Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya: A Centenary Salute

"Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya: A Centenary Salute to Multifaceted Philosopher" by SK Pande, NewsClick, 05 Nov 2018

"A humanist, Marxist, staunch lover of reason, scientific temper and secularist to the core, Chattopadhyaya’s absence is greatly felt as secular India faces threats from Hindutva forces that strive to take the country back to the dark ages."

I have been familiar with the work of Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (19 November 1918 – 8 May 1993) for many years. Here are a couple items on my web site:

Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction (Delhi: People's Publishing House, 1972 [orig. 1964]), chapter 28: Lokayata, pp. 184-199; notes, pp. 221-223.

Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. “Science and Philosophy in Ancient India,” in Marxism and Indology, edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta; New Delhi: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1981), pp. 231-262.

And see:

Ramakrishna, G. "Some Loud Thinking About the Bhagavadgita," in Marxism and Indology, edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta; New Delhi: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1981), pp. 216-221.

Soviet atheism revisited in jest

This is of course a huge topic, but I recently stumbled across a mock-nostalgia page on the Soviet Union, with particular mock-nostalgia for the Stalin era:

Cyber-USSR:
"A realm where no kulak goes un-liquidated, no five-year-plan goes un-overfulfilled, and no Great Leader and Teacher goes un-venerated."

Contents of this site can be found here:

Charter of the Cyber-USSR

So, from the period of stagnation:

Moscow University, 1977-1978: Courses on atheism

And from the period of "militant atheism" in the 1920s:

Some anti-religious cartoons and articles in the journal Bezbozhnik (1924, 1927).

There are several links on this page to sample materials in Russian, including covers of this periodical directed against Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. (What, no Hinduism?)

"Militant atheism" in the USSR was crude, and in the Stalin period, became even cruder, with a sledgehammer ideological and instrumentalist approach accompanying "socialist construction". This crudity, accompanying the virtual deification of Stalin, is what a peasant society undergoing crash modernization gives you, a monstrosity the likes of which were not to be seen again until Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Sidney Hook Recanonized (1)

I'd have to think twice about wasting a dollar on Sidney Hook, so I got a friend to buy Sidney Hook Reconsidered (edited by Matthew J. Cotter, afterword by Richard Rorty; Prometheus Books, 2004) for me for $6.98. It is a deeply reactionary book, with the final section devoted to reminiscences, the worst puff pieces of the book. The sticking point with Hook is of course Hook's redbaiting and his move ever farther to the right as the decades wore on. By and large this is acknowledged but with outright endorsement or nuanced defense.

For example, in "Politics and Dogmas: Hook's Basic Ideals," Robert B. Talisse emphasizes distinctions in Hook's position on purging Communist Party members from teaching and other positions, but defending the warranted assertability of Hook's assumption that the Communist Party was intent on overthrowing American democracy and that members by signing on to it could be presumed to be following Moscow's alleged marching orders (p. 124)

Much of the book is obnoxious. Paul Kurtz, instrumental in making a hero of Sidney Hook, is vacuous as ever. Rorty is as bad or worse than usual.  This whole book reminds me of the backwardness of the American secularist movement. What has changed is that what remains of that generation is dying off, and hence its preoccupations.

Informative at least is David Sidorsky's "Introduction: Charting the Intellectual Career of Sidney Hook: Five Major Steps." The five steps are pragmatism, Marxism, anticommunism, neoconservativism, and Enlightenment naturalism. Sidorsky gives an account of Hook's epistemological perspective of his 1927 The Metaphysics of Pragmatism, but one must go to the work itself to get whatever genuine substance there is. Some account of Hook's Marxist phase is given, and his transformation at the end of the 1930s facing the twin evils of Hitler and Stalin.

I see almost no value to Hook after his Marxist period was over, with the exception of defending secularism ("The New Failure of Nerve," etc.) under attack by the religious revival of the early 1940s and the feudal nostalgia of Mortimer Adler and company and the attempt to turn the clock back at the University of Chicago. I see no reason as yet to revise this assessment. Just from reading the barebones account here, I gather that Hook found himself at the dead end at the end of the '30s as so many leftists found themselves a decade later, when the practical choices apparently foisted on them were Washington and Moscow. Hook's dissatisfaction not merely with Stalinism but also with Trotskyism apparently left him little room to maneuver. His defense of free inquiry and democracy, the supposed basis of his subsequent development, proceeded on a very thin basis. The platitudes of pragmatism don't seem to have gotten him very far.

One interesting fact: Hook split with James Burnham not over their shared anticommunism, but on the issue of McCarthy's hijacking of the anticommunist cause (46). I guess this makes Hook look better, as Sidorsky ends up justifying Hook's anticommunist crusade. Hook did remain an advocate of democratic socialism, or more accurately, social democracy (welfare state liberalism).

Hook's neoconservatism was political, not economic or religious, in reaction to the New Left of the 1960s, especially in the universities. By 1975 he abandoned his residual loyalty to the ideas of Marx, and became concerned with the alleged excesses of egalitarianism in the academy. Sidorsky's account of multiculturalism as forced group consensus, thus justifying Hook's position, is rather dubious and the wrong basis on which to attack the tacit ideological basis of multiculturalism. The ideal of free inquiry notwithstanding, in practice how many academics are free of prevailing intellectual trends in their institutions whatever their philosophical or political loyalties?

Whatever else changed, Hook remained steadfast in his advocacy of Enlightenment naturalism.

Sidorsky ends by recounting an exchange of letters with Hook, who accepted a criticism, days before his death. He recounts a couple of other examples of Hook's teaching.  Hook's life of being perpetually "out of step" with prevailing trends is vindicated.

Thus the tone is set for the insipid boosterism that follows.

Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology (3)

Those who follow the atheist / humanist / skeptics blogosphere are probably aware of controversies that have erupted over the past few years, mostly in connection with accusations of sexism and the role of women within the movement, but also to some extent the priorities of black atheists in relation to established national organizations. I have no intention of questioning the validity of such concerns, but I do question the ideological basis from which many of the dissidents operate.

In my podcast Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology I vaguely alluded to the mechanical combination of ideological labels coming from progressive movements and the atheist/etc. movement. Atheism Plus is a particularly noxious ahistorical, intellectually dishonest, demagogic, and ultimately vacuous attempt to brand a new division of the movement, or a new movement altogether. The insipidity of such gestures mirrors the insipidity of the mainstream from which the dissidents purport to distance themselves.

Such liberal or left-liberal developments are symptoms of the lack of a vigorous mass movement in the USA, more centrally, the lack of class politics. The sins of the hard left stem from the same condition. When you have a subculture of professional middle class people who are essentially spectator-tourists in the world of human suffering, bad politics and superficial accusations of self and others become the political watchwords.  Thirdworldism is one such manifestation of bad politics, which, however bankrupt, would have at least made sense in the context of the global anti-colonial anti-imperialist thrust of the '60s & '70s, but is worse than worthless now.  But just as disgusting is the politics of "privilege", perpetrated of course by the privileged, with no constituency or substantive program, against whomever is deemed more privileged, the white male being at the top of the heap, of course. But 'white male' (or female) is not a class category.  This is what left bourgeois politics gets you, and in the smattering of cases in which one finds alleged radicals participating in the organized atheist/etc. movement, this is what you get.

Naturally, given the historical and structural conditions of American society (and several others), white males are going to be at the top of the heap, and prevailing perspectives and priorities at that class level are likely to prevail, accompanied by dollops of tokenism as a gesture of balancing things out. But focusing on the obvious obscures the essentially bourgeois nature of the movement, and thus the slim chances of any anti-bourgeois perspective--wherever it might come from--of gaining the prominence, leadership role, or influence that it might merit.

While the next logical step would be to name names, I'll let you use your imagination. Instead, I want to probe the blogosphere of the hard left and see what they have to say. Left--and specifically Marxist--takes on atheism and religion vary tremendously, and thus cannot be summed up as one generality. What is wrong with various Marxist takes on religion needs to be covered in separate posts. But now I'm searching the blogs for "bourgeois atheism", and here are a few finds.

