… France’s Master Of ‘Materialist Horror’ | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the case of Christianity in Europe, I think the question to ask is something like this: can a civilization maintain its identity if it sheds its native religion? Houellebecq doesn’t think so, and neither do I. This isn’t a political or polemical point. Imagine taking as an anthropological platitude the claim that human beings will be religious and, moreover, that civilizations are built upon the metaphysical systems they create (or which are revealed to them, to give credit to the metaphysical on its own terms). It’s obvious from such an assumption that the collapse of the metaphysics entails the eventual collapse of everything else. This should be deeply alarming to anyone who cares about the West’s tradition of humanitarianism, which emerges—and it would be wonderful if we could all agree on this—out of the original Judaic notion of imago Dei and later from Christian humanism. Secular humanism has been running for quite some time on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian religious inheritance, but it’s not clear how much longer that can go on.
I reviewed Houellbecq’s
The Map and the Territory. I thought it was great. This is very good interview. Betty has a lot on the ball.
You're right: this is a very good interview. My definition of a good interview is one in which I'm forced, often reluctantly, to consider views I'm otherwise inclined to reject.
ReplyDeleteTime to finally read the sole Houellbecq novel I possess.