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A review by stadkison
How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor by James K.A. Smith
1.0
God this is such nonsense. Smith loves his erudite and pretentious way of saying “I don’t like democracy and think feudalism was better.” Saved you the time and money it takes to parse this messy take.
The only use this has is some potentially insightful analyses of capital L liberalism, but of course, any good Marxist would make the points he does twice as well and without sliding into reactionary pablum. Of course, Smith, like any good “intellectual conservative,” gets in his shots at the “uneducated conservative” so he doesn’t offend his liberal friends too much, but it’s all a facade. He endorses all of the same conclusions as the most extreme fundamentalist; he just finds their means distateful.
Of course, the problems that Smith identifies (to the extent that they are real; much of his problems are with perhaps 2 or 3 of his friends in New York) are not caused by some ideological turn towards secularism (1, 2, or 3, to use his terminology. Rather, they function as an epiphenomenon of the material conditions we are under, namely, capitalism. As an “intellectual conservative,” of course, Smith can never directly come out and say that. All he ends up doing is getting in his jabs at “PC Culture” and, at one point, consumerism by saying everyone is akin to “13 year old girls” (note the misogyny) because we all care about fashion too much.
And this is not even getting to the absolutely annoying writing style, the constant references to (and misunderstandings of) indie bands to show he is with it, and, my personal favorite, thinking Nine Inch Nails wrote the song Personal Jesus so he can make a point about how Johnny Cash, because he’s a Christian good ol’ boy, does it better. My best guess as to the origins of that mistake is that he heard the Marilyn Manson cover, thought they wrote it, and confused them with NIN. Put some respect on Depeche Mode’s name.
Would not recommend.
The only use this has is some potentially insightful analyses of capital L liberalism, but of course, any good Marxist would make the points he does twice as well and without sliding into reactionary pablum. Of course, Smith, like any good “intellectual conservative,” gets in his shots at the “uneducated conservative” so he doesn’t offend his liberal friends too much, but it’s all a facade. He endorses all of the same conclusions as the most extreme fundamentalist; he just finds their means distateful.
Of course, the problems that Smith identifies (to the extent that they are real; much of his problems are with perhaps 2 or 3 of his friends in New York) are not caused by some ideological turn towards secularism (1, 2, or 3, to use his terminology. Rather, they function as an epiphenomenon of the material conditions we are under, namely, capitalism. As an “intellectual conservative,” of course, Smith can never directly come out and say that. All he ends up doing is getting in his jabs at “PC Culture” and, at one point, consumerism by saying everyone is akin to “13 year old girls” (note the misogyny) because we all care about fashion too much.
And this is not even getting to the absolutely annoying writing style, the constant references to (and misunderstandings of) indie bands to show he is with it, and, my personal favorite, thinking Nine Inch Nails wrote the song Personal Jesus so he can make a point about how Johnny Cash, because he’s a Christian good ol’ boy, does it better. My best guess as to the origins of that mistake is that he heard the Marilyn Manson cover, thought they wrote it, and confused them with NIN. Put some respect on Depeche Mode’s name.
Would not recommend.