MENANDACITY:

Aspidistra (Leon Wieseltier, 02.11.03, New Republic)

For The New Yorker's authority on Orwell, the danger lies not in the fading of the concept of objective truth, but in the clinging to the concept of objective truth. Menand thinks that truth is merely a warrant for terrorism, that objectivity is just an early form of fanaticism, that certainty only kills. "Moral certainty of any kind can lead to bloodshed," he asserts in Raritan, in a piece that is critical of the abolitionists of the nineteenth century. "Of any kind": All certainty is like all other certainty, its content is insignificant, all that matters are its consequences. Menand has risen above substance. He is indifferent, and afraid. His fear is understandable: When one has renounced the inquiry into truth and falsity, certainty must seem terrifying. Every conviction must look like an absolute. And so he notes that "in defining the United States as a civilization in opposition to militant Islam, even President Bush found himself, in his speech before Congress right after the attacks, explaining that moral certainty is precisely what makes the enemy so dangerous." Do you follow? A war against jihad is itself a jihad. There is no distinction between a just war and a holy war. What a haul of irony! In this way "the modernist paradox is complete: Americans now find themselves in the position of fighting, and being willing to die, for the belief that no one should be made to die for a belief." Menand is fond of that miserably apathetic sentence: He published it also in The New Yorker last fall, in a review of books about the catastrophe of September 11, adding there that "Americans hold it to be a transcendent truth that it is possible to live a good life without loyalty to a transcendent cause." Philosophy is finished. Go shopping.

Who are these Americans whose spiritual condition Menand intuits so clearly? Myself, I have less anecdotal evidence for the population's perfect post-modernity. I have met Americans who are willing to fight and to die for a belief, and Americans who are not willing; and Americans who would like to discuss the particular belief a little more. And if we are indeed a nation of suave anti-foundationalists, too enlightened or too embarrassed about transcendent causes, then I see no reason to worry about, say, John Ashcroft and the political Christianity that he faithfully and inappropriately serves. Ashcroft is a nasty creature of certainty, no question about it; but his opponents are no less certain that his certainty is false. And so they should be, in my view. In Menand's view, however, the argument can never be closed. He derides Orwell's linguistic contributions to modern liberalism--"Big Brother," "doublethink," "thought police"--as "belong[ing] to the same category as `liar' and `pervert' and `madman.' They are conversation-stoppers." But why should some conversations not be stopped, not concluded with the demonstration that a man who was called a liar actually lied? Or is stopping the conversation in this way like stopping the conversation in the totalitarian way? John Brown in Pottawatomie and Mohammed Atta in Manhattan acted in a similar spirit, but it is significant that the former dreamed of freeing enslaved people and the latter dreamed of enslaving free people. The notion that the hatred of slavery was an excess of hatred, and perhaps that the Civil War was not quite a war worth fighting, is bizarre. With their metaphysics, Menand writes, the world of the abolitionists and the world of the slave-owners "seem to have more in common with each other than either does with our own." There speaks the pragmatist: fascinating at a dinner, useless in a struggle. Unlike Menand's Orwell, the pragmatist is not "a misfit." He is a fit.

Orwell, right or wrong? (Tim Rutten, February 15, 2003, LA Times)

Menand, Hitchens said, "either misread or is misreading Orwell. The motive here is: 'Who wants to write another piece saying Orwell is a great guy?' Orwell's reputation does involve a certain kind of piety. Therefore, there's a certain itch or temptation toward iconoclasm that is just about excusable. To say this guy is overrated is also to implicitly say you have the courage to challenge the consensus."

But, according to Hitchens -- who recently has completed a major introductory essay to a new single-volume edition of "Animal Farm" and "1984" -- what Menand wrote was closer to distortion than misunderstanding.

"Orwell's attitude toward war with Hitler initially was shaped by his anxiety that the Tories would not wage a total war on fascism, but a half-hearted war of empire. He wanted a people's war.

"It only slowly came to him that the Churchill wing was willing to make a real fight of it. I think that's a perfectly honorable evolution. Menand represents him as a bit of an appeaser, which is disgraceful."

Hitchens also takes strong exception to Menand's dismissal of Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism and totalitarianism: "Actually, very few were against all of it at the same time. It was quite rare then -- and still is, as a matter of fact.

"To sum it up, Menand had a contrarian itch, the integrity of which is compromised by his failure to read Orwell with attention and by misrepresenting him on this crucial matter of the war."

For many of you this will be redundant, for which we apologize, but our essay about the Menand review is here and here's our review of Mr. Menand's book, The Metaphysical Club.

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-Brothers Judd Orwell reviews Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2003 9:19 AM