Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge
Rather than cleaving contemporary intellectual foolishness to its historical roots, Thornton starts at those roots, advances from the crucial eighteenth century to the present, and concludes with case studies of three modern loci of falsehood--romantic environmentalism, the American Indian as ethical paragon, and goddess worship. The trouble all began with the Enlightenment assumption, founded on similar dispositions in classical Greek philosophy and scholastic Christianity, that knowledge bred virtue. Once a person knew the good, reason would compel realizing it, for humans are naturally inclined to goodness. Thereafter, romanticism demoted reason and preferred feeling but didn't dispute natural human goodness. Thus the stage was set for "if it feels good, it is good" as the highest ethical standard, and all three current follies that Thornton analyzes are rife with the sentimental indulgence, self-righteousness, and contempt for empirical evidence, especially about human behavior, that the feel-good ethic fosters. Thornton's exposition is complex, yet as he draws the thoughts and interpretations of an impressive array of social critics into his grand intellectual-historical argument, his prose never becomes obscure, though Al Gore, Vine Deloria, Carol Christ, and other targets of his criticism have reason to wish it had.Ray Olson