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Beautiful People THE NEW REPUBLIC • MARCH 21, 2OO5 HIS IS ALL THE MORE SUR- intelligent reader would see through the cality. We all know that what we are prising since Frankfurt gets claim at once. This is not artistry, this is reading is spin; we all know that the per- right to the nub of the prob- spin. So I think that Frankfurt is wrong son quoted is not really committed to lem: "The contemporary pro- even about ordinary bullshit. It may be the truth of what he is saying; and yet Thferation of bullshit ... has deeper true that the ordinary bullshitter needs we are all somehow willing to go along sources, in various forms of skepticism to go through the motions of pretend- with what we instantly recognize to be which deny that we can have any reliable ing that the truth of what he says mat- ersatz news. This is the problem with access to an objective reality, and which ters to him—but this itself is bullshit, bullshit: it is contagious. It invites us all therefore reject the possibility of know- and it may be easily recognizable as such to grow more detached from the real, to ing how things really are." Actually, skep- to us all. In this way we are all drawn give up caring about what is true and ticism is not the same thing as bullshit. into a complacent and rundown theatri- what is false. • There are genuine and deep ways of wondering about the reality and the pos- sibility of objective truth. Skepticism can be an honorable calling. But in the con- temporary world it often degenerates Paula Fredriksen into a received attitude, a hip pose, a rhetorical ploy, a kind of academic party trick. Imagine such a skeptic coming to Beautiful People the humanities center: what kind of pa- per is he or she going to give? An earnest argument that there really is no such THE INVENTION OF RACISM xenophobia. How, he asks, did these thing as truth? Of course not. Such a IN CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY ideas develop as patterns of thinking, paper would lack "irony," which is these By Benjamin Isaac as attitudes of mind? What relation did days the great validator of intellectual these ideas have to Greek and, later, to authority. (I put "irony" in scare quotes (Princeton University Press, 592 PP-, $45) Roman ideologies of imperial expan- because the current version has almost sion? And what contributions did these nothing in common with real irony.) So REEDOM, DEMOCRACY, PHIL- ideas, passing from antiquity to moder- the paper will inevitably be an "ironic" osophy; art, education, law. nity through the paradoxical conduit of performance that the truth simply does Many of the ideas and ideals Enlightenment thinkers—Hume, Vol- not matter to the speaker. This is not that deflne our culture and taire, and Kant, among others—bring to skepticism, it is bad theater. And the what we most value in it trace the development of modern racism? point that the "ironists" are making is Fback across millennia to the civilizations that in their bullshit-artistry they can of Greece and Rome. These two ancient get away with it. (It is not unusual for REEK CULTURE, IN ITS LONG societies constituted a fundamental stage such speakers to draw attention to the history, had two formative en- in the historical development of the West. fact that they have actually been paid to counters with foreign peoples Later, refracted through medieval insti- come and spread their bullshit.) before its hegemony finally tutions, reclaimed in the Renaissance, Gceded to Rome's. The first encounter, in In this way, the bullshit artist raises and re-appropriated in the Enlighten- the early fifth century B.C.E., was with a host of ethical problems that do not ment, this classical patrimony continued Persia. The westward thrust of this imper- arise at the level of ordinary bullshit. For to exercise a decisive influence in shaping ial power out of Asia precipitated the for- bullshit artistry demands our complicity. the culture and the politics of Europe. mation of military alliances between the It is, in its own way, a demonstration of But a shadow side accompanied this perennially fractious Greek city-states; power. The bullshit artist in effect says, amazing heritage. Greek and Roman in the end they cooperated and success- "This is bullshit, but you will accept it writers also conceived, developed, and fully resisted conquest. The second en- anyway. You may accept it as bullshit, rationalized systems of thought that de- counter occurred about a century and a but you will honor it anyway." In this nied full humanity to other human be- half later. This time the aggression went respect, the bullshit artist is a knight of ings. Bigotry and social hatred, aimed at in the opposite direction: under Alexan- decadence. Frankfurt ignores this exam- outsiders beyond the borders of empire der the Great, a military power identified ple; indeed, his analysis of bullshit rules and at immigrant