The discouraging state of our politics has led me to ignore this blog for a bit, but I feel inspired, in a way, by a book I've been reading. It's by Richard Wolin and is entitled The Seduction of Unreason (yes, the title is elongated by use of a colon as are so many other titles of so many other books, but this annoys me so I refuse to include the explanation which is apparently required, by some). The book reviews the astounding group of intellectuals living in continental Europe in the 20th century who admired fascism.
I've expressed dissatisfaction with various Continental philosophers and intellectuals in the past, so I confess that a book like this is bound to appeal to me as it is bound to enrage others. The Enlightenment had its faults, no doubt, but it is staggering to review the lengths to which those who came to loath it were willing to go to deride it not only in their writings but in their lives.
Somehow, the wise came to believe not that reason and science could be, and was, misunderstood and misused. That would seem to be clear enough to those having common sense. Instead, they came to believe that reason and science were wrong, or perverse. The revolt against the Enlightenment, or the Counter-Enlightenment as it's called in this work, was a revolt, it seems to me, against thinking. Against intelligence. Against problem-solving. Against studying a situation, weighing options, and making an informed decision.
And so the intellectuals of Europe came to promulgate the view that it was not only appropriate but necessary that human beings stop thinking. Only by doing so could we truly live. We should let our emotions run rampant, war against one another, return to what the wise apparently felt we were in pagan times. I'm not sure why it was thought that we were spectacularly irrational in pre-Christian times, though one can understand that Christianity could be perceived as stunting us. Perhaps intellectuals of the time thought all pagans were followers of Dionysus as portrayed by Nietzsche in his wildest dreams; all Dionysus and no Apollo. Or were all warriors. Perhaps they thought all were ecstatic initiates of the mystery religions, or what they thought were the mystery religions at the time.
Perhaps they forgot, or chose to ignore, the very rational philosophers of antiquity.
For whatever reason, they did and said some very silly things. Some even practiced animal sacrifice, and dreamed even of sacrificing humans. They became mystics. They thought in fact that mysticism is what we truly want, especially when acting en masse. Thus the appeal of such as Hitler in their eyes. They believed, I think, that people wanted to be told what to do by some seemingly super-human leader who personified the mythic characteristics or particular races and nations.
It was an amazing rejection of thought, an acceptance and glorification of thoughtlessness. Critical thinking was discouraged, even condemned.
Some of this is still with us today, of course. And though I may exaggerate, what are we to make of the learned who so completely abandoned rational discourse and analysis as to render them inhuman and immoral? It seems to me a kind of betrayal, a surrender of our heritage resulting from an ignorance of our ancient past in the West, and the embrace of a barbarism already overcome.
Worse, it renders judgment impossible and undesirable. Absolved of the responsibility to judge correctly, we're not accountable for what we decide to do. I can't help but wonder how anyone with a sense of self-respect could accept a view of human existence which is so childish; which makes children of us all.
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