Boobquake Revisited by EDB, The Fivefold Path, 24 August 2012

While the blogger is certainly justified in adverse reactions to the atheist movement, though feeling at least in part a part of it, he is too uncritical of the demagogic propaganda stemming from certain dissidents.

Much worse is a Maoist blog. I met my first Maoist in high school at the end of the '60s. My first impulse was to punch him in the mouth--I didn't, but he would have deserved it--and my regard for Maoists has not altered since.

"Atheism and Theism" is not a Class Contradiction, M-L-M Mayhem!, 30 August 2012

Aside from the sectarian bankruptcy of the entire politics of this group, and of its take on religion, there are unqualified and unrestricted generalizations such as this:

" . . . it is a club primarily for privileged pro-imperialist petty bourgeois males who imagine that they're subversive for rejecting God while, at the same time, accepting everything capitalist-imperialist society has socialized them into believing is holy."

This characterization certainly fits a number of petty-bourgeois white men . . . also white women, black people, South Asians, and others in the movement, but as a blanket characterization, and by implication a blanket exoneration of others, it is dishonest and demagogic.  But of course such voices exist within the atheist/etc. movement as well.

Various debates are no better. Here are a couple of examples:

Bourgeois Atheism, Revleft, 8 June 2010

A Proletarian critique of 'New' Atheists, rationalia.com, 2 July 2012

We have here utter incoherence. The leftists are as confused as the "mainstream" atheists.

I'm not saying no insightful perspective can be found, but those who rise above the prevailing superficiality are going to find that whatever they choose to call themselves, they won't have as many people on their wavelength as labels might suggest.

Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology (2)

I received a handful of scattered responses via Facebook to my podcast of last Saturday, 11/17/12 Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology.

There is one fellow who has spread the news of my podcast far and wide among atheist/humanist and leftist circles. What he expects to come of this I do not know, or whether he is more optimistic than I about a perceptive reception. I expect nothing from either the atheist/etc. milieu or the left or both in combination.

So far I see a discussion thread on lbo-talk, the listserv of Left Business Observer:

Was something about Atheism & Humanism

So far the greatest appreciation was expressed for the opening quote from C.L.R. James & co., Facing Reality (1958):

C.L.R. James on Descartes & the Division of Labor

We shall see what else comes of this.

Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology

For the past couple of years I have planned to do this podcast. I didn't think I could squeeze all this into an hour, but I got it all in in 3/4 of an hour. Recorded Saturday night, 17 November 2012, here is my latest podcast, installment 7 of my Internet radio show "Studies in a Dying Culture" under the auspices of Think Twice Radio:

11/17/12 Atheism & Humanism as Bourgeois Ideology 

I propose a framework in which the intellectual basis of the atheist - humanist - skeptical movement, particularly in the USA, can be seen as a progressive bourgeois ideology that, while marking an historical advance beyond pre-modern, pre-industrial, pre-technological, pre-capitalist, supernaturally based forms of unreason, addresses only one half of the cognitive sources of irrationality of the modern world, and is ill-equipped to grapple with the secular forms of unreason, which can be denoted by the term "ideology". I argue that the Anglo-American intellectual heritage of atheism has never absorbed the indispensable heritage of German philosophy and social theory from Hegel to Marx to 20th century critical theory and thus remains philosophically underdeveloped and ensconced in a naive scientism. I furthermore argue that American atheism / humanism lacks adequate historical perspective due to the historical amnesia induced by the two historical breaks of McCarthyism and Reaganism. To combat historical amnesia I highlight not only relevant intellectual history but the buried history of working class atheism. I also sketch out some relevant philosophical aspects of the history of the American humanist movement beginning with the first Humanist Manifesto of 1933. I then discuss the intellectual consequences of the political repression of the McCarthy era. From there I discuss two prominent influences of the 1960s and 1970s, atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair and humanist Paul Kurtz. I highlight Kurtz's dialogue with the Yugoslav Marxist-Humanist philosophers and his failure to learn from the encounter. Finally, I discuss the intellectual shortcomings of the so-called "new atheism" and today's celebrity atheists in the context of the depressing political perspective of our reactionary neoliberal era. I also don't spare the dissidents within the movement from my accusations of intellectual superficiality. I end on a note of bleak pessimism.

46:09 minutes 

This podcast provides a framework for thinking about the atheist/humanist/skeptics subculture in the Anglo-American sphere (and possibly beyond) which is different from anything else you are going to find on the subject.

There are some people who are going to appreciate this podcast. There are also some people who think they appreciate this podcast. There is something essential that experience has taught me about commonality: it is elusive, often illusory.

I do not expect the bulk of my readers, even those among the "progressive" liberal-left segment of the atheist/humanist/etc. community, or the hard left, to share my perspective, whether they react sympathetically or not. Note also that while I say little about the "intellectual superficiality" of the "dissidents within the movement" (i.e. the atheist/etc. movement), those familiar with the current political controversies within that milieu may have an idea of what I'm talking about, whether or not they understand where I'm coming from.  I am not optimistic.

Still, this podcast is badly needed and perhaps it will have a modest impact.

Lenin on political agitation, liberalism, & the Russian Orthodox Church

V. I. Lenin, 'Political Agitation and “The Class Point of View”' [Iskra, No. 16, February 1, 1902], in Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 5 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), pp. 337-343.

Here is a sample:

 “What does our ’intellectual’, frivolous crowd that instigates and applauds the Stakhoviches care for the affairs of our sacred orthodox faith and our time-honoured attitude towards it?”... Once again, so much the worse for you, gentlemen, champions of the autocracy, the orthodox faith, and the national essence. A fine system indeed our police ridden autocracy must be, if it has permeated even religion with the spirit of the prison-cell, so that the “Stakhoviches” (who have no firm convictions in matters of religion, but who are interested, as we shall see, in preserving a stable religion) become utterly indifferent (if not actually hostile) to this notorious “national” faith. "... They call our faith a delusion!! They mock at us because, thanks to this ’delusion’, we fear and try to avoid sin and we carry out our obligations uncomplainingly, no matter how severe they may be; because we find the strength and courage to bear sorrow and privations and forbear pride in times of success and good fortune...." So! The orthodox faith is dear to them because it teaches people to bear misery “uncomplainingly”. What a profitable faith it is indeed for the governing classes! In a society so organised that an insignificant minority enjoys wealth and power, while the masses constantly suffer “privations” and bear “severe obligations”, it is quite natural for the exploiters to sympathise with a religion that teaches people to bear “uncomplainingly” the hell on earth for the sake of an alleged celestial paradise. But in its zeal Moskovskiye Vedomosti became too garrulous. So garrulous, in fact, that unwittingly it spoke the truth. We read on: "... They do not suspect that if they, the Stakhoviches, eat well, sleep peacefully, and live merrily, it is thanks to this ’delusion’.”

The sacred truth! This is precisely the case. It is because religious “delusions” are so widespread among the masses that the Stakhoviches and the Oblomovs,” and all our capitalists who live by the labour of the masses, and even Moskovskiye Vedomosti itself, “sleep peacefully”. And the more education spreads among the people, the more will religious prejudices give way to socialist consciousness, the nearer will be the day of victory for the proletariat —the victory that will emancipate all oppressed classes from the slavery they endure in modern society.

Lenin: On Religion

I knew that this little book existed, but it is not easy to find these days. I wasn't sure whether I had a copy buried in my archive, but I found one. I know I read this many many years ago, and found it eye-opening. I've already blogged about several of the essays anthologized here. The ones I missed on my own, but which are included in this collection, are: (1) Tolstoy; (2) Classes and Parties; (3) Working Women's Congress; (4) Draft Programme.

Lenin, V. I. On Religion. 3rd rev. ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. 83 pp.

Preface to the Russian Edition

"Socialism and Religion," in Collected Works, Volume 10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), pp. 83-87. Originally published in Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3, 1905.

"Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution," in Collected Works, Volume 15 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), pp. 202-209. Originally published in Proletary No. 35, September 11 (24), 1908.

