I
thought this was going to be a political diatribe but it was not. I read it for
my “Fantasy Bookball” competition that requires me to read a book by someone I
disagree with. Shapiro’s book is mainly a history of western philosophy with
some bits in the end about his place in the modern culture wars. It is a
recommendable history given the author’s bias. He includes some things that are
definitely more opinion and fact but it’s generally a solid introduction to the
major western thinkers.
The
beginning has a lot of stuff about the bible and the whole book is especially
religious, with an emphasis on the old testament. It makes me realize in the
context of the Simon Schama books how different a Jew Shapiro is, openly
embracing the west and including himself, uncontroversially, as a member, which
would have been unthinkable 100 years ago. I think Shapiro’s place in the world
is very interesting as a conservative Jew who definitely comes from the
tradition of Baruch Spinoza in embracing secular thought; after all, he claims
the west came from Jerusalem and Athens, embracing the two equally. That is not
a very classically Orthodox Jewish opinion.
Shapiro makes an interesting point
about the Middle Ages, arguing that they were not so dark after all, and that
the Enlightenment was not a break with the earlier western thought but a
continuation of it. I am sympathetic to his view and I do not think that the
Middle Ages should be seen as a period of total decline in Europe. However,
Shapiro should acknowledge that with the end of the Western Roman Empire, lots
of technologies, philosophies, and thoughts were lost. He holds up the Church
as the protector of intellectualism during these times and he’s right. However,
it is clear that while Europe rebounded after the fall of the WRE, it was a
slow rebound, and Europe was surpassed for a long time by the Muslim world to its
immediate southeast. Therefore, the Enlightenment was a significant change,
either reversing or speeding up what was already happening, but Shapiro goes
too far in suggesting it was solely a sped-up continuation. That belief doesn’t
make sense in the context of the true deficits of the Middle Ages, so while
Shapiro makes good arguments about the lighter side of the Dark Ages, he
doesn’t give the Enlightenment enough credit for the break it made.
One
example of some very fringe thinking that is inserted is when Shapiro says that
FDR lengthened the Great Depression by nearly a decade, which is definitely
bogus. It was government spending that gave people the jobs that ended the
Depression! How Shapiro can advocate for the policies of Herbert Hoover is beyond
me. He uses a lot of straw man arguments at the end and shows off why he’s so
unlikable. Shapiro is a mean person who likes to humiliate others who don’t
agree with him. At a fundamental level, he is naïve. In the conclusion, Shapiro
writes that, “We used to believe in the Founding vision, supported by a
framework of personal virtue culled from Judeo-Christian morality. We used to
see each other as brothers and sisters, not “the 1 percent versus the 99
percent.” First of all, who is “we”? Certainly we did not all believe in the
founding vision, as the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of
Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all subject to
fierce debate by the founders. Immediately after the formation of the USA, they
split into factions of Federalists and Jeffersonians, proving that there was no
“we” that believed in any one founding vision. Surely we didn’t all see each
other as brothers and sisters when we fought a civil war and enslaved Africans.
Shapiro’s history of western philosophy is good but his analysis of American
history is straight-up dumb. His words are empty and his prescriptions for
policy that are coherent are not good. The rest are largely incoherent mottos
and slogans.
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