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The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
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| Part No: | 0312425325 |
| Manufacturer: | Picador |
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| Customer Rating: | 4.5 / 5.0 |
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| Encouraging Discourse | 2010-01-16 | 5 / 5 |
| There is a measure of success for a single author collection of essays that is subtly different from simply averaging the overall quality of its compositions; an aspect over and above the intent behind the writing that pushes it beyond mere academic effort. It is difficult to define this quality - but the cumulative effect is similar to the sense of 'humanness' I might perceive from someone after a long conversation. There are moments when the conversation's subject fades into the background, and what's left is the pleasure of watching an interesting mind at work. Essayists who fail to exhibit this added dimension, regardless of the caliber of their writing, may, in the end, feel dry and lifeless and unremarkable.
I bring this up because it is my impression that Ms. Robinson achieves this delicate and admittedly vague plateau in 'The Death of Adam', and it is also what tips the collection from four stars to five. By the time I reached the final pages, I felt as though Ms. Robinson had accomplished with her essays what great fiction often does; to intimate, in a calm and deliberate manner, the foreign landscape of another mind - in this case, hers.
And the striking element of this collection is Ms. Robinson's emphatic support of theology and the church as sources of moral guidance. There should be nothing shocking in this - Christianity as moral inspiration has guided the Western world for well over a thousand years, yet to read a reasonable person advocate it now seems almost controversial. But this is her firm foundation - refreshing actually, to this reader - although she isn't an evangelist, at least not here. Her intention is to 'rescue' historical theological texts and personalities from the disparagement of modern cultural judgment, developed over time on incorrect or unfair readings; and, when the facts are unobtainable, to present alternate, positive possibilities compatible with what is known.
It is in this way that she attacks the modern canards concerning John Calvin, which she deals with in more than one instance, and also in how she revisits the debate between Darwinism and Creationism, and even the source and impact of the McGuffy Readers. Time and time again, she returns to the original texts to draw her conclusions, but no matter what the ostensible subject of any essay, Ms. Robinson's main thrust is, as she says in her introduction, "that the prevailing view of things can be assumed to be wrong, and that its opposite...can also be assumed to be wrong. They (the essays) undertake to demonstrate that there are other ways of thinking, for which better arguments can be made."
This confidence in, and explanation of, possible 'third ways' (or more) is what I found most likable about Ms. Robinson's collection. That, and the inference that it's best to be wary of anyone's interpretation of source materials. Ms. Robinson is included in that 'anyone', although from afar, she strikes me as more reasonable simply because she is less fanatically aggressive. The two default positions for any discussions in this country today seem to be intractable polar extremes, often just as interested in destroying the ideas of others as in promoting their own, and it's a pleasure to read someone capable of realistically defending other beliefs. Discussion of the 'issues' is probably only of limited use no matter what, but it is of no use when the two sides are entrenched in dogma.
'The Death of Adam' succeeds best when Ms. Robinson sticks to exegesis. It is informative and enlightening, and although she tends to make assumptions that bolster her arguments when the historical record is thin, they are no less implausible than the prevailing postulations. Where it is weakest, in the essays 'Facing Reality' and 'Family', Ms. Robinson skips too quickly from topic to topic and loses coherence; while in 'Wilderness', she raises what will probably be the defining legacy of the human race, yet her antidote, or better yet, her course correction, is weak and improbable, and amounts to the breathless exhortation that 'we must do better'.
These minor points aside, I admired Ms. Robinson's forthright opinions and her courage to publish them as they are, instead of launching a defensive first strike on people and positions with which she disagrees. I appreciate that she stands for something, instead of simply against something else. If, in this modern life, the possibility still exists to place discussion and intellect onto a useful plane (of which I am uncertain), it will be by supporting the opportunity for unflinching writers and thinkers such as Ms. Robinson to speak their mind, regardless of how well it fits into our own patterns of belief. |
| Modern Jeremiad | 2009-12-28 | 2 / 5 |
| This book could just as well have been entitled "Modern Jeremiad", as its tone is often bleak, accusatory, and angry, sure that the world, and America in particular, has taken a set of massively wrong turns in terms of both its thinking and its behavior. This is a book that marks modern thought as empty of spiritual meaning, and continually contrasts modern (mostly failed) non-religious ideas and behaviors with Christianity's spirituality and ability to provide meaning and moral structure in a modern human's life. The essays are wildly uneven, and the variation in quality is quite wide; most are readable, but several are nigh on unreadable. If you were to read this book from back to front, you would, roughly speaking, be reading from the best essays to the worst.