"The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion" [translated by Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Volume 15, pp. 402-413. From Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

"Classes and Parties in Their Attitude to Religion and the Church,"in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Volume 15, pp. 414-424. Originally published in Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 6, June 4 (17), 1909.

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written on November 13 or 14, 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 121-124 [#55]. First published in Pravda No. 51, March 2, 1924. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written in the second half of November 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 127-129 [#58]. First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany I. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women, November 19, 1918, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), Volume 28, pp. 180-182. [On Religion states: Newspaper report published in Izvestia, no. 253, November 20, 1918.]

From the Draft Programme of the R.C.P.(B.: Section of the Programme Dealing With Religion, in Collected Works, 4th English Edition (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 29, p. 134 (out of pp. 97-140).

"The Tasks of the Youth Leagues", Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League, in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), Vol. 31, pp. 283-99. Speech written and.or delivered on October 2, 1920, published in Pravda, Nos. 221, 222 and 223, October 5, 6 and 7, 1920. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

"On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (12 March 1922), in Lenin’s Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 33, 1972, pp. 227-236. First published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma, No. 3, March 1922. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

Notes

Name Index

Ludwig Feuerbach 7: Lectures

Thus, because religion rules over life and death, heaven and hell, because it transforms laws into the commandments of an all-powerful being—the essence of all human wishes and fears—religion gains control of, or is favored by, human egoism and so exerts a terrible power over man, especially uncivilized man, a power beside which the power of ethics, especially of abstract, philosophical ethics, pales to nothingness, and which for this reason seems indispensable.

But no one can fail to see that religion exerts this power through the imagination alone, that its power resides solely in the imagination; for if the power of religion were anything more than imaginary, if religion were really the positive foundation and support of justice and ethics, the promises and punishments of religion would have sufficed for the founding and preservation of states, men would never have devised all the many exquisitely cruel punishments they employ for the prevention of crime. Or if you will, we acknowledge that religion is the foundation of states, but with this limitation: only in the imagination, in belief, in opinion, for in reality states, even Christian states, are built not on the power of religion, though they have used it too (i. e., credulity, man’s weak point) as a means to their ends, but on the power of bayonets and other instruments of torture. In reality men act out of entirely different motives than their religious imagination leads them to suppose. In his chronicle of Louis XI, the pious Philippe de Commines writes: “All evils or transgressions come from lack of faith; if men firmly believed what God and the Church tell us about the eternal and terrible torments of hell, they could not do what they do.”

But whence comes this weakness of faith? From the fact that the power of belief is nothing other than the power of imagination, and that reality is an infinitely greater power, directly opposed to the imagination. Like the imagination, faith is hyperbolic; it moves only in extremes, in exaggerations; it knows only of heaven and hell, angels and devils; it tries to make more of man than he should be, and consequently makes less of him than he could be; it tries to make him into an angel and consequently, given the opportunity, makes him into a true devil. Faced with the resistance of prosaic reality, the hyperbolic fantasies of faith shift into their direct opposite! Human life would be in a bad way if law and ethics had no other basis than religious faith, which so easily turns into its opposite, because, as even the greatest heroes of faith have confessed, it flies in the face of sensory evidence, natural feeling, and man’s innate tendency to disbelief. How, indeed, can anything built on constraint, on the forcible repression of a sound inclination, anything exposed at every moment to the mind’s doubts and the contradictions of experience, provide a firm and secure foundation? To believe that the state—I mean of course the state as such, not our artificial, supranaturalistic political edifices—cannot exist without religious faith is to believe that our natural legs are not sufficient for man to stand or walk on, that he can only stand and walk on stilts. And these natural legs, the support of ethics and law, are love of life, self-interest, egoism.

Accordingly, nothing is more groundless than the fear that the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, must vanish with the gods. The distinction exists and will continue to exist as long as there is a difference between me and thee, for this is the source of ethics and law. My egoism may permit me to steal, but my fellow man’s egoism will sternly forbid me; left to myself I may know nothing of unselfishness, but the selfishness of others will teach me the virtue of unselfishness. My masculine egoism may be inclined to polygamy, but feminine egoism will oppose my inclination and champion monogamy: I may be unaware of the beam in my own eye, but the merest mote in it will be a thorn in the critical eye of others. In short, though it may be of no concern to me whether I am good or bad, it will always be a matter of concern to the egoism of others.

Who has always been the ruler of states? God? Good heavens, no! The gods rule only in the heavens of the imagination, not on the profane ground of reality. Who then? Egoism and egoism alone, though not simple egoism, but the dualistic egoism of those who have devised heaven for themselves and hell for others, materialism for themselves and idealism for others, freedom for themselves but servitude for others, enjoyment for themselves but resignation for others—the egoism of those who as rulers punish their subjects for the crimes they themselves have committed, who as fathers visit their own crimes on their children, who as husbands punish their wives for their own weaknesses, who in general forgive themselves all offenses and assert their egos in all directions, but expect others to have no egos, to live on air, to be as perfect and immaterial as angels. Not the limited egoism to which the term is ordinarily confined but which is only one variety, though the most common; but the egoism which comprises as many varieties as there are aspects of human nature, for there is not only a singular or individual egoism, but also a social egoism, a family egoism, a corporate egoism, a community egoism, a patriotic egoism. True, egoism is the source of evil, but it is also the source of good, for what else but egoism gave rise to agriculture, commerce, the arts and the sciences? True, it is the source of all vices, but also the source of all virtues, for what gave rise to the virtue of honesty? Egoism, through the prohibition of theft! What molded the virtue of chastity? The egoism of those who did not wish to share their beloved with others, through the prohibition of adultery. What produced the virtue of truthfulness? The egoism of those who do not wish to be deceived and cheated, through the prohibition of lying.

Egoism was the first lawgiver and promoter of the virtues, though only out of hostility to vice, only out of egoism, only because what opposes my egoism strikes me as a vice—just as conversely, what to me is a blow against my egoism is to others an affirmation of theirs, and what to me is a virtue is to them a benefit. Moreover, vices are just as necessary, if not more so, for the preservation of states, at least of our despicable, unnatural and inhuman states, as are virtues. To cite an example that is close to me because I am writing on Bavarian soil, though not in a Bavarian spirit (or in a Prussian or Austrian spirit either, for that matter): if Christianity in our country were anything more than a clerical phrase, if the spirit of Christian asceticism and subjugation of the senses should take hold of the Bavarian people, leading them to abstain from beer drinking, or only from immoderate beer drinking, what would become of our Bavarian state? And despite its “substantial faith,” the Russian state finds its chief source of revenue in poison—in vodka. Without beer, then, there would be no Bavaria, and without distilled liquor no Russia or even Bo‑Russia.*

* The Latin form of “Prussia.”—TR.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), Additions and Notes, pp. 302-304.

Ludwig Feuerbach 6: Lectures

THE OBSERVATION that intelligence in certain spheres of life can exist side by side with the most unintelligent superstition, political freedom with religious servitude, scientific, industrial progress with religious stagnation and even bigotry, has led some to the superficial view and contention that religion is without bearing on life, and especially on public, political life, and that consequently our only goal in this connection should be absolute freedom to believe what we wish. To this I reply that a state of affairs in which political freedom is combined with religious prejudice and bigotry is not satisfactory. I for my part don’t care a farthing for a political freedom that leaves me enslaved to my religious prejudices and imaginings. True freedom is present only where man is also free from religion; true culture is present only where man has become master over his religious prejudices and imaginations. But the state can have no other aim than to form complete, authentic men, though of course this is not meant here in any Utopian sense; consequently a state whose citizens, while enjoying free political institutions, are not free in a religious sense, cannot be a truly human and free state. The state does not make men, men make the state. As men are, so is their state. Once a state exists, to be sure, the individuals who by birth or immigration become its citizens, are molded by it; but what is a state in relation to the individuals who come to it if not the sum and combination of the people who already constitute it, who through the means at their disposal, through the institutions they have created, mold newcomers to their spirit and will? Thus, where men are politically free but unfree in religion, the state is not perfect or not yet complete.

