Victor Hanson and My Public Shame

* Update (01/2007) * Welcome, Zombietime readers! If you value this post, you will probably also relish my 9/11 tribute, my Halloween costume, and my Oriana Fallaci and Whittaker Chambers tributes. Thank you for visiting. Your feedback is welcome.

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Gentle Reader, I (almost) apologize for referencing him so often on this blog. It's just that I am loyal to the man. Loyalty stems from gratitude, and Victor Hanson has given JMK much to be grateful for. A powerful article by him appears today, called "Losing the Enlightenment."   

I first heard of Victor Hanson thanks to the Internet, from one of my first virtual inspirations, the Brooklyn-based, truly Judeophilic blog Fightin' With Grabes. "Who is this guy," I wondered, with wonder and a little jealousy, "who writes so confidently and so economically about ancient Western values?"

I wasn't comfortable with conservative thinking at the time, but a few years ago when I noticed Who Killed Homer? on a remainder table in a Berkeley bookstore I snatched it up. Co-authored with John Heath, it's a post-mortem analysis of post-modern Classical education at the American university. I'd had a worthy introduction to the Classics as an adolescent (three years of high school Latin), but had foolishly neglected them during early adulthood. WKH? single-handedly revived my interest in them -- an interest that had suffered in part, as I learned, from its emasculation by the university itself.

Perhaps the most fortifying component of all of Hanson's writing and thinking is his frequent references to "public shame." A time-honored value among the ancient Greeks, public shame has been waylaid by a contemporary individualism that is often micromanaged beyond belief and beyond even recognition. In my case, the phrase expresses a civic sentiment, or attitude, that arose during long reflections in the aftermath of renouncing a sworn Communist militancy. For saying "goodbye to all that" doesn't cut it when reckoning with such treasonous allegiance. Virtue and honor have to be learned and earned once again (or for the first time). Acknowledging a sense of public shame has been instructive and therapeutic in this new, ex- and anti-communist, patriotic mission. Hence the better part of my gratitude to Professor Hanson, and my loyalty.

Marxist art critic John Berger, whom I regard as humane (though drastically misguided politically), once wrote that "madness is revolutionary freedom confined to the self." The book in which that phrase appears had been recommended by an art instructor during the incipient radicalization of my early undergraduate years at UC Berkeley. It caught my attention then for a reason. For those years were blowing whiffs of such mad experience my way. That experience was comprised in no small part of an excited compassion towards groups whom I had heard of but of whom I had little or no firsthand experience -- the homeless, say, and people with AIDS, and Palestinians (and Jews, too, but dead European ones sooner than live Israeli ones...). This excited compassion sought, demanded an outlet. It could not be confined to the self. So the whiff became a mist, the mist condensed, and soon enough it hardened into an icy compulsion -- to enter the arena of committed, Marxist politics. Excited compassion had become excited passion. It could be neither dissuaded nor attenuated but, like an out of control fire, just be allowed to burn itself out as I watched -- helpless, fascinated, and consumed. Such is the passion for "social change" or "social justice" that, I intimated, would lead either to some (any) kind of revolution or, if left unrealized, even a species of madness. It was the pretty and precarious passion (not yet beauty and not yet potency) of a so ardent youth. At the time I hadn't studied enough history to know that even if such passion did tilt in the direction of revolution, that that would necessarily lead to its own species of madness as well.

Yet I contend that the unguaranteed outcome of Berger's meditated bon mot holds true for those of us who, persevering after excited passion has burned out, seek ex-revolutionary freedom. Extricating oneself, first, from the revolutionary commitment, and then, from the revolutionary worldview, entails moral and spiritual engagement. A whole soul is at stake. (For a poetic example, see my "Miserere" from earlier this year.) Should this engagement fail, then a kind of madness, or something slightly milder -- a kind of moral and civic idiocy -- will set in. (For a live example, just strike up a political conversation with any middle-aged habitué of any offbeat cafe.) Because an underground man cannot simply will himself into becoming an aboveground man. His will, he has learned, is far too untrustworthy; his will may be necessary, but it is not sufficient for leading an upright life.

Securing ex-revolutionary freedom is, ultimately, not just a matter of individual opinion or disposition or even party affiliation. It is a public matter, necessitating public sentiments, public expressions, and public commitments before it may become settled. If it ever becomes settled. This public matter necessitates a strong sense of public shame, a standard without which there can be no definite or confident sense of public pride. For these it is to Victor Hanson, more than to any other contemporary conservative writer, that I turn and return.

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So, Gentle Reader, perhaps you will read his latest article -- a tenacious reckoning laced with just a shade of mourning -- with a deeper appreciation than you might at first have anticipated. It begins:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium....

Try to read it without feeling ashamed.

