‘The question is no longer as Dostoyevsky put it ‘‘can civilized man believe?’’ Rather: can unbelieving man be civilized?1 Philip Rieff1 n order to deepen our understanding of the Iplace of Islam in the contemporary world, it is useful to contrast Islamic2 and secular . The latter is today closely associated with the perspective of secular , ‘the rejection of in favour of a belief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts’.3 Whilst Muslims see moral authority as ultimately deriving from , secular humanists see as intrinsic to humanity. Our innate moral authority, it is argued, provides a sufficient basis for making our own laws. Although Islam may grant that the spiritual and rational faculties of humanity provide an intrinsic moral sense, it From Humanism is also clear that humanity is greatly in need of moral direction and is indeed capable – to : both individually and collectively – of going dangerously and destructively astray without The Eclipse of the light of and the submission to divine guidance that flows from it. As for unbelief, the Qur’an makes it clear that it is a state of ignorance and spiritual darkness, the moral Magnus Bradshaw and social implications of which are apparent in the corruption and injustice of pre-Islamic Arabia. There is evidently at least a partial analogy between that time and our own, in so far as it is identified with and thus . In what follows, I take account of the widespread concern about moral decline so evident today and consider criticisms of a number of widely shared secular humanist values. Rather than presenting a specifically Islamic perspective on the issues at hand, the focus here is on the very different foundations of religious and secular ethics, and the that non-Islamic scholars have reached conclusions about the contemporary ethical cmc papers no.6 predicament that many Muslims would share. From Humanism to Nihilism: The Eclipse of Secular Ethics

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Symptoms of Decline the reduction of truth to utility, taboo to Critics of usually perceive a function, conviction to mere preference; all connection between the secularization of provisional, all exchangeable….sacredness society and moral decline. It was in 1948 is conspicuous in its absence’.7 These that the American essayist Richard Weaver developments take place in the context of observed that ‘There is for the rise of moral individualism, the decline declaring that modern man has become of institutions sustaining morality, and a a moral idiot…we approach a condition disparagement of self-restraint in which in which we shall be amoral without the notions of guilt and moral judgment become capacity to perceive it and degraded without taboo. means to measure our descent’.4 For Weaver, The Ambiguities of the Enlightenment this predicament is linked to the denial of the transcendent, which he equates to a denial For secular humanism, reason is the most of truth itself. If, he argues, the humanist fundamental human faculty and thus the notion that ‘man is the measure of all things’ necessary basis for any approach to ethics. Yet is to be our moral benchmark, there can traditionally, and in the Islamic perspective, only ultimately ensue from this a morally reason is seen as a tool rather than an entirely corrosive relativism, amongst the symptoms self-sufficient means of reaching indisputable of which he perceived to be the weakening moral conclusions, for as Weaver observes, of normal human sentiment and relationships, ‘Reason alone fails to justify itself. Not the loss of the ability to recognize obscenity, without cause has the devil been called the as well as the egoism, narcissism and impiety prince of lawyers, and not by accident are of contemporary man. More recently, in Shakespeare’s villains good reasoners. If After (1981), his celebrated study the disposition is wrong, reason increases maleficence; if it is right, reason orders and of the contemporary ethical predicament, 8 Alasdair MacIntyre suggests that the West furthers the good’. Nonetheless, the quest has suffered a sort of ‘moral catastrophe’: for a rational principle of morality that can ‘We have - very largely, if not entirely – lost be applied universally is central to modern our comprehension, both theoretical and secular ethics. Both and the practical, of morality’.5 utilitarians and sought just such a principle, one whose Indeed, the moral continuity of Western authority no rational person could deny. cultures appears to have been interrupted and Paradoxically, reason led them to radically there is no longer the consensus that existed conflicting conclusions, and proved powerless until quite recently. MacIntyre suggests to provide a ‘neutral’ point of view from that contemporary Western societies lack which to decide between their competing agreed moral criteria: ‘the question of what moral perspectives and claims. Kant’s it is in virtue of which a particular moral deontological theory and the teleological judgment is true or false has come to lack approach of are both deeply any clear answer’.6 The sociologist James flawed – apart from their intrinsic weaknesses Davison Hunter observes that truths have - by their reliance on Enlightenment been replaced by values, that is, ‘truths that assumptions about the role of reason in have been deprived of their commanding ethics that are now seen, by MacIntyre and character. They are substitutes for revelation, John Gray amongst others, as obsolete. They imperatives that have dissolved into a range of suggest that attempts to provide a purely possibilities…The very word ‘’ signifies rational basis for an objective morality are