As to the second point, freedom of faith and conscience, the first condition of a free state is indeed that “every man may be saved in his own way,” that every man may believe what he likes. But this is a secondary and empty freedom; for it means nothing more than each man’s freedom or right to be a fool in his own way. True, the state, in the present sense of the word, can do no more than refrain from all intervention in the field of faith—than grant unrestricted freedom in this respect. But man’s task in the state is not only to believe what he wishes, but to believe what is reasonable, not only to believe, but to know what he can and must know if he is to be a free and cultivated man. Here no barrier to human knowledge can excuse us. In the realm of nature, to be sure, there are still many things we do not understand; but the secrets of religion spring from man himself, and he is capable of knowing them down to their remotest depths. And because he can know them, he ought to know them. Finally, it is an utterly superficial notion, refuted every day by history and even by daily life, to suppose that religion is without influence on public life. This view has originated only in our own day, when religious faith has ceased to be anything more than a chimera. Obviously, where religious faith has ceased to be a truth in man, it can have no practical consequences, it no longer inspires deeds of world-shaking importance. But where this is the case, where faith has become a mere lie, man is involved in the ugliest contradiction with himself and the consequences of faith are at least morally disastrous. Modem theism is just such a lie. The elimination of this lie is the condition for a new, energetic mankind.

The above-mentioned observation that piety in the common sense of the word is often combined with diametrically opposed traits, has led many to suppose that man has a special organ of religion, a specific religious feeling. We should be more justified in assuming the existence of a specific organ of superstition. Religion, that is, the belief in gods, in spirits, in so-called higher invisible beings who rule over man, has been said to be as innate in man as his other senses. Translated into the language of honesty and reason, this would only mean that, as Spinoza has already maintained, superstition is innate in man. But the source and strength of superstition are the power of ignorance and stupidity, which is the greatest power on earth, the power of fear and the feeling of dependency, and finally the power of the imagination.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 24th lecture (excerpt), pp. 218-220.

Is Critique Secular?

Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, Critical Horizons by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. (The Townsend Papers in the Humanities; no. 2)

As if Judith Butler weren't already disgusting enough. Anti-imperialism as an absolute for the (pseudo-)left is rotten politics. And of course academic politics is nothing but unscrupulous careerism anyway.

Edis, Taner. Is Critique Secular?, The Secular Outpost (blog), December 6, 2010.

I'm glad to see someone besides myself denounce the intellectual alliance between postmodernist westerners and apologists for Islam.

Gourgouris, Stathis. “De-transcendentalizing the secular,” The Immanent Frame (blog).

Unequivocal defense of secularism and rejection of identity politics, coupled with an interesting analysis of the relation between transcendentalism and theism (Descartes, Kant), but decoupling a necessary relation between secularism and the Christian West.

Mahmood, Saba. “Is critique secular?”, The Immanent Frame (blog).

“This line of thought urges you to choose: either one is against secular values or one is for them.” This is actually the case, though Mahmood denies it. A noxious example of the dishonest Counter-Enlightenment collusion between postmodernism & religion.

Sullivan, Winnifred Fallers. “What the Danish Cartoon Controversy Tells Us About Religion, the Secular, and the Limits of the Law,” Religion Dispatches, January 7, 2010.

Rotten to the core.

Thomassen, Lasse. Review: Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler and Saba Mahmood, Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, Critical Horizons, Vol 12, No 1, 2010, pp. 103-107.

On the Danish cartoons; the book under review is apparently another horrid example of the meeting of postmodernism and religion.

Yager, Colin. “Is Critique Secular? Thoughts on Enchantment and Reflexivity.”

A completely confused mess. Thoughts on Habermas, Taylor, Romanticism, with too much dallying on Byron. Bankrupt.

---

The Bolsheviks and Islam

International Socialism: The Bolsheviks and Islam
by Dave Crouch, Issue 110, April 2006

Fascinating historical material, combined with the rotten "anti-imperialist" politics of the British Socialist Workers Party. Assuming for the moment that this account is accurate, we must emphasize that the political model of the early Bolshevik regime is unusable for today's politics. One may marvel at the attempt to finesse the modernization and secularization of a multitude of backward cultures, and marvel still more at the Bolsheviks' notion that they might succeed, that they, combining state power with the concentrated power of reason, could actually leverage an irrational society into a rational one. The British SWP, for all its historical sophistication, would not want to acknowledge this impossibility. The objectivity of Stalinism, not only what it was consciously, consists in the logic of stooping to conquer. Just as it dragged the feudal peasant Russian Empire into the modern world by despotic means, it also adapted and lowered itself to the meanest peasant mentality to make it happen. The Bolsheviks seized a critical historical moment and took a chance on the future. But today's Marxists who look to them for guidance are only fooling themselves.

The New Atheists, Political Narratives, & the Betrayal of the Enlightenment

The New Atheists, Political Narratives, and the Betrayal of the Enlightenment. The Real Delusion: Part 1
by Bo Winegard and Ben Winegard, Dissident Voice, July 27, 2011

I'm in partial agreement, but note my objections. The 'New Atheists' is a journalistic fiction. The campaign against superstition is not a distraction; it's not the case that the New Atheists have distracted us from the real issues, but they have failed to make the unbreakable linkage between irrationalism and the real issues that undergird it. Harris is indeed the worst of the lot.

Humanistic Judaism: religion or philosophy?

I always liked the Humanistic Jews—in DC, the Machar people—but this is mealy-mouthed nonsense. Humanistic Judaism is not, as far as I know, traditional Judaism. The latter is unequivocally a religion; the former, I would think, depends on the individual perspective of the participants. But people should be clear about what they're advocating and not engage in mystification. If everybody's Jewish values were Einstein's, we'd now be in a better world, but "Jewish values" are not metaphysically given; they're no more than what you make them, especially when you're selective about the ideas you have extracted from tradition.

Douglass' Women, Douglass' secular humanism, Douglass' politics

My discovery of this novel this morning perked up what otherwise started out as a rotten day:

Douglass' Women: A Novel
by Jewell Parker

There was a real-life intellectual and romantic liaison between Frederick Douglass and German-Jewish emigré Ottilie Assing. She even lived with the Douglass family on Cedar Hill, something you won't learn when you visit the Douglass house today. Naturally, Douglass' wife was not thrilled at this arrangement, but there you go.

Assing claimed in a letter to Ludwig Feuerbach that Douglass was an atheist, but she was likely exaggerating. You can read the letter for yourself on my web site:

Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass

We shall see how Parker handles the freethought aspect of their relationship.

This liaison is actually in the news, connected to the question of Douglass as freethinker. Here is a recent news story:

Douglass a Secular Humanist? by Hector Avalos, Ames Tribune, Saturday, February 5, 2011.

The Douglass-Assing relationship is the linchpin of Avalos' article. Avalos puts Douglass in the company of Dawkins and Hitchens. It's hardly a stretch to identify Douglass with secular humanism; this does not prove Douglass to be an atheist, Avalos admits such as assertion to be an exaggeration, but it would still be more accurate to specify what is knowable about the degree of overlap between Douglass' undeniable secularism and humanism, and the hardcore atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens.

This rather insufferable Christian rebuttal is ridiculous in rendering Douglass' 1883 "It Moves" speech consistent with Christianity, but the blogger is correct that Douglass' statements in themselves do not prove a disavowal of theism per se.

Deeper historical contextualization is mandated, if not in an occasional newspaper piece, then in further investigation of the subject.

I have always had doubts as to where Wilson Moses is coming from, but he has authored several books engaged in in-depth historical analysis of 19th century black nationalism. Note his treatment of Douglass here:

Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Moses addresses the tensions within Douglass' politics, principally between his advocacy of the black cause and his integrationism. "His hostility to the traditionalism and institutional structure of organized religion was part and parcel of the extreme progressive liberalism that he embraced." Moses analyzes Douglass' moral perfectionism and aversion to relativism, a joint product of Enlightenment thought, liberalism, Victorian rationalism, and Christian perfectionism.

Here is another take by Moses on Douglass and other iconic black political intellectuals:

Creative Conflict in African American Thought by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Here you can read an excerpt:

I. Introduction. Reality and Contradiction

Among other things you will find here an analysis of the ideological differences between Douglass and Alexander Crummell, the uneasy relationship between moralism and power politics, and the tension in Douglass between individualism and racial loyalty.

