Mr. Holder, the federal government must do something to prevent further censorship emanating from an American jurisdiction, censorship that is intended to undermine the Obama administration's credibility on free speech and human rights issues. New Jersey's sad spectacle is a destruction of America's Constitutional promise of free speech. What's that smell? Did something die? Or are we in New Jersey? ("In Love With a Jersey Smell!" and "Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/shimages/vvimages/inamerica5.jpg (This image infuriates Cubanoids and mafiosi in Hudson County, also some racist Superior Court judges.)
July 25, 2008 at 10:46 A.M. "errors" not found in earlier versions of this essay have mysteriously appeared in this text. I have corrected them, fully expecting that hackers will reinsert them. More "errors" inserted and corrected. September 19, 2008 at 3:52 P.M. October 25, 2008 at 9:33 P.M. More "errors" inserted and corrected. March 21, 2009 at 11:39 A.M. More distractions and harassment.G.K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown (London: Penguin, 1981).
G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (New York: Dover, 2006).
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995).
G.K. Chesterton, The Paradoxes of Mr. Pound (New York: Dover, 1990). (See the Introduction by Martin Gardner.)
Dudley Barker, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (New York: Stein & Day, 1975).
Michael Coren, Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton (New York: Paragon House, 1990).
See also:
Adam Gopnik, "Localism and its Discontents: On the Man Who Was Chesterton," in The New Yorker, July 7 & 14, 2008, at p. 52. (Disappointing.)
Magnus Magnusson, K.B.E., "G.K. Chesterton," in Chambers Biographical Dictionary (London: Chambers Harrap Pub. Ltd., 1990), pp. 301-302. (If you will use a false name, might as well give yourself a knighthood.)
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (New York: Back bay, 2008).
Anthony Kenney, "Aquinas: Intentionality," in Ted Honderich, ed., Philosophy Through its Past (London: Penguin, 1984), p. 78.
Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free Press, 1991). (Excellent legal theory, critique of rights talk from the Right.)
Robert P. George, "Law and Moral Purpose," in First Things, January, 2008, at p. 22.
Thomas Aquinas, "Treatise on Law," Summa Theologica, Pt. II, QQ., XC.--CXIV., V. 8.
I. With a Twitch Upon the Thread ...
I don't usually bother reacting to magazine essays. New Yorker writers are better than most. During recent years, however, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of the prose found in that magazine. I am aware that someone like Harold Ross does not come along every day -- neither does a Clay Felker, for that matter. I loved the slightly bitchy New Yorker of the "Tina" years. I LOVE Tina Brown's sense of "let's-get-the-girls-together-for-lunch-and-dish-the-dirt!" Right you are, girlfriend. Every magazine or periodical touched by that gracious lady -- with the right measure of malice -- is immediately more fun to read. Whatever else you may say about Ms. Brown, it must be admitted that Tina has an eye (and ear) for good prose.
Adam Gopnik decided to take on G.K. Chesterton. I like Gopnik's mind and prose. Nevertheless, Chesterton is a far better writer and thinker than Adam will ever be. Gopnik's conventional views are upset at his encounter with someone who thinks so differently from himself and all of his friends on the Upper East or West Side, yet who cannot be dismissed with some instructions for "his own good." Chesterton's genius overwhelms Gopnik's critical faculties. I cannot otherwise explain how a man of Gopnik's intelligence could make the following statements:
"... Chesterton becomes a Pangloss of the parish; anything Roman is right. It is hard to credit that even a convinced Catholic can feel equally strongly about St. Francis's intuitive mysticism and St. Thomas's pedantic religiosity, as Chesterton seems to." (p. 58, emphasis added.)
Or this:
" ... his [Chesterton's] ideal order was ascendant over the Iberian Peninsula for half a century. And a bleak place it was, too, with a fearful ruling class [governing] a frightened population in an atmosphere of poverty-stricken uniformity and terrified stasis -- a lot more like the actual medieval condition than like a Victorian fantasy." (p. 59.)
With all due respect to Mr. Gopnik, these are shockingly ignorant statements for any educated person to make, much worse is to make them in print. For these statements to appear in a magazine claiming to be America's premier literary magazine is bizarre. No wonder my books are censored or suppressed. No wonder I find it difficult to find persons who will read my essays and reviews even as (whatever my faults) I find much worse material published in so-called "elite" publications. ("How Censorship Works in America.") As my friends at Inwood Hill Park like to say: "Something's wrong." Publish America? Lulu?
Spain's twentieth century exploded with literary activity from the likes of Vicente Aleixandre (Nobel Prize for Literature), Frederico Garcia Lorca, Juan Goyttisolo; obscure painters like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali; philosophers like Ortega y Gassett, and many others. This has nothing to do with deploring Fascism, on which we can all agree. It is merely to recognize the lack of "bleakness" of Spanish civilization in the twentieth century. For instance, Lorca's "Blood Wedding" has been performed in New York theaters several times within the last twenty years. Films of Lorca's plays as well as his life -- including his stay at Columbia University in Manhattan -- have also appeared.