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cmc papers no.6 inevitably built on non-rational foundations project of seeking an independent rational that are ultimately no more than shared sets of justification for morality and shared rational preferences and assumptions. Many secularists progress through liberal values has failed,11 now acknowledge that reason alone has been resulting in relativism and what Gray refers unable to provide a self-justifying basis for to as the ‘post-modern condition of fractured morality, and that there is no reason to be perspectives and groundless practices’,12 moral that any rational person is compelled to which rejects the Enlightenment concept of acknowledge.9 reason. Postmodernism, rooted in ’s criticism of the Enlightenment, A further problem for the universal claims of emphasizes the multiplicity of perspectives reason-based theories has always been that lacking unity or any objective basis, for all not all secular thinkers see reason as capable values are a matter of perspective and there of fulfilling such a role. For , is no neutral ‘moral point of view’. From for example, reason should be the servant a post-modern perspective, liberalism, far of the passions rather than their master, from providing a set of universal moral whilst rationalism ignores the fact - religion principles, turns out to be just another and modern psychology here being in historically-conditioned worldview, one agreement - that there is an aspect of human equally vulnerable to the dissolving vortex nature that is not and never will be rational, of . The Enlightenment was this irrationality playing a very significant thus ultimately self-undermining because role in human life. Thus, when the pursuit its rational method of enquiry inexorably of abstract principles such as duty or the exposed its own fundamental principles to of the majority come into conflict a withering scrutiny that they could not with our egoistic desires, the latter will often withstand in the long run. This termination prevail, for in practice such abstractions have of the Enlightenment project, Gray suggests, little hold on the human will and will be undermines much of what is foundational unlikely to inspire much loyalty or fear. The in the Western tradition,13 which may in appeal to place reason above self-interest also fact not be renewable, but doomed to an ignores the fact that we cannot treat people irreversible decline. By privileging reason to impartially, and that it may be more rational, the exclusion of other values, he argues, the from a purely secular perspective, to satisfy Enlightenment ultimately bequeathed us a our desires as efficiently as possible; as Roger world which is ‘humanly unintelligible and Scruton observes, ‘it is piety, and not reason, destructively purposeless…it has not issued in that implants in us the respect for the world, anything resembling a new civilization… but for its past and its future, and which impedes instead in nihilism.’14 us from pillaging all we can before the light of consciousness fails in us’.10 Progress in Decline Many of the original moral values of the ‘Progress is not an accident, but necessity. Enlightenment had in fact been inherited Surely must and disappear; surely must men become perfect’ Herbert in transposed form from Christianity. In 15 spite of this, many modern liberal societies Spencer subsequently sought to free themselves from According to Robert Nisbet in his History of moral traditions perceived to be tyrannical the Idea of Progress, ‘no single idea has been and outdated by appealing to agreed universal more important than, perhaps as important principles available to all. However, as, the idea of progress in Western civilization MacIntyre argues that the Enlightenment for nearly three thousand years.’16 Despite

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cmc papers no.6 the catastrophes of the twentieth century, fully rational, nor does it improve morally, which suggest a sobering corrective to as the violent history of the 20th century such hopes, the tendency to see history as demonstrates. The fact that and a gradual ascent towards a utopian goal is technology will always have harmful as very much alive today, not least amongst well as beneficial consequences due to the contemporary secular liberals who proudly imperfection of is overlooked: regard themselves as ‘progressivists’. Francis Fukuyama’s influential The End of History Progress and mass murder run in tandem. As and the Last Man expresses a widely-shared the numbers killed by famine and plague have faith in ‘global democratic capitalism’ as waned, so death by violence has increased. the definitive socio-political system. The As science and technology have advanced, so has proficiency in killing. As the hope for a belief that by expanding its knowledge 20 humanity can remake the world, eradicating better world has grown, so has mass murder. hunger, poverty and tyranny, is today closely …There is no market for the truth that associated with the worldwide promotion of many of our problems are actually insoluble. – by force of arms if necessary. Whereas religion once enabled us to tolerate this awkward fact, today it has become almost As Gray argues, ‘the decline of Christianity 21 and the rise of revolutionary utopianism go unmentionable. together. When Christianity was rejected, its The problem for the secular humanist is that eschatological hopes did not disappear. They ideas of progress and the moral improvement were repressed, only to return as projects of of humanity seem increasingly irrational universal emancipation’.17 and contrary to common sense. The crux Yet, in our time, the progressive has of the progressive contradiction is to see to face harsh realities such as economic and human beings as animals driven by biological ecological crisis, the proliferation of weapons imperatives, and also to believe that we can of mass destruction and the struggle for succeed in a rational project to improve depleting resources as an increasing source the world. Considering the Darwinian of conflict. The twentieth century dealt a perspective, Gray is quick to assert that ‘a truly naturalistic view of the world leaves severe blow to hopes that