A Quote for Our Times . . .

Roger Scruton

Occasioned by Russell Kirk's book America's British Culture, Roger Scruton writes:

[The multiculturalists' program] derives less from the love of other cultures, than from the rejection of their own.

For more, see "The Plague of Multiculturalism" (The Imaginative Conservative, October 25. 2015; republished from The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1994).

Hat Tip to Malcolm Pollack . . .

Spencer Case Reviews Roger Scruton's Notes From Underground at National Review Online

National Review Online
Hat Tip to Bill Vallicella

Spencer Case, in "Polemics and Philosophy from a British Contrarian" (National Review Online April 19, 2014), reviews two works by Roger Scruton, but I will comment only on Case's words about Notes From Underground. Early in his review, Case makes the general observation that Scruton's novel deals "with the dualities of beauty and ugliness, love and betrayal, freedom and tyranny, piety and sacrilege," and Case is correct, but he neglects the greatest duality in Scruton's thought as expressed in this novel, that between truth and falsehood.

Indeed, Scruton informs the reader of precisely this theme, for in his "Author's Note," he states, "This is a story about truth." Even more precisely, Scruton's fictional account of Prague in 1985 is about "living in the truth," as Vaclav Havel expressed it, or rather, the great difficulty of living in the truth within a system that demands, at the very least, compromises.

This problematic of truth comes to a head in a section of the novel that Case finds weak:

Chapter 22, which details the visit of a liberal American philosophy professor, is fine polemic, but it is largely irrelevant to the plot, dropped in to advance the author's point of view.

I think Case means chapter 21. Anyway, I disagree that the chapter is not relevant to the novel's plot. The "liberal American philosophy professor" is integral in two ways. First, he is central to the opportunity for emigration to the West sought by the protagonist's lover. Second, he is integral to the confrontation between living within truth and living with relativism:

He mentioned Richard Rorty, whose name we were hearing for the first time, and who had changed American scholarship with a new theory of truth. The true belief, we learned, is the useful belief, the one that enables you to affirm the rights of your group, and to gain the illuminated plateau of liberation. Truth means power, just as Nietzsche and Foucault had said.

Interestingly, this new theory of truth leads to a 'true' discussion, for as the protagonist notes:

What struck me in this was not the vigorous nature of the argument, unusual though that was, but the fact that it really was an argument, about a concrete matter concerning which modern people ought surely to make up their minds.

The American professor thus plays a role crucial to the plot on two levels -- it moves the plot forward, and it raises the novel's central theme of truth. But I can't entirely set myself at odds with Case's critique:

Ironically, Scruton has written a novel whose content makes the argument for spontaneous order and liberty, but the book overall suffers from authorial central planning. The result is a worthwhile read that doesn't sustain its best moments.

I partly agree that Scruton maintains control, but such is necessary in a novel of ideas, as I know from experience! Anyway, I find Scruton's novel more of a success than Case does . . .

Roger Scruton on the Ideological University

Roger Scruton

Google Images

I've been reading and re-reading Roger Scruton's recent novel, Notes from Underground, and I'll blog upon it at greater length later on, for there are several points of contact between his philosophical ideas and this fictional work, but I want to focus today on an interview called to my attention by my friend Bill Vallicella through his link to an interview of Scruton by Spencer Case (philosophy graduate student, University of Colorado, Boulder, and U.S. Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan). The interview is titled, "Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University" (College Fix, March 14, 2014), and here's a good excerpt:

One [problematic trend in the contemporary university] is the way in which the difficult . . . subjects . . . in the humanities . . . are being displaced by purely ideological subjects . . . . [Formerly,] at the heart of the humanities there were difficult things like the classical languages, modern languages, literature -- read properly and critically discussed -- and so on, the "Great Books" and all the rest, in music the study of harmony and counter-point, in philosophy the analytical discipline that we know about so well. All those were real intellectual disciplines. But I see more and more they're being replaced by gender studies and other forms of essentially ideological confrontation with the modern world . . . . [Of course, t]here is plenty of room for people to include as part of the philosophical discussions of justice the whole question about the relation between man and woman, all the questions that feminists consider. There's absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be included. But, if the assumption is that one has to be a feminist, one has to arrive at a particular conclusion as a result of studying this, then what is involved is not philosophical discussion but ideology. The whole defining nature of philosophy is that you start from free inquiry and you don't actually know what you're going to come up with as a result of your arguments. To think that you have to have the conclusion prior to the investigation is effectually to say that this is a form of indoctrination.