Comments

[BP-DIP]

More Enlightenment:

http://archive.recordonline.com/archive/2002/01/09/09myview.htm

January 09, 2002

Middle East diplomacy could use Enlightenment

By John Eyrrick

The events of Sept. 11 have engendered a sense of helplessness in all of us. Some people respond to this helplessness by drawing parallels to World War II and reaffirming their faith in the invincibility of America. Those who favor diplomacy as a response feel equally helpless. No matter how you look at it, fighting terrorism by any means seems like a no-win situation. I want to offer a paradigm shift in diplomacy that, in my view, is worth a try.
Cultural history is complex and most Americans like to refer to their inherited Judeo-Christian values. It would probably come as a surprise to many Americans that much of our cultural heritage stems not from Judaism or Christianity, but from the European Enlightenment of the 18th century. Not enlightenment with a small "e," but the movement that towered over the late 17th century and all of the 18th with a large "E."
Notable Enlightenment thinkers were Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu in France, Lessing and Kant in Germany, Locke in England and Franklin and Paine in America. The Enlightenment was based on the notion that everyone was capable of reason and that people everywhere could reason their way out of every difficulty. The U.S. Constitution is a typical Enlightenment document – brilliant, well thought out and humane.
Ideas like pluralism, tolerance and the abolition of privilege are all Enlightenment ideas, not to mention the concepts of citizenship, civility and fairness itself. All of these go into our notion of what "Western civilization" is. It is important to note that in our country and others, these ideas historically did not stem from Christianity or Judaism. They could have, but they didn't.
In fact, the churches were in no hurry to embrace Enlightenment ideas and, in many cases, actively opposed them. Churches in Europe and America that did embrace Enlightenment ideas found themselves caught for the next 200 years in an internal conflict between reason and fundamentalism. It is no wonder that in America, at least, people threw up their hands and said, in effect: Let's separate church and state. Let's have a state grounded in the Enlightenment and churches free to choose between Enlightenment thinking (main-stream churches) and Christian fundamentalism.
Some individuals accommodated both the Enlightenment and religious fundamentalism. Judeo-Christianity would have provided a theoretical framework for many Enlightenment ideas. But for the most part this did not happen.
Yet in the Islamic world of today, many of these Enlightenment ideals, including democracy itself, are rejected as "Christian" because they come out of the West which, in Islam's eyes, is "Christian." Yes, the West is largely Christian, but Western Europeans and Americans are also heirs of the Enlightenment and therefore put a lot of faith in reason.
We are finding out that reason is anything but universal. Like any other methodology, it is conditioned by time and place. We Americans don't understand why people in other parts of the world are not more "reasonable." Why are they such "fanatics"? The answer is that their culture never went through the Enlightenment. It is not that they missed out on Judeo-Christianity, but that they missed out on the Enlightenment! But this doesn't mean that they can't be reasonable, particularly if they don't have to be "Judeo-Christian" to be reasonable.
I would suggest, therefore, that the cornerstone of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East be shifted to the extent that we admit our Enlightenment roots and not insist that our cultural roots are entirely Judeo-Christian. If people in the Middle East could be invited to share in some Enlightenment ideals such as pluralism, tolerance, citizenship, democracy and civility, they might be more inclined to accept them than if these same values are presented as Judeo-Christian ideals, which, historically, they are not.
My proposed paradigm shift would also remove much of the discomfort many Americans feel in proclaiming "Judeo-Christian" values, which, strictly speaking, are neither. Let's not be ashamed to admit that many of our values have come from the Enlightenment, a movement historically independent of religion. This just might make these ideas more palatable to Muslims who don't like to be lectured on "Judeo-Christian" values.
Rather than fight fundamentalism with fundamentalism, we could seek to reason together with people in the Middle East, leaving religion aside altogether.

The Rev. Dr. John Eyrrick lives in Montgomery. +2004

[JSobieski]

Dear Rev. Dr. John Eyrrick:

I enjoyed reading your post, but I felt compelled to argue to some extent against the primacy or exclusivity of the enlightenment thinking as the core of Western identity.

Although many of the Enlightenment thinkers you mentioned are best classified as deists, the vast majority were at least nominally Christian and did not seek to actively separate themselves from Christianity as implement some separation between church and state. As the Catholic Pope has recently found opportunities to bring up, Western thinking is really a fusion of Judeo-Christianity with the concept of reason embodied by the Enlightenment that finds it origins in ancient Greece.

I think it is more accurate to say that Judeo-Christian thought is A basis for Western identity and origin than it is to say that the Enlightenment is THE basis for Western identity.

In terms of allowing violent Islamicists the ability to participate in Enlightenment thinking, you are hoping for a miracle beyond reason. The hot hatred of these anti-western forces will not be cooled by a change in tone from religious to philosophy. They will simply interpret that as weakness, a result that will further embolden their activities.

The forces of anti-western though must be confronted with every tool in our arsenal, that includes both philosophy and religion. Violent Islam is an ideology similar to Communism and Nazism, it must be confronted in as many spheres as possible if we are to survive.