The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited by John Carroll
(Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2008)

HUGH MERCER CURTLER is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Southwest Minnesota State University and recently published Provoking Thought with Florida Academic Press.

John Carroll is not concerned about thedecline of Western culture; in his mindthat ship has sailed. Western culture is nomore and lies scattered about us in ruins.He sees the fall of the Twin Towers in NewYork as symbolic of the wreck of Westernculture that perished over one hundredyears ago. He makes a persuasive case inthis book which is nothing less than an intellectualtour de force taking us breathlesslyfrom the heights of Western culture in ancientGreece past its funeral dirge, sung byNietzsche, to the films of John Ford andthe novels of Henry James—"two later attemptsto build anew within the wreckage."On that journey, which incorporateskey works of literature and philosophytogether with remarkably sensitive andinsightful interpretations of selected paintingsand film, not to mention a discriminatingear for the music of Bach, Carrollseeks to "arouse disgust" in the reader andmake him yearn for the restoration of faithin God. Western culture, culminating inthe humanities, has transformed the "I"into the "me" of self-satisfied Occidentalswho think living the good life means "toconsume, to procreate, and to sleep." Inthese terms, says Carroll, "there was giantprogress." But along the way what we call"high culture" slowly crumbled into a pileof rubble.

Carroll greatly admires Edmund Burke'sReflections on the Revolution in France andapplauds his "fight against the advance ofnihilism." But, in the end, he considers theconservative movement in general "a futilereaction against the juggernaut of modernity,a series of last-ditch stands here andthere, on occasion successful for the momentwhile the war is steadily lost." Hisreal heroes are Martin Luther and SørenKierkegaard, the former because he ledthe attack—not against the Roman CatholicChurch, but against the dawning ofhumanism with its self-worship; the latterbecause he sought to breathe new lifeinto the dying carcass of Protestantism.Kierkegaard's mistake was trying to findhis way to the faith of Martin Luther bymeans of human reason, whereas Carrollis convinced that our confidence in reason,which reached its height during theEnlightenment, coupled with our mistakennotion that humans have free will,brought about the wreck of Western culture.He seeks to have us return to Luther's"death of death" by way of a blind faithin the necessity of God's will: a "faith ina stable world predicated on a fixed higherorder strong enough not to come tumblingdown if [things] start to run amok."

Make no mistake: this is a deeply disturbingbook—not because the thesis isdisquieting (to say the least), but becausethe thesis is so convincingly argued. Carrollmakes a strong case, and while somereaders—like the reviewer in the Guardianquoted on the dust jacket—might findCarroll "half-crazed," they will have toadmit (along with that reviewer) that he isalso "at times brilliant." The journey thisauthor would take us on is breathtakingand exhilarating, while at the same timeit does indeed arouse disgust when weconsider that "the heritage of the death ofculture in the humanist mode has been aroutine public life, and a retreat into theindividual unconscious in the hope of stavingoff madness or melancholia.... [HerbertHendon's] rat girl is the reality, the truechild of modern culture." The epitaph forthis culture, as written by John Carroll, is,"I no longer believe in anything beyondmyself." What possible role could suchinstitutions as the universities play in theworld John Carroll describes?

Traditionally, the university's primaryrole has been to preserve high culture andpass it along to the younger generation.Additionally, as Max Weber noted a centuryago, students came to universities "insearch of answers to the great metaphysicalquestions—what to do and how to live."Today, however, we find mainly a fewscattered graybeards who know or careabout high culture standing among hordesof students who think the meaning of lifeis to be found in the pursuit of pleasure.Surrounding the graybeards are legionsof brash young faculty members busilystuffing their political agendas down thethroats of uninterested and unprepared undergraduateswho want only to have fun,get their degree, and go to work and makea living. The function of the university inour postmodern world has clearly changedand this change supports John Carroll'sthesis that, at the very least, high cultureshows little sign of life. In his words, "theuniversity [has become] a conglomerate ofsingle-person sects each obeying his or herindividual conscience, while all aroundthe institution decays into an aimless andmoribund bureaucracy." If this author isright about the current condition of theuniversity, is he also right about the wreckof that culture as a whole?

