Smugism?
At the Chronicle Review, Carlin Romano fires a savage volley at John Gray, everyone’s favorite apocalyptic public intellectual:
Gray has been welcomed on the left as a trophy because he deserted Thatcherism, but he’s no friend of any progressive group that believes in action to achieve a better future. His nirvana, in which we all enjoy a nonmystical contemplation of facts — “Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?” — is self-indulgent apathy.
Professor of European thought? Professor of “Eurythermic” thought is more like it. Gray is an know-it-all “organism” (he’d say so himself) who adapts easily to different ideological temperatures.
I too had to read that three times to make sure it didn’t say “Eurythmic” thought. Anyhow, it’s easy to see how Gray can be taken as a pompous, decadent boob. All too easy. It’s much harder to take the man more seriously, read Enlightenment’s Wake, and recognize that beneath the oracular pronouncements and dieoff advocacy (Gray vs. Gerson on overpopulation would be one of the greatest debates of all time) there’s a brilliant political theorist who has been dragged, in no small part by logic, from conventional modern liberalism to the recognition that much of the Western project has failed at the level of philosophy and done much attendant physical harm meanwhile.
Specifically, there is no doubt that scientific humanism is parasitic on the Christianity that it works so dutifully to repudiate and render irrelevant. The impression I get from her critique is that Romano would probably admit and champion this development. But the secularization of utopia and the costs (beyond the benefits) of replacing divine authority with progressive human power seem to me like invitations for a kind of humility that leave Romano, somewhat more than Gray, looking like the smug one.
“there is no doubt that scientific humanism is parasitic on the Christianity that it works so dutifully to repudiate and render irrelevant.”
Claiming that “there is no doubt,” like saying something is “obvious” or “self-evident,” is more often than not the overcompensation of a writer hasty to cordon off a premise that is dear, but lacking support. I suspect this is the case with respect to the above-quoted sentence. After all, while I know of no one who denies that ‘scientific humanism’ grew out of, or in response to, or as a consequence of, or against, or alongside of – one could go on – but in any case in relation to late medieval Christianity, just what that relation amounts to is anything but beyond doubt. And certainly as strong of a claim as that of parasitism deserves at least some doubt a fortiori.
If you haven’t read it already, let me suggest Hans Blumenberg’s “Legitimacy of the Modern Age” as a powerful critique of a whole range of ‘secularization’ theories of modernity. While, in my opinion, Blumenberg does not accomplish the full measure of his aim, the work is a certainly a welcome and salutary effort to put these theories, which too often rely more on piquancy than sobriety, through their paces. (And if you have read it, I wonder what your refutation of Blumenberg is such that you can so off-handedly say that “there is no doubt” about this parasitism.)
— Chris · Jan 18, 05:47 PM · #
Chris, I haven’t read Blumenberg, so thanks for the tip, and I guess this means the problem phrase should be revised to “there is little doubt”. If you sum up his argument quickly I can try to fend it off.
— James · Jan 18, 10:47 PM · #
i agree.
— danny · Jan 30, 07:37 AM · #