politics could be 22 the vehicle of emancipation. The dystopian no room for secular hope’ , for after all, Darwinism posits no teleological mechanism visions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous that might lead to a qualitative improvement Huxley’s Brave New World seem to be more plausible to the contemporary imagination of, let alone perfection of, human life. Yet than any utopian faith. Gray suggests that the notion that there may be aspects of a pseudo-religion of science has replaced human nature deaf to reason and reform is politics as the main vehicle of progressive intolerable to the progressive mentality. How aspirations, with ‘scientific fundamentalists’ then is the persistence of belief in progress to promising ‘salvation’ through technology and be explained? Gray suggests a reason for its the eventual abolition of sickness, poverty enduring appeal: and even death.18 Dismissing these chimerical For the men and women of today, an irrational notions, Gray, though himself an atheist, faith in progress may be the only antidote to argues that the Christian belief that human nihilism….They believe this not from real knowledge can have both positive and conviction but from fear of the void that looms if negative consequences is nearer to the truth the hope of a better future is given up. Belief in than a naïve belief in limitless progress.19 He progress is the Prozac of the thinking classes.23 argues that humanity as a whole cannot be

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Secular humanism thus finds itself forced modern man’s ‘‘invisible religion’’’.29 It is to choose between the conflicting claims in this context that the therapeutic ethos, of reason and sentiment, between a quasi- with its non-judgmental ‘secular priests’, religious concept that seems increasingly has appropriated the territory of morality implausible, and an icy scientific ‘realism’ and meaning that were once within the that is continually haunted by the spectre of province of religion. The developing notion nihilism. Nonetheless, with the contemporary of psychological man has of course coincided West torn between triumphalism and with an increasing tendency to question, profound self-doubt, the idea of progress and often to reject, traditional sources of seems likely to persist, albeit in a transposed moral authority. Whereas God is traditionally form, for as Philip Rieff suggests, there are seen as the ultimate moral authority, with few ideas that are more flattering to our self- social institutions acting as mediators of that image: ‘We believe that we know something authority, the emphasis is now placed on the our predecessors did not: that we can live individual and personal choice.30 According freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except to Paul Vitz in Psychology as Religion: The the sense of the past – as unremembering, of Self-Worship, the humanistic psychology of honest and friendly barbarians all in a Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others technological Eden’.24 largely replaces moral concepts with the quest for human fulfillment and has thus played a Psychological Morality significant role in the decay of moral values in ‘Modern psychologists have greatly enlarged the the West.31 frontiers of irresponsibility: they needed more space in this area.’ Karl Krauss25 In his recent study of moral education in America, The Death of Character: Moral According to a view prevalent in the social Education in an Age without Good or Evil, , contemporary man has become James Davison Hunter observes that modern characteristically ‘psychological man’, psychology has succeeded in replacing identified with modernity and unbelief as the word ‘character’, with all its ethical opposed to traditional culture and religious implications, with the morally neutral term belief. Finding meaning in the personal ‘personality’.32 Instead of morals, we now and psychological rather than in the social have values, ‘little more than sentiments… domain, he is marked by tendencies expressions of individual preference’.33 26 towards alienation and narcissism; or, as Further, according to Hunter, ‘given its Philip Rieff expresses it, ‘religious man emphasis on therapeutic processes, the was born to be saved; psychological man psychological strategy tends to dismiss (often 27 was born to be pleased’. Imbued with with ridicule) the idea that there is any what Richard Weaver refers to as ‘the content-filled moral agenda we should pass on deep psychic anxiety, the extraordinary to succeeding generations’.34 Instead, with its prevalence of neurosis, which make our emphasis on individual feeling and antipathy 28 age unique’, his predominant trait in the to traditional moral codes, ‘the therapeutic realm of morals is individualism. Noting ethos creates a moral of fulfillment that psychological man has arisen in rooted in the satisfaction of desires’35 conjunction with increasing secularization, Peter Homans observes that ‘psychology has Intimately associated with the rising influence arisen in direct proportion to the decline of of psychology is an anti-authoritarian the power of religion…a substitute relation tendency that is deeply hostile to traditional obtains between the two: psychology is understandings of pedagogy and the

