A Thinking Reed

Category: John Gray

  • Red Toryism revisited

    Philosopher and political gadfly John Gray has what seems to be a balanced take on Philip Blond’s “Red Toryism,” which has been making waves in politico-theological circles. Blond is an acolyte of John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy and an advisor to British Tory leader David Cameron who proposes a program of economic “relocalization” combined with political decentralization and social conservatism as an alternative to liberal permissiveness and capitalist excess. This vision harks back to the neo-medievalist “distributism” of Chesterton and Belloc and, to some minds, represents a third way beyond liberalism and conservatism.

    While granting that Blond is onto something in fingering capitalism and liberalism as responsible, at least in part, for diminshed social cohesion, Gray is skeptical that a “Red Tory” alternative is either feasible or desirable:

    Ours may be a post-secular society (I think so myself) but that is very different from reverting to any version of Christian orthodoxy. Britain today is home to a plurality of religious traditions, ranging from varieties of theism through to the many strands of Hinduism and the godless spirituality of Buddhism. There are also many kinds of agnosticism and scepticism, some indistinguishable from undogmatic versions of faith.

    This rich and interesting diversity is one reason why Blond’s project of reinstating a more unitary culture is so deeply problematic. Today there is no possibility of reaching society-wide agreement on ultimate questions. Happily such agreement is not necessary, nor even desirable. No government can roll back modernity, and none should try. We may be in a mess. But the pluralist society that Britain has become is more hospitable to the good life than the imagined order of an earlier age, which in the end is just one more stifling utopia.

    If anything, Gray’s strictures apply even moreso to the U.S., which has no tradition of an established church and, if anything, less cultural and religious uniformity than Britain. Moreover, it’s hard to see who on the American Right would be the constituency for this anomolous combination of high-church piety, cultural conservatism, and quasi-left-wing economics.

    (I previously wrote about Red Toryism here.)

  • Cognitive ethology, the Left, faith, and dominion

    A long but worthwhile essay that to some extent recapitulates the argument made by John Gray in Straw Dogs. Gray’s contention was that the secular Left has largely jettisoned the metaphysics of Christianity but held on to its anthropocentric outlook and belief in a progressive history. Echoing Nietzsche, Gray argues that the scientific, secular outlook undermines, instead of underwriting, humanism.

    The author of this essay, Steve Best, maintains that the Left, even while taking pride in its progressive, enlightened, science-informed views, still has largely ignored the “animal question,” i.e., the fact that science increasingly reveals a continuity between human and non-human animals. Instead, progressives still largely hold on to the old, discredited humanism that posits an unbridgeable chasm between us and the rest of creation.

    As a Christian who’s also interested in moving beyond a strictly anthropocentric theology, I come at this from a slightly different angle. On the one hand, the Bible (not to mention simple observation) reveals that we have at least a de facto dominion over the rest of nature: what we do disproportionately affects the rest of the world whether we like it or not. On the other hand, historical Christianity has largely adopted an anthropocentrism that is at odds with the Bible, at least on some readings. For instance, in a brief but interesting book, German theologian Michael Welker argues that a close reading of the opening chapters of Genesis describes a human dominion that privileges human interests but also demands a care for the rest of creation:

    The mandate of dominion aims at nothing less than preserving creation while recognizing and giving pride of place to the interests of human beings. In all the recognizing and privileging of the interests of human beings, the central issue is the preservation of creation in its complex structures of interdependence. The expansion of the human race upon the earth is inseparable from the preservation of the community of solidarity with animals in particular, and inseparable from the caretaking preservation of the community of solidarity with all creatures in general. God judges human beings worthy of this preservation of creation. They are to exercise dominion over creatures by protecting them. Human beings acquire their power and their worth precisely in the process of caretaking. The mandate of dominion according to Genesis 1 means nothing more and nothing less. (Creation and Reality, p. 73, emphasis added)

    Traditionally–and perhaps understandably given humanity’s limited ability to affect the non-human world in the past–Christianity has adopted the view that the rest of the world exists for our sake. There have been debates about whether this is an authentically biblical view or one imported from elsewhere (e.g., classical philosophy). Either way, I believe Christianity has the resources to adapt to new understandings of our place in creation without jettisoning the biblical tradition and the essential tenets of Christian theology.

  • John Gray on Isaiah Berlin

    Berlin is remembered by philosophers for defending ethical pluralism – the claim that human values make conflicting claims that cannot always be rationally reconciled – and arguing that this pluralism is the true basis of a liberal society. The argument is hardly demonstrative – if values can conflict in ways that have no rational solution, what reason can there be for favouring individual choice over other goods? But Berlin’s achievement was not to give liberalism a watertight foundation. It was to present liberalism as an attractive vision of life, and one that is not tied to a quasi-religious belief in progress. Though Berlin was solidly committed to the values of the liberal Enlightenment, he never shared the faith of Enlightenment thinkers that growing knowledge could resolve fundamental conflicts of value. For him such conflicts were part of what it means to be human, and any philosophy that offered to deliver us from them was both deluded and illiberal.

    Read the rest here (via the American Conservative).

    I don’t know how much Gray is over-reading Berlin here, but this certainly seems to aptly characterize Gray’s views. He’s been on a jihad against progressivist utopian delusions over the last few years, from taking on humanism in his provocative Straw Dogs (see my thoughts here) to critiquing apocalyptic religion and crusading neoconservatism in Black Mass.

    Gray’s pluralistic, anti-progressivist liberalism definitely resonates with me. I’m deeply suspicious of narratives of historical progress and claims to basing society on a unified conception of the good. But I also have my reservations. Anti-progressivism can easily slide into complacency about rectifiable injustices. Sometimes we need the zeal of the radical.