‘Liberalism is finished, and the practice of tolerance has passed into history. (He seems to have wokeness in mind here, which is to ascribe world-historical status to a passing phenomenon.)’
I would like to share Eagleton’s optimism here, but it seems a little too early to define wokeness as an ephemeral phenomenon. We may well be in the dawn of a new world religion.
To be a world religion, wokeness would require a sense of the Absolute and mythology, like all religions do. It cannot sustain itself without a transcendent element. Without these influences, it is as mutable as Marxist dialectics and outdated Enlightenment treatises.
People who accept its precedents die; the next generation evolves from them but will not share exact opinions. Technology, the environment, and the cultural shifts (some affected by the woke) will define the new thinking of this personality type. Many of us are dying things being dragged along with the tide. Marx was right about his theory of alienation- though derivative of Feuerbach- for without a solid absolute, our opinions are coloured by the whims of the everchanging material environment. By necessity and survival, we form the opinions for our time. Nietzsche is also right: we are all decadents now. The era is us and we are not free to he crabs and wander away out of tradition.
To make wokeness our like it is a current fad is disingenuous, used by people who want to say “the kids aren’t alright,” and avoid the longer evolution of western nations. What differences do the woke have with the characters of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up and Zabriskie Point? Very little. The latter film’s opening scene could be filmed today without many changes: White students arguing how they can be more like radical Black activists. It is not far from the BLM ‘fad’, but neither are these are just history repeating itslef. One can reach back to before the great war, to the Enlightenment, further still to Descartes, and the collapse of Templar Order, to see the evolution from today. First Cause thinking can be ultimately useless. We can trace Wokeness in certain strands of Christianity, in the same way Richard Dawkins is a Christian in denial. They may be opposed, but they share genes, for we are all Western and sourced from the same soup.
I say why does Darwinism exist? For Paradise Lost came before it.
It might be more accurate to call it a denomination than an entire religion. Then again, both might be inaccurate. Wokeness has all the elements of a traditional faith, from high priests to blasphemy to ritualistic kneeling. But as you point out, it’s lacking anything truly transcendental, which may with any luck be its downfall.
The Marxist stated goal might have been relief from alienation but it was always a ruse. For class abolition to occur, there would always have to be a new ruling class bureacracy of Experts that arbitrarily determine new values and those values would need to be imposed by force.
The thing we call Wokeness is just a Gnostic expression of hyper-awareness. The soul is imprisoned in the body and only by becoming hyperaware of the mechanics of an unjust world can the soul break free from the prison and find oneness with the Divine.
But the true virology is actually Hermetic and Pantheist/Panentheist. Hegel is probably the chief Theologian since he constructed the dialectic in it’s clearest form. Marx inverted it into a bottom up structure making the Self a Historical Actor bringing History to its endpoint. Marx was effectively a Gnostic prophet using Alchemy to transform social conditions through revolution.
The Dialectic is all transmutation or social alchemy. Evaporating the particulars of opposites whether Class/Race/Gender and condensing/sublating them into a singular oneness, IE a Hivemind.
…no misteak there T bone. The Hivemind is indeed a most accurate articulation of where things are at, incorporating as it does, the demographic of the female role in the fusion/con-fusion of policy across so many social and economic institutions.
The word for which you search to categorize “wokeness” is “heresy.” It is a corruption of Western Christianity, esp. Protestantism. That explains in part why it has so little sway in other parts of the world, yet is so hard to combat in its home.
For maybe the best analysis to date, read Millenarian Mobs by the late Angelo Codevilla in the Summer 2020 Claremont Review of Books: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/millenarian-mobs/
Dawn of a new religion? Could be. In my more morose moments, I sometimes wonder if there is a cycle in western history with an obligatory religious revival every few centuries which recharges the internalised morality that arguably society needs – followed by long periods as liberty and licence gradually regrow, everyone has a good time but amorality spreads until it threatens society and the next age of censorious zeal is triggered. This would make the Woke the equivalent of the Evangelicals of the 1830s, who gave us middle class morality for more than a century, the Puritans of the 1630s, the religious revivals in the fourteenth and eleventh centuries and so on. Depressing thought. Fortunately, there is no hard evidence for this theory so I am sticking with my copy of JS Mill, with uninhibited self indulgence and with the hope that history will *** the woke.
