French intellectuals have signed a petition to that effect.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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US Trade Embargo Extended to Research
Treasury Department warns against publishing scientific research from Iran, Libya, Sudan, Cuba.
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The Hubble Telescope is Doomed
Bush administration has redirected NASA resources to Mars and moon trips.
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Prince Charles Makes Fool of Himself – Again
More “alternative” treatments should be available on the NHS.
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A Defense of Whig History
Not long ago the television show Biography aired a documentary on the life of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company. Midway through the film came the obligatory two minutes concerning Ford’s anti-Semitic rantings, his Nazi medal, and his anti-Jewish newspaper The Dearborn Independent. When it came time to put Ford’s anti-Semitism into perspective, the film-makers explained that Ford’s views were part and parcel of growing up on a Reconstruction-era farm in southeast Michigan, and as such the great man was no different than anyone else of his time and place. The film-makers didn’t go into the reasons why the good folks of southeast Michigan should be naturally anti-Semitic. There were after all no Jews to speak of in rural Michigan in the late 19th century. Ford would later blame the Jews for jazz, communism and immoral moving pictures, but in turn-of-the-century Michigan these were as unheard of as antiperspirant. The important thing, the film-makers seemed to suggest, was that we didn’t judge Henry too harshly, him being simply a product of his backward time and culture. And, as everyone knows, judging historical figures, particularly a nation’s heroes, by contemporary moral standards is unfair. Among many historians it is not only unfair, it is an academic abomination known derisively as whig history.
The term whig history—also known as presentism—was first coined by British historian Herbert Butterfield in his 1931 study The Whig Interpretation of History. Butterfield’s criticisms were aimed largely at Lord Acton (1834-1902) and Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-59), whose History of England from the Accession of James III was an exercise in “present-minded” history and a hymnal to what Macaulay saw as British physical, moral, and intellectual development (apparently unable to practice what he preached, Butterfield applied twentieth-century standards of historical scholarship to nineteenth century historians). The gist of Butterfield’s critique was that because modern moral and ethical standards are superior to those of the past, it is unreasonable to impose such standards on historical figures. Better to leave right and wrong, and judgments about winners and losers out of the history texts altogether. After Butterfield many historians began to make wildly evasive maneuvers to steer clear of moral judgments. Thus it wasn’t long before we began to hear dubitable dons mouth such palpable absurdities as communism wasn’t good or bad—just different.
Accusations of presentism have long been employed by apologists to rationalize the depraved behavior—in particular the anti-Semitism–of historical figures from Martin Luther to Louis Farrakhan. Luther’s present-day disciples are particularly outspoken on the subject of whig history, though few would recognize the term. The Great Reformer, it is repeatedly alleged, was but a product of his time and place, i.e., a typical superstitious, Jew-hating, Medieval Saxon, and as such modern society cannot hold him accountable for beliefs, ideas and actions that only today in our hypersensitive, morally advanced times are thought sinful. This scarcely corresponds with our innate need to hold our ecclesiastical heroes–men like Luther, Augustine of Hippo, and the numerous contemporary Muslim clerics thought to have God’s ear–to a higher standard of moral accountability than the rest of us mere laypeople. Indeed, in each case a close examination of the man and his moral ideas proves disappointing. Hence supporters have but one recourse to justify the vile behavior and the sinful pronouncements of their leaders: Allegations of presentism. Yes, Luther was an ultra-nationalist who loathed Jews, Anabaptists, Catholics, peasants, the Renaissance and reason, but didn’t everyone? And yes, Augustine advocated burning heretics and advised that the Jew “suffer and be continually humiliated,” but then in his day that was simply par for the course. Taken to its logical conclusion, then, we must concede that Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were but products of their time and national character. Thus if Martin Luther’s anti-Semitism is excused on grounds that it was normal for his place and time, are we to absolve the Nazis of the Holocaust since their anti-Semitism was similarly common in twentieth-century Duetschland?
