Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2009 3:54 pm
No doubt Isaiah Berlin was a great writer, but this quote is superficial, showing Berlin in his role as chief cheerleader for the British war effort – more British than the Brits. His use of the term “final solution” directly compares any effort to logically understand the world to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. As a Latvian Jew whose family suffered terribly, Berlin had a perfect right to sniff out the conceptual roots of totalitarianism. However, saying that belief in a final solution is the universal cause of slaughter is superficial. The real cause of slaughter is will to power, to which beliefs are just means to an end, not an end in themselves. For example Stalin claimed belief in communism as a final solution, where in reality his actions were determined by his own will to power, with the communist “final solution” primarily used as a propaganda device to conceal his autocratic intrigues.Grim wrote:"One belief more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the alters of great historical ideals - justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission or the emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty its self, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution." Isaiah BerlinRobert Tulip wrote:Using Hobbes, Hume and Russell as a prism on to the universe is no bad thing, and highly instructive. I have the impression Hitchens would invoke Aristotle to reject postmodernism as illogical, rejecting the mysticism inherent in saying that contradictory propositions can both be true.
The implication of Berlin’s quote is that it is in principle impossible to understand reality. This is the basis of modern liberal pluralism for which he is something of a patron saint. However, this view can be maladaptive when it supports an excessive scepticism about scientific discovery, for example in the field of climate change.
The nub here is the concept of proof. Hitchens demands a form of empirical proof which is irrelevant to the nature of religious truth. God is not an entity who can be discovered, but a concept which can be understood. The mathematical logic of symbolic understanding of archetypes provides the basis of mythic understanding, and is a completely different way of thought from the empirical tone of the atheist enquiry into whether God exists.This supposed affirmation in the blurring of true and false does not change the nature of the symbol as a physical representation of truth. How could it be an archetype is it were not? Hitchens rejection of myth is mirrored by the inability of myth to prove its truth. Whether you are talking about Mother Goose or the bible is now irrelevant. The frame of reference in regard to the bible has been shrewdly replaced by a philosophical argument discussing the merits and nature of the symbol and mythical representation of reality which is just as much a sociological or anthropological study as anything else.
An example here is the Australian indigenous myth of the Rainbow Snake. Hitchens might argue in his condescending way that the myth is untrue, and is associated with a primitive culture. However, his view would ignore the symbolic role of this myth in helping to establish an indigenous identity which critiques the alienation from the earth of the Abrahamic faiths. This interpretation of symbols goes back to Robert Graves’ Introduction to the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, where he asserts that myth is a dramatic coded record of events like 'invasions, migrations, dynastic changes, admission of foreign cults and social reforms', with the beliefs of conquered people returning in a subordinate form over time. Simply calling all myths equally false closes the door to this sociological interpretation.
Hitchens’ assertion that mythology is false is itself a mythic argument, holding out the vision of the European scientific Enlightenment of the eighteenth century as the model of human progress. In archetypal terms, science has largely conquered religion, meaning that religion needs to return in an altered form, compatible with science, if it is to continue. Hitchens enunciates a triumphant claim of the superiority of science over religion, seeking to chop off all the heads of the hydra in one fell swing. No wonder he writes for Vanity Fair.
By the way, Hitchens’ recent articles are at http://www.hitchensweb.com/