Finally, note the quotation from Douglass in Evolutionary Writings by Charles Darwin, edited by James A. Secord (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?

Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future? is the theme of the May-June 2009 issue of Jewish Currents. There is first the editor's Introduction (pp. 1-3), and here is the rest of the contents:

"Offers We Couldn’t Refuse: What Happened to Secular Jewish Identity?" An Analysis by April Rosenblum (8-28)
"My Dinosaur Days: Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?" An Illustrated Memoir by Lawrence Bush (29-50)
"Humanistic Judaism and Sherwin Wine: The “Other Wing” of the Jewish Secular Movement" An Appreciation by Rabbi Adam Chalom (51-55)
Responses from Readers and Activists (56-69) Barnett Zumoff, Linda Gritz, Ross Perlin, Marie Parham, Rabbi Shai Gluskin, Ira Mintz, Lyber Katz, Joel Schechter, Dorothy Zellner, Brian Klug, Michael Prival, Jack Nusan Porter, Rokhl Kafrissen, Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Billy Yalowitz

Rosenbaum provides an historical account of how secular Jewish (Yiddish) culture was once in the mainstream of American Jewish life and how various social pressures virtually eliminated it in the 1950s and beyond.

Lawrence Bush recounts his own experience in the secular Jewish milieu and his engagement with Jewish Currents, of which he is now the editor. Contrary to Irving Howe, he maintains that Yiddish culture is not doomed after all.

From being the lone humanistic rabbi in the 1960s, at the time of this writing (Wine died in 2007) Sherwin Wine engendered over 30 congregations and over 50 leaders. 

Interestingly, even secularists, in trying to demythologize their religious tradition, didn't make it quite that far:

For example, from Mayn Folk, a 1962 Workmen’s Circle children’s history book (my translation from the Yiddish):

When the Jews lived in the wilderness, their leader was Moses. He was the leader of all the Jewish tribes. All Jews obeyed him. Moses taught the Jews how to live properly and well. He gave the Jewish people wise and good laws. He gave Jews the Torah.

God is edited out of this book, which instead focuses on the “organizer” Moses. However, despite all the evidence of archaeology and Biblical criticism that the Torah was compiled centuries after Moses (if he existed), the traditional teaching of the siddur (prayerbook) that “this is the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel” persists.

Turning Moses into a left-winger is a miracle in itself, but I heard the same line some years ago when attending a Labor Seder, replete with heavy-handed didactic politicization of the traditional ritual in the service of the cause of the day. I was quite amazed to see a number of young people present, as I expected nobody under 80 would be found there. I don't know what denomination the labor seders are held under; it was not Humanistic Judaism as far as I know, but it may as well have been. I liked the people, and especially the participation of African-American, Ethiopian, and Latino union activists, but I found the ceremonial aspect rather lame.

I have also known some of the members of the Washington DC branch of Humanistic Judaism, Machar, but in settings far removed from any semblance of a religious service. Hence I remain mystified what religious services of Jewish atheists could possibly look like and what an atheist rabbi is supposed to do. I suppose this article attempts to answer that question.

Wine attempted to combine both the congregational and secular dimensions of Jewish life, and both the particular tradition and universalism, incorporating non-Jewish intellectual sources. Wine also incorporated intermarriage into his denomination and even gay commitment ceremonies. Wine was willing to question even the cultural survival of the Jewish people. He rejected the Bible and Torah as below the standard of real intellectualism. His philosophy can be found in Judaism Beyond God (1985, revised 1995). His liturgical innovations can be found in Celebration: A Ceremonial and Philosophic Guide for Humanists and Humanistic Jews (1988). His final statement can be found in the festschrift A Life of Courage: Sherwin Wine and Humanistic Judaism (2004).

Given my limited exposure, all I can say is that people have to do the best they can from where they find themselves. If I had to go this route, I would probably prefer Ethical Culture, which I'd also prefer to the even more vapid Unitarians, but I find it all a bloody bore and essentially a palliative for the upper middle class. (Though in fairness I must concede that the traditional clerical institution provides a base for charitable work and social action.) Still, Humanistic Judaism is the next best thing to Jewish humanism, that is, humanism ex officio.

Barnett Zumoff supplements Rosenblum's analysis with a couple of internal factors and adds that "secular Jewishness is currently maintained in America only by a tiny group of determined individuals, through heroic effort and in a very diluted form." Linda Gritz recounts her own efforts in preserving secular Jewish culture. Ross Perlin addresses the problems endemic to this endeavor. Marie Parham recounts her upbringing in the Jim Crow South. The civil rights Freedom Rides and the African art her father brought home from his travels inspired her. She did not realize there was a tradition behind her impulses until she visited Camp Kinderland and heard Miriam Makeba broadcast over the PA system. Rabbi Shai Gluskin thinks that secular ideologies like Stalinism are far worse than theism, so he prefers liberal Judaism. Ira Mintz claims that "Secular Judaism is alive and well and living in Central New Jersey." Lyber Katz estimates that half of the American Jewish population is secular. He also sees a rise in an interest in spirituality among the baby-boom generation. He agrees with Rosenbaum about the devastating effect of McCarthyism. Joel Schechter is an enthusiastic latecomer to Yiddishkeit. Dorothy Zellner blames the red scare and Zionism for the destruction of secular Jewish culture. Brian Klug describes Jewdas (www.jewdas.org) a fairly new Jewish group in Britain that characterizes itself as “radical voices for the alternative diaspora.” He describes an event in London, a "Rootless Cosmopolitan Yeshiva". (I like the sound of that.)

Michael Prival recounts his own formative experience in the Jewish milieu of the Bronx. But there is no reason that younger people, who are entirely removed from this experience, should bother with it. Here he hits the nub:

In my family, secular Jewish identity survived to my children’s generation largely because of our participation in the Humanistic Judaism movement described by Rabbi Adam Chalom. Although Humanistic Judaism is totally accepting of those from non-Jewish backgrounds, secular Jewish identity continues to be rooted in ethnicity. We live in a society so welcoming that the ethnic ties of all groups weaken over time. We may regret the gradual loss of identity, but we can only celebrate the openness of the society that causes it.

A distinct secular Jewish culture cannot survive through the generations in the United States without ghettoization of housing and education that limits exposure of the young to the broader culture and, more importantly, to non-Jewish potential mates. Fortunately, these conditions do not exist for most of us, so our ancestral culture is disappearing.

Now this I can relate to.

Jack Nusan Porter was raised Orthodox, but learned to incorporate secularism? Why not the reverse?

Secular Judaism is not “marginalized,” it simply does not give Jews the nurture and “soul” that religious ritual gives. That’s why I always felt, even back in Morris Schappes’ time, that secular Judaism would decline if it did not acquire some kind of spirituality — and why not a Hebrew prayer-language, and not just a Yiddish spirituality?

Yuck!

Rokhl Kafrissen recounts her disillusionment with Hadar and encounter with Jewish Currents. She is not "secular"; she wants to lead an "integrated Jewish life". Oy.

Michael Gould-Wartofsky is the son of philosopher Marx Wartofsky (who knew?). He grew up in a secular socialist environment but found this at odds with mainstream Jewish identity, i.e. religiosity + nationalism. He could only find like-minded Jews in social movements not specifically Jewish, which he terms the "inner diaspora". (My kind of people.)  He enumerates the ideological parameters of the Jewish mainstream and calls for a radical rupture with it.

Such a secular revival could be global, with the help of new media and the Internet. It could embrace all forms of Jewish culture, not only those that speak Yiddish or Hebrew, and open itself up to the Latino, Arab, and Black Jewish traditions.

Billy Yalowitz starts off by mentioning his presence at two seders, one with the Reconstrucions, the other with is secular left-wing family. Coming from a heritage of communists and Yiddish speaking socialist, he inherited a contempt for Judaism and religion in general, but finds inspiration in the combination of Yiddish literature, left-wing political culture, and Judaism which is also part of his family history.

