The eternal conflict between collectivisim and individualism rages on in America, and a new book seeks to capitalize on fusing the many fronts this war is waged: combining religious apologetics, capitalist worship, and American exceptionalism.
Ben Shapiro, a conservative pundit, is an intelligent and articulate communicator who hosts a web show “The Daily Wire” where he chooses hard-line stances on divisive issues to appeal to a devoted base. While his occasional appearances on Fox News have earned some global attention, an article by The New York Times titled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web” gave him a much wider recognition.
The text in question “The Right Side of History,” seeks to establish a narrative that America has grown into the unique and successful country it is because of a commitment to “Judeo-Christian values,” and the philosophical lessons from Athens.
We believe freedom is built upon the twin notions that God created every human in His image, and that human beings are capable of investigating and exploring God’s world. Those notions were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively.
This paragraph, take from the introduction portion of his book, illustrates the sandy foundation which this narrative is constructed. The “we” fallacy, so early exposed, alerts the reader that Shapiro is writing to a select audience which already agrees with his position. Similar to his debate style, Shapiro has smuggled an assertion, that America could only have flourished because of Judaism and Christianity, into the argument, and the rest of the book is a slanted history lesson to fulfill this claim.
While it is difficult to tell if this is in bad-faith, or if Shapiro is poorly read, regarding the argument he is joining, is unclear. Either way his journalistic background should have led him to do a more strenuous job researching this topic – after all, bold claims demand that he at least grapple the strongest of the opposing arguments. Instead, and unfortunately, Shapiro’s claims make him resemble the religious apologists visible on Youtube today who clam their sacred texts predicted many of the scientific discoveries unfathomable to the people of their time of origin – only Shapiro attempts this politically rather than scientifically.
In one of his more extraordinary claims, Shapiro argues that the Middle Ages were in fact times of scientific growth. He frames this by alleging that the “Dark Ages” were a title used as a smear against Christianity, that education was centralized in monasteries (which he implies is good), and that discoveries were had in the development of war and agriculture.
Popular history maintains that this period represented the “Dark Ages.” but that’s simply inaccurate. Progress continued as Christianity spread. The monastic system centralized learning in manasteries, where priests and nuns devoted themselves to ascetic pursuit of Divine understanding. In educational terms, this devotion revolved around scripture… Meanwhile, the Middle Ages saw technological revolution in agriculture, the rise of commerce, and the institution of new forms of art ranging from polyphonic music to Gothic architecture; it also saw new developments in the art of war, with technological advances that would allow the West to defeat its enemies in the course of coming centuries.
The reader may notice that these same claims may be attributed to more modern examples. Attention may be drawn to North Korea: education has been centralized with a focus on the leader rather than the bible, agriculture has had some innovation, and instruments of war are being developed. I don’t think any western writer would claim North Korea is in a period of enlightenment, but he or she is welcome to prove me wrong.
This mischaracterization persists as Shapiro moves forward to attack The Enlightenment. He frames the title as a slight against Christian values, as he argues that to suggest an enlightenment implies that Christian values were a hindrance to thought.
But advocates of the so-called Enlightenment offer a different theory. They suggest that the philosophy of the modern West – the philosophy of individual rights, particularly – sprang from rejection of religion and embrace of reason. The proponents of the self-proclaimed age of reason flatter themselves that we live today in accordance with the thought of great Enlightenment thinkers, bold new minds who sprang forth from the ground, wholly formed, ready to do battle with, and triumph over, the ancients. In fact, the very term Enlightenment suggests a pre-Enlightenment era in which religion inhibited human development rather than fostering it – and by extension, suggests that belief in Judeo-Christian values and God Himself was at best an obstruction to modern Western Civilization. [italics are his].
What Shapiro seems to miss here is that the Enlightenment was a breaking away from indoctrinated thought. This could not be achieved with the Church’s chokehold on literacy. The accessibility of the public gaining the ability to read the book from which authority claimed it’s power derived caused a mass emancipation. One can replace any book in the place of the bible, and the results would have been the same.
This is a good time to explain a criticism leveled against Shapiro’s argument by a fellow purported member of The New York Time’s “Intellectual Dark Web.” Sam Harris remarked that the argument suffered from “The Genetic Fallacy.” The point Harris was trying relay was that Shapiro was arguing that it could only happen one way, which is fallacious. Any religion could replace Catholicism in the above scenario and the Enlightenment could still have happened. It had little to do with Christianity and more to do with human nature rebelling against authority.