Last edited 8 months ago by Alex Carnegie
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
āHell hath no fury like an an academic scornedā.
Thus the vendetta between Eagleton and Gray continues, much to the amusement of many.
I find Gray very perceptive and Eagleton very perceptive too. I do hope the debate continues
Martin Bollis
8 months ago
āThe aim of the Law is that we should love it, not simply obey it. By identifying our own desires with those of authority, a trespass against authority feels like a violation of ourselves.ā
In conversation with my woke son I posited that the effect of a physical assault on me would be the same whatever the motivation for the attack. We have good laws against assault, therefore additional laws against assault motivated by woke concerns (race etc.,) weāre superfluous.
He was genuinely flabbergasted. To him, the fact a racial assault is just worse in some way was so internalised he was, to use the awful vernacular, triggered.
Woke us not a passing phase. Much of our population now identifies its own desires with those of the (new) authority.
A sexual assault violates identity in a deeper and more long-lasting way than a non-sexual physical assault. However, an assault motivated by race – or homophobia or whatever – says something about the frailty of the assailant’s identity.
AC Harper
8 months ago
There’s a basic philosophical weakness in these philosophies, interesting as they are. The political and philosophical labels are usually applied to whole populations. But a moments Googling will show that about 5% of people are psychopaths, about 1% experience alcohol use disorders, roughly half are politically Left inclined, half politically Right inclined. Approximately 0.1% are in prison in the UK. Some are Christians, some are Muslims, many are neither or something else.
So no, there is no benevolent state of nature – and to try and force people of differing predispositions into a benevolent state of Utopia is doomed to fail because of it.
āUnequal distribution of propertyā by whom, exactly? Is there some Great Benevolence missing whose job it is to dole out equal shares of every single thing? The cancer researcher and the crack head should live next door to one another in identical circumstances as the teen mom, the veteran aerial firefight pilot, and the retired supermarket deli manager?
Next youāll be telling us we can only have two beers a week and three items of clothing . . .
You’ll have one beer a week, wash your underwear by hand, fly to Majorca once every few years and wait for ‘public’ transport like everyone else.
And you’ll be HAPPY!
Even as you see the Zils drive past. Clap harder!
No one is going to be telling you that. But how far are you prepared to go? Let’s say one family dynasty over generations of inherited wealth managed to buy up all the land in a country so they own everything. Everyone else has to rent from this one family – the family can charge what they want, they kind of own the society. Nothing illegal has taken place. Would you say that is just how the cookie crumbles? – no problem.
Martin, I think that is a big āletās suppose.ā
Couldnāt we equally suppose the family decides to give away the land because they were no longer interested in administering it? (Counting all that money gets boring, donātcha know?!). Then everyone has their own home and bobās your uncleā¦
It seems to me, suppositions can take us many places.
I merely give the extreme of where unregulated libertarian capitalism can end. I don’t suppose it will go that far. But the relentless increase in inequality, and the rise of an unaccountable oligarchy, shows the direction we are going. All I’m asking is how far are we going to go before ‘society’ (which does exist after all) decides that it’s perhaps not such a good idea after all? I find it bizarre that so called conservatives can in one breath moan about ‘elites’ but then wax lyrical about the wonders of the free market. The wealthy elites are result of the free market which ultimately ends in monopolies – e.g Google.
Martin, thank you for thinking about what I wrote and responding.
I would suggest your concern about wealth inequality and monopolies is misplaced as those lines of thinking are based in a fixed pie perspective on wealth. Although that perspective tends to predominate economic/political opinions, IMHO it does not reflect reality.
