The Inquiry and its Enemy
Or, a starting point
You find yourself at the beginning of an inquiry into the Western intellectual tradition, the Great Tradition of poetry, political philosophy, revealed religion and fiction that is the vital, tortured soul of Western civilization and cause of modernity. I have prepared for this inquiry for about a decade by studying the liberal arts and classics. My basic goals are to deepen my understanding of reality as it is disclosed in and through the Tradition and to convey valuable elements of my education to others — especially younger, curious minds who find themselves dissatisfied with our moral-political milieu. Depending on where you come from (personally and intellectually), you may be familiar with the texts and questions that will inform my inquiry. Even so, insofar as it is my inquiry — inflected with my own personality, perspective and purposes — you are now at the beginning. Welcome.
The inquiry is a quest. Every good question implies a quest, calls up the desire to seek an answer, to make an intellectual journey — to brave the darkness of ignorance in search of the light of truth. If any one question gives rise to this quest, it is, “What is man?” This is the fourth of Immanuel Kant’s four critical questions — the one into which he says the other three fold, i.e., his most fundamental and comprehensive question. The question is similarly crucial for Plato: the problem of the soul of man lurks behind the form and content of all his dialogues. All this is not to say, however, that the question of man is unimportant for other philosophers in the Tradition. The inquiry can hardly ignore, for example, Aristotle’s influential definitions of man; nor can it ignore the Christian conception of man as imago Dei or the results of modern natural science (such as the theory of evolution) and their manifold ramifications. Even so, I consider Plato and Kant to be especially attuned to this question and especially useful for all who wish to acquire a grasp of it amidst what has been called the crisis of modernity.
Now, this crisis has been variously characterized; but it doubtlessly involves liberalism’s ongoing crisis of confidence: is liberal-democracy good for man? If so, why? Or with what qualifications? Recent intellectual and political developments (the rise of postmodernism and nationalism, for example) force these questions upon us — alert denizens of a constitutionally liberal, democratic nation-state. I begin this quest, then, with the hope that studying the Tradition, especially Plato and Kant, will help us grasp the strengths and weaknesses of our civilization’s embattled regime. (In addition to Plato and Kant, Nietzsche may also prove to be essential; for he is both their greatest heir and critic and the most incisive critic of liberal-democracy). But above all I hope that the quest inaugurated by this essay will help all who undertake it to orient their souls in these our disorienting times.
My quest will focus on the canonical texts of political philosophy; but I anticipate that it will from time to time draw my attention to the texts and questions of other disciplines and modes of inquiry, e.g., history, theology and physics. I am only a thoughtful reader. I have no firm method, only a mode of reading. I have no expertise, only a good liberal education. My way of reading involves attending to detail and authorial intent. My understanding of the meaning and value of a liberal education will be explained in due course. —
Like all worthy quests, this inquiry has an enemy. Its name is postmodernism. Vanquishing the enemy, or at least depriving it — to some extent — of prey, is my urgent goal. The enemy is a monster with a black heart, fiendish head and two powerful, far-reaching arms. It is an elusive, shadowy beast; yet, we may posit at the outset of our quest that its heart is critical Theory; its head is Social Justice scholarship; and its arms are Social Justice activism and identity politics. My goal is to strike at the place where the head and heart of the monster meet in order to end its life and reign of terror in our times. The claim that postmodernism reigns today will be defended subsequently; but I am tempted to say it is self-evident: is our milieu not postmodern? Are we not led to doubt that modernity is or may be a happy home for human beings?
It is necessary at the outset to see the enemy clearly. What is this critical Theory — the apparent heart of the monster? It is an approach to the study of man and society developed in the 1960’s-70’s by “French social Theorists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, who were the original architects of what later came to be known simply as ‘Theory.’”1 The scholarship and influence of these intellectuals will be interrogated as this inquiry continues. It is sufficient for now to posit that their common aim was to undo the European Enlightenment: whereas the Enlightenment generally sought to enthrone reason or science as man’s final authority and guide, the founders of postmodernism or Theory sought to dethrone reason and with it all forms of authority. This, they claimed, was the final frontier of freedom: unfettered by any dogma of reason or religion, human beings might finally be able to act or express themselves without compunction.
