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Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization Kindle Edition

by Samuel Gregg (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 90 ratings
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"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream

"Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon

The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high.

The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths.

We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason.

But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Samuel Gregg poses the only question that matters: Can the West survive? It can, he concludes, but only by resorting to the radical measure of becoming, once again, itself. This book is a trumpet blast, calling an entire civilization to arise as from a trance—to true ‘wokeness.’ A magnificent achievement.” —Peter Robinson, former speechwriter to President Reagan and Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution

“Understanding Western civilization’s present crisis involves grasping how and why the separation of reason and faith has left the West adrift. In this powerful book, Samuel Gregg shows that restoring faith and reason—fides et ratio—to their proper place is essential if the West is to rediscover itself and draw upon the best of its religious heritage and the Enlightenment’s achievements.” —James V. Schall, S.J. (1928-2019), professor emeritus, Georgetown University

“Samuel Gregg has put us all in his debt by recalling us to the fundamental truth—once obvious—that reason without faith is sterile. Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization is a masterly inquiry into what has made what we call ‘the West’ the dynamo that changed the world. The answer cannot be found in political innovation or technological prowess alone, but also involves a recognition of that horizon of transcendence that grounds reason and the whole Enlightenment project. This is a deep and authoritative inquiry into the resources that our civilization requires to succeed but which are everywhere under siege. Anyone who cares about the future of Western civilization should read this.” —Roger Kimball, editor and publisher, The New Criterion


“If you think ‘Enlightenment’ means only science, if you think Western civilization is only about politics and economics, or if you think faith and reason cannot coexist, then you need to read this book. What gave rise to the West, Samuel Gregg argues, was not just science, politics, or economics, but a vision of the human person that did not separate but integrated faith and reason. Gregg shows the way out of our spreading ‘pathologies of reason and faith,’ demonstrating the true nature, and limitations, of reason, its deep connection to faith, and their complementary roles. The benefits of Western civilization can be realized in no other way. Gregg shows us how they might be preserved not only for us but for future generations.” —James R. Otteson, Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, professor of economics at Wake Forest University

“Faith and reason form the foundation of the optimistic outlook in Samuel Gregg’s book. He shows how reason unmoored in faith and faith detached from reason easily drift into forms of unequal treatment, denying our creation in the image of God, which anchors us in hope. From Genesis to Paul, Gregg shows that the arrow is from Truth to Freedom, through logos to ‘enlightenment.’ The West has flourished in this freedom. May it never be lost.” —Vernon L. Smith, 2002 Nobel laureate in Economics, Chapman University

“Samuel Gregg has written a clear, eloquent, and concise guide to the intellectual and spiritual currents, rooted in reason and faith, which inform Western civilization at its best. He does full justice to the West’s Jewish and Christian roots and their affirmation of reason’s ability to articulate freedom’s purposes. He also lauds the best currents of Enlightenment thought even as he warns against the ‘forces of destruction’ that increasingly impel the modern world toward tyranny and a soul-destroying nihilism. With impressive learning and grace, he shows his readers ‘a way back’ to the old verities that point the way toward a promising future. A must-read for all who care about the fate of a Western civilization rooted in truth and liberty.” —Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College, author of The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity

About the Author

SAMUEL GREGG, the research director at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, writes and speaks on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He holds D.Phil. in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford. His previous books include For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good and Becoming Europe.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07F6P81DX
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Regnery Gateway (June 25, 2019)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 25, 2019
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1873 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 180 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 90 ratings

About the author

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Samuel Gregg

Samuel Gregg

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Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford, where he worked under the supervision of Professor John Finnis.

He is the author of several books, including: Morality, Law, and Public Policy (2000); Economic Thinking for the Theologically Minded (2001); On Ordered Liberty (2003); his prize-winning The Commercial Society (2007); The Modern Papacy (2009); Wilhelm Röpke's Political Economy (2010); and Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and America's Future (2013) as well as monographs such as Ethics and Economics: The Quarrel and the Dialogue (1999); A Theory of Corruption (2004); and Banking, Justice, and the Common Good (2005). Several of these works have been translated into a variety of languages. He has also co-edited books such as Christian Theology and Market Economics (2008); Profit, Prudence and Virtue: Essays in Ethics, Business and Management (2009); and Natural Law, Economics and the Common Good (2012). His forthcoming book is titled, Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case for Limited Government, a Free Economy, and Human Flourishing. He has also written on the thought of St. Thomas More.

He publishes in journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; Journal of Markets & Morality; Economic Affairs; Law and Investment Management; Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines; Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy; Evidence; Ave Maria Law Review; Oxford Analytica; Communio; Journal of Scottish Philosophy; University Bookman, Moreana, and Policy. He is a regular writer of opinion-pieces which appear in publications such as the Wall Street Journal Europe; Foreign Affairs; National Review; Public Discourse; American Spectator; Australian Financial Review; and Business Review Weekly. His op-eds are also widely published in newspapers throughout Europe and Latin America. He has served as an editorial consultant for the Italian journal, La Societa, as well as American correspondent for the German newspaper Die Tagespost.