I will concede that critics of presentism are correct in one respect: only a beetlehead would blame the ancients for the lack of scientific knowledge extant in their day. Socrates believed in a preposterous pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses. Does this make Socrates’ views on government any less insightful? Does the fact that Aristotle was a slave-owner who judged the sun to move round the earth diminish the genius of his poetic theory? Because of the then scarcity of scientific evidence (fossil records, geological deposits) it would seem proper to make allowances for those pre-Darwinians who accepted the existence of gods and godlings. And when one allows for gods, one is open to all sorts of the superstitious manifestations. Post-Darwinian man, however, does not get off quite so easily, and may explain why many humanists regard the pre-Darwinian skeptics–thinkers on the order of Diderot, Paine, Shelley, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft—to be the greatest intellectual heroes of their age, in particular those who thrived in a repressive Christian age whose monotheism, admittedly, was rather easier to swallow than the Roman and Greek deities. If we regard Columbus as a hero—despite the ongoing attempts of some to turn him into a genocidal maniac—it is because in the midst of the repression and persecution of the Spanish Inquisition, he courageously sought to discover the truth about the physical world. The same goes for Abelard, Copernicus, Galileo, Servetus, and countless more medieval martyrs.
It is easy to see why presentism is held in such contempt, for without an uncompromising belief in the evolution of right and wrong many of our historical heroes would come off looking no better than a Senator Joe McCarthy or a Slobodan Milosevic. Anti-whig historians must then accept that morals and values, rather than being fixed like the vast and immovable stars, are as changeable as a bi-polar sufferer’s disposition.
I, for one, am not convinced. Generally speaking, wrong has always consisted of inflicting injuries on other people, whereas “right wrongs no man,” to quote the Scottish proverb. It follows then that murder, hatred, exploitation, intolerance, and bearing false witness have always been wrong, and have always been known to be wrong. Doubtless, the Christian rabble-rousers of the Middle Ages who led the persecution of “witches” and “Jewish devils” were fully aware of the viciousness of their acts, despite the blessings of Mother Church. If one were legitimately in doubt as to the ethics of such persecutions, one had only to recall the commandment of Jesus of Nazareth: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you…”
Anti-Semitism and slavery remain two of history’s popular moral benchmarks, though most modern historians grant dispensations to historical heroes for their Jew hatred and slave-owning. Difficulties arise, however, when one recalls men, even in Medieval Europe, who condemned the heinousness of anti-Semitism and slavery. One of these was the theologian Pierre Abelard, who, in the tenth century, wrote in defense of the Jews:
No nation has ever suffered so much for God. Dispersed among all nations, without king or secular ruler, the Jews are oppressed with heavy taxes as if they had to repurchase their very lives every day. To mistreat the Jews is considered a deed pleasing to God. Such imprisonment as is endured by the Jews can be conceived by the Christians only as a sign of God’s utter wrath. The life of the Jews is in the hands of their worst enemies. Even in their sleep they are plagued by nightmares. Heaven is their only place of refuge. If they want to travel to the nearest town, they have to buy protection with the high sums of money from the Christian rulers who actually wish for their death so that they can confiscate their possessions. The Jews cannot own land or vineyards because there is nobody to vouch for their safekeeping. Thus, all that is left them as a means of livelihood is the business of money-lending, and this in turn brings the hatred of Christians upon them.
We know what Abelard received for his pains: murder attempts, condemnation and castration. Meanwhile Luther’s excuse was that Yahweh expected too much from sinful man, that there was no way in hell mankind could keep God’s rigorous commandments. May as well then toss Holy Writ down the crapper.
What then shall we make of men like Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia and pre-eminent slave-owner? Do we topple him from his pedestal and T.P. his monument, or do we rather accept that he was a normal eighteenth-century Virginia planter? To be sure, Jefferson was in no way a “normal” Virginian, not by any stretch of the imagination. But he was a human being, born in original sin, and acquiring a good deal more along the way. Voltaire said that “every hero becomes a bore at last.” I take this to mean that every hero becomes a human being at last, with all the failings, stupidities, prejudices and inconsistencies of our damned human race. Luther, a passionate believer in Heaven and Hell, was correct when he said we are all sinners–himself in particular. Fortunately for Luther–and many another historical hero–he will not be subjected to the flames and agonies of his imaginary Inferno.
Christopher Orlet’s homepage is www.christopherorlet.net
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Another Bad Defense
We’ll get back to the religious discussion (and anyway it’s continuing in a lively manner in the comments), but other things come up in the meantime. This item may seem like just a bit of self-advertising, but it isn’t really. I hadn’t even seen it until today, and didn’t know about it, so I feel I came by it honestly. That is to say, I would have linked to it anyway, even if it had not been by someone who writes a column for B&W; I would have linked to it if I’d never heard of Julian. I would have done a Note and Comment as well, because he mentions some ideas I’ve been scratching away at lately, and others that suggest new areas for further inquiry.
