Two schools of Islam criticism

On November 5 I quoted a comment David Yerushalmi’s SANE website had made about me, written in their weird, esoteric, techno-geek jargon:

The problem with Auster is he approaches and yet stays clear of the Reciprocal which would bring for him the focus of WHY the West has turned to the Redirection.

To which I replied:

So that’s my problem! I’ve got that darn Reciprocal and Redirection all mixed up. I’ll get right on that…

SANE is not amused. Instead of getting my irreverent but serious point that people writing for the public should write in commonly understandable language, SANE lectures me for not having grasped the Reciprocal and the Redirection. (Which I actually tried doing a couple of times, but gave up.)

In any case, we now have on one side the Michael Savage “Take Your Religion and Shove It up Your Behind” School of Islam Criticism, and on the other side we have the David Yerushalmi “Your Reciprocal’s Connected to Your Redirection” School of Islam Criticism. And between them there’s me, asking people who are engaged in public discussion to use normal, understandable language suitable for public discussion.

- end of initial entry -

Terry Morris writes:

“SANE lectures me for not having grasped the Reciprocal and the Redirection. (Which I actually tried doing a couple of times, but gave up.)”

Well, that makes me feel a little bit better. I thought I was just too stupid to grasp the meaning of what they were saying. I understand what the term reciprocal means. I understand what the term redirection means. But the way they use the terms in the sentence is just confusing as far as I’m concerned. And I gave up in short order trying to understand it too. If I’m simply too stupid to understand the clear meaning of the concepts as they state them, then I count myself in pretty good company. :-)

Steven Warshawsky writes:

I too have tried to understand the particular analytical viewpoint expressed by Yerushalmi. He has criticized some of my writings for not perceiving and/or confronting whatever it is that the below (from his comment about you) is supposed to mean:

“Science—the theoretical underpinnings—is the symbolic mathematization of all of existence. This is Telos as Certainty. It is the destruction of Speech and the murder of Man in the way intended by Kojeve. Now you could understand this if you put your mind to it.”

As far as I am able to understand his philosophical point of view (I’ve read some of his longer essays), it appears to be that science inherently and inevitably destroys traditional human values. Why? Because the scientific perspective (a la the Enlightenment) leads to democracy, which is based on the premise that there is no “truth” but what the majority of people believe and vote for. So science leads to subjectivism and relativism, which leads to liberalism and nihilism. Or something like that.

Unless I am misunderstanding Yerushalmi’s analysis (and I very well may be), it appears to lead to the conclusion that only a primitive, hierarchical social structure is compatible with traditional human values as political conservatives define them. Who knows, maybe he is right. But this certainly is not the kind of society that I wish to see created in this country. I guess that makes me a “liberal” at heart.

Nevertheless, Yerushalmi and his colleagues at SANE have many interesting and insightful things to say about the contemporary scene.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 14, 2007 11:22 AM | Send