By revolting against reason and revelation, the first postmodernists revolted also against every product of these, as well as the fecund tension between them, and the greatest or most comprehensive of these is nothing other than our Western civilization itself: postmodernism is inherently anti-Western. For postmodernists of all stripes, “the West” is a complex of oppression, “reason” and “revelation” two masks worn by those few who benefit from it.
Regarding the influence of Theory in America, it is sufficient for now to note that postmodern concepts like Derridean deconstruction, Foucauldian power and discourse and Lyotardian skepticism toward metanarratives — (which narratives are now said to include the claim that modernity represents progress born of science) — not to mention the celebration of non-Western epistemologies and logo-phobic social-constructivism, are ubiquitous in our schools and culture. This (to make a long story short) is because a cadre of Marxist academics in America in the 1990’s — in the wake of the collapse of Soviet communism — appropriated French Theory and transformed it into a kind of intellectual life-support for their radical critique of America. In keeping with Marx’s formula that the true goal of thinking is to transform — not simply understand — the world, these academics made postmodernism practical, a tool for inspiring and directing radical activism. Over time (and by cynically appropriating moral authority from the civil rights movement of the 1960’s), the growing cadre of Theorists devised that amorphous ideology that is known today as “Social Justice.” Thus, it is appropriate to think of Social Justice scholarship as “applied postmodernism.”2
But what, more precisely, is this scholarship — the apparent head of the monster? It is first and foremost the work of academics in five fields of research: post-colonial Theory, queer Theory, critical race Theory, feminist Theory, and disability Theory.3 (Notice that these fields are united only by their invocation of Theory). Yet, it must be understood that the influence of Social Justice scholarship is not confined to those corners of the academy dedicated to research in these fields. It influences or virally infects the administrations of most American universities as well as research in many other fields — especially in the humanities and social sciences. Crucially, the fact that most universities in the U.S. no longer require graduates to be well-versed in the “Great Books” of the Tradition is due largely to the influence of Social Justice on pedagogy.4 Scholar-activists motivated by this ideology are also the creators of the aptly acronym-ed programme of indoctrination called Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (D-I-E), which programme currently pervades and corrupts nearly all U.S. institutions, and the educators of its evangelistic enforcers and disseminators.
Social Justice thus may be the legislating school of thought in America today. Its agents lay down the law, as it were, for many academic disciplines by influencing (or, rather, policing) research agendas, university administrators, and campus discourse. And, of course, what happens in the academy does not stay in the academy: students take what they learn into the world. It is, then, hardly surprising that the monster of postmodernism reaches out from within the ivory tower of academia to grasp the people and institutions of our society at large: students influenced directly or indirectly by postmodern Theory and Social Justice scholarship in the academy enter society ready to become “woke” Social Justice activists and practitioners of identity politics — those “thin-skinned, acrimonious, violent human beings” with whom we are by now all too familiar.5 This is the “Great Awokening.”6 —
Without its heart or head, the monster of postmodernism would perish. Yet, its hold on our society is so strong that even in its death throes its arms could flail with baneful effects. As it is, the monster only tightens its embrace.
What, then, are Social Justice activism and identity politics — the apparent arms of the monster? The former is all those modes of protest, petition, propaganda, lobbying, regulatory fiat, legal action, and judicial (mis)interpretation intended — firstly — to permanently equalize outcomes among certain identity groups (typically defined by race, gender, or sexual orientation), i.e., achieve “equity” — and secondly — to set and enforce speech codes that define what is acceptable (and unacceptable) to say about all that pertains to the social status of women and favored identity groups (“minorities”). This second purpose serves the first, as it is an effort to control all policy debates. — My definition is provisional; but it does describe with some specificity attempts to establish equity by action not properly political.
Identity politics is often closely related in practice to Social Justice activism, but it may be distinguished conceptually. Identity politics is all those efforts to capture the official organs of political power that intentionally politicize biologically rooted identity groups — e.g., those defined by race, gender, and sexual orientation — and their allies (people who identify morally with but are not themselves members of a given identity group). These categories should be contrasted with what might be called doxa-logical ones (doxa is the Greek word for “opinion”), e.g., religion, ideology or culture. The political mode that is identity politics may in turn be contrasted with properly partisan politics — which is all those efforts to capture the official organs of political power that seek to politicize any and all citizens by articulating and defending one or more moral-political principles and attendant policy proposals. The agents of identity politics seek to build the members of preferred identity groups and their allies into a coalition against “the system,” which they say is oppressive (or insufficiently celebratory) of those identities. Like Social Justice activists, these agents seek to “problematize” all that is supposed to be held in common by the highly diverse citizenry of the U.S. — to ensure that citizens only think to act politically on the basis of their “minority” or “ally” status. They oppose the idea that America is or might ever be one people, nation, or moral whole.
