There is an emerging global culture war. It is one that was neither expected nor easily predicted. In fact, it is a war that goes to the very essence of being human.
Hegel summarized the western side of the debate in Philosophy of Mind when he wrote: "When Individuals and nations have once seized upon the abstraction of freedom itself it has more than any other thing, boundless power, just because it is the very being of Mind, its very reality."
The recognition the mind is free is a western notion embraced by a significant portion of the globe. When the Judeo-Christian religion spread, this idea that freedom is an essential characteristic of mankind took root.
But what of those who do not embrace Judeo-Christian thought? What of those who contend that freedom, even if offered through God's grace, is not a blessing? And what should one make of radical Islamists who contend that only by following the precepts of Allah through Mohammed's prophecies can one find truth?
The awakening and flowering of scientific knowledge in the West occurred because freedom took hold, because thought was liberated from nature. Excited by doubt, the free person invariably engages in a quest for truth. That questioning is dialectical; it forces reappraisal of every thing that is studied.
Socrates was the western mind writ large. He subverted all he studied; his questioning was relentless and endless. The very questioning of experience which led to the efflorescence of science and philosophy also has the effect of consuming the social order and undermining authority.
It is the price paid for doubting.
For Hegel and Hegelians including Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History, the history of freedom is evolutionary spreading its wings across the globe in a manner that fills the space of tyranny and slavishness. Yet Hegel was not an optimist. He realized that freedom dissolves realities forcing people to reconsider what was once true.
Hegel also realized that selfish desire and passion are more effective springs of action than the pursuit of freedom which exists only through laws, morality and constraints.
What the world now faces is the dark side of Hegel, the side Marx contemplated when he turned Hegelianism on its head. For many Islamicists western evolutionary thought is flawed. They prefer a backward glance at the wreckage of the past and conclude that freedom unrestrained by rigid religious laws inevitably results in debauchery. So passionate are these Islamists that they are willing to kill any who deviate from their theocratic musings.
Rather than embrace the Socratic dialogue of questioning, they insist on doctrinal recitation. Truth is not elusive, a matter to be pursued. For the Muslim true believer truth is already known, written on the tablets of the faith. One merely turns the page to know what is true and what must be pursued. This is not a culture of doubt, but one of assurance and insistence.
For those who embrace this religious ideal, there isn't a dialectic. How can there be when truth is already determined? Perhaps this explains why new pharmaceutical or software products do not emerge from the Islamic world. Scientists cannot question or doubt. Hence they cannot engage in real science.
How this conflict between freedom and orthodoxy unfolds is already evident. If the idea of freedom prevails civilization, despite ebbs and flows, will prosper. If, however, Islamic extremism manages to capture the imagination of those who find freedom too hard to ingest, a dark ages may be in our future. That in the bluntest of terms is the present global culture war.
The test of Western mettle is whether we have sufficient confidence in freedom's civilizational message to defend it, recognizing that a great sacrifice in blood and resources awaits us. We fight this war not for ourselves but for those who follow.
The hope of mankind lies in opening the doors to doubt, in questioning and in truth seeking. Any other path will ultimately result in blind alleys and turning the clock back to an age of barbarity.
Herbert London is president of the Hudson Institute and John M. Olin Professor of Humanities, and author of the recently published book "Decade of Denial," from Lexington Books. He can be reached through http://www.benadorassociates.com/.
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