RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
225
SIDNEY HOOK
Seven years ago in opening the series of articles on "The
New Failure of Nerve," in PR, I offered an explanation of the
revival of religion in terms of the decline of capitalism, the rise of
totalitarianism, the outbreak of war, and the simultaneous decay of
socialist belief.
What then seemed to be a strong current, has now become a
tidal wave. Regarded as a social phenomenon, I still believe that the
complex of factors described in my earlier article, together with the
spirit of
fin du mondisme
generated by the liberation of nuclear
energy, is roughly adequate as a causal explanation. But since we
are considering the renaissance of religion among intellectuals, cer–
tain special features, cultural and psychological, should be noted.
First of all, the intellectuals mainly concerned are literary and
political-individuals who are not professionally interested in ideas
from the point of view of their validity. With notable exceptions they
had never earned their right to religious disbelief to begin with, but
had inherited it as a result of the struggle of an earlier generation.
They were largely ignorant of theology and philosophy, ignorant of
the facts of historical evil, ignorant of the recalcitrance of human
habit and of the depth and varieties of human limitation.
It
would
be false to say that any group was properly prepared for the modern
world in the sense of anticipating its horrors. But these intellectuals
were pitifully unprepared to understand them even after they hap–
pened, and to re-examine their assumptions about the modern world
in the spirit of critical realism rather than of panic or despair. The
shock of recent events bewildered them to such an extent that they
have become intellectually, not more skeptical, but more credulous,
abandoning beliefs never properly understood, for others understood
even less. Some have become so obsessed with the animality of man
that they can see no grandeur at all in human life; so fearful of the
possibilities of human cruelty, that they are blind to still existing pos–
sibilities of human intelligence and courage; so resigned to the be–
trayal of all ideals, that they can no longer make distinctions and
regard all social philosophies which are not theocentric as different
roads to the culture of 1984.
It is safe to say that those whom Hitler and Stalin have caused