Agreed. Complete agreement. I've been around universities since 1975, and I've seen the shift take place. Things became so bad at one university I was at that the social work department lodged a formal complaint -- or at least threatened to lodge one -- against the philosophy department for daring to question fundamental assumptions held in the field of social work. I don't recall the precise issue, but I think that it had something to do with Leftist assumptions that shouldn't -- according to some -- be called into doubt. And as Scruton notes, when something can't be questioned, we're being confronted with ideology, not philosophy.

Roger Scruton's Notes from Underground: A Scene

Amazon

I'm currently reading, on my iPad, Notes from Underground, a novel by the conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton about the twilight years of Communist Prague, and I came upon this passage, which occurs soon after the young protagonist has met an equally young, mysterious woman:

She was standing a pace away from me, her back to the chapel, her eyes fixed on the Nusle steps.

"Do you see that old woman?" she asked.

I turned my eyes in the direction of hers. The woman with the dog was coming down now, handing her body from step to step, gripping the rail and muttering.

"Like the poodle in Faust," she went on, "he comes in many forms."

"Who?"

"Mephistopheles. The spirit who always denies."

How would you feel about a woman you'd just met if she uttered those words to you? The protagonist is already in love, so we can imagine his feelings. I think such words would spark my interest if I weren't in love, and thrill me if I were.

But I'd be expected to like that sort of thing, wouldn't I?

Objectivity in Judgements of Beauty?

Bust of Roger Scruton

A Thing of Beauty?

Alexander Stoddart

Since I am so busy teaching an intensive writing course, I'll just quote a short passage on beauty by Roger Scruton for my readers to contemplate:

In the last analysis there is as much objectivity in our judgements of beauty as there is in our judgements of virtue and vice. Beauty is therefore as firmly rooted in the scheme of things as goodness. It speaks to us, as virtue speaks to us, of human fulfillment: not of things that we want, but of things that we ought to want, because human nature requires them. (Roger Scruton, Beauty, page 145)

As firmly rooted as judgements of virtue? Those are firmly rooted? So speaks Scruton. Justification waits upon more reading . . .

Beauty again . . . but 'scrutinizing' this time . . .

Roger Scruton
Photograph by Pete Helme

Readers will recall that I recently posted a brief passage from Dave Hickey's words on beauty in his book The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty:

In images, beauty is the agency that causes visual pleasure in the beholder, and since pleasure is the true occasion for looking at anything, any theory of images that is not grounded in the pleasure of the beholder begs the question of art's efficacy and dooms itself to inconsequence!

This grabbed my interest and was on my mind when I just happened to notice that Roger Scruton had published a philosophical book on Beauty, in which he says

Beauty . . . is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world. (page x of ebook version)

I don't know if Hickey would agree or not, but that doesn't matter to me. Scruton, by the way, is alluded to in my novella:

There's even an English philosopher who has scrutinized the culture of alcohol and claims that virtuous drinking has contributed to the Western tradition of democratic rule because it loosens the tongue without loss of reason.

Those words are spoken by Mr. Em to the Naif only a few brief pages into The Bottomless Bottle of Beer. My novella doesn't discuss the concept or even experience of beauty, but I would like to think that I have accomplished something beautiful in writing it.

But to judge if I have done so, I need to know what beauty means, and perhaps Scruton can help me there . . .

