Daily Blague

Crawling out from under a heap of Timeses, I rub my eyes and vacantly survey the scene. That's what I do every Monday, but not in public; as a rule, I'll have written up a book for Monday publication. The cupboard is bare today, however. There are several books in my to-write-up pile, but they all seem to be somewhat challenging. Take Measuring the World, for example - the book by Daniel Kehlmann that I read in St Croix. Perhaps because I haven't read much Pynchon, I haven't read anything quite like Measuring the World. When it wasn't making me laugh, it was at least making me smile. But a good deal of sleight-of-hand is involved, and I haven't figured how its tricks work. How does a brisk narrative whose surface is characterized by a childlike intensity of gaze upon the manifest present, as well as by a brusque, deadpan humor that I take to be peculiarly German - how does such a narrative convey the illusion of cosmic scope? When I can answer that question, I'll write up Mr Kehlmann's novel.  

In today's Times, there's an Op-Ed piece by Richard A Shweder that I found provocative. Entitled "Atheists Agonistes," the piece considers the recent spate of aggressively atheistical books, by such writers as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. Mr Shweder notes that the famously tolerant John Locke warned against tolerating atheists. Here's Locke, as quoted in the essay:

Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.

Locke's interest in "promises, covenants and oaths" marks him as a man who has not entirely moved out of the feudal atmosphere that, while thin, had not altogether evaporated by the end of the seventeenth century. He doesn't believe that an individual can make a calculated, self-interested decision to honor his commitments, reasoning that this is not only the most prudent but the simplest policy to adopt. I am always surprised to find that there are very bright people who behave well because they fancy that God is looking over their shoulder, because I would loathe such a God with Satan's rage, and probably take up a life of evil. This is not to say that I am an atheist. I don't happen to believe in a God, but I also don't profess to know the first thing about the possibility that God exists. The matter is actually of no earthly interest to me - and I have no unearthly interests. This makes it easier to agree with Mr Shweder's conclusion:

Instead of waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s), those of us who live in secular society might profit by being slower to judge others and by trying very hard to understand how it is possible for John Locke and our many atheist friends to continue to gaze at each other in such a state of mutual misunderstanding.