Neo-Paganists for Pat Buchanan?
Posted on June 15th, 2009
by Leon Hadar |
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Canadian political philosopher Shadia Drury, a long-time critic of the late neocon guru Leo Strauss has a very interesting piece in the latest issue of Free Inquiry, which is published by the Center for Secular Humanism. In “Against Grand Narratives” (sorry; not available online), she argues that “Since the triumph of Christianity over the pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome, the West has suffered from the inability to affirm life in the world without an overarching purpose to give it meaning and make it worthwhile.” The Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim provided such grand narratives as part of an effort to “destroy the pagan view of life as an endless cycle” and replacing it with “the cyclical view of history with a linear view that has a magical beginning, an arduous middle, and a very splendid finale.” In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, reason ended up replacing the religious narratives with “an array of secular, but equally grand tales — liberalism, Darwinism, and communism are heirs to the grand narratives of monotheism,” according to Drury. “All assume that human history is not static or cyclical but linear,” with human history being “a meaningful drama moving slowly but surely toward a climax.”
Drury argues that there John Stuart Mill’s liberalism, with its progressive view of history as a march toward freedom helped lay the foundations of Western imperialism, and by extension to contemporary neoconservatism.
Unhappily, Americans can escape from neoliberalism (the Democratic Party) only to fall into the grip of neoconservatism (the Republican Party). They have no genuine conservative alternative. In contrast to neoliberalism and neoconservatism, classic conservatism was less optimistic about the trajectory of history, and this made it more sober in its political expectations. For example, Edmund Burke was an outspoken critic of British imperialism. Even though he believed that God was guiding history, he did not pretend that eh knew where history was going, and he certainly did not believe in the inevitability of human progress. He was rightly skeptical about grandiose social engineering projects. For him, culture was a delicate fabric that took thousands of years to develop. Imposing an alien culture on a foreign people and expecting it to blossom like a plant was unrealistic and could only become the source of unnecessary suffering. Whatever its shortcomings, classic conservatism eschews grand narratives.”
Drury promises to explain in her next piece “why grand narratives must be transcended in favor of a return to pagan sobriety.” She sounds very much like British philosopher John Gray who has been challenging both contemporary conservatism and Social-Democracy.
Filed under: Conservatism
[...] Neo-Paganists for Buchanan?? Canadian political philosopher Shadia Drury, a long-time critic of the late neocon guru Leo Strauss has a very interesting piece in the latest issue of Free Inquiry, which is published by the Center for Secular Humanism. In “Against Grand Narratives” (sorry; not available online), she argues that “Since the triumph of Christianity over the pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome, the West has suffered from the inability to affirm life in the world without an overarching purpose to give it meaning and make it worthwhile.” The Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Muslim provided such grand narratives as part of an effort to “destroy the pagan view of life as an endless cycle” and replacing it with “the cyclical view of history with a linear view that has a magical beginning, an arduous middle, and a very splendid finale.” In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, reason ended up replacing the religious narratives with “an array of secular, but equally grand tales — liberalism, Darwinism, and communism are heirs to the grand narratives of monotheism,” according to Drury. “All assume that human history is not static or cyclical but linear,” with human history being “a meaningful drama moving slowly but surely toward a climax.” [...]
Julian the Apostate is our tragic hero.
This is a really really interesting and provocative piece. Indeed, it’s the kind of thinking that would be a good place to start for those at that American Cause conference noted in Daniel McCarthy’s post where the subject is how to build a majority.
Seems to me that it’s almost impossible to argue against Drury’s point that “[i]n the aftermath of the Enlightenment reason ended up replacing the religious narratives,” and also ended up replacing the goals or rewards implicit in religion with the simple (but problematic) promise of liberty.
And that, it strikes me, is what is forgotten by both liberalism and conservatism, and as such gives whoever grasps it a great opportunity.
If there’s anything about liberalism that makes people today curl their lip a bit it’s that so much of it seems simply concerned with grabbing money; indeed it can seem that almost its sole appeal now is telling people that if elected they will get you more.