There is this for instance:
Several months ago I was contacted by another Sunday morning show to discuss some religious issue or other, and on that occasion the producer explicitly said that the reason for not using me was that I was “not extreme enough”. This is the kind of thinking that hampers serious, constructive debate over the challenges a multicultural society faces. The media almost invariably confuse balanced coverage with having two sides put equal and opposite cases.
That is a pretty bizarre thing for a producer to say, isn’t it. Arguably, of course, it’s not so much ‘thinking’ as sheer bottom-line calculation. Viewers prefer to watch people with polarized ideas shout at each other rather than people with overlapping ideas tease out their disagreements and discuss the reasons for them. That’s not entertaining, who wants to watch that! It’s useful, it’s helpful, it’s constructive, it teaches everyone something, but it’s not like watching a street fight, so the hell with it. But too right about hampering proper debate. That’s something that gets plaintively pointed out here quite often, too, but fat lot of good it does. James Fallows said it in his book Breaking the News, and Deborah Tannen said it in hers The Argument Culture. But to no one’s surprise the McLaughlin group and Bill O’Reilly didn’t suddenly mend their ways.
And we’ve been running into the same thing here lately, at least it seems so to me. It seems to me there was a strong either-or line on the hijab issue: either you’re completely unequivocally against it, or you’re wrong, and that’s all there is to it. Mention of possible reasons to oppose the hijab was just treated as thought-crime and either ignored or greeted with foam-at-the-mouth personal vituperation. There just wasn’t any room to treat it as a complicated issue with a lot to be said on both sides. That’s odd – but maybe another point Julian makes can help explain it:
The lazy use of derogatory labels is one symptom of this malaise. One of the least helpful of these is “Islamophobia”. The introduction of this term into the lexicon of multiculturalism has, at a stroke, made it much more difficult to draw the kind of careful distinctions a serious discussion needs. It should be obvious that there is a world of difference between disliking a belief system and hating its adherents. “Islamophobia” blurs this distinction, by suggesting that opposition to Islam is just a prejudice, like homophobia or racism.
Exactly so. I’ve squandered a lot of breath (and typing energy) lately arguing that it’s a really terrible idea to conflate religion with race, and that includes conflating any particular religion with race. They are very, very different things, both because one is voluntary and escapable and the other is not, and because one is a system of ideas and the other is not. Make religion the equivalent of race and in an instant you’ve made it much more difficult to disagree with anything a given religion does. Which of course is exactly why the defenders of religion and religions do it. But why the defenders of multiculuralism do it is another matter, and one that needs some looking into.
By eliding “race and culture” and presenting them as though they were two sides of the same coin, Phillips tarred Goodhart with the Powellite brush. But this is nonsense. Race and culture are not inseparable. Culture concerns beliefs and practices and we are responsible for what we believe and do. We have no such responsibility for the colour of our skin or ethnicity.
Exactly. Just what I say! Therefore must be right. So there’s another confusion we all need to oppose, along with the one about religion and ‘separate spheres.’ Religion is not entitled to defense on the basis of being the same sort of thing as poetry or love, and it’s also not entitled to defense on the basis of being the same sort of thing as race. It’s going to have to do better than that.
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Julian Baggini ‘Not Extreme Enough’
Race and culture are not inseparable, and simplification doesn’t help.
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The Future of Multiculturalism
Guardian readers react to David Goodhart’s essay on diversity versus solidarity.
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Solidarity Can Conflict With Diversity
The left’s love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values it once championed.
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Not Only Where but Also What
Funny, it didn’t even seem like that much of a storm. I went out for a walk in it, thinking it was just a common or garden variety storm. I didn’t turn back after five minutes because I was drenched, so it can’t have been raining all that hard! It was certainly raining sideways, thanks to the wind, but I have been in many harder rains. I was wet when I got back but not soaked. And yet there were floods. And then awhile later there was more wind, and then there was a sudden unpleasant absence of electricity, which lasted more than seven hours. Nature can be so obstructive.
I was going to say something about meaning (and what we mean by it), but I want to say a little more about borders first, and also about what we mean by ‘science’. Those two things are essentially the same subject, but approached from different angles. What we mean by ‘science’ makes an enormous difference to what we mean by those formulas about the separate spheres – to where we draw those contentious borders between them. Or rather not all that contentious – not contentious enough. That’s my point. For some reason the platitude about ‘Science over here’ and ‘many other valuable things over here on the other side’ gets endlessly repeated and not questioned enough. If it can get repeated and not questioned even by such a thoroughgoing rationalist and scientist as Gould, we know something must be odd.
