Humanizing the Social Sciences

by Gerald J. Russello

Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore, by Peter L. Berger. Prometheus Books, 2011.

Sociology was invented in the nineteenth century by the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who envisioned a “science of society” in which religion was replaced by rationalism and the polity was ruled by experts. Comte intended the discipline to be a new “religion of humanity” and an instrument to further radical political ends. Yet the career of Peter Berger, one of America’s best-known sociologists, shows that the discipline need not be ideological or anti-religious, and that the study of society can be as humanistic as it is social-scientific.

Mr. Berger is best known for The Sacred Canopy (1967), which critiques what is known as the “secularization thesis,” the theory, promoted by Max Weber and Emile Durkheim (among many others), that as societies modernize, they necessarily secularize. Mr. Berger found that rather than simply secularize, societies pluralize: Religious traditions multiply in modern societies but they do not necessarily diminish. What increases is the individual responsibility to choose one of those traditions, or none. The expectations of utopian secularists and militant atheists for a Comtean world are exaggerated. It was a prescient point considering the half-century that followed The Sacred Canopy’s publication.

Conservatives, Politics & Culture: A Response to Claes Ryn

by Gerald J. Russello

Claes Ryn (How Conservatives Failed 'The Culture') is characteristically forthright about what he sees as conservatism's main difficulty:  its neglect of the imaginative realm of culture and the arts in favor of politics. This emphasis is not only a reversal of traditional conservative priorities but is self-defeating.  Ryn's own work is a testament to what a realistic conservative vision looks like, infused with imagination and an informed understanding of human society.  Cultural questions are treated by the Right now as reasons for political engagement and partisan fundraising, as if Hollywood, Broadway, and the TV networks cannot be fought on a purely imaginative basis.

Ryn acknowledges some of the positive attributes of the political conservative movement, including its sincerity and some victories, but the situation has grown only more dire since he wrote this essay 15 years ago. The most popular conservative pundits now write almost exclusively of politics, and the quality of engagement with important questions of culture and imagination has been diluted severely. Bright spots remain - one thinks of the New Criterion, for example, which still seriously engages the arts, but the most important non-liberal source of the reflection Ryn is seeking, the journal Image, is outside the conservative community, for reasons its editor, Gregory Wolfe, explained in his recent collection of pieces from that journal. But his work, critical as it is, only illustrates Ryn's larger point: the unifying culture that conservatives should have been defending they have let dissolve and have not developed imaginative responses to the current cultural crisis facing the West.

The typical response from conservatives is that politics, and its adjunct law, influence culture and so are properly a conservative focus. I don't think Ryn disputes that these areas are important, just that they are not the most important. In many ways, the Tea Party is a version of the 1970s and 1980s evangelical resurgence. Although the rise of the Religious Right had some good effects, as a cultural matter are you better off, as the saying goes, thirty years ago than you are today?  The governing political ideology does affect culture, but Ryn is right to argue that it should not determine culture. The historian Christopher Dawson uses the example of the early Christians bursting upon the desiccated Roman world, creating a new order.  This example I think shows both the overwhelming power a unified culture can have, as well as a warning against the temptation to cocoon away from the larger culture.

And yet, and yet. Russell Kirk, whose own work was a conscious attempt to recreate a living conservative tradition, remained hopeful that resurgences were possible. And his lived example remains a counterexample, as does Peter Viereck, when the memory of the political strategists fades away.

If one looks, there are ways to build a vibrant culture for oneself and one's family, but this is predicated on the same false prophecy if individual self-creation that liberalism has preached; it can ever be only a partial solution. What is lacking when Ryn wrote, and even now, are conservatives who can grapple imaginatively with the new technologies and media to develop a true counter-narrative to secular liberalism.

This is difficult work, more difficult than writing op-eds on the farce of the presidential electoral process, or the Supreme Court nominee guessing-game, but it is the more crucial.

Gerald Russello is the Editor of The University Bookman.

For­got­ten Con­sti­tu­tional Founders

by Ger­ald J. Rus­sello

An In­cau­tious Man: The Life of Gou­verneur Mor­ris
by Melanie Miller (ISI Books 2008, $25.00).
For­got­ten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Mar­tin
by Bill Kauff­man (ISI Books 2008, $25.00).

Even after more than two cen­turies, the story of the Con­sti­tu­tion re­mains en­thralling. Fifty-five men—av­er­age age, forty-two—met be­hind locked doors, their de­lib­er­a­tions se­cret, to cre­ate a gov­ern­ing doc­u­ment. Their au­thor­ity to do so was, to say the least, un­clear. Most of the new states had sent their del­e­gates merely to re­vise the Ar­ti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion, under which the thir­teen for­mer colonies had been gov­erned dur­ing the War for In­de­pen­dence, and not to cre­ate a new gov­ern­ment.

