Tea at Trianon: Why Religion and the Humanities Are in Decline

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, July 24, 2023

Why Religion and the Humanities Are in Decline

From The Public Discourse:

Since 2008, two major trends in the United States have been much discussed but little compared: the declines in religion and in the humanities. The downward trend in religion, particularly Christianity, accelerated in 2008. As Pew research has shown, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen from 77 percent to 65 percent, while the percentage of Nones has risen from 17 percent to 26 percent. This decline is particularly acute among Millennials, of whom only 46 percent identify as religious. Meanwhile, the decline of the humanities has accelerated at America colleges. Majors in the humanities have declined between 30 and 60 percent, depending on the department. Churches and humanities departments find themselves facing mergers, consolidations, and closures.

These trends, perhaps seemingly unrelated, are parallel manifestations of the same social ethos: our obsession with means and neglect of ends. For Jacques Ellul, a twenteeth-century Christian intellectual, forgetting ends is the defining trait of our modern technocracy that can only recognize what is efficient and useful. He writes in Presence in the Modern World (originally published in French in 1948) that “in our world, everything must serve, which is to say, exist as means. All that was formerly ‘useless’ or ‘gratuitous’ must submit itself to the necessity of ‘usefulness.’” What Ellul observed over seventy-five years ago is coming into fuller fruition today: if something isn’t a means (like religion and the humanities), and is therefore useless, it is discarded.

Of course, the useful is inherently teleological: calling something “useful” invokes the question “useful for what?” But modernity resists this question by multiplying means without any clear ends. We can see this exemplified in a recent Wall Street Journal poll indicating a growing prioritization of money (always a means) and a downplaying of nation, community, and God (ends). We live an infinite regress of usefulness with little sense of the point of our labors. In a world that only understands useful things, interest in humanities and religious faith (both of which consider human purpose) will inevitably decline.

We resist the question “for what?” because to think about ends requires not only deliberation but thinking. While deliberation is oriented toward doing things, thinking seeks to understand why we do things. Thinking forms the horizon of meaning, while deliberation enables us to choose among means available for fulfilling goals. When we reject thinking, we are left deliberating about means without understanding what they’re aimed at.

Yet we all implicitly think we already know our life’s purpose (usually to maximize convenience and utility); therefore, we think life’s meaning doesn’t require serious thought. “Everyone,” as Ellul writes, “knows more or less the purpose that civilization pursues, and it seems completely pointless and outdated to pose this question.” My college students have worked hard getting impressive credentials since at least middle school and will continue to do so long after college. When I ask them where this is all going, they are befuddled. “This is just what you do,” they often answer. Anything else is impractical, unrealistic, and useless. They have been going their whole lives without asking or being asked “where to?” Asking such a question means stopping, thinking, and perhaps changing direction, all things that religion and humanities have us do. But our society has no interest in silence or pausing. (Read more.)