Shapiro spent a significant portion of his book arguing that Judaism and Christianity furthered human thought, then spent time criticizing the Enlightenment – magnifying the events of The French Revolution as a punching bag as an example of how it went wrong (whilst suspiciously silent about The Crusades). The genetic fallacy is also present in assuming that Judaism and Christianity were the only two institutions that could foster this slow progression of human perseverance.
On the topic of “Judeo-Christian” ancestry, Hannah Arendt illuminates this phenomenon and pulls together Greek and Roman thoughts on the matter.
The problem of human nature, the Augustinian quote quaestio mihi factus sum (“a question have I become for myself”), seems unanswerable in both its individual psychological sense and its general philosophical sense. It is highly unlikely that we, who can know, determine, and define the natural essence of all things surrounding us, which we are not, should ever be able to do the same for ourselves – this would be like jumping over our own shadows. Moreover, nothing entitles us to assume that man has a nature or essence, then surely only a god could know and define it, and first prerequisite would be that he be able to speak about “who” as though it were a “what.” The perplexity is that the modes of human cognition applicable to things with “natural” qualities, including ourselves to the limited extent that we are specimens of the most highly developed species of organic life, fail us when we raise the question: And who are we? This is why attempts to define human nature almost invariably end with some construction of a deity, that is, with the god of the philosophers, who, since Plato, has revealed himself upon closer inspection to be a kind of Platonic idea of man…
Monotheisms are an extension of human thought, a thinking tool, like Plato’s cave, that allow people to grasp their place in the universe. But again, it could have been any theory of a god. Shapiro is placing far too much emphasis on the Christian god in this context. Now it must be admitted, criticism against the Enlightenment is helpful. It is important to accept the flaws of the past and not elevate the past to a position undeserved, and no movement, time period, or teaching is without error. Shapiro’s criticisms would have been better served without the baggage of his defense of Christianity. It distracted from his broader inquiry.
In an recent interview regarding the publication of his book with BBC, Shapiro was flustered and the moment went viral. Readers have probably already seen it, but many have focused on the spectacle of his appearing foolish, rather than a very telling utterance by Shapiro’s. The revealing statement in question, “I believe that if you are somebody who takes Judaism seriously, that comes along with ideological commitment,” is an admission of the forced lens with which Shapiro structures his worldview.
This is very informative when reading or reflecting on the book. It reveals Shapiro’s stance on Republicanism/Conservatism and why he so confidently can criticize Trump and the Alt-Right. It explains how his commitment to Capitalism, and how he attacks things that go against his definition of the free-market. This book is a window into Shapiro’s rigid mind as he tries to fuse these three commitments – Conservatism, Capitalism, and Judaism – into one coherent framework.
It is easier to criticize than to provide an answer, and Shapiro should receive a measure of respect for putting his thoughts into the open and trying his hand at answering his twofold question: Why is America so successful? And why are Americans so angry? He offered his interpretation, and it was both valuable and coherent, so in fairness, more than criticism should be offered here.
As to the division: this is a product of the shrinking personal-life. Leading up to, and during the 2016 election, the slumping economy stressed people’s incomes. The gig-economy made up this difference for many people but hung a shroud of uncertainty over many American’s live. Democracies suffer when their economies do poorly because the masses of voters seek someone to solve the mess. Social media allowed for the venting of these frustrations, and frustration bred greater frustration as voices found confirmation in other complaints.
It must be said, divisiveness is not bad so long as the concerns and ideas expressed are constantly forcing a response from the opposing argument; unfortunately, the business model of social media did not, and perhaps still does not, foster this atmosphere. Instead, the resentment which festered within the two hemispheres of the public consciousness was allowed to grow unchallenged until the 2016 election forced a reckoning.
Shapiro correctly identified that America was indeed founded on many of the most resilient ideas of older democracies. Applying the Cartesian Method, the Founding Fathers took what was useful, discarded what was useless, and added what is essentially their own.
Probably the greatest example of this can be witnessed in the Federalist Papers number 39. Knowing that a republic was the strongest form of government, but further knowing that America was too large for a republic to be effective, Madison proposed a radical theory of a multi-republic country that was bound together by a constitutional agreement thereby protecting each state’s sovereignty while binding them to a larger government.
Where Shapiro misses a mark in the conclusion is in assuming the Fathers had faith in reason – they instead had faith in debate. While reason may lead minds to truth, truth does not always win arguments (Aristotle himself argued that while truth has the advantage, it does not always win over the crowd). Instead, by immortalizing free speech in the constitution, and pitting the tyrannical impulses of those in power against one another, the Fathers allowed for an eternal battle to keep the country always striving to better itself.
Lucid Ink 