The first essay, entitled Darwinism, is the biggest disappointment, particularly as it was the reason I bought the book. Here, unfortunately, the author is murky, imprecise, ill-informed and sometimes plainly misleading. She appears to be not very well acquainted with the subject, at least from the modern scientific point of view. It would appear that this essay's main theme is that materialism in ideas (science) and practice (acquisitiveness) is no substitute for moral and spiritual values; this is a strong idea, and has been argued in many ways by many people. This essay starts unraveling when the author chooses to use the term Darwinism in several different contexts without carefully distinguishing between them. Since the sub-title of the book is "Essays on Modern Thought", there is a strong implication that this subject would address evolutionary biology. However, Darwinism is used here to mean at least four different things: Modern evolutionary biological science, the historical progression of social and political ideas that followed from Darwin's writings, Social Darwinism in and of itself, and the pseudo-scientific ramblings of various people, to include some, but not all, of Dawkin's writings (some of Dawkin's work is legitimate evolutionary biological science, and some of it is atheistic crankiness). Each of these have some quite distinct elements, and by conflating them together the author displays some fairly flaccid thinking, much of it from old and long since discredited ideas, or ideas that are on the bleeding edge of scientific thinking, but which are treated by the author, as, well . . . scientific gospel. Certainly the essay struggles to be modern in the sense of being current, or having applied lessons learned.
The most modern and enduring thoughts that emanated from Darwin are expressed in evolutionary biological thinking, which attempts to describe a mechanism for the observed changes that occur in a biological organism's physical and genetic structure. The idea for natural selection came from the observations that: natural organisms vary in their physical traits, and seemingly small differences can keep one species from interbreeding with another; most species produce many, many more offspring than can possibly survive in their resource constrained environment, and so only those most fit for survival live long enough to reproduce and pass on their particular traits; the traits that confer higher fitness to surviving organisms can change over time, in part due to changing environmental pressures, providing a very slow mechanism for genetic and physical change of organisms. There were many influences on Darwin that produced these happy thoughts, one of which was Malthus. The author seems to want desperately to take the bleak views of Malthus (and they were very bleak) and connect them to evolutionary biology; she repeatedly turns the idea of natural selection on its head, talking about it as some agent that replaces God and is "killing off those who die", rather than as a description of the normal state of nature (IN EVERY GENERATION most species normally produce more offspring than can survive, which is what Darwin was addressing). Nature works that way whether you believe its origins were from God's creation or you are trying to explain it as a working scientific theory. And just because some aspect of Malthus has influenced and is linked to modern evolutionary biology, doesn't mean that all of Malthus' observations or conclusions apply to it, nor does it mean that every idea Darwin had has survived intact, either, although the author is not careful to make that important distinction.
