Posted on 06/17/2004 1:54:49 PM PDT by quidnunc
Two views are emerging about our post-September-11 world. One is angry, but also therapeutic — and most often embraced by the Left. I think it goes roughly like this. Removing the Taliban in our initial rage might have for a moment seemed necessary, but things now in retrospect have proved not much better than before in Afghanistan and might well get worse. There was no need for the Iraqi campaign. Thus the Europeans and moderate Arabs were right that chaos would result and terrorists multiply in its bitter aftermath. Sharon has only antagonized the Palestinians, set back the peace-process, and made America’s war far more difficult. Mr. Bush’s unilateral rhetoric and vainglorious posture have needlessly offended the Europeans, who now have recently developed a real dislike of the United States and likewise complicated our task.
Here at home the Patriot Act and certain dangerous new jurisprudence are greater concerns than any prior inability of rounding up sleeper cells. No wonder almost every day an Al Gore, Howard Dean, or Ted Kennedy is screaming or yelling about something. It doesn’t feel good to have so much money, education, and sophistication and still not be able to stop this dangerous course of events — that are the “worst ever,” “unprecedented,” and “a new low” in American history.
The other interpretation is somewhat tragic, largely upbeat about our recent accomplishments, and held by those on the more conservative side. Given the bleak options after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the prior murderous history of Afghanistan, and the depressing landscape of the Middle East, the past three years are nothing short of miraculous: Taliban gone; constitutional government emerging; and a good man like Karzai trying to end fundamentalist terror. Saddam, his sons, and Iraqi genocide are now over with. And despite the daily turmoil, Iraq is likewise inching toward some type of consensual government in less time than was true of a more sophisticated postwar Japan or Germany. There is a good chance that the Israelis will leave Gaza; suicide bombing is vastly reduced; a new fence will give both sides a breather until — and if — a legitimate Palestine government emerges to negotiate final borders.
As far as our “allies” go, Mr. Bush simply tore off the scab of the preexisting wound of Europe-American relations, in which the subsidized protection offered by the United States in the post-Cold War had far earlier led to an array of conflicting passions on the continent, arising out of an increasingly anti-democratic EU, envy, dependency, and resentment. In America proper — without much erosion of our daily ease and freedoms — we have rounded up scores of terrorists and thus so far avoided another mass murder. Consequently, conservatives are more likely to speak in calm tones than either scream for resignations or in wild-eyed fashion cite conspiracies that are destroying America.
How to adjudicate these two conflicting views of the present situation? We cannot. Why so?
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
"It doesn’t feel good to have so much money, education, and sophistication and still "......not have any power.
It is a shame that there are very few Christian of even conservative philosophers going toe to toe with Satan's minions (the Rousseauian neo Marxists).
It is a shame that there are very few Christian of even conservative philosophers going toe to toe with Satan's minions (the Rousseauian neo Marxists).
What you say is true, but, unfortunately, this is a battle that will have to be fought by secular conservative philosophers. I think it is a simple statement of fact that explicitly Christian philosophy would simply not be taken seriously in the university philosophy departments. Professional philosophers, even those seriously interested in epistomology, ethics, and eschatology, do not take explicity Christian arguments about such matters seriously because they argue from authority, rather than matters that be argued rationally. I can't think of an academic philosopher in the Anglo-American world in the 20th century who made explicity Christian arguments about anything who was read by the 1970s, let alone today. Lewis, perhaps in England, but who was regarded as a popularlizer, and, in Germany, Max Scheler in the '20s (known as the "Christian Nietzsche) and that's about it.
What I think would be required for the battle in the philosophy departments even to be joined would be a compelling re-examination of the Lockean tradition, but I've no idea how that would look.
why excerpt?
The battle does not have to be fought in the secular unversities. The individual Church's and their universities must develop philosophical arguments to counter deconstructionism, existentialism, structuralism, post modernism, feminism, post colonialism et al.
Christians can and must do fight the battle or else suffer continued marginalization.
I don't agree with your premise that Christianity and philosophy are incompatible. Wasn't Augustine a neo Platonist? Wasn't Aquinas an Aristotilian?
Because of this line at the end of the article: "All copyrights reserved by Victor Davis Hanson".
I didn't say Christianity and philosophy (as mode of thinking) are incompatible, rather that serious philosophers today simply do not speak in the language of Christian theology and would not take arguments couched in Christian terms seriously. Even those philosphers who still read Augustine and Aquinas usually prefer Plato and Aristotle.
