On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society

by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Book Overview

In On Looking Into the Abyss one of our most distinguished historians--author of Victorian Minds and Poverty and Compassion--brings her prodigious learning and authoritative moral vision to bear on the present. In particular, Gertrude Himmelfarb is concerned with exposing the intellectual arrogance and spiritual impoverishment of our most fashionable current ideas--and with tracing their dire consequences for our collective life.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679428267
• ISBN13: 9780679428268
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Exposing our era's intellectual fraud and spiritual impoverishment

With impressive scholarship, keen insight and courteous polemics, Himmelfarb challenges the intellectual deception and spiritual poverty of our era. Most of the essays examine the trash that's become intellectually fashionable since the1980s. The title essay braves the swamps of postmodernism inhabited by the demons of nihilism, irrationality and immorality. She dissects deconstruction and related pseudo-philosophies particularly for their baleful effect upon philosophy, literary criticism and historical studies. In the madhouse of deconstruction, the interpreter takes precedence over the text that is interpreted, with comical or insane results. The objective is to undermine reality by denying that it exists. She warns of the consequences when we are informed that philosophy has nothing to do with wisdom or virtue, that metaphysics is really linguistics, that morality is a form of aesthetics and that the best approach is not to take philosophy seriously. And about what happens to our sense of the past when we are told there is no past except that which the historian creates, or to our perception of the significance of history when we are assured that it is we who give it meaning, or to that terrifying historical event, the Holocaust, when it can be so easily 'demystified' and 'deconstructed'? Hegel deified Reason, arguing that every individual could rely on their own reason, accepting as true what seems rational according to individual judgment. Thus a train of thought was set in motion that led to Feuerbach representing religion as the failure of humanity's critical reason and Max Stirner claiming the Ego as the only reality. The destination becomes obvious. Himmelfarb shows up many contradictions in Marx: his habit of portraying his proletarian protagonist in pejorative ways, his counterfactual assertion that the needy would forever become poorer and the sinister sacrificial vision lurking behind his materialist interpretation of history. The author's epitaph for Marx has proved to be far too optimistic: the collectivist serpent returns from Hades again and again. The essay on Liberty confronts the icon of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill. She convincingly argues that his doctrine of the absolute freedom of the individual inevitably leads to relativism. And if truth can be relativized, morality will follow. She laments our materialist culture that bans unhealthy foods but not sadistic movies and forbids racial segregation but not moral degradation. Absolute liberty tends to subvert the very freedom it seeks to maintain as it grants itself the right to assault the foundations. This was also clearly pointed out by Polanyi in his seminal work Science, Faith and Society. The Dark and Bloody Crossroads Where Nationalism and Religion Meet includes a comparison between the newer versus the established nation states. As the newer ones become more assertive and brutal, the older nations are becoming spineless and passive, ashamed of affirming

Himmelfarb Acumen

"Formerly, when historians invoked the idea of imagination, they meant the exercise of imagination required to transcend the present and immerse oneself in the past. This is the genius attributed to the great nineteenth-century historians: 'empathy, imagination, the attempt to place oneself in an historic situation and into an historic character without prejudgment.' For the postmodernist it means exactly the opposite: the imagination to create a past in the image of the present and in accord with the prejudgment of the present-minded historian." - Gertrude Himmelfarb (From: Postmodernist History) Essay List - On Looking into the Abyss Of Heroes, Villains, and Valets From Marx to Hegel Liberty: "One Very Simple Principle"? The Dark and Bloody Crossroads Where Nationalism and Religion Meet Where Have All the Footnotes Gone? Postmodernist History

Let's Hear It For Gertie! Five Cheers.

The moral debility of our Western universities has no more incisive a critic than Gertrude Himmelfarb. A refreshing read for anyone sick of the doubletalk of the multiculturalists.

Acadummies Explained

Himmelfarb's observations on post-modern 'history' are right on target. The apologists for the Holocaust (revisionism is always apologetics) in academia are hideously indifferent to the greatest devastation and assault on humanity ever known. I had to laugh at the post-modern historian's lament about the 'fact fettish' of traditional historians. This book may be considered the starting point in the inquiry on why many students leave academia less able to think critically than when they enter. This is a tragedy, particularly because the 'new' history (or literature or psychology, etc.) is so boring and formula-driven that a daily newspaper is more informative, relevant, and interesting in comparison. This book is an eye-opener for those who wonder why so many college graduates are clueless about where they are in human history and how they got here. Those who have long suspected the intrusion of academic nincompoopery in our universities in recent decades will enjoy this book.

Brilliant, concise essays on culture and the arts

Gertrude Himmerfarb has been writing sharp and insightful critiques of history and society for over 50 years, and her more recent books are as good or better than anything she has published in her long career.In "On Looking Into the Abyss" Himmerfarb demolishes literary deconstruction and exposes its frauds as devistatingly as any critic. Her contrast of the Marxian and Hegelian views show us both the continuing attraction of Marxism as well as its fatal flaws, and make us understand why a 160 year old debate is still relevant. In an age where discourse is often reduced to televised shouting matches, the half-baked opinions of celebrities and carefully crafted statements matched to opinion poles, read Himmelfarb to re-discover what intelligent argument and essays can and should be.