by Greg Johnson
3. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Cultural relativism is one of those fashionable ideologies that take less than five minutes of clear thinking to expose as fraught with insurmountable difficulties. Indeed, this is the common denominator of everything that comprises what we call “political correctness.” All of it requires that we not think clearly, and that we not process what is right before our eyes. All of it requires “doublethink.” Nevertheless, so many individuals—including well-meaning ones—are in such thrall to these positions that it is necessary to patiently refute them. One of the virtues of Duchesne’s book is his discussion of the problems inherent in cultural relativism—a theory which is sometimes not explicitly stated by Leftists, but which is nevertheless fundamental to ideologies like multiculturalism.
Consider the case of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) who was so convinced of the objective truth of cultural relativism that he could write comfortably of the burning of widows as “a spectacle of awesome beauty” (see p. 32 of Duchesne). One hears in this the voice of the fanatic, and can’t help but be repelled. But, as Duchesne remarks in a dense footnote, more problematic still is the difficulty of explaining—if cultural relativism is true—how Geertz managed to transcend his own cultural situatedness in order to appreciate the “awesome beauty” of something universally regarded by Westerners as unspeakably barbaric.
Cultural relativists are often accused of this sort of inconsistency. They appear to make claims which, according to their own position, are impossible. But Duchesne has a more interesting point to make. He draws our attention to a paradox that lies at the heart of cultural relativism: though it claims to have dispensed with Eurocentrism, cultural relativism itself is a product of European culture. No other culture has ever floated the idea that it is not “unique,” and that its beliefs and practices are no more true or valid than anyone else’s. Further, cultural relativism is based upon certain ethical assumptions that are uniquely Western. It is the West that gave rise to the idea that there is a “common humanity,” and that all human beings—and their cultures—must be treated with equal respect. And it is only the West that has extolled the objective treatment of other cultures, which requires a vigilant self-criticism, lest one’s own cultural prejudices distort one’s findings.
In the light of these simple and obvious considerations, cultural relativists appear remarkably naïve. They believe that they have transcended their own ethnocentric culture, while all the time they are in the grip of it. They assume that their values are universal, when in fact they are uniquely Western. They never reflect on this, and in their harsh treatment of their own culture it never occurs to them to notice that it is only the West that gave rise to the ideals according to which they attack it. And it never occurs to them to consider that perhaps this makes the West unique. It is Westerners alone out of all other peoples who engage in this sort of ruthless self-criticism—some might say self-hatred. Why is this? The cultural relativists and revisionist historians have no answer to this question—but Duchesne, as we shall see later on, can give us some insight.
In the process of critiquing cultural relativism, Duchesne briefly raises some troubling questions about multiculturalism. This is a natural transition, since multiculturalism is founded upon cultural relativism. However, Duchesne packs his comments into a footnote on p. 32. Indeed, quite a few of his more “politically incorrect” asides are confined to footnotes, perhaps because he did not want to distract readers from the main argument of the text (which courts enough controversy). Duchesne writes “Is not the emphasis on cultural pluralism a form of [Western] universalism that requires modes of reflective reasoning (metacultural, historical, and anthropological) that are/were unavailable in other cultures and that threaten/have threatened the particular traditions and standards of diverse cultures?”
In other words, isn’t the pluralistic ideal of multiculturalism itself a Western cultural artifact, at odds with the anti-pluralism and parochialism of other cultures (e.g. Islam, to name just one)? And therefore wouldn’t the insistence that cultures co-exist and “harmonize” with each other require them to adopt alien, Western ideals of tolerance and, indeed, cultural relativism? Again, this is an obvious problem to which most multiculturalists seem to be completely oblivious—largely because, despite their professed interest in other cultures, they are in fact surprisingly ignorant of the often radical differences between them. They insist that somehow we will simply be able to “tolerate” all these differences. But, as Duchesne points out on the same page, “Can Westerners defend their liberal values by tolerating values which negate these liberal values?”
Finally, and most pointedly, he asks “Should Westerners be deprived of their own particular traditions in the name of the universal promotion of pluralism and diversity?” It often seems that multiculturalists believe that everyone has a right to practice and celebrate their culture—except for Westerners, who must nip and tuck their culture to accommodate others. At the root of this, of course, is a deep and pernicious form of self-hatred: the feeling that we have no right to defend Western culture, for its history is just a long roster of sins against others. This is, of course, the net effect of decades of education and propagandizing by anti-Western, neo-Marxist historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, who have distorted the historical record and minimized or denied the West’s unique virtues.
The situation today is typified by a story recently told me by a friend who teaches at an expensive private high school. He said that his school’s campus clubs include organizations for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics. Is there a club for European-American (i.e., white) students? Yes indeed, but its purpose is to promote multiculturalism and tolerance. In short, the only identity permitted to the white, Western students is the identity of the self-hating Westerner, who demands of himself what he would never demand of others: that he repudiate his own culture, in the name of “diversity.”
