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Review Summary: AFTER IDOLATRY - RECOVERING OUR FOUNDATION |
Date: 2002-11-25 |
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Details: David Walsh's AFTER IDEOLOGY is a fantastic piece of work. It comes closer to being the book I have been looking for than anything I have yet read. It almost overwhelms me. Unfortunately, he attempts to do the impossible: Present the Answers about man which are available in theology and imperative for true human fulfillment and happiness - in the language of philosophy.
I understand his reasoning - most people have been led by the prevailing mentality or paradigm to think that theology is claptrap. But, there is no way the creature will ever be able to see and understand himself without submitting to the will of his Creator, without at least approximating that old "God's Eye View", which also goes by the name of "objectivity". Self-centeredness (anthropocentrism) looks good, but it goes nowhere. Without theology - the Queen of The Sciences - all we can do is stumble in the dark. Without theology we are "blind".
This will remain true no matter how brilliant the philosophers become. Walsh's book contains just about all the correct theological insights needed to achieve the freedom from ignorance we need, the "truth that makes one free". But, without the hard core theology, especially concerning The Problem - Original Sin - we will continue to spin our wheels. Of course I have not read anything he has written since 1990. I had better get busy. |
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Review Summary: A moving, lucid call for spiritual renewal |
Date: 2000-07-10 |
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Details: David Walsh's book is far more than a Christian critique of modernity. Through his profound readings of Solzhenitsyn, Camus, Dostoevsky, and Voegelin, he makes a compelling--even thrilling--case that the real "solution" to modernity's systematic impoverishment of our souls' longing for transcendence must come not from the facile rejection of modernity's values but from an immersion and understanding of these values so complete that it bottoms out in despair. Only a purgative suffering of the human and spiritual emptiness of the various ideological solutions can allow us to open our souls to a fresh experience of grace--we must pass through the fire of modern atheism and secular humanism in order to burn free of the unrealities inherent in these systematic rejections of divine order. If the book has a fault, it may be that it is too optimistic about the inevitability of this process unfolding on a large scale; but hope is a forgivable virtue. This is a beautifully written, closely reasoned book capable of changing lives. |
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Review Summary: On The Way Back From Barbarism |
Date: 2000-03-13 |
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Details: After Ideology is a courageous effort to sketch a postmodern path to the recovery of civilization after a bloody century of ideological war. Democracy is not a stone: it won't subsist on its own. When cut of from its spiritual foundations it becomes deformed and sick. We can continue to wallow in ideological exhaustion and nihilism pretending the 20th Century never happened or we can look at the horror from the "inside" through the eyes of Solzhenitsyn, Voegelin, Dostoevsky and Camus and begin to understand that democracy is as much a matter of spirit as of institutional arrangements. David Walsh is an excellent guide to the thought of these men (particularly Eric Voegelin) and page after page contains arresting observations which will require the serious reader to engage in profound self-examination. We must find a way out of the ideological box if we are to survive in society. We have not done so yet. After Ideology is a good place to start. |
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Review Summary: Scary. |
Date: 1999-10-11 |
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Details: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison must be spinning in their graves. This book seeks to undo everything they worked to achieve for us. Tolerance is tossed, in favor of a very narrow pseudo-Christian ideology of buttinsky selfishness. |
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Review Summary: A Meditation for the close of Millennium |
Date: 1998-05-28 |
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Details: David Walsh provides an essential meditation on this rather destructive century. Through his masterful dissection of the life and work of such prescient minds as Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Camus, and Voegelin, Walsh articulates a visionary understanding of the importance -- at the close of this millennium -- of recovering the spiritual foundations of freedom. Walsh offers an excellent diagnosis on the dead end of "modernity" coupled with a prescription for healing the afflictions of the modern soul -- to ascend from the depths. I first read After Ideology back in 1990 under Professor Walsh's tutelage. Though my overall perspective may have changed since then, I still find Walsh's insight as invaluable now as I did as his student. |
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out of 7 Reviews