As long as the poorest in the world continue to get wealthier and suffer less deprivation, whichāwith the exception of the pandemic yearsāhas been the case for quite some time now; who cares how much money the wealthiest make?
Eagleton, like most communists, seems entirely oblivious to socialist forms of imperialism, both spatial and psychological (of which the 20thC is littered), and the deliberate and ochestratwd mass murder that came (and still comes) with it. Or at least he either avoids alluding to this, or is in total denial, as if all destruction can only lead from ‘oppressive’ class power structures developed in capitalist contexts. The difference is that Gray is a realist, Eagleton an idealist. Surely no one believes in the utopic world to come any more – it’s utterly naive. This is partly why Eagleton thinks ‘wokism’ is a passing fad, because as a leftist, he’s unable to identify what it is, let alone see it. If he sees it, it appears utterly harmless to him …. until, that is, it comes for him.
Agreed whole heartedly with your idealist/realist contrast Eagleton/Grey. Iām a great fan of John Grey but also Roger Scruton. I totally think that someone needs to write about the two of them and their views on āThe Worldā. They each often send me down completely different worm holes from which Iām unable to extract myself or rather if/when I do I am much bloodied, broken and confused. Perhaps Grey and Scruton have been simultaneously discussed? Perhaps someone has insight on the two? Individually Iām fine having most of their writings.
I have little use for Eagleton but none the less have for years now paid my dues to NLR to keep track of whatās going on in this part of the world.
The “passing phenomenon” comment was the most revealing bit of the article.
Bret Larson
8 months ago
My god, I canāt even read past the first paragraph. The rule of law and society are more important for the poor than for the rich. As to, income distribution, if it bothers you change your job. Youāre allowed to do that.
Unfortunately we’re back to the days when what mattered was who your parents are; how much they own, whether they’re educated, where they live and who they know. This is the best predictor of where you will end up however much we might want to fantasise otherwise.
What utopia are you making a comparison to? And why do you think itās problematic that parents who invest in their kids have better results? And yes, itās not the dollar value of investment that is the most important.
Charles Stanhope
8 months ago
On first seeing the Pont du Gard, Rousseau lamented āwhy was I not born a Romanā.
One can but sympathise!
Bernard Hill
8 months ago
…Acting in “the service of life” is only lame for those with excessive admiration of their own capabilities.
Tyler Durden
8 months ago
The culture wars – or partisan realignment into warring liberal and conservative blocs – is transmutating again into a Gnostic order.
That is to say, the young have been economically disenfranchised and so have take up the task of restoring Light to the darkness of the world created by the Demiurge.
Philip Gerrans
8 months ago
This is a B- first year essay larded with senility. As are all his pieces. Does he pay Unherd to get published or have some sinister hold over the editors? There is no other explanation. If he wants to write this stuff he can post it on his instagram or get a substack but Unherd is not supposed to be tiktok for supeannuated 1980s arts academics.
Itās all about empathy/sympathy and are we or do we behave in an altruistic/moral ways? Or do we need laws that constrain us to behave in societally acceptable ways? The jury is definitely out as the definition of civilized society is up for grabs. As one might expect. To equate Freud with progress is problematic. Itās 2023 and the world seems to be falling apart. We live in exciting times.
Richard Calhoun
8 months ago
There can be no freedom if there is no order.
Richard Calhoun
8 months ago
Wokeness will have a short life … commonsense will prevail
It’s already at least forty years old, if you count from the moment it first started shaping policy in institutions such as schools. How short is short?
How short is short? In the span of overall human intellectual development? Iād say 40 years is rather short.
Judaeo/Christine philosophy is substantially older than that. As is Hinduism, Muslim thought, Confucianism, and the like. We are fairly new to the idea that religious thought need not be the foundation of our world view. As such, we are bound to come up with some pretty crazy shit before we work it outā¦
‘Liberalism is finished, and the practice of tolerance has passed into history. (He seems to have wokeness in mind here, which is to ascribe world-historical status to a passing phenomenon.)’