As I promised, it takes less than five minutes of clear thinking.
4. THE DISHONESTY OF THE REVISIONISTS
Enter the late Jerry Bentley (1949–2012), revisionist historian. Bentley promoted the ostensibly valid claim that all the world’s peoples deserve serious study by historians. But he promoted this largely by denying that there was anything distinctive or unique about “classical Greece, the European Renaissance, the Reformation, the Glorious Revolution and Parliamentary supremacy, or the Enlightenment” (pp. 54–55). Now, at the risk of seeming to make a dogmatic claim, I submit that the only excuse for holding such a position would be ignorance of all the historical events or periods just listed. But Bentley was a university professor, and far from ignorant. One therefore feels driven to the conclusion that he was, like so many other academics, in the grip of an ideology, and being less than honest.
In academic circles it’s considered dirty pool to accuse a scholar of dishonesty. One must instead patiently refute his errors and carefully avoid hinting that one believes that those errors are less than honest. (And Duchesne, good academic that he is, plays this game, and generally avoids speculating about the motivations of his opponents.) But now and again one encounters a position that is so patently dishonest one feels a moral obligation to denounce it as such. And, in general, the dishonesty of the revisionists is patent.
Consider, as another example, the case of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. You may not have heard this name, but he is one of the most highly-regarded academic historians today. His 1000+ page textbook The World: A History (2007) is utilized in classrooms throughout the English-speaking world, and has been lavishly praised by other historians. It should instead have created a scandal, given that Armesto devotes scant treatment to ancient Greece, Rome, and Christian Europe, while lavishing attention on Asia, Africa, and the Americas (p. 62).
To make matters worse, Armesto’s treatment of European history is often absurdly distorted by his Left-wing ideological commitments. In dealing with classical Gree
ce, for example, he asserts that “until recently” we hailed the Greeks as originators of democracy but “scholars today” have “revised” our assessment of them and exposed the fact that only privileged males counted as citizens. But, of course, this is not a recent discovery! It has been common knowledge for more than 2,000 years.
Duchesne writes that Armesto “essentially walks over what was uniquely Greek—the existence of a government that allowed for the full participation of all male citizens—in the name of facts that were, in varying ways, common features of the rest of the ancient world” (p. 63). Historians of the past recognized the flaws in Greek society—the treatment of women as non-persons, the institution of slavery—but saw what was still exceptional about the Greeks in spite of their flaws. Armesto’s ideology will not allow him to take such a balanced view. Because the Greeks were not feminists and egalitarians, they must be “exposed” and vilified, their achievements denigrated and denied.
Aside from the ideological blinders worn by the revisionists, Duchesne also exposes the inherent flaws in their basic methodology. In brief, the revisionists cherry-pick the evidence, accumulating only the facts that seem to support their own claims. Duchesne puts it more politely, observing that their approach is too Baconian and insufficiently Popperian. In other words, they think that you can prove a case simply by assembling evidence that confirms it, and do not seem to realize that one must come to terms with evidence that disconfirms it as well.
But the revisionists have a convenient way of dealing with disconfirming evidence: dismissal and denunciation. For example, a book by the revisionist historian Andre Frank wildly overplays the role of China in world trade in the 18th century. At one point he confronts some troubling but well-founded statistics from another source: Europe’s share of world trade in 1720 was 69%, and 72% in 1750. Frank’s response: “this unabashedly Eurocentric claim is disconfirmed by the evidence discussed in the present book.” In fact, Frank’s book offers no hard evidence to refute these statistics.
When it comes to colonialism, the fur really starts flying. One of the revisionists’ standard claims is that whatever Europe may have achieved in the modern period was accomplished through the ruthless exploitation of its colonial possessions and their inhabitants. The trouble with this claim, however, is that according to the best evidence Europe’s profits from colonial trade in the late 18th century amounted to no more than 2% of GNP. The revisionists also love to claim that the Industrial Revolution was made possible by colonialism. But Duchesne notes that profits from colonial trade were too small to have contributed much to the capital formation that made the Industrial Revolution possible. In the case of Britain, colonial trade was no more important than domestic industries as a source of the capital that went into industrialization.
From the fact that Britain was linked into a global trade network it simply does not follow that she was parasitic upon it. Duchesne writes:
Academics are so preoccupied with the moral implications of the slave trade, the plunder of resources, and the use of violence in the enforcement of mercantilist trade arrangements, that they cannot see the obvious: Britain earned her riches through her own virtues and talents as a nation that deliberately set out to achieve imperial greatness. It was Britain’s development of the best navy in the world, civil institutions, administrative and financial reforms that made it possible for her, in the first instance, to seize upon and appropriate raw materials and slaves in faraway lands. (p. 88)
And Duchesne points out other obvious problems with the claim that Europe’s links with the rest of the world—colonial and otherwise—were responsible for its achievements. First, all things considered the costs of colonialism—administration, taxes, defense—outweighed the gains. Second, Spain acquired huge colonial possessions but wound up undeveloped, lagging well behind other European countries that had fewer such foreign entanglements. Third, countries like Germany and Switzerland lacked colonial properties but nevertheless became extraordinarily wealthy.