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cmc papers no.6 communication of moral values. In the wake rooted in deeper, non-rational forces.40 The of the trauma of , thinkers such as results of rationally-driven scientific research Theodore Adorno and Erich Fromm, strongly thus end up undermining reason itself. influenced by the views of Marx and Freud, had sought to reduce the susceptibility of the The moral implications of determinism are ‘mass man’ to manipulation by such malign evident in its alliance with psychology and forces.36 Rather than distinguishing legitimate in the tendency to see criminals as helpless and illegitimate authority, however, their victims of physical, social or psychological solution was to undermine authority in impairment. In One Nation Under Therapy, general – albeit exempting their own - Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel refer to this increasingly common practice as ‘the whether in law, the family or the classroom. 41 For anti-authoritarian intellectuals, as for abuse excuse’, whilst Frank Furedi notes in Rousseau in his time, ‘man is born free yet is Therapy Culture that ‘traumatic experience everywhere in chains’. The question of who has been converted into an all-purpose explanation for numerous forms of and made those chains in the first place does not 42 seem to have occurred to them. antisocial behaviour’. Modern psychology tends to see people as determined by The Question of Freedom unconscious motives or trauma; as Sommers ‘Behind every crooked thought there lies a and Satel note, ‘proponents of therapism…are crooked molecule.’ Roy Fuller37 uncomfortable with the notion of personal responsibility’.43 The concept of crime is Are people free to make moral choices and increasingly being replaced with that of to act upon them, or are they determined psychological disorders that may lead one to by forces beyond their control? It is evident make ‘bad choices’ or act ‘inappropriately’. that without , notions of character, Concepts of evil and guilt are widely will, , virtue and vice lose much of perceived to be inherently judgmental and their meaning. The most reasonable course intolerant, and the idea of sin has been for the secular humanist in such matters is to replaced with deterministic notions that defer to the authority of science, which may undermine moral responsibility. Humanistic of course ultimately support determinism. psychologists such as Carl Rogers advocate Indeed, argues David Berlinski, if the human a ‘total acceptance’ of the patient, for those mind is an expression of genes, determinism who do wrong lack self-fulfilment and are 38 follows as a logical necessity. There is in need of therapy rather than punishment. thus also a contradiction between belief A climate has arisen, according to Gertrude in human free will and the evolutionary Himmelfarb, in which ‘moral principles, psychology proposed by Steven Pinker or still more moral judgments, are thought to in The Selfish Gene. Yet, be at best an intellectual embarrassment, at as Berlinski observes, both men prefer to worst evidence of an illiberal and repressive ignore the plainly deterministic implications disposition’.44 of their work.39 The trouble is that what science implies may be incompatible with In Life at the Bottom, a study of the British the modes of thought and being to which underclass based on his experience as a prison even the most reductionist of scientists cannot psychiatrist, Theodore Dalrymple argues that help but privately defer. Yet determinism the notion that people don’t have personal presents another serious inconvenience, for as responsibility for their actions is now widely Anthony O’Hear has pointed out, if we are accepted, with disastrous moral and social determined our apparent rationality is in fact consequences: ‘The aim of untold millions

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cmc papers no.6 is to be free to do exactly as they choose From Darwin to Hitler: , and for someone else to pay when things go Eugenics and Racism in Germany,49 Richard wrong’.45 He argues that in the UK a form Weikert examines the impact of Darwin’s of Marxist-influenced social determinism, theories in Nazi Germany. Herbert Spencer’s according to which our consciousness is doctrine of had applied determined by our social status and poverty Darwin’s concept of the survival of the fittest excuses crime, is now prevalent.46 He sees to the human social realm, and biologists this trend as being supported by therapists such as Ernst Haeckel concluded from this and social workers who may have a vested that competition between species became interest in seeing those who behave criminally competition between races in the human or irresponsibly as passive, helpless victims domain: ‘the gulf between [the] thoughtful in need of their help. Similarly, according mind of a civilized man and the thoughtless to the sociologist Alan Wolfe, ‘America has animal soul of the savage is enormous – most definitely entered a new era in which greater than the gulf that separates the latter virtue and vice are redefined in terms of from the soul of the dog’.50 Whilst Darwin public health and addiction’.47 Dalrymple himself cannot of course be blamed for these likewise notes the increasing use of the later developments, Darwinism, especially term ‘addiction’ and ‘addictive personality’ social Darwinism and eugenics, provided to cover pleasurable but harmful behaviour important impetuses to the Nazi view that related particularly to crime, drugs, food and mass-murder on an industrial scale could sex. This has led to the loss for many people be a morally praiseworthy contribution to of the concepts of discipline and self-control, human progress. Such views should not be and their replacement with the notion that seen as an isolated aberration, for support for such behaviours are a form of disease that eugenics before the Second World War was excludes choice. The notion that people are a British and American as well as a German not responsible for their actions is encouraged phenomenon.51 The moral problem for the by a therapeutic worldview that sees criminals secular humanist is that if human life has and addicts as powerless, to be treated like nothing sacred about it, if we are simply children or as vulnerable and dependent, animals with more complex brains with lacking real control over their lives. nothing to qualitatively distinguish us from our supposedly lesser cousins, such reflections Evolution and Materialism may become at least worthy of consideration. ‘The idea that human beings have been endowed with powers and properties not found According to a neo-Darwinian perspective elsewhere in the animal kingdom – or the that seeks to explain every form of universe, so far as we can tell – arises from a human behaviour in evolutionary terms, simple imperative: Just look around.’ David apparently selfless or altruistic behaviour is Berlinski48 actually driven by genetic or reproductive imperatives. It is evident, however, that if all If there is one belief that unites virtually morality, even apparent altruism, is actually all humanists it is Charles Darwin’s theory driven by self-interest, egoism is logical and of evolution. It performs the valuable twin self-sacrifice makes no sense. As Keith Ward role of bulwark against religious belief, and, suggests, a biological view of morality makes in combination with a faith in progress, anger, lust, envy, pride and so on into natural religion-substitute. Yet it is well-known aspects of human nature.52 Eager to avoid that Darwinism has, to put it mildly, a the cynical outlook on human nature and troubled moral history. In his recent study,

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cmc papers no.6 morality that stems from such observations, that corrodes every traditional belief about Michael Ruse insists that ‘there is no question human nature that is incompatible with that we are scheming to do what is in our materialism.57 Yet few humanists really accept self-interest and yet pretending to be nice. the full implications of seeing human beings Rather we perform better if we are deceived as mere animals, for as John Gray observes, by our biology…we are moral because our ‘Darwin showed that humans are like other genes, as fashioned by natural selection, fill animals, humanists claim they are not’.58 It us full of thoughts about being moral’.53 seems that even scientists are not immune The question that arises here is whether self- to this inconsistency; noting the curious deception is really a better basis for morality fact that Ruse and Dawkins see morality than scheming, for if we are able to see as having no basis, yet end up believing in through the self-deception, scheming would liberal moral values,59 Ward observes that surely be a more logical approach. Having ‘What the biological moralists are really doing made the remarkable claim that ‘There is is to impose their own moral ideals on to no foundation for ethics at all…morality is the evolutionary process, rather than, as they no more than a collective illusion fobbed claim, deriving moral ideas from the process off on us by our genes for reproductive itself’.60 ends’54 – a statement that seems to hint at - Ruse acknowledges that ‘the As we have seen, the Enlightenment and simple fact is that if we recognized morality the secular ethics that stem from it, are to be no more than an epiphenomenon based on fundamentally theistic notions of of our biology, we would cease to believe the uniqueness of humanity. Darwinism, in it and stop acting upon it’.55 Thus, he particularly neo-Darwinism, undermines suggests, biology must find ways to make this by telling us that there is no permanent people believe that morality is something human nature, only an endless interplay objectively real, whilst knowing that it is in of genes with the environment. Reason fact an illusion. However, if morality is a is shown to have a non-rational origin in socialized mechanism with no objective basis, survival-oriented human drives. Indeed, simply another enabling mechanism for the the very concepts of truth and reason are replication of genes, then it is not rational to undermined, becoming merely biological follow it when it contradicts self-interest, and mechanisms for the replication of genes imposing such beliefs on others would be a (although, paradoxically, it is reason that form of deceit. As Keith Ward observes, such makes this observation). Thus Ward a view is a recipe for moral anarchy, for if a observes that ‘when the biological moralist morality is to be based on pragmatism and says that morality is just a set of imprinted maintained for its useful social applications, behaviour patterns, and in the same breath it must be seen as having a basis in reality, or recommends that we ought to face up to and accept this, because it is the truth, he is its power to compel us will be dramatically 61 reduced, if not eliminated altogether.56 simply contradicting himself’. Furthermore, if morality evolved, it continues to do so There has been much reluctance, even and is entirely relative, for evolution only amongst its adherents, to accept the implies change, not any objective basis for implications of the worldview that evolution moral standards. We are therefore unable offers us, its profound subversion of the to meaningfully compare one set of moral most basic human notions of self, meaning values against another over time, for what and morality. famously is considered evil today may in due course referred to Darwinism as a ‘universal acid’ come to be seen as good. Any morality

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cmc papers no.6 based on evolution must thus be relative to unimaginable, is today considered acceptable the evolutionary stage of development in under extreme circumstances, and tomorrow which it arises, this stage itself being part of a will be considered part of the general advance process of flux with no permanent points of of civilized society and unimaginable to live reference. without’.64 In Moral Darwinism: How We Became Materialism is not, however, a Hedonists, Benjamin Wiker argues that the that necessarily manifests itself in an fundamental distinction in Western thought Epicurean tolerance. Neither his notoriety, has been between the theistic understanding nor the extremity of his depiction of human of a purposive universe created by a higher nature, should lead us to overlook the intelligence, and the materialist view influence of the Marquis de Sade65, who in