I would like to share Eagleton’s optimism here, but it seems a little too early to define wokeness as an ephemeral phenomenon. We may well be in the dawn of a new world religion.
To be a world religion, wokeness would require a sense of the Absolute and mythology, like all religions do. It cannot sustain itself without a transcendent element. Without these influences, it is as mutable as Marxist dialectics and outdated Enlightenment treatises.
People who accept its precedents die; the next generation evolves from them but will not share exact opinions. Technology, the environment, and the cultural shifts (some affected by the woke) will define the new thinking of this personality type. Many of us are dying things being dragged along with the tide. Marx was right about his theory of alienation- though derivative of Feuerbach- for without a solid absolute, our opinions are coloured by the whims of the everchanging material environment. By necessity and survival, we form the opinions for our time. Nietzsche is also right: we are all decadents now. The era is us and we are not free to he crabs and wander away out of tradition.
To make wokeness our like it is a current fad is disingenuous, used by people who want to say “the kids aren’t alright,” and avoid the longer evolution of western nations. What differences do the woke have with the characters of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up and Zabriskie Point? Very little. The latter film’s opening scene could be filmed today without many changes: White students arguing how they can be more like radical Black activists. It is not far from the BLM ‘fad’, but neither are these are just history repeating itslef. One can reach back to before the great war, to the Enlightenment, further still to Descartes, and the collapse of Templar Order, to see the evolution from today. First Cause thinking can be ultimately useless. We can trace Wokeness in certain strands of Christianity, in the same way Richard Dawkins is a Christian in denial. They may be opposed, but they share genes, for we are all Western and sourced from the same soup.
I say why does Darwinism exist? For Paradise Lost came before it.
It might be more accurate to call it a denomination than an entire religion. Then again, both might be inaccurate. Wokeness has all the elements of a traditional faith, from high priests to blasphemy to ritualistic kneeling. But as you point out, it’s lacking anything truly transcendental, which may with any luck be its downfall.
The Marxist stated goal might have been relief from alienation but it was always a ruse. For class abolition to occur, there would always have to be a new ruling class bureacracy of Experts that arbitrarily determine new values and those values would need to be imposed by force.
The thing we call Wokeness is just a Gnostic expression of hyper-awareness. The soul is imprisoned in the body and only by becoming hyperaware of the mechanics of an unjust world can the soul break free from the prison and find oneness with the Divine.
But the true virology is actually Hermetic and Pantheist/Panentheist. Hegel is probably the chief Theologian since he constructed the dialectic in it’s clearest form. Marx inverted it into a bottom up structure making the Self a Historical Actor bringing History to its endpoint. Marx was effectively a Gnostic prophet using Alchemy to transform social conditions through revolution.
The Dialectic is all transmutation or social alchemy. Evaporating the particulars of opposites whether Class/Race/Gender and condensing/sublating them into a singular oneness, IE a Hivemind.
…no misteak there T bone. The Hivemind is indeed a most accurate articulation of where things are at, incorporating as it does, the demographic of the female role in the fusion/con-fusion of policy across so many social and economic institutions.
The word for which you search to categorize “wokeness” is “heresy.” It is a corruption of Western Christianity, esp. Protestantism. That explains in part why it has so little sway in other parts of the world, yet is so hard to combat in its home.
For maybe the best analysis to date, read Millenarian Mobs by the late Angelo Codevilla in the Summer 2020 Claremont Review of Books: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/millenarian-mobs/
Are you Julian Young, the Nietzsche / Schop / Heidegger scholar?
I recently saw wokery described as autistic literalism, designed to protect the egos of mediocre minds.
Thatās a very good description. I equate wokeism with cowardice and groupthink.