Part of the problem is that ultimately, acceptance of Christianity rests on some sort of arument like Origen's credo absurdam est, an argument to faith transcending rational argument. Unfortunately, from a philosophical point of view, all of the attempts to make rational arguments for the existence of God, ala Aquinas, Scheler and countless others, or even rational arguments for belief regardless of whether or not He exists, e.g. Pascal's bet, have been largely viewed as unsuccessful. Hence, philosophers have written off the question as unknowable -- which allows some to be Christians (or Jews) some to be deists, others agnostic and still others athiest. Any attempt to argue from a seriously Christian perspective would be met with the argument that the premise was not subject to validation and hence not worth discussing.
BTW, the fact that I think Christian arguments will not get anywhere in the philosophy departments does not mean I am not a Christian (which I am) or that I think Christians should not be active on campus. I think they need to focus on spiritual matters more directly and less on the philosophical. I think Christains need to re-examine their hostility to the entire Enlightenment enterprise and work within those parts that are not incompatible with a Christian perspective on matters spiritual. My own view is that the English tradition is (and this may account for some of the persistence of Christianity in the US) not incompatible with Christianity, as long as one does not insist on Bible inerrancy which precludes science. Most philosophers will not object to arguments by Christians per se (as they regard the matter as unknowable), just arguments couched in Christian terms. Christians who wish to win need to understand this and modify the way they approach matters accordingly.
What a great analysis, this is why a liberal friend of mine was so angry after 9-11. He was not so angry that we were attacked as that it made his arguements and appeasements all the more pointless and possibly (as they hate to admit) wrong.
I also believe that philosophers who are Christians must meet each of these isms and fight them. The problem with the Catholic and the liberal protestant sects is their philosophers tend to agree with the underlying neo Roussouian and neo Marxist philosophies.
"My own view is that the English tradition is (and this may account for some of the persistence of Christianity in the US) not incompatible with Christianity, as long as one does not insist on Bible inerrancy which precludes science."
I agree with above whole heartedly.
True enough, although this is more a problem with Catholic philosophers than protestants.
And, a bigger problem - from the point of view of getting anywhere philosophically, is that such a large number of evangelical Protestants are Biblical literalists. That position has not been intellectually respectable for more than 100 years in even remotely sophisticated circles, and it has not been respectable in society at large at least since the Scopes Trial in the mid-1920s!
Perhaps I am naiive, but I find myself still in an essentially late 19th century place religiously, where I maintain essentially traditional Christian belief with acceptance of science and the Higher Criticism. Rather like one of my greatgrandfathers who began as a fundamentalist Southern Methodist minister before the Civil War, but who freed his slaves because he felt slaveholding was incompatible with his ministry, and ended up as a Congregationalist minister in rural Oregon in the 1920's. But, that's just how things make sense to me.
Thank you for the reference. I'm sure you are sincere, and I understand that there are probably 25 million Southern Baptists and members of other denominations who agree with you. But, that notwithstanding, nothing you nor I do will change the fact that taking a Biblical inerrancy position will get you and your ideas written off faster than almost anything with the probably 75% of Americans who don't belong to denominations which hold the Bible to be inerrant, and with the probably 90% of college graduates who don't believe in inerrancy. The position truly has not recovered from the ridicule of Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken in the Scopes Trial.
...thanks to the anti-intellectual position taken by most advocates of Biblical inerrancy. I linked to the website because Clark has written extensively about the failures of secular philosophy to avoid self-refutation. Christians may not be able to convince secular philosophers of the truth of scripture (only the Holy Spirit can do that), but an intellectually rigourous Christian can point to the fatal flaws in secular philosophies and to the coherence of Christianity.
Indeed, but I would amend "most" to "virtually all".
an intellectually rigourous Christian can point to the fatal flaws in secular philosophies...
Surely, that's correct. But, it has to be done in the language of secular philosophy or you lose them. Unless you've been in a serious university philosophy department, you have no inkling of how alien Christian theological argument is to the way philosophers think. It stands completely outside their categories. I have known well-respected professional philosophers who considered themselves seriously believing Christians, some Roman Catholic, some (mainline) Protestant. However, that was for them a matter of faith, not of their professional work.
As things stand now on the Continent, you may be right. However, it wasn't always this way. Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which he called for a superman who would write his own code of morals and ethics. Essentially, he was calling for a culture war.
Some say Nazi Germany was formed to take Nietzsche up on his offer. After that destructive affair, the Continent has been somewhat gunshy about exercising overt forms of power. Now, they try to pull off the kind of passive-aggressive crap that VDH sees in American liberals.
bttt
An intellectually rigourous Christian can do this. Secular philosophy can be refuted on its own terms. The problem, as you pointed out, is that the alternative, coherent Christian philosophy, is unacceptable to academia. That's where they're lost. They prefer to stick with contradictory systems rather than acknowledge the consistenecy of Christianity once divine revelation is accepted as an axiom.
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