August 7, 2008
NO MAN IS A MOUNTAIN:
The Christian Roots of the West (Dinesh D'Souza, Aug 7th 2008, AOL News)
[J]urgen Habermas is now regarded as perhaps our leading living philosopher. Habermas is also an atheist. Yet when Habermas found out that the European Union in its charter gave full acknowledgement to ancient Greece and Rome, but none to Christianity, he erupted in learned outrage.Habermas's argument is that it is philosophically illiterate to locate the roots of the West in Athens but not in Jerusalem. In fact, Habermas argues that Jerusalem--by which he means Judaism and Christianity--is far more responsible than Athens for the modern principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. In "A Time of Transition," Habermas writes:
For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.
Habermas's point is that there is too much arrogance in contemporary atheism. Even the atheist is standing on mountain erected by Christianity. How ungrateful it is to scorn the mountain that is still holding you up! How ridiculous the posture of the man who cannot acknowledge the very foundation that sustains him from below!
Their ridiculousness is their charm. To hear an atheist, a Darwinist, a libertarian, a Marxist, etc. speak is to be amused by every thoughtless word. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2008 9:08 AM
A wise man I know refers to the promulgators of this phenomenon as "parasites of Christianity."
I would add, to Habermas's list in the third paragraph, a healthy balance between faith and reason (see Benedict's Regensburg address), and a wise willingness to render to Caesar's what is Caesar's, while hoping that what he means by universalistic egalitaianism is equality in the eyes of God and in access to opportunity rather than equality of results.
Posted by: Qiao Yang at August 7, 2008 1:05 PMI'd agree that atheists and Marxists deny the mountain they stand on, but that doesn't apply to more than a small percentage of libertarians and Darwinists.
Posted by: PapayaSF at August 7, 2008 1:37 PMIt's quite remarkable the speed and degree to which Western cultural memory has been jettisoned. Forget about going back to Shakespeare or Chaucer. Try reading Undset, Sienkiewicz, or Jokai today. Our culture is far more distant from the readers they wrote for roughly a century ago then they were from the average Westerner a millenia before them.
Posted by: b at August 7, 2008 2:10 PMBefore the Civil War, Macauley made the point that as early as the Dark Ages, Christianity, in Europe, eradicated the human slavery that provided the engine of production to both Rome and Greece, and practically everywhere else. The slavery of the "other" finally eradicated by Wilberforce and Lincoln was also brought about essentially by Christianity, which may have to do it again in China and Africa generally. (And to what extent is Christianity responsible for eradicating the slavery of Communism and Nazism in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe? Such a record can not be matched by any other philosophy. To paraphrase Pitt, we know the one thing that can defeat human slavery. And nothing else can or ever will.
Posted by: George Clarke at August 7, 2008 5:17 PMThe great Richard Rorty self-described it as freeloading.
Posted by: oj at August 7, 2008 5:25 PM
Atheists, etc.
You left out the witches and queers.
Posted by: Lou Gots at August 7, 2008 9:28 AM