Monday 18 August 2008

The Project of the West

Hanif Kureishi, "a writer that appreciates irony and can look at such a serious debate with humour" as Trevor Wilson, who is presently working on "Jihadist Islam to Islamic Revivalism", wrote to me from Melbourne, was recently (on 8 August 2008) portrayed in the New York Times. Trevor is right, here are two examples:

"The project of the West, the Nietzschean project, has been to drive out religion and to produce a secular society in which men and women make their own values because morality is gone. Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World. How can you not laugh at that? How can you not find that a deep historical irony?”

“The antidote to Puritanism isn’t licentiousness, but the recognition of what goes on inside human beings.”

3 comments:

Thinking Thoughts said...

"Then suddenly radical religion returns from the Third World."
I do not think fundamentalism "returned".It was always present in people who "believed" in something and could not "think" about their lives.

Thinking Thoughts said...

„Überhaupt nichts kann durch Erzählen gewusst werden.“ (SPENCER BROWN 1997: XII)
Was man erzählt bekommt, kann man glauben oder lernen, aber nicht wissen. Wissen erlangt man allein durch eigene Erfahrung. Ohne Erfahrung ist „Wissen“ abstrakt und leer – und mithin kein Wissen, sondern eben Glaube oder Meinung.

Hans Durrer said...

Agreed.