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Nostalgia for the Absolute | George Steiner

2 posts | 1 read | 1 to read

Writer and scholar George Steiner's Massey Lectures are just as cogent today as when he delivered them in 1974 -- perhaps even more so. He argues that Western culture's moral and emotional emptiness stems from the decay of formal religion. He examines the alternate mythologies (Marxism, etc.) and fads of irrationality (astrology, the occult). Steiner argues that this decay and the failure of the mythologies have created a nostalgia for the absolute that is growing and leading us to a massive clash between truth and human survival. Ultimately he suggests that we can only reduce the impact of this collision course if we continue, as disinterestedly as possible, to ask questions and seek answers in the face of our increasingly complex world.

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Gleefulreader

Nostalgia for the Absolute | George Steiner

pick

Another from the Massey Lecture series. Steiner‘s premise is that western civilization continues to look for certainties - in Marxism, in Freud, in astrology and the anthropology of Levi-Strauss - to fill the gap left behind by the decline of the Christian religion. He further posits that the search for ultimate scientific truth (for ex. that one day the earth will cease to exist) is something we cannot grasp which is why we turn elsewhere. Con‘t

Gleefulreader This is a good companion to The Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, and is still relevant today. Important note: it was written in 1974 and therefore there is some language in reference to hippies and their appropriation of Eastern culture that is outdated. 1mo

10 likes1 comment

Gleefulreader

Nostalgia for the Absolute | George Steiner

“The cults of unreason, the organized hysterias, the obscurantism which have become so important a feature of Western sensibility and behaviour during these last decades, are comical and often trivial to a degree; but they represent a failure of maturity, a self-demeaning, which are, in essence, tragic.”

As relevant today as it was in 1974.

5 likes