Therein is one of the major problems of the Darwinism essay, and in the approach of other essays in this book: In the Introduction, the author describes a program for her essays, part of which is to read original works, and extract from them the truth of the author's ideas, rather than relying on later interpretations, and possible misinterpretations. This idea is as old as a freshman lecture in historiography, but even this powerful idea can be misapplied, as it often has been here. Taking ideas espoused 150 years ago, and treating them as if they represent the current thinking on the subject they initiated is rarely fruitful, and in this case, terminal. Ideas, not just organisms, evolve, and some portions or threads of useful ideas are discarded because they are wrong, or better ideas replace them, etc. The author sometimes seems to understand this rather obvious point, but in many instances, clearly does not. For example, as the author points out, Darwin definitely influenced the Social Darwinism movement via his The Descent of Man (Dover Science Books), among other writings, and helped (unwittingly) to produce a framework for much mayhem. The author uses this link to damn all Darwinism (via her conflation of Social Darwinism with modern evolutionary biology), in particular by her insistence that there is a clear intellectual chain from Malthus, Darwin, Social Darwinism, Nietzsche and Freud directly to the Nazi's racial theories, which of course, culminated in the Holocaust. Certainly there are real links there, but doesn't this conclusion seem awfully glib? The author ignores many other influences, and further says that while religion has been used for evil means, it has not been as evil as science, here specifically in the form of Social Darwinism (a very odd point in and of itself). Nothing I have read on the subject of the Holocaust pretends to know exactly all and how profound the influences were that produced this horrific behavior; all writers agree that evil is generally at root unknowable, but all allude to many influences. Ironically, given the author's constant comparison of Darwinism and Christianity, it has been argued in many instances that Christianity is the main intellectual and cultural cause of the Holocaust, evidenced by its long history of anti-Semitism, which included many past incidents of mass murder, albeit not on an industrial scale until the Holocaust. Martin Luther, for example, is called out by, among others, Lucy Davidowitz in her The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945, as having been a prime historical influence on the Nazi's racial hatred and thereby on the Holocaust. Luther's The Jews And Their Lies described the Jews as "the Devil's people", advocated destroying their property, expelling them from Germany, and said that "We are at fault in not slaying them". These words of Luther were regularly referenced in the violent Nazi party propaganda inciting the German populace against Jews. Be that as it may, the argument for the Holocaust's prime cause is weak for either Luther or Social Darwinism: Nazi evil lies in their deeds, their willingness to put imperial power and megalomaniacal ambitions above any love for their fellow human beings. Like many other power mad human beings, they seized upon the most convenient pretexts to further their ambitions. Unfortunately, here the author puts the cart before the horse, and does this is several other essays (substitute Darwin's Social Darwinism for Stalinism, Leninism, Mao, Castro, etc.)
The author also seems to at times understand the limits of science, but many other times asks of science something it isn't designed to do. As Chet Raymo said in Skeptics and True Believers, "Science is an effective, rational instrument for discerning (tentatively, partially, but progressively more accurately) the facts of the world." The keys here are tentativeness and rationality, both significant limits; science is not truth, nor does it aspire to be. The author, in this and other essays, sometimes sees and acknowledges this clearly, but in this essay in particular, repeatedly misses this point, and calls science to task for being empty of meaning (in the spiritual or moral sense), or having supplanted religion - a moot point. Evolutionary biology makes no such claim, although a writer like Dawkins often does, and when he does, he is no longer representing science. The author has recognized this distinction in some of her other writings, but here she again conflates science with scientists who stray from science to make points about religion, or even better, working scientists who make conclusions about religion under the guise of "science."
She also has occasion to make silly statements about science, as for example, "Cats and dogs are quite closely related, but a lifetime of studying dogs would not qualify anyone to speak with authority on the ways of cats. So with the whole earthly bestiary which has been recruited to the purposes of the proper study of mankind." This is at best, an overly broad point about the real differences between species, but comes across as deliberately ignorant. Those traits that are similar or the same between a cat and a dog allow science to study the traits in one organism and apply them to the other, not to mention are clearly useful in refining our understanding of what is NOT the same, and therefore providing distinguishing characteristics between the two species that makes them uniquely a cat or dog. The OBVIOUS extension to humans is that we have successfully used these similarities to study human diseases and work out cures for them using other animals, among many other things. Does the author really not understand this, or was she just, again, sloppy? You be the judge.
A more troubling example of the author's odd statements regarding science is: "Darwinism is harsh and crude in its practical consequences, in a degree that sets it apart from all other respectable scientific hypotheses." It is hard to know where to begin with this statement, but I will limit it to two questions: 1. What does the judgment "harsh and crude" have to do with evolutionary biology? The author doesn't appear to answer this, and it is a loaded subjective observation that is not usefully applied to hypotheses or theories. 2. How is it that scientific hypotheses are "respectable" or not? They are either testable, and add to a useful probabilistic model of the phenomenon being studied, or they are not. They can be well-established, meaning they are reliably predictive for the use they are put to, or they can be early and quite tentative and promising but not used by anyone, and can be discarded if the hypotheses was disproven or proved to have no predictive value or was superseded by an idea that worked better, etc. etc. etc.
There is much more that disappoints in this essay, and it seems no more than a nearly unreadable muddle - it clearly needed an editor.