Scruton-izing the West

Scruton's Western Landscape

(Image from Roger Scruton: writer and philosopher)

Conservative British philosopher Roger Scruton has recently published a thoughtful article, "Islam and the West: Lines of Demarcation," in the journal Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation (No. 35, Winter 5769 / 2009). In this article, he offers a sketch of seven features that depict Western civilization in contrast to Islamic civilization, which I excerpt below:

The first of the features that I have in mind is citizenship. The consensus among Western nations is that the law is made legitimate by the consent of those who must obey it. This consent is given through a political process in which each citizen participates in the making and enacting of the law. The right and duty of participation is what we mean by "citizenship," and the distinction between political and religious communities can be summed up by the view that the former are composed of citizens, whereas the latter are composed of subjects who have "submitted" (which is the primary meaning of the word islam). If we seek a simple definition of the West as it is today, it would be wise to take this concept of citizenship as our starting point.

. . .

This brings me to the second feature which I identify as central to European civilization: nationality. No political order can achieve stability if it cannot call upon a shared loyalty, a "first-person plural" that distinguishes those who share the benefits and burdens of citizenship from those who are outside the fold. In times of war, the need for this shared loyalty is self-evident, but it is as necessary in times of peace, if people really are to treat their citizenship as defining their public obligations. National loyalty marginalizes loyalties to family, tribe, and faith, and places before the citizen, as the focus of his patriotic feeling, not a person or a group, but a country. This country is defined by a territory, and by the history, culture, and law that have made that territory ours. Nationality is composed of land, together with the narrative of its possession . . . . The recent history of . . . [many Muslim] countries might lead us to wonder whether there is not, in the end, a genuine and profound conflict between the Islamic conception of community and the conceptions which have fed our own idea of national government. Maybe the nation-state really is an anti-Islamic idea.

. . .

The third central feature of Western civilization is Christianity. I have no doubt that it is the long centuries of Christian dominance in Europe which laid the foundations of national loyalty as a type above those of faith and family, and on which a secular jurisdiction and an order of citizenship could be founded. It may sound paradoxical to identify a religion as the major force behind the development of secular government. But we should remember the peculiar circumstances in which Christianity entered the world. The Jews of first-century Judea were a closed community, bound by a tight web of religious legalisms but nonetheless governed from Rome by a law which made no reference to any God, and which offered an ideal of citizenship to which every free subject of the empire might aspire . . . . During the early centuries of Islam various philosophers attempted to develop a theory of the perfect state, but religion was always at the heart of it . . . . When all such discussion stopped, at the time of Ibn Taymiyya in the fourteenth century, it was clear that Islam had decisively turned its back on secular government, and would henceforth be unable to develop anything remotely like a national -- as opposed to a religious -- form of allegiance.

. . .

[I]t is, perhaps, the Greek input into Christianity which is responsible for the fourth of the central features that I believe worthy of emphasis when addressing the Western confrontation with Islam: that of irony. There is already a developing streak of irony in the Hebrew Bible, one that is amplified by the Talmud. But there is a new kind of irony in Jesus' judgments and parables, one which looks at the spectacle of human folly and wryly shows us how to live with it. A telling example of this is Jesus' verdict in the case of the woman taken in adultery. "Let he who is without fault," he says, "cast the first stone." In other words, "Come off it. Haven't you wanted to do what she did, and already done it in your hearts?" . . . . This irony is shared by the great Sufi poets, especially Rumi and Hafiz, but it seems to be largely unknown in the schools of Islam that shape the souls of the Islamists. Theirs is a religion which refuses to see itself from the outside, and which cannot bear to be criticized, still less to be laughed at -- something we have abundantly witnessed in recent times.

. . .

Irony is intimately related to the fifth notable feature of Western civilization: self-criticism. It is second nature to us, whenever we affirm something, to allow a voice to the opponent. The adversarial method of deliberation is endorsed by our law, by our forms of education, and by the political systems that we have built to broker our interests and resolve our conflicts. Think of those vociferous critics of Western civilization such as the late Edward Said and the ubiquitous Noam Chomsky. Said spoke out in uncompromising and, at times, even venomous terms on behalf of the Islamic world against what he saw as the lingering outlook of Western imperialism. As a consequence, he was rewarded with a prestigious chair at a leading university and countless opportunities for public speaking in America and around the Western world. The consequences for Chomsky have been largely the same. This habit of rewarding our critics is, I think, unique to Western civilization.

