams (author of Dilbert))
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To: neverdem
all their bold and courageous thinking, won at such a great cost, would have devolved into such cheap surrender to fanaticism?

This is the core of the message--that in a very real way, terror has already won on the conrtinent. The best illustration is not the Pope, but the German opera--shut down not by totalitarian police but by mere fear of cutthroats whom the state is unwilling to control.

36 posted on 10/02/2006 8:17:12 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: neverdem

bump


37 posted on 10/02/2006 8:18:35 PM PDT by VOA
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To: neverdem; Jim Robinson
Those in an auto parts store in Fresno, or at a NASCAR race in southern Ohio, might appear to Europeans as primordials with their guns, “fundamentalist” religion, and flag-waving chauvinism. But it is they, and increasingly their kind alone, who prove the bulwarks of the West. Ultimately what keeps even the pope safe and the continent confident in its vain dialogues with Iranian lunatics is the United States military and the very un-Europeans who fight in it.

Is this a subtle nod to Freepers?

38 posted on 10/02/2006 8:34:14 PM PDT by GOPJ ("Everyone is somebody's else's weirdo." -- Scott Adams (author of Dilbert))
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To: GOPJ

Could be, but he is from Fresno and he hangs out with a pretty conservative bunch here.


39 posted on 10/02/2006 8:45:58 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
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To: tpaine

That was the best paragraph of the whole article!


40 posted on 10/02/2006 9:35:29 PM PDT by Left2Right ("Democracy isn't perfect, but other governments are so much worse")
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