Regarding the long Introduction, it does have some interesting ideas in it, for example, "Literacy became virtually universal in Western civilization when and where it began to seem essential for people to be able to read the Bible," which has stimulated me to look at this further. It, however, suffers from the same kind of problems that the Darwinism essay does. In addition, I will address just one thing in the Introduction, which is in fact a problem throughout the essays. The author calls historians to task for being too cynical, and jumping on every flaw or problem by way of writing off the subject being analyzed. I agree with her that there is a tendency in historical writing to do this, and it is sometimes serves to obscure real accomplishments, but . . . Some of it is quite legitimate in bringing a seriously different understanding, rather than being just cheap criticism, and, oddly enough, the author herself does a good deal of this throughout the essays, some of which is new understanding, and some of which is nothing more than cheap shots towards something she objects to (as seen in the Darwinism essay).
A perfect example of this is found in the Introduction where the author takes historians to task for picking on Thomas Jefferson regarding the hypocrisy of being a slave owner while espousing freedom for all men. She points out that Jefferson, in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, included a passage that attacked slavery as a terrible crime, and which was removed by others, and that Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (Classic Reprint), attacks slavery vehemently; yet even with this, historians still insist on beating up poor Jefferson for his hypocrisy, without acknowledging the accomplishment. Following the formula of her book in the first two points, we can examine Notes on the State of Virginia and find a few other things: 1. He never intended on publishing this work in his lifetime, but was forced to because a draft got out. It is clear from the remainder of his behavior throughout his life, that he ALWAYS acted to preserve slavery and other Southern institutions regardless of what he said about slavery (see "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power by Garry Wills, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph Ellis, etc.). 2. In Notes on Virginia, although he attacked the institution of slavery, he also described his view of the native inferiority of blacks relative to whites, and proposed that if all the slaves were freed, they would have to be expelled from the United States, as they were not capable of being participating citizens; they were too stupid. Jefferson, in fact, made a habit, like many of our politicians, then and now, of floating nice-sounding ideas, such as freeing the slaves, into a legislative environment that was never going to make it into law - he was grandstanding. 3. One of the prime reasons for the founding of the Republican party in 1792 (which changed to the Democratic-Republican party in 1824 and the Democratic party in 1858) by Jefferson was to maintain states rights and the agrarian quality of the South (translate - protect slavery, which the Democratic party did with great fierceness until recent times). 4. Jefferson supported the 3/5 clause to the Constitution (from abroad), which is the single most powerful reason why the South held more power in the legislature all the way to 1860 and thereby dominated much of the Federal government. Additionally, Jefferson would have lost the election of 1800 to Adams without the additional electoral college votes generated by counting slaves without representation. 5. Jefferson bought and sold hundreds of slaves after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and at his death 50 years later, he had by then freed only 10, and still had 135. Washington, on the other hand, freed all of his slaves at his death.
I would invite the author to visit Jefferson's Monticello, as I once did, and really inspect his home and grounds. Monticello was diabolically designed to keep slaves out of sight (this has been noted by other observers), either under the house, which is a warren of narrow, dark rooms and passages with dumbwaiters to support the home above, and the slave quarters are out of view; only the whitest of slaves served in the house, among them Sally Hemings, and some of his and Sally's children (his parentage of some of her children has now been validated via DNA evidence). Whatever his relationship with Sally, there was a strong element of coercion in it, and whatever else Jefferson accomplished, he was in a no way a friend of slaves, or any real kind of abolitionist. The author's opprobrium to the contrary, this is not an annoying and cynical point, but goes to the heart of Jefferson's attitudes and accomplishments, or lack thereof, regarding slavery.
I found the best essays to be The Tyranny of Petty Coercion and Wilderness, which are tight and cogent pleas from the heart for the courage to act in the best interests of community, nation and humankind, against the cynicism of virulently partisan discourse and environmental exploitation, respectively. These are brave explications of thoughts routinely squelched in today's America via the worst kind of peer pressure. The author provides a spot on description of the failure of the political will of liberalism or progressivism as an antidote to the conservative shift of power and money to benefit a rapacious and selfish elite (not, as other critics would have it, the failure of liberalism itself- the author supports the instincts of liberalism to help the disadvantaged, for example).
