Icarus Fallen: In Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World

by Chantal Delsol

Book Overview

It would be difficult to find a more perceptive description of Western man and the world he now inhabits than that provided by Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1935191691
• ISBN13: 9781935191698
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Window into the European mind

Intended as a "sociology of the mind," this essay examines the existential uncertainty and barren spiritual landscape that Chantal Delsol observes in Europe. She portrays the continent's postmodern cultural confusion in terms of an Icarus who survived the fall but suffers from paralyzing injuries. The European mind was first wounded by the loss of Christianity and then more grievously by failed attempts to replace it with secular salvationist substitutes that led to the totalitarian tragedies of the 20th century. These experiments have left people dazed, disoriented and stripped of certainties. Utopian ideologies weren't the only attempted replacements; they also included science, the arts and reason itself. She elegantly likens these failures to collapsed cathedrals. Arguing that meaning is found outside of the self in ideas, ideals or values, the author believes Europeans have lost the will for it as they now reject all interpretative frameworks like religion, politics and economics. Fear of absolutes and ideology has understandably bred disillusionment. Rigidity of thought was indeed the cause of the persecutions, the wars, the Holocaust and the Gulag. The danger of democracy, on the other hand, is its multiplicity of opinions that are all equally valid. It is thus by nature averse to objective truths that would constrain certain behaviors. And without a sense of purpose, mankind embraces the vapid and fatuous as revealed in banal and clichéd discourse. Delsol calls it the "clandestine" ideology of our time, overt ideology having become taboo. This black market substitute is arbitrary, sickly sentimental and intolerant despite claims to the contrary. It functions as code language for the European welfare state whose citizens remain adolescents that conflate desires with rights in a process called the "sacralization" of rights. She characterizes the morality of our time as one of complacency. The Good is considered to be that which gratifies, immediately and obviously. In reality the Good operates over the long term, so this notion restricts the imagination to a narrow spatio-temporal niche. And having rejected all frameworks, individuals have to formulate their own moral blueprint in the quest for self-fulfillment. This morality of complacency has deprived Europe of a system of ethics whilst promoting self-interest and subjectivity. Simultaneously, emotion & indignation have become the preferred channels to demonstrate morality which is usually negatively defined, in reaction to what people claim to despise. There's a type of piety expressed in hysterical fits of morality, particularly by artists and intellectuals. Its relativism, rage and selectivity betray it as mere posturing; it is moreover demonstrably contradictory in the way it clings to moral absolutes whilst affirming the omnipresence of relativism. Delsol considers it a vain, empty morality of despair and withdrawal. Others less kind might call it grotesque hypocrisy and crude p

Lucid and Mighty

Delsol proves she is one of the most astute cultural critics of our times. This book is a tour de force which rips apart the "politically correct" thinking and meaninglessness of modern life, revealing just what we are scared of and how it inhibits our search for the truth. This masterpiece fits in with the very best of other writers in the "Conservative Revolutionary" approach including Spengler, Evola, Alain de Benoist, Heidegger and others. The writing is superb and her arguments leap off the page and transfix one with their aptness and penetrating insight. It's one of those books you want to send to all your friends and annoy others by reading aloud from it. My favorite parts reveal the agenda behind the "clandestine ideology" that works to equalize all behaviors and suspend/repress judgment on everything. She tells it like it and describes what is really going on around us.

An extensive evaluation of the pitfalls of modern times

Skillfully translated into English by Robin Dick, Icarus Fallen: The Search For Meaning In An Uncertain World by Chantal Delsol (Professor of Philosophy, University of Marne-La-Vallee, Paris) is a thoughtful and scholarly evaluation of Western man and the shattering of his twentieth century ideals. Professor Delsol ably argues that man was burned by the failure of utopian ideology (especially when confronted with the devastation of World War I and the 20th Century armed conflicts which were to follow throughout the 20th Century), and seemingly insufficient religious traditions just as Icarus was burned when he flew too close to the sun and his wings failed him. An extensive evaluation of the pitfalls of modern times and the strict limits on human virtues, Icarus Fallen is strongly recommended reading for students of 20th Century Philosophy, Politics, and History.