It should not be too difficult to discern my own sympathies. One area to pursue that was only touched on by a couple of the participants: how to non-Jews associated with Jews, most notably in mixed families or intimate relationships, relate to secular Jewish culture under discussion? Prival and Gould-Wartofsky skirt this question from opposite angles. I don't see any future for any culture in the USA that is not open to everyone. In addition to the factors adumbrated by Prival, the communications revolution—the enculturation of children via media technology from birth—has permanently altered the nature of culture and established a permanent discontinuity with the cultural past. On the other hand, it has also created options for recombinant appropriations of the flotsam of all cultures that never previously existed. So there is now a question of what any individual from one ethnic group experiences, related to a question of what individuals from different groups experience in association. This, as well in differentials in the experience of or need for belonging, are factors to consider. I personally can only stand so much of belonging, and so total immersion in anything is too much for me to take, but others will make their way as suits them, hopefully without getting stuck in a rut.

Descartes as a Moral Thinker

"'I think, therefore I am', said Descartes, and the world rejoiced at the perspective of the expansion of individual personality and human powers through the liberation of the intellect." — C.L.R. James et al

The watershed marked by the philosophy of Descartes has long been recognized. The dualism of Descartes' philosophy has often been linked to his historical and social position, e.g.:

Descartes' Dualism (Extract) by Albert William Levi

One can find such treatments also in the Marxist tradition (e.g. C.L.R. James & the Johnson-Forest Tendency, quoted above):

Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

There is, of course, the perennial favorite which deals not with Descartes specifically but with the contradictions of Enlightenment, unsatisfactorily in my view: Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. See also my web guide/bibliography:

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide

Here is a book I just discovered which is alleged to challenge common wisdom about Descartes:

Steiner, Gary. Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. See also at Prometheus Books.

There is one brief passage on Marx, and, surprisingly, Steiner finds an affinity between Descartes and Marx. Otherwise, the book appears to be innocent of Marxism. Looking through the bibliography, the one author I'm tempted to pursue is Hans Blumenberg (also known for a debate with Karl Löwith).

Here is the publisher's product description:

Although commentary on Descartes is extensive, the importance of morality in his thought has been all but overlooked in contemporary English-language scholarship. Considered to be the first modern philosopher, Descartes is often interpreted as a wholly secular thinker who acknowledged no authority above the human will. In this important reassessment of the great French philosopher, Gary Steiner shows the influence of Christian thought on the moral foundations of Descartes's philosophy.

Descartes's commitment to Christian piety and to the autonomy of human reason stand in an uneasy tension with one another. In DESCARTES AS A MORAL THINKER, Steiner examines this tension between the "angelic" aspirations in Descartes's Christian commitments and the "earthly" or technological aspirations reflected in his endeavor to use reason to ground scientific practice. Steiner provides a close analysis of all Descartes's texts and correspondence that bear on morality. By placing Descartes's work in historical context, Steiner demonstrates Descartes's indebtedness not only to Galileo and Bacon in developing his conception of autonomous human reason but also to Augustine and Aquinas in conceptualizing the human condition and the role of belief in God. Providing a detailed survey of German, French, and English scholarship on Descartes, Steiner concludes with an in-depth examination of contemporary debates about secularization, nihilism, and modernity in such thinkers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Hans Blumenberg, and Karl Lowith. Steiner shows how Descartes's own ambivalence about the relation between faith and reason can shed light on contemporary controversies regarding what Blumenberg calls "the legitimacy of the modern age."

This bears looking into. I think this will inadvertently confirm the incomparable greatness of Baruch Spinoza.

Descartes’ Bones (1)

Shorto, Russell. Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. New York: Doubleday, 2008.

There is a web site for this book: Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto.

This has got some important material on it, including an excerpt, a gallery of images, and a reader's guide. Some of the questions asked of the reader are more fruitful than others, and deeper questions could be added.

There is also a link to Shorto's YouTube video, or you can access the video at YouTube itself.

See also the publisher's page at Random House.

Naturally reviews can be found in innumerable places, but here's one from The New York Times Book Review:

Body of Knowledge By GARY ROSEN (October 31, 2008).

And behold: "Gary Rosen is the chief external affairs officer of the John Templeton Foundation." This speaks volumes about the integrity of the newspaper of record. Naturally, the gambit here is to dampen the conflict between science and religion by adopting a middle-of-the-road position that purports to make friends with everyone.

And this position is not far from Shorto's own:

LEAPING INTO THE POST-BUSH WORLD
By Julie Phillips. Amsterdam Weekly,6-12 November 2008.
"After eight years of warring fundamentalisms, Russell Shorto says in his new book,
Descartes Bones, it’s time for something new."

The bankruptcy of contemporary thought is multiply worse than the end-of-ideology ideology of the 1950s, predicated on liberal premises, for this manifestation of "moderation" is fundamentally right-wing. Calling people extremists for vehemently opposing extremists ultimately pulls everything to the right, and moderation becomes timidly mitigating the right-wing extremism while capitulating to it. To defame the "new atheists" (a fake journalistic moniker) as extremists, and also to claim that both Obama and McCain represent a move away from fundamentalism: how shamelessly idiotic can you be? This is what today's right-wing liberal pundits posit as a transcendence of dichotomies. It's too disgusting for words.

We learn also that Shorto is a lapsed Catholic, and that his rebellion against his upbringing is related to his preoccupation with the chasm between faith and reason. This issue also contains an excerpt from the book.

The book itself does not seem to be so vacuous, though one must be alert to spin. It can be classified in what seems to be a growing genre of popular philosophical biography, much of it produced by serious scholars. Examples of this genre are Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World (my favorite), Rebecca Goldstein's Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (another favorite) and Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, Steven Nadler's The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil, and Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers and Rousseau’s Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment by David Edmonds and John Eidinow. Such books take off from a relationship (often antagonistic) between two thinkers, or a specific incident or problem, or a particular thinker, perhaps with respect to a particular question.

This book begins with an account of Shorto's visit to the Musée de l‘homme, where he gets to see Descartes' skull. Then Shorto flash's back to the beginning of his quest. For him, as well as others, Descartes is the intellectual fount of modernity, which has recently come under attack from the right and the postmodern left. The conflict of faith and reason belongs to our time as well as Descartes'. The "new atheists" are cited here. (xviii) As the fate of Descartes' remains shows, Descartes has been appropriated by left and right. The basis for the right's interest is Cartesian mind-body dualism, the mind or soul being untouchable by materialistic science. Shorto follows Anglican cleric Colin Slee in positing a contemporary three-way split: fundamentalist religionists, fundamentalist secularists, and religious liberals. (xix)

Such is the preface and the shallow middle-of-the-road journalistic approach to ideas and politics. It's an unwitting piece of evidence for the contention that religious moderates pave the way for religious right-wing extremists, an argument that can be extended to politics in general, though today's atheist liberals would probably not understand this.

Chapter 1 gets down to the actual history. The story starts with Descartes on his deathbed. Descartes protests against proposed medical remedies for his soon-to-be-fatal condition. Here we find an interesting, underappreciated facet of the Enlightenment and scientific revolution: The new skeptical attitude was also applied to an inherited body of medical pseudoscience. Materialistic medicine, based on the soon-to-be-established mechanical world view, is something taken for granted (by its critics as well as by its other beneficiaries), but physical medicine was inseparable from religion in Descartes' day; prayer was an integral to treatment as medicaments. (8) Since this is by no means a relic of the past, Shorto wonders what makes the modern modern. He wonders whether the divide between the material and the spiritual is wrong. (9)

Again, the shallow editorializing. However, we shall see what we can learn from the historical account as the book proceeds.

Secularism, Utopia & the Discernment of Myth

Boer, Roland. "Secularism, Utopia and the Discernment of Myth," Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 7 (Fall 2005).
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ijcs/secular/boer.htm

Roland Boer has written a number of books and articles on Marxism and religion, and has a blog, too. More on all that later. For the moment, this article . . .

Boer seeks a way to characterize properly the free-lance sensibilities of contemporary "spiritual experience". Four issues to address are: secularism, post-structuralism, utopian possibilities of religion, and the discernment of myths (after Ernst Bloch). I'm guessing that he really meant to write post-secularism rather than post-structuralism.

