Orthodox Leadership in a Brave New World

Almost thirty years ago Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered an address at Harvard University that still ranks as one of the most trenchant and inspired critiques of Western culture ever given. Although some of the political references are dated, two observations remain as true today as when they were first spoken. The first is that the philosophical materialism that shaped communism and led to the Gulags now operates in the Western world. The second is that mankind stands at an anthropological threshold.

What is philosophical materialism? To use Solzhenitsyn's definition, it is the belief that man has no touchstone other than himself:

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth . . . we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

Philosophical materialism has concrete cultural ramifications. To social utopians, it means that persons have no enduring value -- so society can be forcibly arranged around notions of the common good. To hedonists, it means that the body is primarily a pleasure machine. To nihilists, it means that because the death of the body is also the end of existence, we should exalt death and violence.

These themes shaped much of the course of the last century. Solzhenitsyn had firsthand experience of Marxist social utopianism, but he was not the first to sound the alarm. Almost a century earlier, Dostoevsky heard the rumblings that would make Russia susceptible to communist tyranny and warned, "Without God, everything is permitted."

Read the entire article here.

Comments

[Margaret]

Those last few words strike a chord. I came across Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues yesterday and read his account of how he very systematically tried to be good. He says that neither his virtues nor his approach is dependent on a faith, but I wondered why anyone without a faith would actively try to be better than they are because, without God, isn't everything permitted? Better go and read the whole article now!

[Stavros]

Ben, a brilliant man in his own right, wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue. Let's give him credit for trying. Making up your own rules is usually a recipe for failure.

[Hermes]

God is the transendant highest being. God is the first cause and a self-unmoved mover (because beings seek divinity) otherwise there will be an infinite regress to causes of causes. God is mostly unaware of the world. God is not the author of everything because evil exists. God must be immaterial, unchanging, eternal, unity and simple.

That is all we can infer. The rest is Jewish tribal mythology.

[Stavros]

Evil exists because God gives us the freedom to choose between good and evil. We often choose the latter. He is aware of and sees everything and try as we might we cannot hide from Him. Even when we go astray however, God still loves us and is willing to forgive our many sins.

The rest is human folly and arrogance.

[Hermes]

It is human folly and arrogance to believe we know the personal attributes of God i.e. love.

[Margaret]

Stavros,

Visiting your blog over the last couple of days I have been transfixed by Solzhenitsyn's sepia
face, by that cloven forehead. I wanted to look at other images of him, and that took me to this site:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/articles/fredrikson/index.html

I enjoyed reading the account by the Swedish journalist of his role as postbox for Solzhenitsyn, such an everday mixture of the mundane and the inspirational, of prams and dissidence. Perhaps you have already seen it.

[Stavros]

Margaret,

Thanks, I had not read it though I found it fascinating. Those of us who have grown up in relative freedom often take those freedoms for granted and it takes a guy like Solzhenitsyn to help us realize the price people have to pay to secure and maintain those freedoms. As the events in Burma and so many other places throughout the world make quite apparent, we still have a long way to go.