. . .

This habit of self-criticism has created . . . [the sixth] critical feature of Western civilization, and that is representation. We in the West, and the English-speaking peoples preeminently, are heirs to a longstanding habit of free association, in which we join together in clubs, businesses, pressure groups, and educational foundations. This associative genius was particularly remarked upon by Tocqueville in his journeys through America, and it is facilitated by the unique branch of the English common law -- equity and the law of trusts -- which enables people to set up funds in common and to administer them without asking permission from any higher authority. This associative habit goes hand in hand with the tradition of representation. When we form a club or a society which has a public profile, we are in the habit of appointing officers to represent it. The decisions of these officers are then assumed to be binding on all members, who cannot reject them without leaving the club . . . . Association takes a very different form in traditional Islamic societies, however. Clubs and societies of strangers are rare, and the primary social unit is not the free association, but the family.

. . .

This brings me to . . . [the seventh,] final and critical point of difference between Western and Islamic communities[: alcohol]. We live in a society of strangers who associate rapidly and tolerate each other's differences. Yet ours is not a society of vigilant conformity . . . . It is endlessly creative in forming the institutions and associations that enable people to live with their differences and remain on peaceful terms, without the need for intimacy, brotherhood, or tribal loyalties . . . . What makes it possible to live in this way? There is a simple answer, and that is drink. What the Koran promises in paradise but forbids here below is the necessary lubricant of the Western dynamo . . . . Of course, Islamic societies have their own ways of creating fleeting associations: the hookah, the coffee house, and the traditional bathhouse . . . . But these forms of association are also forms of withdrawal, a standing back from the business of government in a posture of peaceful resignation. Drink has the opposite effect: It brings strangers together in a state of controlled aggression, able and willing to engage in any business that should arise from the current conversation.

These are all interesting features to consider, especially the surprising seventh one. I would never have considered alcohol as a significant feature of Western Civilization, but perhaps Scruton has a point. At the very least, I can employ his argument to persuade my wife that my daily beer is a defense of significant cultural values. She might counter that I drink 'alone' as I read literature after my daily exercise, but I think of myself as associating with great individuals who are strangers made more familiar by culture and drink.

Exploring some of the tensions among these seven features might be interesting. For instance, the tension between nation-state exclusivity and Christian universalism is worth thinking about. On this point, one might wonder if the European Union offers a workable political framework since it sets itself at odds with the nation-state but apparently eschews any explicit reference to the role of Christianity in Europe's process of self-definition (or so I've read in some reports).

But I'll leave such discussion to those who comment -- if any do -- for my day must begin.

Girardean things hidden since the foundation of the world...

René Girard

That obscure object of mimetic desire?

(Image from Stanford University)

...or at least since yesterday for me, when I first puzzled over Roger Scruton's summary of a point developed by René Girard in Le Bouc émissaire (The Scapegoat).

The point developed by Girard, as I have since come to understand, concerns archaic religion's emphasis upon the killing of a sacrificial victim, who serves as the ritualized object of sacral hatred expressed through a sacrificial act carried out by a community to purify itself of its envy and jealousy by concentrating all of its impurity upon one individual whose death effects the destruction of that impurity and thereby restores communal peace. Temporarily.

Now, let's turn to Scruton's puzzling summary, in "The sacred and the human" (Prospect Magazine, Issue 137, August 2007), of Girard's point:

Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax.

Scruton's summary here refers to non-Christian sacrifice, which works effectively only so long as the community members remain unaware that they are motivated by their own flawed nature, their own envy and jealousy, for only if they believe that they have killed the truly guilty one can they feel justified in their regained innocence.

Or so I gather is what Girard more or less means in the system that lies behind Scruton's summary. Doubtless, I've gotten some of it wrong, but be patient with me, for I'm working in relative ignorance of Girard own writings.