But the biggest problem of all is that—as mentioned earlier—the revisionists tacitly treat Europeans as passive agents whose destiny was determined by their situatedness within the “world system.” It is this “world system”—the web of relations between interconnected nations—that emerges as the only truly active “agent” in the accounts of revisionists. “The world system,” Duchesne writes, “is ultimately conceived as the active (structural) entity determining a country’s developmental possibilities” (p. 91). What of the desires, dreams, ideals, and aspirations of remarkable, farseeing men? What of the “doers,” who are not content to be acted upon and who, instead, act? The ideology of the revisionists simply contains no room for such men.
The revisionists are extremely keen to avoid doing the “bad old history,” which saw the rise of the West in linear terms as a history of progress. So they swing to the opposite extreme, avoiding any suggestion that there is a pattern to Western history at all. What explains the extraordinary achievements and innovations of the West if not, shall we say, “Western characteristics”? Well, we’ve already seen one answer to this: the West was dependent on the rest. The revisionists also continually have recourse to the idea that the many revolutionary changes and innovations in Western history were essentially accidental. We were in the right place at the right time, as it were. Again, no great, exceptional men with exceptional minds and motivations. All are moved only; none are self-moved.
Duchesne writes: “In their extremist desire to strip Europe of any deep-seated, differentiating characteristics, revisionists have left themselves with no option but to treat [Western] history as an unending series of ‘lucky shots’ and abrupt turns” (p. 203). One revisionist historian writes that Europeans “weren’t just lucky; they were lucky many times over.” The truth is that Europeans were lucky indeed: lucky to be in possession of a singular genius and drive. But that this may have been our “lucky break” is a possibility the revisionists simply will not allow themselves to consider.
As I shall treat in greater detail in the next section, the revisionists also continually draw our attention to ideas and inventions that Europeans allegedly “borrowed” from others (even when the evidence for this is scanty). As Duchesne points out (p. 64) what they fail to realize is that being original does not preclude having debts to others—and that affirming the uniqueness of the West does not imply that it was hermetically sealed (p. 177).
Japanese Zen was certainly indebted ultimately to the Indian sage Bodhidharma, but no honest man would call Zen “unoriginal.” Einstein was likewise indebted to Newton, but again no honest man would use this as a basis to dismiss relativity theory. But, to come full circle, we are not dealing here with honest men (though it is doubtful, in fact, that the revisionists would question the originality of Zen and Einstein!). We are dealing with men in thrall to an ideology, determined not just to deny the West’s greatness, but ultimately—in truth—to destroy it.
5. WHAT ABOUT THE EAST?
The revisionists’ favorite non-Western people seems to be the Chinese. They tend to both exaggerate Chinese achievements, and to emphasize how the West has been dependent upon them (again, even where the evidence for this is slim). We have already seen how one historian has made a name for himself through his implausible claims about the Chinese share of world trade in the early modern period. And I have already referred to the absurd claim of another historian (Robert Temple) that it was really the Chinese who discovered Newton’s laws of motion.
Of course, when many of my readers think of accounts of Chinese achievements they will immediately think of Joseph Needham’s highly influential, multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China. This book is quite valuable in many ways, but the trouble with it is that Needham is so enamored of the Chinese he tends to exaggerate their achievements. Worse still are his unsubstantiated claims regarding the transmission of Chinese ideas and inventions to the West. One critic quoted by Duchesne refers to Needham’s account of the inf
luence of China on the West as “heavily flawed on several counts, of which the most important are the absence of sources that even begin to point at transmission” (quoted in Duchesne, p. 173). Indeed, Needham would sometimes simply assert that such and such innovation made its way from China to the West and say “the details of the transmission are still obscure.”
For years it has been claimed by historians that since movable type was invented in China, it must have been transmitted from China to Germany, where it was picked up by Johannes Gutenberg. The trouble is that there is simply no evidence for this. The truth, of course, is that the West has borrowed many ideas and innovations from other cultures. But the West did not simply passively adopt these: we developed them, often to a point never reached, or even imagined, in their cultures of origin. Further, as I have said already, the West’s openness to foreign ideas is one of its unique characteristics. And one could not find a better contrast to this than the Chinese themselves.
The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who lived in China from 1583 until his death in 1610, characterized the Chinese as largely uncurious and complacent. He wrote that, “The Chinese are so self-opinionated that they cannot be made to believe that the day will ever come when they will learn anything from foreigners which is not already set down in their own books.”369 By contrast, Ricci himself—typical Westerner that he was—seems to have been quite open to learning from the Chinese. He translated several major Chinese works into Latin so as to make their thoughts available to Westerners. Indeed, as Duchesne notes (p. 243, citing figures like Montaigne) Europeans have always seen others as a mirror in which to assess themselves, both their virtues and their shortcomings.