communities within, with Greek culture confronted the Per- it out as impossible. And in this way he both marked and marred ancient litera- sian Empire and prevailed. fails to confront the most interesting— ture. This is the dark theme that compels The Persians had controlled a vast and influential—style of bullshit in our the rich research of Benjamin Isaac in his multi-ethnic empire that included Egypt, time. important book. the Near East, and what corresponds But the problem is even worse. For Scrutinizing a huge array of classi- to modern-day Iraq (ancient Babylonia) once we recognize that the bullshit artist cal sources in an eight-hundred-year and Iran (the Persian heartland). Alex- flaunts his indifference, we have reason arc from the flfth century B.C.E. to the ander pushed yet farther east, into the to go back to the ordinary bullshitter fourth century C.E., Isaac lays open territory of what is now Afghanistan and and ask whether it really is true, as their expressions of ethnic prejudice and Pakistan. Through military and diplo- Frankfurt asserts, that he must hide it. matic prowess, he ruled it all. But the Think of Gergen's claim that Summers Paula Fredriksen is a historian of ancient political unity of this huge area lasted reminds him of Socrates. I think that any Christianity at Boston University. only as long as its master. When Alexan- MARCH 21, 2005 • THE NEW REPUBLIC der died in 323 B.C.E., his empire splin- bringing foreigners, as immigrants, any virtue How could there exist a tered into smaller kingdoms and city- "home." competent commander or a courageous states. Yet an underlying cultural unity soldier with the habits of these peo- endured. ow DID GREEKS, IN BOTH ple?. .. They indulge their bodies in the Wherever Alexander conquered, he these experiences of foreign luxury of their riches. They have souls established cities and left behind colo- contact, regard non-Greeks? humiliated and terrified by the monar- nizing populations. Forms of urban gov- According to a scholarly tra- chy." Greeks, he recounted, are hard, ernment, and thus of Greek religion; Hdition that traces back to the Enlighten- disciplined, masculine, strong, free. East- such organs of post-classical civic cul- ment, those who fought in the Persian erners par contre are soft, corrupt, effem- ture as the agora, the gymnasium, the Wars regarded that struggle as a contest inate, weak, and servile. What produced library, the theater or amphitheater or between Western democracy and Orien- such inferior people? Persian govern- hippodrome: these "old country" insti- tal despotism. For Herodotus and his ment, Isocrates explained, and Persian tutions spread an exported form of generation, these modern historians as- social relations. (Greek government and Greek civilization, enabling the growth sert, the war against Persia was no mere society, accordingly, produced intrinsi- of a new international culture, which military encounter, but a Kulturkampf cally superior people.) Various vase scholars call "Hellenism." Hellenism of the deepest spiritual and historical paintings visually broadcast the same was always a hybrid phenomenon, a significance, recognized as such by the message. In one particularly striking creolization of local customs and cul- combatants. By repelling Darius and example, a heroically nude Greek pre- tures with the dominant element of Xerxes, opines one scholar, the Greeks pares to sexually assault a terrified Per- Greek. (Artifacts from the Ptolemaic resisted gradual "orientalisation ... sian. The Greek runs at the Persian, kingdom, for example, though recogniz- coupled with spiritual slavery and the grasping his own erect penis in his right ably Hellenistic, are also unmistakably rule of priests." "It was the contact and hand like a sword. The Persian presents Egyptian.) Greek itself became antiq- collision of two different types of civi- his buttocks, while the caption reads, "I uity's English, the universal linguistic lization," writes another, "of peoples of stand bent over." The painting refers medium that facilitated trade and trav- two different characters ... tliis contest to an Athenian victory in 465 B.C.E.; el, the exchange of both goods and between the slavery of the barbarian and the imagery portrays the enemy as ef- ideas, the workings of government and the liberty of the Greek, between Ori- fete, impotent, feminized. Translated of diplomacy, across this vast expanse ental autocracy and Hellenic constitu- more colloquially, the message is: "We've that stretched from the eastern Medi- tionalism." "In depicting the heroic ef- really buggered the Persians." Given terranean to the edges of India. In brief, fort of the Greek complex to save itself," Persian culture, Greek victory was "nat- Hellenism was the West's first great ex- declaims Volume Five of the 1927 Cam- ural," as natural as the dominance of perience of globalization.
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