A Retrieval
The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos by Sohrab Ahmari
Sohrab Ahmari questions the ideological presuppositions that undergird and inform the modern West. His misgivings have become more urgent in recent years, since the birth of his son. “I have come to believe that the very modes of life and thinking that strike most people in the West as antiquated or ‘limiting’ can liberate us,” he writes, “while the Western dream of autonomy and choice without limits is, in fact, a prison.”
As an immigrant from Persia, Ahmari is not ungrateful to the West for offering him refuge from the stifling oppression of revolutionary Iran. Yet, as a recent Catholic convert and father, he is compelled to ask whether a society that actively removes every barrier to individual appetites is a good environment in which to raise a family. The Unbroken Thread intends to resolve this father’s dilemma:
How do I transmit to my son the value of permanent ideals against a culture that will tell him that whatever is newest is also best, that everything is negotiable and subject to contract and consent, that there is no purpose to our common life but to fulfill his desires?
Ahmari looks to tradition for answers.
According to tradition, writes Ahmari, truth is the accumulation of wisdom over centuries. It is inherited and must be transferred to future generations. Reason can discover and expound upon truths contained in tradition, but it cannot alter them. In contrast, the progressive age understands truth as something individuals can create for themselves through scientific inquiry or philosophical innovation. This modern view of truth sees tradition as outdated and an obstacle to progress.
Ahmari, who serves as the op-ed editor for the New York Post, sees himself as a critic and “interrogator of modern certainties.” He asks an ethical question in each chapter and demonstrates why tradition offers a better answer than does modernity. No particular tradition is said to offer definitive answers to every question. The author instead seeks to show that contemporary thinking is deficient in certain ways and that “we may have too hastily thrown away the insights of traditional thought and too eagerly encouraged the desire for total human mastery.”
An Impediment to Truth
Early in his exposition, Ahmari tackles the problem of scientism with a recounting of the intellectual evolution of C. S. Lewis. “The scientific outlook,” which Lewis embraced in his youth, “can’t, and won’t, bother with questions having to do with ultimate meaning, the stock-in-trade of faith and philosophy,” writes Ahmari. Scientist ideologues mask their ideals under the guise of science while simultaneously railing against idealism. They sow despair by claiming that moral struggles cannot be overcome because there are no correct answers. They say these philosophical or moral teachings cannot be empirically proved in the world of measurable facts and data.
Scientism turns out to be an impediment to the discovery of truth because it rejects non-scientific forms of knowledge. Unlike the hard sciences—or modern skepticism masquerading as science—the philosophical tradition does provide the intellectual tools to resolve pressing moral dilemmas.
While Tertullian famously asked what Athens had to do with Jerusalem, Thomas Aquinas answered his rhetorical question in sophisticated fashion when he demonstrated the harmony that exists between faith and reason. Even though philosophy and theology pursue different questions and lines of inquiry, God is the source of both faith and reason; therefore, these intellectual pursuits ultimately point back to this one reality and truth. Aquinas thought that since human rationality is a gift from God, the Christian philosopher must seek out truth wherever it can be found. The modern caricature of medieval Europe as a dark age marred by obscurantism and superstition is merely a self-serving mythology.
John M. Vella has served as the editor of Crisis magazine and the managing editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review
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