How is it possible that such world class artists are unknown to an American literary journalist whose prose appears in "elite" publications for the benefit of the lower orders, like me? On what basis is Spain -- Orwell's and Hemingway's Spain -- "bleak" in the twentieth century?
As for Thomas Aquinas, among contemporary Thomists are promiment philosophers and scientists in all continents. This includes a recent revival of scholarly interest in Neo-Thomists working in physics, philosophy, and humanities. (See "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" as well as "Ted Honderich Says: 'You Are Not Free!'") The Neo-Thomist revival in natural law jurisprudence -- which is well represented in the United States of America among leading advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court -- suggests that, to put it kindly, Mr. Gopnik's statement concerning Aquinas is "inaccurate." A Thomist and scientist, as well as a Jesuit priest, is Lorenzo Albacete. (An "error" in the previous sentence that does not appear in earlier versions of this essay has suddenly materialized and been corrected.)
Professor Robert P. George at Princeton University comes to mind as a contemporary Thomistic natural law theorist. Harvard Law School's Mary Ann Glendon (former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican), whose well-written works display a worrisome skepticism about rights is influenced by the natural law tradition. Glendon's work is highly recomended. Professor Glendon is not skeptical about what the concept of rights is meant to protect and recognize -- human dignity.
I have read both of these scholars and many others making use of Thomistic thinking. Thomas Aquinas -- like Descartes or Spinoza, Kant or Hegel -- is among a handful of philosophers who are, and will remain, timeless as well as relevant. During the latest 2,500 years of Western philosophy there have appeared a total of about 15 to 20 great philosopers. Aquinas is one of them. "Pedantic religiosity?"
Gopnik does not get the point to Chesterton. Why write about someone you do not admire or whose books you do not relish? Ethusiasm communicates to the reader. But then, so does the opposite. If the author of a magazine article does not think very highly of his subject, why should I care enough to read a magazine article about that person? No reason. You lost your average reader, Adam.
I will come to the assistance of Mr. Gopnik and the New Yorker by offering a word or two about G.K. Chesterton's writings and life. This is only a brief comment about an artist and thinker who deserves much more. Opposed to the spirit of Chesterton are all of the hackers and censors of this world, seeking to destroy ideas of which they disapprove and to prevail in the public square through violence.
I suspect that what Mr. Gopnik does not like (and what many N.Y. chi-chi fashionistas deplore) is a writer and thinker who defends ideals of any kind. We are naked apes, grovelling in shit, grasping and brutal in accordance with a dominant interpretation of what science allegedly "establishes." There are some people in trendy positions and important roles in media who delight in thinking this way. They are offended by persons who reject nihilism. I am more than happy to reject nihilism and the trendy platitudes that substitute for serious thought in many places these days. I say this as a man of the Left who is committed to democracy and the U.S. Constitution.
I do not believe that this nihilism is what science teaches. I do not believe that we are required to hold such a (in the full meaning of the word) "bleak" view of human nature. We are capable of love and compassion. 9/11 has certainly taught us that there are ordinary men and women -- rarely persons who teach at Barnard perhaps -- willing to sacrifice even their lives for others because of such lofty ideals. Perhaps it is such men and women who enjoy the Father Brown mysteries, as I do, even as I also read Kant and Spinoza, Carl Sagan and (heaven help me) Naomi Wolf. My daughter informs me that I must read someone called, "J-Val." Heaven help me is right! I can only hope that I have misspelled one of these names.
II. Chesterton's Row Boat.
"I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool." (Orthodoxy, p. 13.)
This paragraph describes Chesterton's (1874-1936) intellectual journey. Chesterton studied at St. Paul's, then at the Slade School of Art, London. Chesterton could paint and draw like an angel. Baruch Spinoza and several other philosophers have been good painters. (See Mathew Stewart's book on Spinoza and Leibnitz.) In youth, Chesterton experimented with all of the latest philosophies, knew radical intellectuals and artists, was an atheist and just about everything else, briefly, then discovered the ability to write. Chesterton admits that he even knew one or two women who (get ready for a shock!) "smoked" and indulged in "free love." Surely, G.K., these activities were not "indulged in" at the same time. Think of the fire hazard, my good man!
Writing is a mystery. Writing or any art is a kind of grace. You cannot do it well and lie. You can only write well if you set out to tell the truth as you see it. Nowhere is this more true than when writing literary fiction. No one can do this perfectly. You will fail as often as you succeed -- perhaps more often. Those who cannot accept this calling or vocation -- which can be agonizing -- will quickly fall by the wayside. They will stop writing. There is a constant process of refining one's insights together with a merciless critical attention to one's words and thoughts. Literary effort and genuine philosophy are forms of purification by fire, as is love for another human being. The result for Chesterton was a rediscovery of the eternal wisdom in Christianity and in humanity's religious impulse. Notice Chesterton's comment about his greatest rival George Bernard Shaw:
"If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist." -- I beg to differ as regards the gorgon. -- "It is another thing to discover that the rhinocerous does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths." (Orthodoxy, p. 15.)
