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Friday, March 18, 2011

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Jack Whelan

Kelly in his book blog http://allthingsshiningbook.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/garry-wills-really-did-not-like-our-book/#comments refers readers to this my defense of his book here, even though he says he doesn't understand it.

There's another extended discussion of Wills's review here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/garry-wills-did-not-like-whooshing-up.html

There are many reasons why Kelly doesn't understand my defense, the most likely being that he cannot accept my admittedly peculiar Christocentric view of history and of my way of locating where his book fits into it. That's ok.

Their book is not intended for a scholarly audience, and so it eschews all the scholarly apparatus and hairsplitting that scholarly types love, but in the end either you get what they're trying to do or you don't. I have my quibbles with this point they make or another, but whether their reading of Dante or John's Gospel or Homer reflect the scholarly consensus is a secondary concern, because what they are trying to do doesn't depend on whether enlightenment rationalist types agree with their reading of them or not.

That's not their audience, and it's ok because that audience and its mindset have no future. The enlightenment model is a rickety old habit that persists because nothing robust enough has come along to blow it down. I think what D&K are doing is an attempt to prepare the mainstream for a way of thinking that will eventually blow that old mindset away, and in doing so they are opening up a space that will have enormous possibilities for the creation of something new.

Tom

Hi there. Um, you don't actually address Wills' criticism. You say that Wills is 'Q4', without actually addressing Wills' specific points.

For example, at one point Wills notes that the book says "Augustine was the first important Christian to interpret Christianity using the categories of Greek philosophy". Wills says that Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and others were important Christians who did this before Augustine.

Is Wills right or wrong? Saying that Wills is 'Q4', and 'Catholic' (three times), is just a personal attack. You say he's a liberal Catholic. You're aware that he claims to say the Rosary every day, and started off with William F. Buckley? Could he possibly be more complex than to be simply dismissed as a liberal Catholic?

We'd never know from your critique, with respect. You quote Wills' first paragraph, then say "I'll leave it to you to read the rest of the review". Did you read the rest of the review? Or had you already made up your mind that "Wills represents a moribund, minority position in the culture at large", and so doesn't deserve further consideration? And what's "learned ... cluelessness"? Isn't that a contradiction?

Jack Whelan

Tom--

I think that Wills is a very smart guy who has completely misunderstood the book--it doesn't fit into his template for what a good book should do, so he dismisses it for reasons that tell us more about him than they do about the virtues or vices of the book. That's what I mean by learned cluelessness. I think the reason he has misunderstood the book is because it's attempting to answer questions he doesn't really have because his mindset is pre-Nietzschean.

I'm a Catholic too, and there's a lot I disagree about in this book, but I respect what they're trying to do, and Wills just doesn't because it's clear to me that he doesn't understand what they're doing. And I argue that he doesn't understand what he's doing because his mindset prevents him from doing so. That's all I'm saying, and that's where Q4 Q1 thing comes in. It's an attempt to explain different mindsets. Take it for what it's worth; I'm sorry if that's not helpful for you.

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