Her essays on Psalm 8 and Dietrich Bonhoeffer are also of high quality, and a welcome departure from the stiff and angry tone that permeates a good part of the book. Psalm 8 is a frank autobiographical account of the author's personal spiritual journey. The Dietrich Bonhoeffer essay is a capable exploration of one of the best examples of personal dedication to and sacrifice for one's principles, rare in any time and place, and particularly compelling in the person of Bonhoeffer. Luther, for all his fame as a man of courage ("Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders"), did not have the strength of resolve of Bonhoeffer; even while he was standing up to the Pope, in the face of being burned at the stake, he was actually already under the protection of German princes who had every political reason to use Luther as a way of removing the heavy economic hand of the Roman Catholic Church, and Luther knew this. When the peasants rose up against their feudal lords a few years later, stimulated in some part by Luther's call to independent interpretation of the Bible, and thereby some independence from authority, Luther's response was to tell the princes they had every right to destroy recalcitrant peasants (an inflammatory overreaction that only fanned the flames of the resulting violence; it is hard to avoid the thought that Luther's vitriol was self-protective and craven). Bonhoeffer had access to similar protections at several junctures in his ethical and bravely public battle with the Nazis (e.g. he was given permission to go, and went to NYC in 1939, and returned after a month to a situation that was clearly life-threatening), but chose to face the threats rather than retreat, and it shortened his life, as he was ultimately imprisoned, then murdered by the Nazis.
There are several on John Calvin, to include the two on Margaret of Navarre and Puritans and Prigs, which I won't comment much on here, but which I generally found interesting, as I knew little more than the basics regarding Calvin. However, I didn't buy her extended supposition, that because some of Calvin's works show him to be more benign than he is often described, some of the basic historical facts around Calvinism are quite wrong, such as the rigidity of the ascetic, controlled life and the theocratic style of Puritan communities. She is right to say these accounts can be exaggerated, and they often miss the richness and happiness of some of the lives of people in these communities, but she herself exaggerates in minimizing the real effects of this and other theocracies. Thomas Jefferson's best contribution to America was his insistence on freedom of religion, a point of view he developed in part as a reaction to New England's theocratic history, and his agreement with Roger William's own insistence on freedom of religion, which insistence was precipitated by direct theocratic interference with William's ability to worship freely in Puritan Massachusetts, and his subsequent migration to and formation of Rhode Island.
If you are interested in her views on Darwinism, this book is not recommended, but if you are interested in some heartfelt discussions of the quality of modern life, and a more friendly view of our Puritan heritage, this book is recommended. |
| A brief comment | 2009-11-24 | 5 / 5 |
| | This collection of essays on somewhat obscure topics (to me, anyway) was nevertheless an interesting and enjoyable read. The author writes extremely well (one of my more literate friends refers to this sort of highly literate style as being an "uber-stylist") and even if you don't agree with her it's still thought-provoking. As a biologist, I most enjoyed the chapter on Darwinism, but the others are good too. You might not always agree with her, but the author is a talented cultural critic and she has a great deal of erudition on the history of these ideas. The book made me think and I came away better informed on these issues than I was before. No book can do more than that. |
| Marilynne Robinson Worth Reading Anytime | 2009-09-11 | 5 / 5 |
| | This book of essays is a wonderful testimony of a person who is not afraid to go against the commonly held beliefs of much of the non-religious world. Who knew Calvin was so intersting, or that New Englander Calvinists and the McCuffie (sp?) readers were so admirable, or that the Darwinists so untrustworthy? You don't have to believe her, but she will make you read more about all these and other topics. |
| I Suppose It's Good For Me | 2008-11-26 | 4 / 5 |
| | Our author takes the position that not only are we the product of the "dumbing down of America", but we've allowed our thought processes to become "dumbed down" as well. She then gives us a series of essays to prove her point, essays that are peppered with obscure words utilizing their most obscure meanings! I ran for my Websters soft cover dictionary, but had to resort to my unabridged for most of them. She does make some good points about how inacurate research has developed some long-held ideas resulting in flawed thinking. And, I suppose resorting to long sessions with the dictionary is good for me. All in all, I felt this to be a thoughtful and engaging book. |
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