Two visions of the Western soul

It is the easiest thing in the world for commerce to export a new Western technique. It is infinitely harder for a Western poet or saint to kindle in a non-Western soul the spiritual flame that is alight in his own.—Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History

All we have is our own lucidity, which we must train on a world where faith still inflames the minds of men.—Mark Lilla, New York Times Magazine.

For Toynbee, the heart of the West is the spiritual flame that is alight in the soul of a Western poet or saint, which he seeks to convey to others. For Mark Lilla, the heart of the West is the sterile lucidity in the mind of a secular liberal, gazing at the spiritual flame that is alight in other men’s souls as at something alien and dangerous.

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Alan Levine writes:

Lilla may be a fool, but Toynbee was not an admirable contrast to Lilla. Toynbee was a poisonous character who, whatever his own religious convictions, was a consistent apologist for tyranny, and—Islam! He was a rather extreme appeaser in the 1930s, then favored appeasing the Soviets after World War II. He was a classic case of an Arabophile Muslim apologist in dealing with his own specialty; he whitewashed Iraqi Muslim persecution of the Christian minority there in the 1930s. While I concede that “A Study of History” contains some interesting ideas, he was not, in general, a trustworthy or competent historian.

Oh yes, he was at least a borderline anti-Semite!

LA writes:

I was not aware of Toynbee’s being an appeaser in the ’30s and in the Cold War. I was aware of his anti-Semitism—and it was more than borderline. I’m not referring to descriptions of Judaism as a “fossil” religion in A Study of History, but his comments about Jews in the modern world. (I thought I had posted something at VFR about Toynbee’s anti-Semitism but I’m not finding it.)

While no one accepts Toynbee’s overall scheme of history, his analytical concepts for the stages of a society’s development, such as “challenge and response,” and “resting on their oars,” have become a part of the vocabulary of historians. More importantly, his basic concept of civilizations and his classification of the historic civilizations have been widely accepted and influential. For example, his idea that the civilization is the largest intelligible unit for the study of human society has become a part of everyone’s mental furniture. Without Toynbee, no Huntington.

In any case, the overall character of Lilla versus the overall character of Toynbee is not the issue here but their contrasting ideas as seen in the two quotes.

I must add, with respect for Mr. Levine who makes many valuable comments at VFR, that it is tiresome and distracting, every time one quotes or references some author on a given point, to have to defend that author’s entire oeuvre and character. I’m not signalling out Mr. Levine on this. It seems to be a common response in our culture that if Person X is referenced with regard to a single point, then Person X and his overall worth must become the topic of the discussion.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 25, 2007 11:04 PM | Send