Together Social Justice scholars and activists and the practitioners of identity politics indict America’s cultural heritage, institutions, civil religion and founding principles. Consider, for instance, the fact that their guiding value —equity — entails the allocation of goods and legal protections to overcome or counteract precisely what “Publius,” the pseudonymous founder of the U.S., declared in the Federalist Papers that it is the “first object of government” to protect, namely “the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate.”7 Whereas our founder(s) thought government ought to prize diversity in “faculties” or talents above all, postmodernists believe it should prize diversity in (bodily) identities above all. — This anthropological or political disjunction lurks behind the increasingly stark moral one between justice as merit and justice as equity.
This, then, is the monster of postmodernism — the enemy of our inquiry: postmodern critical Theory, Social Justice scholarship, and Social Justice activism and identity politics. I plan to argue in future essays postmodernism is monstrous because it abjures reason, corrupts education, poisons freedom, and suppresses life and virtue (excellence or quality). It seems to me that the tendency of postmodernism is to accelerate and radicalize what Pierre Manent has called “the despotism of gentleness.”8 The postmodern manifestation of this despotism is radically democratic insofar as it seeks to suppress, deny, subvert or destroy all or most natural and conventional differences among men — especially any sense of what Nietzsche called the “distinction of ranks” among men — in the name of equality or equity, which is an undesirable notion of equality that welcomes despotic imposition.9 The egalitarian commitments of postmodernism enable it to feed on the passion for equality that always already lives in the hearts of democratic peoples.10 Ironically, the agents of the despotism of gentleness are frequently very harsh in condemning whatsoever they deem ungentle or “intolerant.” They despise or fail to comprehend the fact that the word “discrimination” has more than one meaning. Anyway, their typical activity is maligning keystone institutions and ideas of Western civilization as oppressive, exclusionary or biased — by which they mean unjust.
This last observation connects the substance of our quest to its urgent goal: since postmodernism seems to harbor a latent conception of justice, we may be able to overcome or, at least, free ourselves from it by recovering a better conception or account of justice in the course of this inquiry.
How will the rest of this project be presented? The quest is a methodical inquiry into the Western intellectual tradition that will focus on exegesis of important texts by Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and others. As it proceeds, the reasons for its course will be explained. It will be a series of long essays. Alongside these will be a series of notes of various lengths. Often these notes will supplement or clarify themes presented in the essays; but sometimes they will be wholly unconnected. The notes give me a way to follow the free play of my mind. The essays give me a way to pursue a methodical inquiry. The essays will be more thoroughly researched, scholarly, and clearly related in a linear fashion.
Questing in the Western Intellectual Tradition is a project that I hope will be interesting to and useful for many different kinds of people; but my one ambition is to eventually reach a cadre of American students in the late stages of high-school, college, and early professional life. I believe it is of the utmost importance that students in the U.S. begin to cultivate for themselves heterodox, fulfilling intellectual lives.
W ~ 4 ~ S ~ 5 ~ H ~ 8
Pluckrose, Helen, and James A. Lindsay. Cynical Theories: How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity—and why this harms everybody. Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA), 2020, 24.
Ibid, 45ff.
Ibid, 61-66ff.
Cusset, François. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. University of Minnesota Press, 2008, 166-75.
Burns, Timothy W. “Martin Luther King, Augustine, and Civil Disobedience” in In Search of Humanity: Essays in Honor of Clifford Orwin. Lexington Books, 2015.
Patterson, James M. “Response to Critics” in "Symposium on James M. Patterson's Religion in the Public Square: Sheen, King, Falwell." The Political Science Reviewer 45, no. 1 (2021): 253-289, pp. 285.
The Federalist Papers, ed. Charles R. Kesler. Penguin, 2003, 73 (#10).
Manent, Pierre. An Intellectual History of Liberalism. Princeton University Press, 1995, 111.
Cf. Burns 2015.
See Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, II.2.1.