{"id":75817,"date":"2018-12-04T12:18:35","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T17:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=75817"},"modified":"2018-12-04T17:26:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T22:26:55","slug":"the-mod-sex-art-and-god-carl-trueman-talks-with-camille-paglia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=75817","title":{"rendered":"(The Mod) Sex, Art and God: Carl Trueman Talks With Camille Paglia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do you as an atheist think that the God of the Bible offers a more realistic approach to reality than post-structuralism?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Camille Paglia:<\/strong>Post-structuralism is a cynical, reductive, and monotonously simplistic methodology that arose from the devastated landscape of twentieth-century Europe, torn by two colossal world wars.\u00a0 It has nothing whatever to do with American culture, American imagination, or American achievement in literature, art, music, and film.\u00a0 The trendy professors who imported post-structuralist jargon into U.S. academe were fools and frauds, and they deserve to be unmasked and condemned for their destruction of the humanities.<\/p>\n

The worship of Michel Foucault (called \u201cSaint Foucault\u201d in the title of one sycophantish book) has been the worst kind of idolatry, elevating a derivative writer of limited historical knowledge to godlike status.\u00a0 Foucault borrowed from a host of prior writers, from Emile Durkheim and Max Weber to the great Canadian-American sociologist, Erving Goffman (a major influence on my work).\u00a0 For three decades, young professors have been forced to nervously pay homage to Foucault\u2019s name, as if he were the Messiah.\u00a0 Elite academe likes to insult religion and religious belief\u2014except when it comes to the sacred names of post-structuralism, before whom all are expected to kneel.<\/p>\n

I am an atheist who takes religion very seriously and who believes (as I argue in\u00a0Provocations<\/em>) that the study of world religions should become the core curriculum of global education.\u00a0 I call comparative religion the true multiculturalism.\u00a0 Who is better prepared for life and its inevitable shocks and losses:\u00a0 the faddish Foucault acolyte or the devout Jew or Christian?\u00a0 The Bible is a masterpiece of world literature, an archive of Hebrew poetry of the very highest level.\u00a0 Its hero sagas have saturated Western literature and flowered in epic Hollywood movies still broadcast at every holiday.\u00a0 The parables of Jesus (with their vivid metaphors drawn from everyday life) strike to the core of human experience.<\/p>\n

As I have repeatedly insisted, Marxism, of which post-structuralism is a derivative, has no metaphysics.\u00a0 It sees nothing bigger than society, which constitutes only a tiny portion of the universe.\u00a0 Marxism does not perceive nature, nor can it grasp the profound and enduring themes of major literature, including time and fate.\u00a0 Marxist social analysis is a useful modern tool that all scholars should certainly know (Arnold Hauser\u2019s 1951 Marxist epic,\u00a0The Social History of Art<\/em>, had a huge impact on me in graduate school).\u00a0 However, in its indifference to the spiritual, Marxism is hopelessly inadequate as a description of human life and its possibilities.\u00a0 By externalizing and projecting evil into unjust social structures and prophesying a paradise-like utopia via apocalyptic revolution, Marxism evades the central issue that both religion and great art boldly confront:\u00a0 evil is rooted in the human heart<\/strong>.…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a> (my emphasis).<\/p>\n

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"Who is better prepared for life and its inevitable shocks and losses: the faddish Foucault acolyte or the devout Jew or Christian?" Dr. Trueman had the enviable privilege to chat with Dr. Camille Paglia, art historian and social commentator. https:\/\/t.co\/JC5Vp00YML<\/a><\/p>\n

— Modern Reformation (@ModRef) December 3, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n