One thing worth mentioning is that it’s not only a matter of the location of the borders, but also one of what the borders are actually like. Are they sharp and clear like a fence or a wall? Or are they more vague and blurry, like, Oh, that range of hills; like, From about here to about over there somewhere. Or are they in fact not a border or division at all but a continuum. Maybe it is simply not the case that science is entirely different from poetry, emotion, love, justice and the other items that usually go in the other sphere. Maybe science is simply continuous with rational inquiry, only (as Susan Haack puts it) more so. If that’s the case (and I think it is) then is science really entirely irrelevant to, say, love, or poetry? Is it out of the question to think about either of those things in a rational way? One can think about things in a rational way without thereby excluding also thinking about them in a non-rational way, after all. And surely we all do. Martha Nussbaum has an excellent illustration of this, I’ve just remembered while typing, in Sex and Social Justice [sorry I can’t give the page reference at the moment, because I’m Away and don’t have it with me]. She’s discussing Nell Noddings’ ideas about women’s ‘different’ approach to knowledge via ‘caring,’ and she offers as example her feeling of unreflective love for her daughter on seeing her asleep on the couch after a basketball game. Very nice, says Nussbaum, but is it really true? Aren’t there all sorts of rational ideas underlying that unreflective feeling? How does she even know that is her daughter for example? And how does she know the sleep is a healthy athletic one and not a drug-induced stupor? And many more elaborations of the idea, which are both convincing and amusing.
So that’s the kind of thing I mean. The banal version means something like: science is in another sphere from love because you can’t stick love in a test tube or on a scale. True enough, but it doesn’t follow that you can’t learn anything at all about it by taking thought and even to some extent by considering evidence. And surely that applies to most of the items in the usual version of the Other Sphere. They may not belong in a test tube, but it doesn’t follow that there is nothing of interest or value to be said and thought about them via analysis and inquiry and investigation. The whole scheme is in fact a canard, and should be done away with.
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A Counter-cultural Antiques Roadshow
Review of Curtis White’s The Middle Mind deplores ‘torn-jeans prose.’
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What is the Connection Between Religion and War?
‘In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.’
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Muslims in Nigeria Boycott Immunisation
Polio vaccination is suspected as American plot to make Muslims infertile.
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East of the Border
José mentioned the resort to fuzzy and misleading analogies that sophisticated theists resort to. I’ve been thinking, and scribbling notes, about that for a day or two. It’s true. There are fuzzy misleading analogies that crop up over and over again. I’m short on time at the moment, so will just say a couple of things, and go on at more length tomorrow.
There is for instance another version of the ‘separate sphere’ argument. That ‘science’ (never explicitly defined, and always cited in such a way that it’s implicitly defined far too narrowly) is in one sphere and poetry, art, morality, meaning and similar (often including things like love) are in another, along with of course religion. But if one thinks about it, that’s an odd way to draw the map. I could just as easily draw a quite different map, or several different maps, with the borders in quite different places. With science and all other kinds of empirical inquiry in one sphere and perhaps art, poetry, meaning and religion in another. Or with empirical inquiry and secular activities such as art and poetry along with emotion in one, and religion and ‘meaning’ in another. Or with all the terms except religion on one side and religion all by itself on the other. It all depends on which criteria you use to decide who goes on which side, doesn’t it.
And that gets into the misleading analogy aspect. Poetry and literature are great favourites for this – but that is indeed a bad analogy. There is a reason fiction is called ‘fiction’ for instance. Because it’s fiction. Surely an enormously important difference between literature and religion is that literature does not claim to be true in the way that religion does. Nobody talks about having ‘faith’ in Anna Kareninina or Macbeth. Nobody reproaches presidential candidates for not mentioning Elizabeth Bennett or Don Quixote often enough. Nobody ends a campaign speech with ‘Hamlet bless you.’ It’s a very tendentious matter where that border should be drawn, as it so often is with borders. It’s a victory for the theist side if as many items as possible are included on their side – in short everything except laboratory science. But one could argue that none of the items really belong there – except possibly ‘meaning.’ I have some thoughts on that, but they’ll have to wait.