12.15.24 - Orthodoxy by Chesterton
This was one of the best books/longform essays I've read in a long time. It's a short book, so it doesn't need a great deal of summarization. So I'll deal with some running themes in short.
It's a Rejection of Materialism, Rationalism, and Secular Progressivism
Chesterton spends more time dressing down his intellectual opponents then he really does talking about Christianity itself. But that discussion is one of the best, most biting, and funniest diagnoses of the modern mind that I've ever read. As relevant today as it was in his time.
In short, Chesterton is against the idea that a materially concerned "evidence-based" worldview. Using a writing style that is extremely fond of highlighting paradoxes, he illustrates the faults of a materialist/naturalist worldview from damn near every angle.. There are too many great takedowns of materialism to count, but one that I enjoyed especially is his account of how it devolves into solipsism, which in turn undermines an empirically driven enterprise.
“all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.”
His use of paradox continues, until Chesterton is dealing with the political tendencies that are downstream of a materialist worldview. I won't try and write it better than he does, but it eventually leads to him questioning the legitimacy of what we today would call "technocracy" or meritocracy. Chesterton's worldview is deeply democratic, and holds a deep respect for the wisdom of the ordinary person. There'a a good deal of real estate in the book dedicated to relating the values of democracy to a christian worldview, and he builds up the idea that those most fit to wield power are those who don't seek it (a common theme in fantasy, Dumbledore says something like this in Harry Potter, it's the key message of Lord of the Rings, it's there in Spider-Man--the cultural products of a Christian civilization!). A lot of this is actually pretty familiar for the type of person who would read this.
But there was an idea he said on the wisdom of ordinary people that I'm not sure I've ever seen articulated quite as perfectly anywhere else; that the ordinary person's comfort with inconsistency, with paradox, gives them "streoscopic" sight. This one really hit me. As an average annoying college grad, I spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing my own worldview, trying to make it internally consistent, and its often frustrating when you talk to "normies" and realize that they don't even TRY to do this. The politics and opinions of the average person are dumbfounding. But Chesterton sees this is a feature, not a bug:
“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.”
Every other paragraph Chesterton has some insight like this that felt like it carved a new groove in my brain. This is just a sample.
The Culture Wars are Old News
Most people who read philosophy or have some interest in the history of the ideas will already have a sense of this. But I don't think I really felt how long we've been locked into the same kind of debates until I've read this book. Orthodoxy is in an active conversation with Nietzsche and. his philosophical contemporaries. Anyone who spends time on weirdo right wing twitter may be familiar with the conversation between the Nietszchean/post-christian right and the Christian right. Well, it does appear that the same sort of debates raged in Chesterton's time. But that's not a surprise.
What is a little surprising is how he describes but the prevailing political and social thoughts of his time--how he describes the average forgotten member of the commentariat. Through his dress downs, you get a sense of the kind of intellectual environment he was arguing with in 1908, and its awfully similar to our own. The same diagnoses of democracy, converstaions about progress, tensions between meritocratic and democtatic impulses. Some of these will vaguely map onto modern culture war fault lines, and some of the institutionalist/populist tensions we see today. If there's anything comforting about this book, its that we've been farting around with the same basic pallete of ideas for some time. And we're all fine.
It's a Compelling Case for a Christian Civilization
This is the main point of the book, really. He's not trying to make some kind of scientific case for the factual reality of the resurrection or anything. It's not that kind of Christian apologetics work. It's really walking through how he himself arrived at becoming a Christian (a lot of it is through finding faults in Christianity's opponents). It's an account that probably wouldn't satisfy real skeptics, because it doesn't answer the real points of contention (is it TRUE). Here's an excerpt to give you an idea what he builds up to:
This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden.
Again, if you're someone who isn't Christian or who struggles with faith, I don't think you'll find anything in this work that helps you make the leap. What Chesterton does do succesffully, I think, is paint a very compeling case for Christian civilization, for the values that are consequents of a Christian worldview. It's not the point of the book, I think, but it's what happens. Throughout the work you develop an appreciation for the very peculiar worldview and cultural matrix that arises from a religion that believes that God became a man. Being born and raised in America, it's easy to take for granted a lot of really weird cultural patterns we have that are downstreeam of that fundamental belief. I think that Chesterton illunminates the link between western civilization and Christian belief in a lot of places. One that I liked, which I also feel is a bit of a leap, is how he ties the resilience of western societies with it's capacity to "die daily":
“The highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization OUGHT to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnorak of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange life—it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS—ever since.”
Personal Feelings
I love this book for a lot of reasons. The most superficial one being that I agree with his "politics," and general vibe.
But the most personal reason I love thisb book is that his journey to faith seems to mirror my own. When I was like 14 (when I was an edgy atheist), I personally learned the case he makes in the chapter "The Maniac," that pure materialism/rationalism eventually leads to solipsisim, and that tears your whole world apart. Only faith, not human reason, can serve as a viable foundation for your life, for anything. Accepting that is a profound act of humility. It's one that I made, and my life has been richer, my heart bigger, and the world I live in more interesting ever since.
knxnts