The Defeat of the Mind [Paperback]

Alain Finkielkraut (Author), Judith Friedlander (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231080239 | ISBN-13: 978-0231080231 | Publication Date: April 15, 1995

A passionate critique of Enlightenment--both in its contemporary invocation and its historical and cultural use--and a call to arms to rethink human equality and liberty without the sacrifice of individual rights and ethnicities.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a provocative, philosophically grounded contribution to current debate on multiculturalism and ethnicity, French thinker Finkielkraut draws on the universal values of the French Enlightenment to argue that every citizen in a democratic society has an obligation to become fluent in the dominant language and culture. He maintains that the cultural relativism advanced by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and by Third World theorists such as Frantz Fanon has led to a contemporary "cult of difference" and to nationalist politics that exalts group identity over individual freedoms. Finkielkraut critiques the seductive perils of the German model of the Volk (people), whereby the individual can join the nation only if he or she belongs to an ethnic group, and he detects reverberations of this line of thought in anticolonial, anti-Western attitudes and in the modern multicultural movement. He concludes this essay, published first in 1987 in France, by analyzing corrosive effects of the spread of Euro-American culture, particularly rock music and the cult of youth, on non-Western peoples.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

[Finkielkraut's work] is one of the final flowerings of the spirit of Diderot. It teaches again the truths that ignorance can not foster freedom, that Shakespeare is of a different order than a pair of boots, and that rock religion is suicide.

(Harold Bloom )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 165 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231080239
• ISBN-13: 978-0231080231
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,457,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiculturalism und das Volk, May 12, 2006

By 

The Dilettante "Dilly!" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Defeat of the Mind (Paperback)

In this essay, French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut sketches an intellectual history of multiculturalism, and -surprisingly- finds its roots in two right-wing countercultural movements of the 19th Century: the volkisch ideology of German Europe (epitomized here by Herder), and the reactionary Catholic thought of writers like Joseph de Maistre and Donoso de Cortes. Both of these ideologies were explicitly anti-universalist and anti-democratic and both developed in reaction to the ideas of the Enlightenment and specifically the French revolution.

Fundamentally, these thinkers all denied that Man is a universal category. Rather, each "volk" and its culture is unique. As such, cultural difference is ultimately more important than individual rights.

(Is this starting to sound familiar?)

In the words of de Maistre: "I do not know the Man as such. Never have. I have known Poles, French, English. Thanks to Montesquieu I am aware of the existence of the Persians as well, but I have never known the Man."

Finkielkraut convincingly demonstrates how these racist 19th Century ideas corrupted 20th Century social science, and eventually led to the 21st Century ideology of multiculturalism. He suggests, persuasively, that this view of humanity as a collection of "peoples" is inescapably racist and collectivist, no matter how it is sugarcoated.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deconstructing the deconstructionists, February 17, 2009

By 

Gary Wolf "author of The Kicker of St. John's... (New Mexico, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Defeat of the Mind (Paperback)

One of the more astute contemporary observers of Western decline is the French writer Alain Finkielkraut. In "The Defeat of the Mind," he traces the lineage of the multiculturalist disease, which, he argues, has provided much of the impetus for a widespread abandonment of the intellect throughout the Western world. This stance, and subsequent tracts in the same vein, have earned him near-pariah status among most of the "intellectuals" of Western Europe.

Finkielkraut considers multiculturalism to be a mutation of older rebellions against the Enlightenment. The Lumières, as Diderot, Voltaire, and the other Enlightenment thinkers are known, sought to elevate man to the highest possible level, bestowing upon him a mandate to perfect himself, to live according to universal principles. These principles, which would form the basis of a forward-thinking cultural and political community (and were an important inspiration for the U.S. Constitution), were considered the common heritage of mankind.

One of the most powerful challenges to the Enlightenment was the rise of chauvinistic nationalism, as typified by the German Johann Herder (1744-1803). Herder rejected any notion of eternal categories, or of "man" as an autonomous entity. Instead, he argued that man's only valid spiritual home were the unique and mysterious qualities of the national group (volksgeist). Naturally, Herder was a partisan of the German volk, holding German culture, art, literature, and history above that of all other nations.

Says Finkielkraut (all translations in this review are mine, from the French edition):

"For all time--or, more precisely, from Plato to Voltaire--human diversity was judged before the tribunal of values; Herder came along and condemned all universal values in the tribunal of diversity."