For the eigh­teenth-cen­tury gen­tle­man, being re­mem­bered for cre­at­ing a new na­tion was a legacy worth risk­ing one’s life, for­tune, and sa­cred honor. Yet, for some of them, that eter­nal mem­ory was to be elu­sive. Of the del­e­gates, whom Thomas Jef­fer­son (him­self a mem­ber in good stand­ing of the “founders’ club,” though he was not at Philadel­phia) called “demigods,” only per­haps a dozen have re­mained in our na­tional imag­i­na­tion. There is the in­ven­tive Ben­jamin Franklin, the solid George Wash­ing­ton, pre­sid­ing nobly and silently over the de­lib­er­a­tions, and of course the “fa­ther of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” James Madi­son.

But who now re­mem­bers Mary­land’s Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, for ex­am­ple, or Richard­son Davie of North Car­olina? The In­ter­col­le­giate Stud­ies In­sti­tute is re­turn­ing at­ten­tion to these so-called for­got­ten founders. In ad­di­tion to Gou­verneur Mor­ris of New York, the Mary­lan­der Luther Mar­tin, and war hero Nathanael Greene, more are planned, in­clud­ing bi­ogra­phies of Oliver Ellsworth, John With­er­spoon, Charles Car­roll, James Otis, and John Dick­in­son. These short stud­ies, in­tended for the gen­eral reader, should be placed along­side the bi­ogra­phies of the big five—Hamil­ton, Jef­fer­son, Madi­son, Adams, and Franklin.

Mar­tin and Mor­ris il­lus­trate the founders’ dif­fer­ent minds. Mar­tin (1748–1826) was dif­fi­cult at best dur­ing the height of his bril­liant ca­reer as a lawyer, serv­ing, among other things, as At­tor­ney Gen­eral of Mary­land for al­most thirty years and as one of Aaron Burr’s de­fense lawyers, but by the end he was a can­tan­ker­ous, im­pov­er­ished drunken mess. In a vi­gnette that speaks vol­umes about eigh­teenth-cen­tury life, the Mary­land bar levied a tax on its mem­bers to sup­port Mar­tin in his des­ti­tute old age, in recog­ni­tion of his ser­vices.

The Qual­ity of Our Imag­i­na­tions: Interview with Gary Gregg

by Ger­ald J. Rus­sello

We thank The Uni­ver­sity Book­man for allowing us to offer their in­ter­view with Gary L. Gregg, II, who holds the Mitch Mc­Connell Chair in Lead­er­ship at the Uni­ver­sity of Louisville, where he di­rects the Mc­Connell Cen­ter. He is the au­thor or ed­i­tor of nine books, in­clud­ing a new series of young adult nov­els called The Rem­nant Chron­i­cles. On the University Bookman site there is a re­view of his new novel, The Iona Con­spir­acy.

Gary, thanks for join­ing us. Tell us a lit­tle bit about how you came to write The Iona Con­spir­acy.

In 2003, I led a stu­dent trip to Scot­land. Upon re­turn­ing from that trip, the muse in­spired me to start a lit­tle story re­lat­ing to the places I vis­ited. It re­ally was a won­der­fully un­ex­pected gift: an image, re­ally, that I was drawn to ex­plore in writ­ing. That at­tempt turned into The Sporran which was pub­lished in 2007 (and will be re­pub­lished in a new edi­tion later this year). My lit­tle story about Jacob Boyd opened up a whole new world to me and I knew one story would not do. Though I wrote it so it could stand alone, The Iona Con­spir­acy is the fur­ther un­fold­ing of Jacob Boyd’s con­nec­tions to “The Rem­nant” and the an­cient trea­sures of Isil­dane.

Scot­land plays a large role in The Iona Con­spir­acy, as it did in your ear­lier novel, The Sporran. What is it about Scot­land that fires your imag­i­na­tion?

You are right to say that Scot­land fires my imag­i­na­tion. As a Gregg, we trace our an­ces­try to Clan Mac­Gre­gor and some old Scot rebels and out­laws from long ago. I am sure hav­ing Dr. Kirk as one of my major lit­er­ary and con­ser­v­a­tive he­roes re­in­forced my nat­ural in­stincts to love all things Scot­tish. My writ­ing, though, all began on that 2003 trip through Scot­land. The land, build­ings, ruins, and peo­ple all struck my imag­i­na­tion. I was par­tic­u­larly taken by Dr. Kirk’s beloved St. An­drews.