The Great Humanistic Revanchement

The Mazeppist, whose patron saint is Jude Thaddeus, also known as the patron saint of desperate or lost causes, has dedicated the coming year of 2012 to the "Great Humanistic Revanchement" (YGHR). To that end, he urges every reasonably educated American to read three (count 'em, only 3) books in the coming 12 months:

1) Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions;

2) Edward Said, Orientalism;

3) Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis.


Why these three? All published in the latter half of the 20th century, each book contains an antidote to three of the four horsemen of the 21st century apocalypse.

Reading Kuhn's SSR as an undergraduate enabled me to recognize the constructed nature of all knowledge--especially scientific knowledge. Such insight helps to bring one back from the lost highway of naive realism. Never again would I take the claims of so-called "experts" at face-value. My undergraduate course in statistics didn't hurt, either. Naive realism underwrites the Siamese twins of scientism and religious fundamentalism who somehow manage to sit astride the gray horse of the 21st century apocalypse.

Reading Said's Orientalism in the mid-1990's alerted me to the constructed nature of my "knowledge" of Asia and, in particular, of Islam. It also alerted me to the political uses and implications of such "knowledge," not to mention the irony that such "knowledge" is, in fact, ignorance. As the years have passed, I have become fairly critical of Said's own biases and blindnesses; nevertheless, Orientalism is a book that must first be read before it can be properly critiqued--and, once read, the deep truths it contains concerning the hypocrisy that infects all "Western" narratives of moral superiority will never allow one's conscience to rest. Such narratives underwrite the nationalistic jingoism, liberal condescension, and sublimated white supremacy that ride the black horse of the 21st century apocalypse.

Toulmin's Cosmopolis, a book I read before Orientalism, helped me to appreciate the catastrophic significance of the Thirty Years War for all of the subsequent history of Europe and its North American progeny. The catastrophe was not limited to the unprecedented slaughter that took place during the conflict itself, but to the manner in which Europeans chose to respond to the tragedy.

History is the record of unintended consequences and Toulmin, a student of Wittgenstein's, argues that the post-war Cartesian turn to dogmatic metaphysics and scientific certainty amounted to a counter-revolution against the humanism of Montaigne and Shakespeare. This counter-revolution continues to this day and underwrites jingoistic nationalism, scientism, and religious fundamentalism: all effects of that 17th century civil war. The Cartesian counter-revolution is the pale horse of the 21st century apocalypse that gallops behind the others and urges them forward.

As for the fourth horse of the 21st century apocalypse--the bloody red one--read these three books and you will see it coming with your own eyes.