On the face of it, this book might seemlike just another postmodern attack on the"despised logos," since Carroll holds humanreason in low esteem, subject to "demonicforces" within the individual thatrender it "weak, subsidiary, and circumscribed."His choice of faith over reasonis avowedly that of "the darkness of faithwhere the light of reason does not shine."But postmodernism, despite its devastatingeffect on higher education, is simply a reappearanceof the Romantic revolt againstreason that began with Goethe; it has nointellectual credibility. The author sees itas little more than a feature of our "fantasylife" on a level with the Hollywood movieand the popular song. Carroll's position,in contrast, has considerable intellectualcredibility and must be taken seriously.At the same time, Carroll most assuredlyagrees with postmodernism in his rejectionof human reason. He notes that anyattempt to reason our way to human goodness,as was attempted by Immanuel Kant,is doomed to failure as was Kierkegaard'sattempt to reason his way to faith. "Theforces that determine goodness—that is,whether humans obey the moral law ornot—have little to do with either reason orwill. They have to do with faith and its obscureminions." And here lies the criticaldifference between John Carroll and thezealots in the academy who are intent onreplacing reason and truth with a thin pabulumof sociology and cultural anthropology.Postmodernists embrace themselvesand their own theories; Carroll embracesfaith in God.

As well, despite his call for a returnto "the darkness of faith" in God, Carrolldiffers in important respects from theevangelical fundamentalists in this country.One must suppose that this author hasno time for the "feel-good" religion ofthe fundamentalist variety that has doneso much to foster anti-rationalism in ourschools: the goal here is to "kill Luther'smonster and once again achieve the deathof death." Compromise is unacceptable:commitment to God must be total. Mostcomfortable Christians who attend Sundayservice while sipping a latté wouldfind Carroll's agenda too demanding. Onemust find salvation by an extinction of self,finding meaning outside the self in love forothers and, ultimately, in an unflinchingfaith in God. In order to accomplish that"it is time to bury the dead and to start thedifficult business of restoring our capacityfor life." This sounds alarmingly like a formulataken from a postmodern text, but,once again, we must bear in mind that forJohn Carroll the restoration of "our capacityfor life" is not to be found in shallowself-indulgence, or condemnation of creedsand people we find intolerable, but onlythrough a leap of faith in a loving God thateven Kierkegaard was unable to take.

This book is unquestionably as brilliantlywritten as it is disturbing. At theend of the day, however, after we have paidthe author due homage, we must pause. Ifwe are to agree with Carroll that Westernculture has been dead for more thanone hundred years and that we have latelybeen rummaging around among the brokenremnants of a culture that is rapidlyturning to dust, we must face the questionof where we go from here. It is not enoughto insist that we recover the blind faith ofa Martin Luther. That is no longer possiblefor the vast majority of Westerners whoare lost in a cloud of hedonistic pleasurethey mistake for happiness—though thiscould end suddenly if we lose control ofour own technical wizardry. Nor is it possible,or acceptable, to reject human reasonaltogether as Carroll seems to do. In hisinsistence that we embrace "the darknessof faith where the light of reason does notshine," his argument smacks of bifurcation,and we must reject his final conclusion astoo extreme and leading to helplessnessin the face of seemingly insurmountablereal-world problems. What he means, ofcourse, is that we must not blanch at thecontradictions that reason tells us lie at theheart of faith in God—that humans are responsiblefor their acts while at the sametime they are not truly free; that God isgood, but His creation is flawed; that innocentssuffer while evil men prosper. Tobe sure, paradox and contradiction lie atthe heart of faith and must be embracedas mysteries beyond human understanding.But at the same time, we must act asif we are free and act responsibly. And indoing so we must try to determine whatis the right thing to do to save a planet weare rapidly destroying with our expandingpopulation and stubborn demands thatthe earth sustain us at our present level ofcomfort. As we do this we may want tocontinue to plumb the depths of the extraordinaryworks of men and women thatdefined Western culture—to the extentthat this is still possible.

Human reason may be a fragile thread,but it is the only one we have to lead us outof our present labyrinth. Faith alone leadsto quietism, and that will not allow us toaddress our many problems; to do that wemust remain engaged. Machiavelli was notalone in thinking that the devout Chris-tian makes a poor citizen. It is certainly thecase that Western culture has replaced Godwith the human ego (as Nietzsche saw soclearly that it drove him mad), and Carrollis correct to see this as a major cause of ourpresent malaise. But any workable solutionto real-world problems must reach outsidethe self to find meaning while at the sametime rethinking the thoughts of the greatminds that have come before us and trustingto reason and science to make possiblewhat we come to realize is absolutely necessaryfor the survival of the human race.At a time in our history when more thantwo-thirds of the American public do notknow that DNA is the key to heredity andone in five think the sun revolves aroundthe earth, we must repulse any attempt todenigrate reason. Faith begins with selfdenial,but it must find room for reason ifwe are to survive as a people and begin tofashion a new culture to replace the oldone we have destroyed. All of the rubblemust not be discarded.