And conservatism has fallen into the trap of just reacting negatively on this field, where anyone is bound to lose. Who after all is against giving you more money?
So maybe it’s my libertarian bent, but it sure would be lovely to see a new conservatism emerge not that wants a return to Drury’s paganism, but whose promise is to always fight for the maximum amount of liberty possible in “an ordered” society.
People do hunger for some greater purpose, I think, more than just the almighty dollar always. And while they’ll always falter for the latter sometimes, it’s nice to think that in the main they’d have more respect for someone who has credibly demonstrated that they are looking out for their liberty rather than just trying to always bribe them.
Sure makes a nice thought experiment to image people’s reaction if instead of instituting these obscene bailouts it was the Republicans who stood up and said that these giant corporations had been given the gift of liberty and had no right to impose on the liberty of others to save themselves from their mistakes, and then see the Democrats being the ones fighting to steal taxpayer dollars to preserve the castles of Goldman Sachs and Citibank and AIG and etc.
Seems to me even if they still lost the election at least they’d have some of the respect whose existence even on the molecular level they seem to so totally and utterly and deservedly lack today.
Great great post Leon.
[...] (not available online) by Canadian academic Shadia Drury. In “Against Grand Narratives”, Drury, according to TAC blogger Leon Hadar, argues for a rejection of linear monotheist grand narratives and a return to a “pagan” [...]
Here is the conservative translation:
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Hey, I just came from the site where they peddle atheism, and we have come to the conclusion, “Jews and Christians, and Muslims are stupid”.
With “Christianity over the pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome”, we deny that these melded, so we can pretend that monotheists don’t understand different philosophies.
We Atheists believe that each person is responsible for making sense of their own universe, so we decided that humans are the highest form of intelligence in the known universe, which implies that there is no other (or if there is, so far it seems to ignore us).
Monotheists believe that each person is responsible for making sense of their own universe, so some of them think they have reached some enlightment, or have had some experience with some trancendental being, which is clearly inferior to the atheist’s position.
We therefore believe, “the West has suffered from the inability to affirm life in the world without an overarching purpose to give it meaning”, and so the US Constitution and that whole thing about “All Men Being Created Equal, Endowed By Their Creator”, needs a Liberal overhaul.
We completely deny the Monotheist assertion that their beliefs can co-exist with ours, and when they claim the right to believe in miracles and claim a “paradox” such that this won’t interfere with our ability to believe in science or our precious Atheism, we must claim they are lying. We refuse to believe that any Monotheist can believe in or understand “liberalism, Darwinism, and communism”, nor explain why each of these has failed, and also we claim that Monotheists don’t understand science or philosophy.
Therefore, we can claim, “Americans can escape from neoliberalism (the Democratic Party) only to fall into the grip of neoconservatism (the Republican Party). They have no genuine conservative alternative.”
“Drury promises to explain… a return to pagan sobriety.”
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Most TAC Conservatives know that the statement, “neoliberalism=All Democratic, neoconservatism=All Republican… They have no genuine conservative alternative”, is nonsense.
Thanks for the comments, including by Jack Ross on his blog. Drury contrasts all the three Abrahamic religions with their grand narrative and the “linear view” that “weave all the different stories into a single historical account with an outcome that transcends the intentions and purposes of the multiplicity of diverse actors” with the “pagan view of life and an endless cycle.” Based on her critique, tribal Judaism was transformed by Paul into a more user-friendly – sans circumcision plus shrimp – and universal religion with a global mission as opposed to the more tribal task of Judaism (I simplify here), which in turn led to bloody conflicts and wars. In the Age of Reason we get instead the secular “religions” of liberalism, communism and Darwinism with the same crusading disposition. I don’t necessarily agree with this analysis but I think that it should provoke some discussion among conservatives, not only with regard to neoconservatism but also the Christian Right.
excellent post! I would have thought that Hinduism avoids the grand narrative. There is a god for every need, emotion and season of the year so that the divine is experienced in every detail of daily life. Despite our belief in one God and the narrative of the new testament, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox panoply of saints can be and is used in parts of the world to similar effect