Anyway, I think that I now understand Scruton's larger summary as well, for in the Christian enactment of the archaic sacrifice, the victim himself forgives those who sacrifice him:

The climax, however, is not the death of the scapegoat but the experience of sacred awe, as the victim, at the moment of death, forgives his tormentors. This is the moment of transcendence, in which even the cruellest of persecutors can learn to humble himself and to renounce his vengeful passion.

This forgiveness works to effect something even larger, as Scruton explains, again summarizing Girard:

Christ's submission purified society and religion of the need for sacrificial murder.

It could only do so, of course, because in Christianity's high Christology, the crucified Christ is himself divine. Absent that detail, the death of Jesus is merely a sad, if noble, tale.

In poking about on the internet, I came upon an interview with Girard by Nathan Gardels, editor of New Perspectives Quarterly, which published the interview in its Summer 2005 issue under the title "Ratzinger Is Right." In this interview, Gardels poses a startling question:

NPQ: Is Christianity superior to other religions?

Girard affirms this without hesitation, then procedes to lay out his own summary of his theory, which helps clarify Scruton's obscure remarks:

Girard: Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to "forgive them for they know not what they do." He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated.

This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Christianity. This is what is unique about Christianity. And this uniqueness is true.

I'm curious what Girard means by "true" in this last remark. Does he mean that the Christian story of Christ's sacrifice is true in its historical and theological details, or does he mean that it's true in the sense that it expresses most succinctly the psychological truth that lies behind the scapegoating myth, namely, the guilt that each individual bears for the envy and jealousy felt toward other individuals, hatreds that can only be overcome through forgiveness?

I guess that finding the answer to this will require some future reading on my part in Girard's oeuvre...

Speaking of secrets...

René Girard

A view askew?

(Image from COV&R)

...here's how Christianity works.

According to René Girard, anyway ... well, actually, according to Roger Scruton's reading of Girard in "The sacred and the human" (Prospect Magazine, Issue 137, August 2007):

In his study of the scapegoat, Le Bouc émissaire (1982), Girard identifies Christ as a new kind of victim -- one who offers himself for sacrifice, and who, in doing so, shows that he understands what is going on. The words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" are pivotal for Girard. They involve a recognition of the need for sacrifice, if the guilt and resentment of the community is to be appeased and transcended, and the added recognition that this function must be concealed. Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax. The climax, however, is not the death of the scapegoat but the experience of sacred awe, as the victim, at the moment of death, forgives his tormentors. This is the moment of transcendence, in which even the cruellest of persecutors can learn to humble himself and to renounce his vengeful passion. Through his acceptance of his sacrifical role, Christ made the "love of neighbour" -- which had featured in the oldest books of the Hebrew Bible as the standard to which humanity should aspire -- into a reality in the hearts of those who meditate upon his gesture. Christ's submission purified society and religion of the need for sacrificial murder: his conscious self-sacrifice is therefore, Girard suggests, rightly thought of as a redemption, and we should not be surprised if, when we turn away from our Christian legacy, as Nazis and communists did, the hecatombs of victims reappear.

This is complex, fascinating, controversial stuff, and it reminds me that for some time, I've been wanting to get into the works of Girard. He's been recommended to me for years now, beginning around 1981 or so, when he first began teaching at Stanford, where one of my friends, Denise Albanese, was then working towards her doctorate in English literature and mentioned Girard and his theory of "mimetic desire" -- which I won't pretend to understand but which I suspect would be congenial with some of my own interests in literary theory and religious studies.

Since I'm short for time this morning, I'll not comment on the passage above, which I'm posting more as a note to myself to read Girard than as any sort of musings about what Girard means. I don't yet know what Girard means, and I am quite puzzled by one of Scruton's remarks:

Only those ignorant of the source of their hatred can be healed by its expression, for only they can proceed with a clear conscience towards the tragic climax.

If this correctly presents one of Girard's points, then what can it mean? I suppose that I need to read Le Bouc émissaire, which has been translated as The Scapegoat (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Reading Girard's own words would enable me to 'scrutinize' this more closely myself.

But for now, I leave us with this puzzlement of mine.