In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Member of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 2004. In 2008, he was elected a member of the Philadelphia Society, and a member of the Royal Economic Society. He is the General Editor of Lexington Books' Studies in Ethics and Economics Series. He also sits on the Academic Advisory Boards of Campion College, Sydney; the La Fundación Burke, Madrid; and the Institute of Economic Affairs, London; as well as the editorial boards of the Journal of Markets and Morality and Revista Valores en la sociedad industrial.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
90 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

velodog revolver
5.0 out of 5 stars The all important Logos
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2019
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Great analysis of a central aspect of the Judeo-Christian world view, its relation to the Logos and why this led to the deluge of scientific discovery and the current pre eminence of the West. While decline is likely it is not inevitable. The "rediscovery" of faith by many of the astrophysicists and even current cultural aspects such as the "Hearts of Space" music program gives hints that we as humans want to know the truth about where we came from and who or what started all this mess! If you're concerned about our future as a nation then this is a good read. If you can't stomach anything by a "Popist" then you won't be able to comphrehend this little book. Your loss. The author deserves a wider audience.
4 people found this helpful
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Roman
5.0 out of 5 stars I don’t often say that a book is a “must-read.” But this one really does fit that category.
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2019
Verified Purchase
I’ve read many texts about faith and reason questions but few spell out like this one just how significant getting the faith-reason relationship right is for the West.

The book begins with Benedict XVI’s famous Regensburg address, and shows that its primary critique was of the West. For a long time, Samuel Gregg says, the West has been shaken by what he calls “pathologies of reason” and “pathologies of faith.” An example of a pathology of reason would be the reduction of reason to the natural sciences. An example of a pathology of faith would be Marxism. To resist these pathologies, the West has to correctly order its commitment to reason with what the author calls “the two faiths of the West,” so that reason and faith can balance and correct each other.

The book explains how the West’s unique integration of reason and faith occurred. It stresses that the process really begins with the Jewish people and the way in which their religion embodied a commitment to rationality and freedom centuries before the Greeks came to anything close to the same insights. That’s a welcome corrective. Connected to this is the fact that the Greeks’ achievements couldn’t be fully realized because of the pagan religions’ highly irrational nature.

Gregg shows how the idea of God as Logos (Divine Reason) was crucial for integrating Greek rationality with Judaism’s conception of God as a free, rational and active Creator. Christianity, Gregg says, universalized this idea and made it central to the West’s understanding of itself.

Three chapters of the book focus upon showing how the breakdown in the West’s integration of reason and faith has contributed to so many of the destructive forces that has caused many people to doubt the integrity of the entire Western project, such as Nazism, Marxism, and Nietzscheanism – but also “softer” forces that have corroded the West over time. These include utilitarianism and liberal religion, the latter being a form of sentimental humanitarianism that has laid waste to much of Christianity and Judaism in Western countries. Gregg doesn’t suggest that the disintegration of the reason-faith nexus is the only cause; but he does claim it is an underlying problem that links many of these trends.

There is a controversial thesis in this book. Gregg argues that the West needs to reassess the widespread view that the Enlightenment, as a movement of ideas that stressed reason and the social and natural sciences, was somehow deeply at odds with Jewish and Christian religious beliefs.

He acknowledges that there have been tensions but claims that it’s a myth that the entire Enlightenment was a highly anti-religious enterprise. He marshals plenty of facts to back up his position. He shows just how sympathetic many active Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians as well as many pious Jews were to many of the Enlightenment’s achievements. Most “Enlighteners,” he argues, were conventional religious believers of the time, especially those who participated in the Anglo-American and Scottish Enlightenments. This strikes me as very important given the debates going on today about how religious believers should think about the Enlightenment.

Most contemporary books about Western civilization are doom, gloom and pessimistic in tone and conclusion. Gregg doesn’t go down that path. He is optimistic that the West can recover if it can rediscover the particular synthesis of reason and faith that marked its emergence and continues to influence us today, whether we realize it or not. The last two chapters demonstrate how this could occur.

Lastly, the book is written with a very accessible style. Whether they agree or not with the book's argument, specialists and no-specialists alike will enjoy.
49 people found this helpful
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Eduardo Garcia Gaspar
4.0 out of 5 stars A matter of survival.
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2019
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Really a great book. Well written, clear, reasoned and well argued. All in a short work that goes to the point. And that is, I suspect, a matter of survival of Western civilization. If it doesn't survive, the things that happened in the 20th century will return (yes, Nazism and the barbarism of the USSR, Pol-Pot and the like).
The issue on the table is the compatibility between reason and faith. Between science and religion. When they do not accompany each other, bad things happen. Faith alone, without reason, leads to pathologies such as religious terrorism. Science, without faith, produces horrors, like the Holocaust. That is the drama at the bottom of the tragedy of our day.
It has been my opinion, for some time now, that what S. Gregg describes is real. The spirit of our times limits reason to the field of experimental science and thinks that faith is nothing better than superstition. This is the same mistake made by those who think that all that exists is faith in divine dictates that do not admit examination.
S. Gregg takes as intellectual base of his book ideas that come from Benedict XVI. To this he adds a multitude of sources and evidences that present his ideas as something reasonable and justified. And it points out something that I did not know, the "Böckenförde Dilemma" ... fascinating.
In short, a great read. Important and of serious consequences. A matter of survival.
15 people found this helpful
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