After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom [Paperback]

David Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

This book is a fusing of what some call neo-conservative and neo-political theory with traditional Christian philosophy and theology. Experiences of the 20th century have demolished the expectations with which modernity began: nowhere is there the same unshakeable belief in historical progress or the invincible power of technology. The author argues that we are in the age of reduced expectations, of limits, of the exhaustion of ideology. The struggle to recover order in the midst of disorder can only be successful, Walsh states, with a transcendent foundation of shared ultimate meaning and value. Walsh explores for the reader the works of Dostoyevski, Solzhenitsyn, Camus and Voeglin, thinkers who have plumbed the depths of this crisis and discovered the existential truth that is capable of overcoming it. The modern experiment of secular humanism has failed. Without God, without moral absolutes, without divine order, the author argues that we end up mired in the 20th century morass of international and local violence, genocide, corruption, meaningless and hopelessness. From the author of "The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfilment".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

After Ideology may well be unexcelled. Walsh's synoptic review of the works of these thinkers in light of the social and political developments they all but predicted is nothing short of thrilling. -- Crux

From the Publisher

This work describes how four thinkers-Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Camus, and Voegelin-were able to confront secular messianism and find the means of overcoming it so that what they eventually formulated was, essentially, a form of philosophic Christianity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Catholic University of America Press (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813208335
• ISBN-13: 978-0813208336
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,031,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving, lucid call for spiritual renewal, July 10, 2000

By 

"tim_farrington" - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (Paperback)

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.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On The Way Back From Barbarism, March 12, 2000

By 

Richard R. Ring (Longview, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (Paperback)

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.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Meditation for the close of Millennium, May 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (Paperback)

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.