Dawn of a new religion? Could be. In my more morose moments, I sometimes wonder if there is a cycle in western history with an obligatory religious revival every few centuries which recharges the internalised morality that arguably society needs – followed by long periods as liberty and licence gradually regrow, everyone has a good time but amorality spreads until it threatens society and the next age of censorious zeal is triggered. This would make the Woke the equivalent of the Evangelicals of the 1830s, who gave us middle class morality for more than a century, the Puritans of the 1630s, the religious revivals in the fourteenth and eleventh centuries and so on. Depressing thought. Fortunately, there is no hard evidence for this theory so I am sticking with my copy of JS Mill, with uninhibited self indulgence and with the hope that history will *** the woke.
āHell hath no fury like an an academic scornedā.
Thus the vendetta between Eagleton and Gray continues, much to the amusement of many.
I find Gray interesting. Eagleton not at all – a one trick pony.
I find Gray very perceptive and Eagleton very perceptive too. I do hope the debate continues
āThe aim of the Law is that we should love it, not simply obey it. By identifying our own desires with those of authority, a trespass against authority feels like a violation of ourselves.ā
In conversation with my woke son I posited that the effect of a physical assault on me would be the same whatever the motivation for the attack. We have good laws against assault, therefore additional laws against assault motivated by woke concerns (race etc.,) weāre superfluous.
He was genuinely flabbergasted. To him, the fact a racial assault is just worse in some way was so internalised he was, to use the awful vernacular, triggered.
Woke us not a passing phase. Much of our population now identifies its own desires with those of the (new) authority.
Where do you draw the line? A sexual assault is presumably also a physical assault so why do need a distinct category of sexual assault?
A sexual assault violates identity in a deeper and more long-lasting way than a non-sexual physical assault. However, an assault motivated by race – or homophobia or whatever – says something about the frailty of the assailant’s identity.
There’s a basic philosophical weakness in these philosophies, interesting as they are. The political and philosophical labels are usually applied to whole populations. But a moments Googling will show that about 5% of people are psychopaths, about 1% experience alcohol use disorders, roughly half are politically Left inclined, half politically Right inclined. Approximately 0.1% are in prison in the UK. Some are Christians, some are Muslims, many are neither or something else.
So no, there is no benevolent state of nature – and to try and force people of differing predispositions into a benevolent state of Utopia is doomed to fail because of it.
āā¦doomed to failā¦.ā Agreed completely.
āUnequal distribution of propertyā by whom, exactly? Is there some Great Benevolence missing whose job it is to dole out equal shares of every single thing? The cancer researcher and the crack head should live next door to one another in identical circumstances as the teen mom, the veteran aerial firefight pilot, and the retired supermarket deli manager?
Next youāll be telling us we can only have two beers a week and three items of clothing . . .
You’ll have one beer a week, wash your underwear by hand, fly to Majorca once every few years and wait for ‘public’ transport like everyone else.
And you’ll be HAPPY!
Even as you see the Zils drive past. Clap harder!
No one is going to be telling you that. But how far are you prepared to go? Let’s say one family dynasty over generations of inherited wealth managed to buy up all the land in a country so they own everything. Everyone else has to rent from this one family – the family can charge what they want, they kind of own the society. Nothing illegal has taken place. Would you say that is just how the cookie crumbles? – no problem.
Martin, I think that is a big āletās suppose.ā
Couldnāt we equally suppose the family decides to give away the land because they were no longer interested in administering it? (Counting all that money gets boring, donātcha know?!). Then everyone has their own home and bobās your uncleā¦
It seems to me, suppositions can take us many places.
I merely give the extreme of where unregulated libertarian capitalism can end. I don’t suppose it will go that far. But the relentless increase in inequality, and the rise of an unaccountable oligarchy, shows the direction we are going. All I’m asking is how far are we going to go before ‘society’ (which does exist after all) decides that it’s perhaps not such a good idea after all? I find it bizarre that so called conservatives can in one breath moan about ‘elites’ but then wax lyrical about the wonders of the free market. The wealthy elites are result of the free market which ultimately ends in monopolies – e.g Google.
Martin, thank you for thinking about what I wrote and responding.