Post-secularism is manifested by the pervasive practice of asserting that one is spiritual, not religious. In the utopian realm, Boer seeks a shared language of spiritual experiences that do not erase differences. Secularism and post-secularism are inseparable and dialectically related. Contrary to the settled conception of secularization now, the concept was much contested in the 19th century prior to the interventions of Max Weber and Karl Lowith. Considering alternatives to the latter two, Boer begins with Walter Benjamin (The Origin of German Tragic Drama). Boer's description of Benjamin's notion of secularization is unintelligible to me, but it has something to do with the fall of theological/historical time into spatialization and taxonomy, termed "natural history". Benjamin's work reveals that religion has been (tacitly?) equated with Christianity, and secularization effectively equals the negation of Christianity. Religion is often assumed to pertain to the supermundane, supernatural realm, though it has taken on a broader meaning as well. Boer is unclear here, but he mentions anthropological studies and studies of religions outside of Christianity (and Judaism). All the analytical tools brought to bear on non-western non-Christian belief systems are actually secular translations of the categories of Christian religion.

Boer sees something pernicious in this, apparently, but his next move is to shifts to a discussion of Adorno's critiques of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Key here is that . . .

The language of theology, appropriated by Heidegger and existentialism, has the distinct ideological role of producing patterns of subordination to an absolute authority, which became fascism rather than God and the Church. The theological language of existentialism - which drew its sacredness from the cult of authenticity rather than Christianity – becomes, for Adorno, an ideological schema particularly suited to fascism, for which it functioned not so much as an explicit statement, but as a “refuge,” a mystification that gave voice to an ostensible salvation from alienation that functioned as a virulent justification of oppression, the “smoldering evil” (Adorno 1965, 9) of fascism.

Boer equates this view to a critique of idolatry one can find in Adorno's writings. Proceeding further . . .

Secularization then becomes a process riven with contradictions, one whose rejection of Christianity relies on Christianity, and this, I would suggest, is one of the main reasons for the fact that secularization never quite seemed to succeed . . .

Boer's overall argument doesn't make a bit of sense to me. Mini-arguments here and there do, but the overall structure of the argument doesn't cohere. Here is one piece, though, that is exceptionally lucid, and socially accurate:

The flowering of the myriad forms of religious expression and experience for which the secularization hypothesis could not account is instead described in terms of spirituality, the properly post-secular religion. I don’t want to trace the Christian history of the term “spirituality,” but one of its features is that it relies upon the widespread knowledge of a whole range of religious practices that would not have been possible without the study of religions in the first place, without the endless cataloguing and study of religions from the most ancient, such as Sumeria and Babylon or pre-historic humans, to the most contemporary forms, such as the well-known Heaven’s Gate group that committed suicide, all shod with Nike shoes, when the comet Hale-Bopp appeared on earth’s horizon. Apparently emptied of doctrines to which one must adhere, or of institutions that carefully guard salvation, or of specific groups bound by language and ethnic identity, spirituality enables one to recover lost or repressed practices, such as Wicca or Yoruba sacrifice, but to pick and choose elements that seem to suit individual lifestyles or predilections. It allows one to designate the vitality of indigenous religions (which are no longer religion but spirituality), as a lost source of connectedness with the land, with nature, or other human beings. Unfortunately, however, spirituality’s private piety and devotion comes at the expense of any collective agenda. It also relies on both liberal pluralism and tolerance, as well as the profound reification of social and cultural life that is everywhere around us. You can practice your own particular spirituality in your small corner, as long you don’t bother me, we say. Like secularization, spirituality itself depends upon its own contradiction: both rely upon the religion they reject.

This is a dead-on description of all the upper middle class New Agers I've met in recent years.

Boer next shifts to a discussion of Utopia, taking off from the thought of Ernst Bloch. Again, there's a passage I can't make any sense out of:

What is often forgotten is that the hermeneutics of suspicion and recovery in political approaches such as feminism, post-colonial criticism and liberation theology owe a debt to Bloch. It seems to me that the effort to locate a shared language of “spiritual experience,” one that is sensitive to variations of social, political and cultural difference, relies upon a utopian project in the best sense(s) of the term.

One of Bloch's central insights was not only to discern utopian impulses, but to note that when they include yearning for a lost golden age, their regression has already set in. Utopianism should be future oriented.

The problem with seeking a shared language, as utopian hermeneutics does, is that religions embody mutually exclusive world views. And there is no unmediated experience. Attempts to transcend difference betray origins, as is the case with Rudolph Otto.

Once again, Boer's logic eludes me, but his next move is to seek a unifying principle in myth.

Even more than religion per se, the Enlightenment target of secularization was myth, a term that had acquired an unwieldy cluster of associations: untruth, confusion, fuzzy thinking, the ideology of oppression, and so on. Myth found itself driven from town to town, expelled by the enlightened burghers, only to retreat to the forests and deserts, the realm of Nature, where a few wayward individuals might have some use for it. Faced with the use of myth by the Nazis and other sundry fascists, with their notions of blood and soil and the Blond Beast, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno saw only the negative aspects of the term. For Benjamin, the ultimate form of myth was capitalism, as he traced in The Arcades Project (1999), and so he sought a way beyond myth, a waking from the dream, that made use of biblical motifs. Unfortunately, he remained trapped within the myth of the Bible itself. For Adorno (1999), myth was the antithesis of utopia. Myth was the realm of the unitary principle, the abolition of non-identity that is characteristic of a world dominated by men. For both Adorno and Benjamin, utopia meant the end of myth.

Boer prefers Bloch:

For Bloch, myth is neither pure false consciousness that needs to be unmasked, nor a positive force without qualification. Like ideologies, all myths, no matter how repressive, have an emancipatory-utopian dimension that cannot be separated from deception and illusion. Thus, in the very process of manipulation and domination, myth also has a moment of utopian residue, an element that opens up other possibilities at the very point of failure. Bloch is particularly interested in biblical myth, for the subversive elements in the myths that interest him are enabled by ideologies both repetitious and repressive.

Further down . . .

At his best, Bloch’s discernment of myth is an extraordinary approach, for it enables us to interpret the myths of any religion or spirituality as neither completely reprehensible nor utterly beneficial. That is to say, it is precisely through and because of the myths of dominance and despotism that those of cunning and non-conformism can exist. It is not merely that we cannot understand the latter without the former, but that the former enables the latter.

Two examples from the Bible are given, the first concerning Eden, the second, death.

In the end, then, the value of religions like Christianity is that they have tapped into this utopian desire for something beyond death. Their mistake for Bloch is that they want to say something definite about death. But that something is hardly definite: it is mythology, and for that we need a discerning eye that can see both the liberating and repressive features of those myths.

I find Boer's conclusion most unsatisfactory and downright irritating:

If we follow through the dialectical relationship between secularism and post-secularism - a contradictory logic in which secularism turns out to rely on the Christianity it everywhere denies, a logic that appears starkly in a post-secularism that cannot be thought without secularism - then myth turns out to be the most urgent religious or spiritual question for us. Rather than the problem-ridden term “spirituality”, I have argued that Bloch’s hermeneutics of the discernment of myth provides not only a productive method, but also an approach to the utopian desire that lies behind any effort to find a shared “religious” or “spiritual” language. Such a language needs to be both critical and appreciative, for myths work in an extremely cunning fashion. It is a process that enables on the one hand the identification of those myths, or even elements within a myth, that are oppressive, misogynist, racist, that serve a ruling elite, and on the other, those which are subversive, liberating and properly socialist or even democratic ­ in other words, utopian.

