The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel: Essays on Political Philosophy in Our Modern Era of Interacting Cultures

12. Overdosing on Iconoclasm: A Review of Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason1

Chapter XII h Overdosing on Iconoclasm: A Review of Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason1 Except for the superficiality of its closing pages on Eastern mysticism, Harris’s 2004 book is an unusually interesting one full of remarkably fresh formulations challenging beliefs prevalent in the liberal West. One of its strengths lies in the statistics with which it notes what is often brushed aside, namely, the fact that the modern era is not an age of secularization, because most of the world’s population east and west still adheres to religious beliefs. In other words, most of the world’s population would reject John Rawls’s call to realize “political liberalism” and “reasonable pluralism” by regarding their ultimate beliefs as mere “comprehensive doctrines” the truth of which cannot be demonstrated. Such is the impracticability of the most prominent liberal political philosophy today. Another strength of Harris’s book is the colorful documentation with which it heaps scorn on the absurdities in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts, such as the Deuteronomy injunction to stone to death any relative or friend rejecting the Jewish God (p. 18) (Deuteronomy, 13: 6–11). But these absurdities are well-known. What is novel and challenging is Harris’s criticism of the belief, really a staple of Western liberalism, that these absurdities do not detract from the holiness of any text traditionally regarded by any group as holy. In other words, according to some a priori rule, the free, autonomous exercise of critical reflexivity should not lead to a completely iconoclastic attitude toward any such text. Rejecting this point, Harris refutes the kind of illogical, liberal, relativistic multiculturalism and pluralism according to which racism, sexism, 708 The Ivory Tower and the Marble Citadel and homophobia are obviously evil, but any idea at all about what is holy should be treated reverently as a “religious” idea, no matter what the atrocities it inspires. Harris correctly points out that this relativism undermines any Western determination to avoid the catastrophes that will ensue if Muslim fanatics gain control over WMDs. Knocking over other sacred cows, he rejects the fashionable belief that democracy is the correct form of government in all political circumstances (pp. 151, 230); notes that “the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza…. will be a direct cause of war between Islam and the West should one ever erupt over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”; and indicates, albeit not clearly enough, that by erroneously giving support to this occupation, the U.S. increased that Muslim anger against the U.S. which led to the terrorism of September 11, 2001 (pp. 94, 109, 153). Finding the proper dose of iconoclasm, however, is not easy. Harris runs into problems because he combines his iconoclasm with a surprisingly naïve kind of logical positivism whereby the exercise of critical reflexivity—traditionally called “reason”— is exclusively equated with the scientific pursuit of knowledge. I shall not dwell on his preposterous belief that neuroscience with its pretentious jargon about “proprioception, kinesthesia, enteroreception, and even echolocation” (p. 41) can eventually identify the normative principles on which human life should be based. Even if it could explain how “to suffuse our lives with love, compassion, ecstasy, and awe” (p. 43), the principles on which to make political choices—should China promptly democratize? should same-gender marriage be legalized? should reparations be paid to the descendants of persons enslaved under U.S. law?— cannot be inferred from these feelings. Similarly, normative political principles cannot be deduced from the apparent absoluteness of evil in the case of acts like torturing a child to death. One cannot from the evilness of the latter prove that Truman should not have dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki. Hence the ineptitude of the discussion in Harris’s chapter 6 about whether morality has any objective basis. Moreover, when Harris ridiculously endorses the “experiences” produced by “the use of psychedelic drugs” (40) and so legitimizes or apologizes for the most catastrophic trend in modern U.S. history, the spread of the drug culture (160–163), he fails to 12. Overdosing on Iconoclasm 709 appreciate the crucial distinction between those subjective feelings of ecstasy or serenity which psychedelic drugs indeed can produce and public acts enhancing the lives of one’s fellow citizens, such as a technological invention, an athletic performance, a musical composition, a good Ph.D. dissertation, or a policy pulling...