Gertrude Himmelfarb is a conservative historian who is reasonably prominent in the United States because of her politics, not the quality of her historical scholarship. (Isn't it ironic that the champions of merit and high standards are overwhelmingly represented by intellectuals whose work fails to meet those standards? Remember Allan Bloom?) The political theorist Alan Ryan has a skillful and understated demolition of Himmelfarb in the December 2 New York Review of Books. He is reviewing her latest book, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. Although readers will know my preferred modus operandi is to "philosophize with a hammer" (as Nietzsche says), I must say I very much admire what Ryan has done here. Early on, he notes:
There is room for disagreement about the quality of Gertrude Himmelfarb's work as a historian and room for concern about the extent to which it has been damaged by her political preoccupations--some might say obsessions. What leaves no room for disagreement is the quality of her writing, which has a verve and sharpness absent from most academic prose, and if there is always much to disagree with in what she says, she says it with wonderful clarity. The Roads to Modernity is no exception. It is a pleasure to read. There is a great deal to be said against the line Ms. Himmelfarb takes, but much to be said in favor of the way she does it.
Notice how skillfully this is done: several hints are dropped that, on substance, there are serious problems here, but high and generous marks are given for style. Ryan then moves to an extended summary of the argument of Himmelfarb's book, with almost no editorial comments mixed in. The crux of her position is to distinguish the British Enlightenment from the French one, and to argue that,
the "good" [British] Enlightenment was not a rationalist, secular, radical enterprise at all. It was mildly progressive, socially conservative, culturally tolerant....[Its intellectual] heroes [Shaftesbury, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke] were...sociologists of virtue. "Virtue" in this context is a term of art: it has nothing to do with the preservation of one's virginity, but everything to do with the qualities that make us useful members of society.
The bulk of the review essay is given over to an exposition of Ms. Himmelfarb's claims about these thinkers and the British Enlightenment. Only in the final few paragraphs does Ryan finally unleash the critical reservations. It begins with the following rather gentle reprimand:
Ms. Himmelfarb is a vivid writer, but oddly naive. She writes as though it is an urgent matter to understand who thought what and to award them good and bad marks for their ideas; but she never stops to discuss how much impact intellectuals have on the politics of their day, or to wonder what conditions must obtain if they are to have an impact....
This line of criticism--Ms. Himmelfarb's "unconcern with questions of causation" as Ryan quietly puts it--is developed over the next few paragraphs, setting the stage for the final blow (and what a brilliant blow it is):
The Roads to Modernity is perhaps not to be read as history. It is certainly very entertaining if read simply as a slight essay on some distinguished thinkers. But Ms. Himmelfarb--as her epilogue makes clear--means it as more than that. It is meant to defend the view that America, in its current Republican incarnation, represents what is best in "modernity." And as we know from what she has recently written elsewhere, this includes President Bush's version of the war on terror, his unflinching support for Ariel Sharon's Israel, and his faith-based initiatives in welfare and education. The defense of America also includes belittling the achievements of countries whose inhabitants lead longer and more healthy lives than those of the United States, and whose workers are, on an hourly basis, the most productive in the world. One can only observe that the parochialism, narrowness, and insularity of her political outlook betray the cosmopolitan ethos that her book defends. They are also, and in themselves, silly.
What a tour de force! This could almost stand as an epitaph on what passes for conservative public intellectual thought in America today: sometimes "entertaining," intellectually "slight," and ultimately "silly."
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