that life consists of a blind and ultimately many ways represents the dark side of the meaningless material process.62 Wiker notes Enlightenment. Rejecting belief in the soul that for Epicurus all that exists is matter in and comparing human beings to machines, motion, and ‘there are no intrinsically evil Sade argues that even conscience ultimately actions because nature itself is immoral. has a material origin and that all morality is Since human beings are ultimately a random merely a matter of social pragmatism. Since conglomeration of atoms, there is no intrinsic freedom is an illusion we are justified in unity causing or defining ‘‘human being’’ committing moral because we have no to which we can refer moral judgments’. choice but to do so; there can be no moral Epicurus sees the good life as incompatible responsibility, and the concept of crime has with belief in God and the immortality of the no meaning. We inhabit a universe with soul, since an afterlife in which we are judged no ultimate meaning, the sole purpose of places unacceptable restrictions on how we existence being pleasure. According to Sade’s live our lives in this world and nourishes a proto-Darwinian logic, the amoral and purely form of anxiety that is incompatible with instinctual imperatives that govern nature contentment. For Epicurus, and humanity justify the radical egoism, the are ultimately synonymous with pleasure torture, murder and extreme forms of sexual and pain, happiness thus demanding freedom perversion depicted in his writings: ‘assure from disturbance. Wiker traces the history yourself that you are absolutely sovereign in of materialism from Epicurus to Darwin a world groveling at your feet, that yours is and argues that the contemporary scene in the supreme and unchallengeable right to the West represents a return from Christian change, mutilate, destroy, annihilate any and ethics to those of materialism. For example, all the living beings you like…’.66 In many he regards ’s dismissal of the ways Sade is ahead of his time, his radical, sanctity of life based on his contention that transgressive individualism and contempt human beings are not essentially different for the sacred making him a quintessentially from animals, as well his Alfred Kinsey’s modern thinker. As John Phillips observes, his attempt to normalize the practices of bestiality works ‘push the logic of atheistic materialism and paedophilia,63 as logical extensions of to its ultimate conclusion’;67 indeed, that the materialist and Epicurean perspectives. conclusion must be seen as a logical and Reflecting on these developments, and the consistent extrapolation of the materialist ways in which they may play out in the near worldview to rival that of secular humanism. future, he has this to say: ‘we may call this phenomenon the law of moral compromise: Looking into the Abyss what yesterday was considered barbaric and ‘To scientific atheists, the ancient idea that

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homo homini lupus – man is a wolf to man – Nihilism also entails the implicit view that leaves them shaking their heads in poodle-like life’s ultimate questions cannot be answered, perplexity.’ David Berlinski68 if indeed they are asked at all, because there are no ultimate truths.70 For the nihilist, In a letter of 1878 the Russian novelist humanism is merely a fragile assemblage of Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes: religiously-derived values and comforting, Now assume that there is no God, or manufactured illusions. Nihilism seems to immortality of the soul. Now tell me, why stalk the humanist imagination like a dark, should I live righteously and do good deeds, unacknowledged twin forever seeking if I am to die entirely on the earth? .... And recognition. if that is so, why shouldn’t I (as long as I can Indeed, nihilism seems in some ways to rely on my cleverness and agility to avoid being be a more adequate reflection than secular caught by the law) cut another man’s throat, 69 humanism of the contemporary scientific – or rob and steal? rather, scientistic - weltanschauung represented Dostoyevsky’s challenge, which has often by those, such as Richard Dawkins, for been paraphrased by the statement that whom ‘the universe we observe has precisely ‘if , everything is permitted’, the properties we should expect if there is at suggests that whilst the atheist can choose to bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and conform to moral principles, he is not bound no good, nothing but pointless indifference’.71 by them. In a godless universe devoid of any Perhaps, then, we may find solace in the eschatological reckoning, he suggests, there realm of private experience? It seems not, if can be no compelling, absolute authority we are to take Francis Crick seriously: ‘you, for morality, and things can no longer be your joys and your sorrows, your memories judged good or evil in the same way. Indeed, and your ambitions, your sense of personal something cannot become a source of moral identity and free will, are in fact no more value just because someone says it is so – to than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve be effective, to hold sway over the will and cells and their associated molecules… ‘‘you’re the instinctive egoism of human beings, it nothing but a pack of neurons’’.’72 It has too must be felt to truly be so in an objective rarely been observed that the worldview sense. A social or psychological source of of scientific reductionism has much in moral values can only hold sway to the extent common with that of the nihilist or indeed that it is itself perceived to be rooted in such the psychopath. Given such statements, it is a source of value – and becomes weakened to curious indeed that Dawkins and others sense the extent that it is not. no inconsistency with their conventional secular pieties concerning the adventure of In the absence of God, humanism is not the science and their awe and wonder at the only alternative, for nihilism may also be true. spectacle of the universe. In defining this term, we should distinguish existential nihilism, the belief that life is Nihilism is one logical consequence, not meaningless and without value, and the sense just of a dehumanizing scientism, but of of emptiness and despair that follow from this, radical relativism and the postmodern denial from ethical nihilism, the view that morality of objective truth, including ethical truths. is ultimately based on subjective opinion Louis Pojman cites the following paraphrase rather than any objective set of , that it of a tape-recorded conversation between the is merely a human invention that enables us serial murderer Ted Bundy - a trained lawyer to cope with living in a meaningless world. - and one of his victims in which he attempts