I have a number of objections here, beginning with another instance of a chronic lack of logical clarity. How does Jewish secularism rely on Christianity? Or Indian, or Japanese? Suppose one rejects post-secular ideologies: New Age spirituality, etc.? Then how is myth the most urgent spiritual question, other than to neutralize it? Why should there be a spiritual language at all, shared or not? Why should anything subversive, liberating, or socialist be seen in mythical expressions in the 21st century? There's not an atom of it that is progressive in any way. Myth can only be productively scavenged retrospectively, by those not under its grip. Myth in any form is not adequate to the comprehension of contemporary society. Considering the problem more widely, popular symbology simply can't encapsulate the truth content of the state of our society at this time. Indeed, after the waning of the various countercultures of the 1950s-70s, I see nothing left for popular mythology to do. The good intentions of the past need to be salvaged as well as criticized for their naivete. (I've addressed this with respect to the individual mysticisms of avant-garde jazz musicians.) What myth is alive today needs to be killed off and dissected. In any case, Boer should be more clear and specific about what he's after.

Trotsky on religion (3): literature & art of the secular future

Excerpt from Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924), Chapter 8: Revolutionary and Socialist Art

But can a great art be created out of our infidel epoch, ask certain mystics, who are willing to accept the Revolution if it can secure them immortality. Tragedy is a great and monumental form of literature. The tragedy of classic antiquity was deduced from its myths. All ancient tragedy is penetrated by a profound faith in fate which gave a meaning to life. The Christian myth unified the monumental art of the Middle Ages and gave a significance not only to the temples and the mysteries, but to all human relationships. The union of the religious point of view on life with an active participation in it, made possible a great art in those times. If one were to remove religious faith, not the vague, mystic buzzing that goes on in the soul of our modern intelligentsia, but the real religion, with God and a heavenly law and a church hierarchy, then life is left bare, without any place in it for supreme collisions of hero and destiny, of sin and expiation. The well-known mystic Stepun approaches art from this point of view in his article on Tragedy and the Contemporary Life. He starts from the needs of art itself, tempts us with a new and monumental art, shows us a revival of tragedy in the distance, and, in conclusion, demands, in the name of art, that we submit to and obey the powers of heaven. There is an insinuating logic in Stepun’s scheme. In fact, the author does not care for tragedy, because the laws of tragedy are nothing to him as compared to the laws of heaven. He only wishes to catch hold of our epoch by the small finger of tragic aesthetics in order to take hold of its entire hand. This is a purely Jesuitic approach. But from a dialectic point of view, Stepun’s reasoning is formalistic and Shallow. It ignores the materialistic and historical foundation from which the ancient drama and the Gothic art grew and from which a new art must grow.

The faith in an inevitable fate disclosed the narrow limits within which ancient man, clear in thought but poor in technique, was confined. He could not as yet undertake to conquer nature on the scale we do today, and nature hung over him like a fate. Fate is the limitation and the immobility of technical means, the voice of blood, of sickness, of death, of all that limits man, and that does not allow him to become “arrogant”. Tragedy lay inherent in the contradiction between the awakened world of the mind, and the stagnant limitation of means. The myth did not create tragedy, it only expressed it in the language of man’s childhood.

The bribe of spiritual expiation of the Middle Ages and, in general, the whole system of heavenly and earthly double bookkeeping, which followed from the dualism of religion, and especially of historic, positive Christianity, did not make the contradictions of life, but only reflected them and solved them fictitiously. Mediaeval society overcame the growing contradictions by transferring the promissory note to the Son of God; the ruling classes signed this note, the Church hierarchy acted as endorser, and the oppressed masses prepared to discount it in the other world.

Bourgeois society broke up human relationships into atoms, and gave them unprecedented flexibility and mobility. Primitive unity of consciousness which was the foundation of a monumental religious art disappeared, and with it went primitive economic relationships. As a result of the Reformation, religion became individualistic. The religious symbols of art having had their cord cut from the heavens, fell on their heads and sought support in the Uncertain mysticism of individual consciousness.

In the tragedies of Shakespeare, 'which would be entirely unthinkable without the Reformation, the fate of the ancients and the passions of the mediaeval Christians are crowded out by individual human passions, such as love, jealousy, revengeful greediness, and spiritual dissension. But in every one of Shakespeare’s dramas, the individual passion is carried to such a high degree of tension that it outgrows the individual, becomes super-personal, and is transformed into a fate of a certain kind. The jealousy of Othello, the ambition of Macbeth, the greed of Shylock, the love of Romeo and Juliet, the arrogance of Coriolanus, the spiritual wavering of Hamlet, are all of this kind. Tragedy in Shakespeare is individualistic, and in this sense has not the general significance of Oedipus Rex, which expresses the consciousness of a whole people. None the less, compared with Aaeschylus, Shakespeare represents a great step forward and not backward. Shakespeare’s art is more human. At any rate, we shall no longer accept a tragedy in which God gives orders and man submits. Moreover, there will be no one to write such a tragedy.

Having broken up human relations into atoms, bourgeois society, during the period of its rise, had a great aim for itself. Personal emancipation was its name. Out of it grew the dramas of Shakespeare and Goethe’s Faust. Man placed himself in the center of the universe, and therefore in the center of art also. This theme sufficed for centuries. In reality, all modern literature has been nothing but an enlargement of this theme.

But to the degree in which the internal bankruptcy of bourgeois society was revealed as a result of its unbearable contradictions, the original purpose, the emancipation and qualification of the individual faded away and was relegated more and more into the sphere of a new mythology, without soul or spirit.

However the conflict between what is personal and what is beyond the personal, can take place, not only in the sphere of religion, but in the sphere of a human passion that is larger than the individual. The super-personal element is, above all, the social element. So long as man will not have mastered his social organization, the latter will hang over him as his fate. Whether at the same time society casts a religious shadow or not, is a secondary matter and depends upon the degree of man’s helplessness. Baboeuf’s struggle for Communism in a society which was not yet ready for it, was a struggle of a classic hero with his fate. Baboeuf’s destiny had all the characteristics of true tragedy, just as the fate of the Gracchi had whose name Baboeuf used.

Tragedy based on detached personal passions is too flat for our days. Why? Because we live in a period of social passions. The tragedy of our period lies in the conflict between the individual and the collectivity, or in the conflict between two hostile collectivities in the same individual. Our age is an age of great aims. This is what stamps it. But the grandeur of these aims lies in man’s effort to free himself from mystic and from every other intellectual vagueness and in his effort to reconstruct society and himself in accord with his own plan. This, of course, is much bigger than the child’s play of the ancients which was becoming to their childish age, or the mediaeval ravings of monks, or the arrogance of individualism which tears personality away from the collectivity, and then, draining it to the very bottom, pushes it off into the abyss of pessimism, or sets it on all fours before the remounted bull Apis.

Tragedy is a high expression of literature because it implies the heroic tenacity of strivings, of limitless aims, of conflicts and sufferings. In this sense, Stepun was right when he characterized our “on the eve” art, as he called it, that is, the art which preceded the War and the Revolution, as insignificant.

Bourgeois society, individualism, the Reformation, the Shakespearean dramas, the great Revolution, these have made impossible the tragic significance of aims that come from without; great aims must live in the consciousness of a people or of a class which leads a people, if they are to arouse heroism or create a basis for great sentiments which inspire tragedy. The Tsarist War, whose purpose did not penetrate consciousness, gave birth to cheap verse only, with personal poetry trickling by its side, unable to rise to an objectivity and unable to form a great art.

If one were to regard the Decadent and the Symbolist schools, with all their off-shoots, from the point of view of the development of art as a social form, they would appear merely as scratches of the pen, as an exercise in craftsmanship, as a tuning up of instruments. The period in art when it was “on the eve” was without aims. Those who had aims had no time for art. At present, one has to carry out great aims by the means of art. One cannot tell whether revolutionary art will succeed in producing “high” revolutionary tragedy. But Socialist art will revive tragedy. Without God, of course. The new art will be atheist. It will also revive comedy, because the new man of the future will want to laugh. It will give new life to the novel. It will grant all rights to lyrics, because the new man will love in a better and stronger way than did the old people, and he will think about the problems of birth and death. The new art will revive all the old forms, which arose in the course of the development of the creative spirit. The disintegration and decline of these forms are not absolute, that is, they do not mean that these forms are absolutely incompatible with the spirit of the new age. All that is necessary is for the poet of the new epoch to re-think in a new way the thoughts of mankind, and to re-feel its feelings.