I would suggest your concern about wealth inequality and monopolies is misplaced as those lines of thinking are based in a fixed pie perspective on wealth. Although that perspective tends to predominate economic/political opinions, IMHO it does not reflect reality.
As long as the poorest in the world continue to get wealthier and suffer less deprivation, whichāwith the exception of the pandemic yearsāhas been the case for quite some time now; who cares how much money the wealthiest make?
And NO second homes, particularly in Cornwall!
Eagleton, like most communists, seems entirely oblivious to socialist forms of imperialism, both spatial and psychological (of which the 20thC is littered), and the deliberate and ochestratwd mass murder that came (and still comes) with it. Or at least he either avoids alluding to this, or is in total denial, as if all destruction can only lead from ‘oppressive’ class power structures developed in capitalist contexts. The difference is that Gray is a realist, Eagleton an idealist. Surely no one believes in the utopic world to come any more – it’s utterly naive. This is partly why Eagleton thinks ‘wokism’ is a passing fad, because as a leftist, he’s unable to identify what it is, let alone see it. If he sees it, it appears utterly harmless to him …. until, that is, it comes for him.
Agreed whole heartedly with your idealist/realist contrast Eagleton/Grey. Iām a great fan of John Grey but also Roger Scruton. I totally think that someone needs to write about the two of them and their views on āThe Worldā. They each often send me down completely different worm holes from which Iām unable to extract myself or rather if/when I do I am much bloodied, broken and confused. Perhaps Grey and Scruton have been simultaneously discussed? Perhaps someone has insight on the two? Individually Iām fine having most of their writings.
I have little use for Eagleton but none the less have for years now paid my dues to NLR to keep track of whatās going on in this part of the world.
The “passing phenomenon” comment was the most revealing bit of the article.
My god, I canāt even read past the first paragraph. The rule of law and society are more important for the poor than for the rich. As to, income distribution, if it bothers you change your job. Youāre allowed to do that.
Unfortunately we’re back to the days when what mattered was who your parents are; how much they own, whether they’re educated, where they live and who they know. This is the best predictor of where you will end up however much we might want to fantasise otherwise.
What utopia are you making a comparison to? And why do you think itās problematic that parents who invest in their kids have better results? And yes, itās not the dollar value of investment that is the most important.
On first seeing the Pont du Gard, Rousseau lamented āwhy was I not born a Romanā.
One can but sympathise!
…Acting in “the service of life” is only lame for those with excessive admiration of their own capabilities.
The culture wars – or partisan realignment into warring liberal and conservative blocs – is transmutating again into a Gnostic order.
That is to say, the young have been economically disenfranchised and so have take up the task of restoring Light to the darkness of the world created by the Demiurge.
This is a B- first year essay larded with senility. As are all his pieces. Does he pay Unherd to get published or have some sinister hold over the editors? There is no other explanation. If he wants to write this stuff he can post it on his instagram or get a substack but Unherd is not supposed to be tiktok for supeannuated 1980s arts academics.
That B- is generous. I think you may be grading on a curve.
Not one substantive point
I think it’s a very self-important book review.
Rousseau didn’t know about Dunbar’s Number.
Itās all about empathy/sympathy and are we or do we behave in an altruistic/moral ways? Or do we need laws that constrain us to behave in societally acceptable ways? The jury is definitely out as the definition of civilized society is up for grabs. As one might expect. To equate Freud with progress is problematic. Itās 2023 and the world seems to be falling apart. We live in exciting times.
There can be no freedom if there is no order.
Wokeness will have a short life … commonsense will prevail
It’s already at least forty years old, if you count from the moment it first started shaping policy in institutions such as schools. How short is short?
How short is short? In the span of overall human intellectual development? Iād say 40 years is rather short.
Judaeo/Christine philosophy is substantially older than that. As is Hinduism, Muslim thought, Confucianism, and the like. We are fairly new to the idea that religious thought need not be the foundation of our world view. As such, we are bound to come up with some pretty crazy shit before we work it outā¦