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cmc papers no.6 to justify his crime. His argument casts a an objective basis for morality can exist for disturbing light on the shadowy territory the secular humanist. Putting the matter where relativism and nihilism converge: differently, David Berlinski concludes that ‘If moral absolutes are not commanded by Then I learned that all moral judgments are God’s will, and if they are not in some sense ‘value judgments’, that all value judgments absolute, then what ought to be is a matter are subjective, and that none can be proved simply of what men and women decide to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I even read should be. There is no other source of somewhere that the Chief of the judgment’.74 United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than Conclusion collective value judgments. Believe it or not, ‘The hollowing out of Western civilization by I figured out for myself – what apparently nihilism is virtually complete.’ John Gray75 the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself – that if the rationality of one value It is doubtful that a purely , judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions rejecting any transcendent divine power – would not make it one whit more rational. which is not after all the case even in ancient Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for Greece, Rome or Confucian China - has anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and ever proved itself effective in a society over a daring – the strength of character – to throw significant period of time. Indeed, insofar as off its shackles…I discovered that to become societies have engaged in such experiments, truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become they have usually, as John Gray suggests, been truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered catastrophic: that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the The role of humanist thought in shaping greatest block and limitation to it, consists the past century’s worst regimes is easily in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that demonstrable, but it is passed over, or denied, I was bound to respect the rights of others. I by those who harp on about the of asked myself, who were these ‘others’? Other religion. Yet the mass murders of the twentieth human beings, with human rights? Why century were not perpetuated by some latter- is it more wrong to kill a human animal day version of the Spanish Inquisition. They than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a were carried out by atheist regimes in the steer? Is your life more to you than a hog’s service of Enlightenment ideals of progress…. life to a hog? Why should I be willing to the result has been a form of tyranny, new in sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than history, that commits vast crimes in the pursuit for the other? Surely you would not, in this of heaven on earth.76 age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as As Christopher Lasch and others have ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or observed, liberal democracy has borrowed ‘bad’? That is the honest conclusion to which much from preceding religious traditions;77 my education has led me – after the most humanism has thrived in parasitic relation to conscientious examination of my spontaneous an unacknowledged host, namely religious and uninhibited self.73 concepts of human nature and meaning. Yet humanists have absorbed such values Bundy, who had read Sade, offers a serious without acknowledging the possibility that challenge to arguments that undermining religion might, in the long make morality a matter of consensus and run, also threaten the viability of their own pragmatism, indeed to any suggestion that moral principles. According to Friedrich

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Nietzsche, as Christianity declines, moral Muslim Educational Quarterly concepts intrinsically linked to it are no longer intelligible, even if they appear to endnotes be: ‘‘When one gives up the Christian faith, 1 Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Thera- one pulls the right to Christian morality out peutic, University of Chicago Press, from under one’s feet…it stands or falls with 1987, p.4 faith in God’’.78 Yet, as Gray observes, ‘In many ways humanism is not much more than 2 I refer here to normative ‘mainstream’ secular Christianity; but it has suppressed Islam rather than to recent ‘funda- the profound insights into the contradictions mentalist’ or ‘modernist’ forms of the of human nature and the ambivalence of religion. knowledge that were preserved in the 3 As defined by the Collins Concise Christian tradition.’79 Dictionary. Humanism today finds itself rendered 4 Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequenc- incoherent by a reductionist science with es, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, which it is fundamentally incompatible, for 1948, p.187 when contemporary scientists, unmindful of any limits to their