German Pentecost

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

1914 brought unity to a previously divided Germany. One pastor in Hanover wrote, “When the day of mobilisation had fully come, there were Germans all together in unity – villagers and city dwellers, conservatives and freethinkers, Social Democrats and Alsatians, [Hanoverian] Guelphs and Poles, Protestants and Catholics. Then suddenly there occurred a rushing from heaven. LIke a powerful wind it swept away all party strife and fraternal bickering . . . and the Kaiser gave this unanimity the most appropriate... Read more

Atheisms

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

James Wood is one of the most public of our public atheists, but he has several bones to pick with other members of the brotherhood in a TNR review of Sam Harris’s latest book (TNR, December 18). He complains, for instance, against Dawkins’s use of Russell’s “celestial teapot” argument (ie, we can’t prove there isn’t a teapot orbiting the sun; but that doesn’t mean it’s a tolerable, rational opinion), emphasizing that “content matters here.” There’s a difference between the unprovability... Read more

Multiple universes

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Playwright, novelist, and philosophy Michael Frayn offers this critique of David Deutsch’s claim that quantum mechanics implies multiple, perhaps infinite, worlds: “If only we knew what proportion of David Deutsches was putting forward each of these theories we should be able to judge which of them correct. Sadly since we can’t know anything whatsoever about any of these other universes the question must remain forever undecidable; though I have a sneaking private suspicion, unsupportable by any possible evidence, that however... Read more

Israel is Egypt

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

The Lord says through Isaiah (chapter 19): “So I will incite Egyptians against Egyptians; and they will each fight against his brother and each against his neighbor, city against city and kingdom against kingdom.” Jesus says of Israel, “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death” (Matthew 10:21) and “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various... Read more

Means and ends

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Thoreau wrote, “Our inventions . . . are but improved means to an unimproved end. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate . . . . We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will... Read more

Mediated

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Instead of continuing to quote de Zengotita until I’ve transcribed the whole book, let me summarize: This is the best anthropology of contemporary culture I’ve ever read. Somewhat reductive – I’m not sure that everything is so shaped by media as de Zengotita suggests. Mostly he makes a very compelling case for tying in our politics, relation to time and things, our habits of thought and feeling to the fact that (in one of his most succinct formulations) we live... Read more

Predictable surprise

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

De Zengotita again, commenting on how lame action/sci fi movies have become: “There’s this very specific phase in so many of these films, a phase that’s so marked I bet there’s some insider lingo for it. It’s when the suspenseful set-up phase – which is often pretty good, very atmospheric, intriguing character foibles – ends and the resolution phase begins. At that point, everything seems to go on automatic, and the rest of the movie spins out flat and formulaic,... Read more

Mediating the Other

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

De Zengotita notes the paradox of modernity/postmodernity’s affirmation of the Other: “instead of treating the Other as an alien something – threatening in some cases, alluring in others, but in all cases an object , whether of conquest, exploitation, proselytizing, study, or tourism – instead of that, you recognize in the other an autonomy and agency equal to your own and place yourself in a reciprocal relationship of dialogue with the Other, etc. This is the most visible, the postive,... Read more

Things

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

De Zengotita gives this lovely description of his grandfather’s (a surgeon) delight in things: “it was his hands that I remember most of all, the care they extended to everything he touched, one by one, no haste, no waste, to each its due. That much was obvious. But subtler internal qualities made for beauty in even the simplest actions. Before using things, he took time to assess them. Just for a second, when he was buttering bread; more intently, when... Read more

Mediated

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita (Bloomsbury, 2005) comes highly recommended from Ken Myers. No wonder. This is a very thoughtful book, written with great energy. Every paragraph is quotable, and has the effect of holding up a mirror to the way we live now. For instance, comparing our penchant for “capturing the moment” in pictures with someone obsessively pulling the lever on a slot machine, de Zengotita says, “It gets like that with cameras on vacations, but not because of... Read more