If you are a genuine artist, philosopher or creative thinker of any kind, you will find what is at the core of yourself or you will die trying to discover it. When you hit bottom in yourself, nothing and no one will destroy or shake you as you pursue your mission in life. I agree with Chesterton -- as an agnostic -- that there is indeed wisdom in all of the great religious traditions. Christianity's ethics of love and compassion is simply true. The same movement towards love and compassion is easily found in Judaism, which is to Christianity what Britain is to America. Islam's ethics of identification with and obligation of charity for the poor results from the same ethics of love and compassion. Hinduism and Buddhism contain identical wisdom in a form that is culturally appropriate for the nations giving birth to these great traditions. These areas of human concern and effort -- religion or spirituality -- will not be replaced by science. Rather, science may be one expression of this human quest for meaning and understanding of the universe as well as human life.
I will now shock and annoy the Conservatives: Marxist humanism amounts to much the same Chestertonian insight concerning mutual dependency and obligation. Try the works of Kolakowski or Lukacs, you'll see what I mean. In fact, Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago is a perfect expression of this point. Humanity must come before ideology. John Bayley's long essay on this novel and his comments on Tolstoy are highly recommended. Chesterton's fundamental wisdom is that truth, beauty and love are all around you. They are "God," if you want to use that word. They call you home to your "everlasting identity" as a person necessarily joined to your brothers and sisters in a human community that culminates with what we may call "heaven" or infinite "love." ("Is this atheism's moment?")
Of course, these are metaphors. Metaphors are inescapable in all areas of human learning or wisdom, including science. "Particle pairs," "Super Nova," "Big Dipper," "Schrodinger's Cat."
Pointing to Chesterton's human flaws is not very interesting to me. Every English person of his class and education displayed anti-semitism early in the twentieth century. Every one of those young English and American men was willing to die in a war to stop Hitler and Nazism. Millions did exactly that. Ask yourself how far those trendy opinions (which are as trendy as are the opposite opinions today, which have the advantage of being true) really went with those people. People like Winston Churchill, H.G. Wells and Rebecca West, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad (certainly one of the greatest writers who ever lived, a Polish-Brit!), T.S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw. I suggest that anti-semitic remarks were things people were expected to say. Deplorable? Certainly. Should you judge men and women of genius by such statements alone. No.
Chesterton understood something which philosophers (Richard Rorty, Michel Foucault) would articulate only at the end of the twentieth century, thinking themselves very daring for expressing the point. Chesterton understood, as he said, that "every man is an idealist because he is a man." Yes, Chesterton meant all human beings. Science is a human endeavor.
"The obvious point is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyze a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorous and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man's wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much is custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man's desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven." (Heretics, p. 77, emphasis added.)
This pork chop can even become a symbol or metaphor that functions in a language of feelings. The attempt to dissect desires and scrutinize brain functions to locate my preference for Rembradt over Caravaggio -- without my consent, in order to "help" me -- will result in permanent and maybe lethal harm. This effort is in the tradition of Hitler and Stalin, or Mengele and his Soviet admirers. Such a monstrosity is worse when it is imposed upon a child or young person over many years.
I am not a "thing" to be controlled or conditioned by laboratory sadists. Read Edward Said. Would Professor Said find himself shocked to be associated with Chesterton? Why object to colonialism if you doubt human dignity or freedom? No reason. Philosophical controllers of all kinds make the same evil mistake. Chesterton would insist (as I do) that human freedom is sacred and inviolable because freedom is an essential part of what we mean by a person. Persons are sacred. Neither of us would regard himself -- or any other human being -- as a "thing" or "object" to be conditioned.
If you were to persuade Chesterton that he was wrong about the rights of others or in his remarks concerning Jews, he would acknowledge this "error" and make amends. Chesterton would not seek to use state power to silence or control his opposition. Even totalitarians in the twentieth century have usually refrained from the grotesque effrontery of adding hypocrisy and oily insincerity to their many sins by calling torture and theft forms of "therapy." Senator Bob?
We may disagree on many issues as conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. However, in America and Britain as well as many other places in the world, at the end of the day, we agree about one big thing. We believe that ALL persons are free, equal, and worthy of respect. Persons should be free to lead spiritual lives in their own ways or not to believe in God and decline all forms of spirituality. Government must respect this freedom or it becomes tyranny. Chesterton insists (as I do) that this recognition of human freedom and dignity is what England will always have in common with America, however often we fail to live up to these values. This common belief in core values will always bring us home to morality, i.e., God -- "with a twitch upon the thread." If you share a fundamental belief in human dignity, then when all is said and done, you will find that you also love Britain and America. (See "Shakespeare's Black Prince" and "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
"I have to do with England," said Father Brown, "I come from there. And the funniest thing of all is that even if you love it and belong to it, you still can't make head or tail of it." ("The Crime of the Communist," p. 674.) Father Brown's creator, G.K. Chesterton -- nihil obstat.