discipline, would have 5 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, us believe that humans are simply higher University of Notre Dame Press, Notre animals, their minds mere epiphenomena Dame, Indiana, 1981, p.2 determined by implacable physical laws 6 MacIntyre, op. cit. p.60 and processes, humanists, who accept the materialistic premises of science and grant 7 James Davison Hunter, The Death of its methods privileged status, are less and Character: Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil, Basic Books, New less able to justify their allegiance to ideas York, 2000, p. xiii, xiv of human uniqueness, reason and free will. Such a position remains coherent to religious 8 Weaver op. cit. p.19 believers alone, and the humanist trails 9 For example, Julian Baggini, Atheism: A inconsistently in their wake to the extent that Very Short Introduction, OUP, Oxford, he shares it, for as Gray observes, ‘when the p.44 claim that humans are radically different from other animals is wrenched from its theological 10 , and roots it is not just indefensible, but virtually Wrongs, Demos Open Access, no date, incomprehensible.’80 Nonetheless, it seems p.51 likely that humanism will continue at least 11 MacIntyre p.38 as a habit of thought for some time, for it dimly reflects religious doctrines of human 12 Gray p.146 uniqueness that are indispensable for morality 13 Ibid. p.146 if not, indeed, for civilization itself. It is more likely the increasing prevalence of a morally 14 John Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake: Politics ruinous scientism and nihilism that should and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age, Routledge, London, 1995, p.146, 145 be of primary concern to those, whether of religious or secular persuasion, who wish to 15 Herbert Spencer quoted in Philip Rieff, defend enduring human values of any kind.å The Triumph of the Therapeutic, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p.7 A version of this article was originally published in

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16 Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Enemies, Arlington House Publishers, Progress, Transaction Publishers, New New Rochelle, 1976, p.81 Brunswick, 1994, p.4 37 Quoted in John Cornwell, A Head for 17 John Gray, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Trouble, Sunday Times (London), 9/7/06 Religion and the Death of Utopia, Allen Lane, London, 2007, p.28 38 David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, Basic 18 John Gray, Heresies, Granta Books, Books, New York, 2009, p.177 London, 2004, p. 65, 70 39 Ibid. 176-179 19 Ibid, p.70-71 40 Anthony O’Hear, After Progress, 20 John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Bloomsbury, London, 1999, p.24-25 Humans and Other Animals, Granta Books, London, 2002, p.96 41 Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, One Nation under Therapy, St. Martin’s 21 Gray, Heresies, p.56 Griffin, New York, 2005. p.95-99 22 Gray, Straw Dogs, p.xii 42 Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture, Routledge, London, 2004, p.29 23 Gray, Heresies, p.3 43 Sommers and Satel, op.cit. p.92 24 Rieff op. cit. p.4 44 Gertrude Himmelfarb, The De- 25 Thomas Szasz, Anti-Freud: Karl Krauss’s Moralization of Society: From Victorian criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry, to Modern Values, Alfred A. Syracuse 1990, p.108 Knopf, New York, 1995, p.240 26 Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Modernity 45 Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: and the Making of a Psychology, University The Worldview that Makes the Underclass, of Chicago Press, 1982, p.5 Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001, p.5 27 Rieff p.25 46 Ibid p.13 28 Weaver p.16 47 Quoted in Sommers and Satel, p.6 29 Homans, op.cit. 5,8-9 48 Berlinski, op.cit. p.155 30 Hunter, op. cit. p.147 49 Richard Weikert, From Darwin to Hitler: 31 Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: The Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Cult of Self-Worship, Lion Publishing, Germany (, London, Tring (UK) 1979 2006) 32 James Davison Hunter, The Death of 50 Quoted in Benjamin Wiker, Moral Character: Moral Education in an Age Darwinism: How we Became Hedonists without Good or Evil, Basic Books, New (Intervarsity Press, Downer’s Grove, York, 2000, p. 214 Illinois, 2002), p.257 33 Ibid. p.216 51 Wiker, op.cit. p.273 34 Ibid. p.11 52 Keith Ward, The Battle for the Soul: The End of Morality in a Secular Society, 35 Ibid. p. 192 Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1985, p.60 36 Thomas Molnar, Authority and its

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53 Michael Ruse, The Significance of 74 Berlinski p.40 Evolution, in Peter Singer, ed. A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 75 Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake, p.179 1991, p.504 76 Gray, Heresies p.44 54 Ibid. p.506 77 Lasch, op. cit. p.85 55 Ibid. p.507 78 Quoted in McGrath, op.cit, p. 132 56 Ward op. cit. p.69 79 Gray, Heresies, p. 6-7 57 Quoted in Wiker p.23 80 Gray, Black Mass, p. 189 58 Gray, Straw Dogs p.4 59 Ward p.67 60 Ibid. p.73 61 Ibid. p.71 62 Wiker, op.cit. 63 Wiker p.288 64 Ibid. p.300 65 This brief outline of Sade’s views is drawn largely from John Phillips; How to Read Sade, Granta, London, 2005 66 Ibid p.36 67 Ibid. p.3 68 Berlinski p.34 69 Quoted in Alister McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, Doubleday, London, 2004, p.148 70 Karen L. Carr, The Banalization of Nihilism: Twentieth Century Responses to Meaninglessness, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992, p.18 71 Quoted in Wiker p.133 72 Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Charles Scribners and Sons, New York, 1994, p.3 73 Quoted in Louis P. Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, Wadsworth, Belmont (California), 1999, p. 31-32

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