Herder can be contrasted to thinkers such as Goethe, who, while acknowledging the importance of the nation, argued that high culture is capable of transcending national boundaries. Both realms exist simultaneously; it is up to us to find the balance.

Herder passed the anti-Enlightenment baton to later advocates of ethnocentrism, but also to the new, radicalized social scientists of the 19th century: the sociologists, linguists, and anthropologists. Dressed up as "progressives," they used a different approach to deny man his existence as an individual. Everything became dependent upon society, without which nothing can be explained. Instead of being a captive of his national affiliation, man was seen as a unit within his social class, animated purely by interests and other factors that were not of his own design.

Fast forward to 1945. In the aftermath of the Second World War, efforts were underway to spread culture to the masses, in order to divorce them once and for all from chauvinistic ideologies, particularly those centered on the concept of race. UNESCO, for example, was founded at this time as a major vehicle for the propagation of Enlightenment values.

Soon, however, something went awry. A world in the throes of decolonization began to see the Enlightenment itself as a form of Western imperialism. Third World ideologues, such as the Algerian Frantz Fanon, refused to be subservient to Western notions such as the rights of the individual or freedom of expression. Reason itself was now seen as ethnocentric.

This new generation of radical Third World ideologues were goaded by the resurgent Marxist intelligentsia in the West. The latter ravaged the old concept of "civilization," going even further than the Third-Worlders in relativizing the Enlightenment. Not only is there a plurality of equal cultures throughout the world, they say, but Western culture is itself a plurality, split into warring, equally valid subcultures.

Notes Finkielkraut:

"In the campaign against barbarism, the Lumières now find themselves in the dock, and no longer in the role reserved for them quite naturally by Leon Blum or Clement Atlee: that of prosecutor. The objective remains the same, to destroy prejudice. But to accomplish this, it is no longer a matter of opening others to Reason, but rather opening one's self to the reason of others. Ignorance will be defeated the day when, rather than wishing to spread to all men the culture of which one is the guardian, one mourns the death of one's universality. In other words, "civilized" men descend from their imaginary pedestal and recognize with humble lucidity that they are themselves a variety of native."

Finkielkraut points out two delicious ironies in this state of affairs. The first is that the Left's poster children of decolonization aligned themselves ideologically with Herder and the nationalists--in clear contradiction of Marxist dogma. The Frantz Fanons of the world exchanged one master for another: Instead of being ruled by Europeans, they were now ruled by the tyranny of their own resurgent native identity.

The second irony is that the Western multiculturalists inherited and absorbed the docrines of racism. According to Finkielkraut, under the "old" racism,

"the characteristics of each people were engraved in their genes; the national "spirits" became quasi-species endowed with a hereditary character, permanent and indelible. This theory melted away. But where then is the progress? Like the old preachers of race, the current fanatics of cultural identity consign individuals to their affiliation. Like [the old preachers], they carry differences to the extreme, and destroy...any natural community or community of culture between men...With the replacement of the biological argument by the cultural argument, racism was not annihilated, it was simply returned to its point of origin."

And thus, in our era, Herder has triumphed across the board. The rise of the new ideologies has neutralized both the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Enlightenment. The near-disappearance from the scene of these two forces hastened the death of culture, in the old sense of the term. There could no longer be any appeal to a higher standard in art and literature because this would violate the new rules of the game: Man exists only as a product of his society (or class or community). This reality, say the "current fanatics," can no more be changed than can the course of history.

In this vast stew of cultures, the idol of Post-Modernism raises its ugly head. God, country, family, the individual, the Enlightenment, and art have all been murdered--but instead of lamenting the loss of orientation and depth, confusion is now worshiped. "When hatred of culture itself becomes cultural," observes Finkielkraut, "life with intellect loses all meaning."

I close with the following statement on the challenge of multiculturalism, of the new world in which the mind has been defeated. The followers of Post-Modernism, says Finkielkraut,

"do not aspire to an authentic society, in which all individuals live a comfortable and cozy existence within their cultural identity, but to a polymorphic society, a contentious world that seeks to put all forms of life at the disposal of everyone. [The post-modernists] praise less the right to be different than they do a widespread amalgamation; the right of each person to the specificity of the other. Multicultural for them means abundantly stocked. It is not cultures as such that they appreciate, but the watered-down version, the part that they can try out, savor, and throw away after use. [They are] consumers and not conservationists of existing traditions... 'All cultures are equally valid and everything is cultural' declare in unison the spoiled children of the afffluent society and the detractors of the West."