The Culture of Hope
As I see it, destiny was determined to make Frederick Turner of interest. Born in England on 19 November 1943, one day less than a year before me, he soon proved himself to be a wanderer, living in Africa before he went to university (Oxford, not Cambridge!). He then became a US citizen, and from 1985 was at the University of Texas (after positions at the University of Bath in the UK, and UC Santa Barbara in California). He is presently Founders Professor of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. More to the point, he is a prolific writer, poet and critic. Among many others, his books include Shakespeare and the Nature of Time; Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; Natural Classicism: Essays on Literature and Science; Rebirth of Value: Meditations on Beauty, Ecology, Religion and Education; Beauty: The Value of Values; The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit; Shakespeare’s Twenty-first Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money; On the Field of Life, on the Battlefield of Truth, and Natural Religion.
There’s much more. He contributes essays, poetry, reviews, and translations to many periodicals, including Harper’s Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The Wilson Quarterly, Poetry, Reason, Forbes ASAP, Society, The Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems, The American Arts Quarterly, Pivot, New Literary History, Oral Tradition, First Things, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, The Missouri Review, The Ontario Review, The National Review, The Partisan Review, Shenandoah, The Stanford Literary Review, American Enterprise, Lapham’s Quarterly, and , believe it or not, many more. His work has been translated and published in Albanian, French, German, Japanese, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Rumanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, and other languages.
He’s a polymath. He was first known for his Shakespeare criticism and for his scholarship in the field of English Renaissance philosophy. More recently he has written on Renaissance science and art, Shakespearean theatre and performance, Christopher Marlowe, and explored several Shakespeare plays. He is a founder of the literary-critical school known as Natural Classicism. Another emphasis has been on the relationship between science and technology on one hand, and the arts and humanities on the other. As a result he has been involved in groundbreaking studies of the neurobiology of aesthetics, the ritual and performative roots of the arts, and the humanistic implications of evolution, ecology, recombinant DNA technology, space travel, artificial intelligence, brain science, and chaos theory. He has been awarded numerous prizes. Did I say he’s a polymath?
His book The Future of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit assessed the chances for a revival of our cultural energies at the turn of the millennium, based on what was seen as the remarkable new developments in scientific cosmology and technology. It is this book, published in 1995, that is the starting point of these comments. He made his intentions in writing his book clear: “When one seeks for radical equality, and a total pruning of the tree of authority, one gets an Oliver Cromwell, a Napoleon, a Hitler, a Lenin, or a Stalin instead. In recent times, the egalitarian commune movement has given birth to such monstrosities as Charlie Manson and Jimmy Jones. Any of us who were involved in radical consciousness-raising groups in the sixties, seventies, and eighties can remember the oppressive atmosphere of thought control and authority, the way in which some unacknowledged leader emerged supported by a little coterie of moral enforcers and yes-men, and bullying of the weak or independent.” He’s not frightened to make his views clear. He has often been controversial. He’s the ideal person for my last blog in this current series.
Thirty years ago, Turner proposed a radical agenda in The Culture of Hope, with its telling subtitle – A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. Why did I read it? Because he commented “This book is for those who have been shaken out of themselves by art, who have felt a piece of Mozart’s Magic Flute reach out and grab them by the heart, who have seen the grave look on Flora’s face as she steps out of Botticelli’s Primavera the way gods always do, lit by a light too powerful to be quite shown: for those who have heard a line of Shakespeare so that it rang and rang again in their ears – ‘Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul/Of the wide world dreaming of things to come.” I felt I had to read it!
To continue to quote, but now from the book release:
“Turner recycles some material from earlier university press books for this, his grand synthesis that promises to overcome the stalemate in the culture wars. Proponent of a “third way” or “centrist” position, Turner (Arts and Humanities/Univ. of Texas, Dallas) rehearses the standard complaints about our culture in crisis. Unlike traditional conservatives, though, he ventures a prescription that goes beyond nostalgia for faith and values. A sober critic of the so-called avant-garde, Turner posits a “radical centre”—“a return to classical forms, genres and techniques in the arts” that is grounded in the latest research in anthropology and science. Turner fancies his “reconstructive postmodernism” a new paradigm on the intellectual horizon, and it’s hard to imagine anyone familiar with all the disciplines he brings together in this fascinating, if exhausting, book. A cogent critic of anti-foundationalist thought (be it feminist, Marxist, or linguistic), Turner reaffirms the need for hierarchy in the arts, for logic over force, and for beauty over relativism. His multiculturalism is truly pan-cultural, discovering the transcendent in all cultures. Turner’s idea of a “natural classicism” is remarkably transparent—he locates classical forms in nature itself. Some of his other ideas are a bit obscure, and his tendency toward unrelieved abstraction will turn off sympathetic readers. Turner’s immediate cure for cultural malaise is nothing less than a four-page manifesto that is certain to provoke debate, and his discussion of biology is sure to be used against him, despite his distinctly un-“bell curvish” ideas. Turner’s fictional “fable for the future”—a brave new world that resembles the utopian cyberspace of the Tofflers—flirts with kookiness. A superb critic of trendy feminist and multicultural ideas, Turner deserves a hearing in the ongoing debate: He’s Apollo to Camille Paglia’s Dionysus.”
So what is this Third Way? A number of contributors to Philosophy Now in October 2019 suggested answers, and a few were published. The topic was “How to negotiate a path between capitalist & socialist excesses? There were many similarities between the views expressed, of which these are just a selection.
Steve Foulger, from London, observed “In political philosophy a ‘Third Way’ is usually taken to mean a position that rejects the extreme views to be found at either end of the left/right spectrum. It is commonly seen as occupying a middle ground, rejecting radicalism. Its proponents often say it offers the best of both worlds, whilst detractors see it, unsurprisingly, as the worst of both.” …. I believe Third Way proposals should reject the (monist) idea that there is one all-embracing solution to the problems of society, and instead accept value pluralism as its guiding principle. Values are vitally important to people, but they can be contradictory and indeed incommensurable. … my Third Way would involve a radical extension of democratic control into a largely devolved society.”
Similarly, at least to some extent, Jonathan Tipton, from Preston, Lancashire, suggested “In the last twenty five years, the ‘Third Way’ has denoted a distinct political ideology that argues in favour of the free-market, entrepreneurship, and against the nationalisation of industries, whilst still endorsing radical policies of social justice. It is commonly seen as a compromise between right-wing neoliberalism and leftist social democracy.” …
Tipton goes on to observe, “Arguably John Rawls offers the closest thing to a theoretical basis for Third Way values. In his influential book A Theory of Justice (1971), he put forward a thought-experiment, the ‘Original Position’. Imagine, he said, that a society’s values were to be decided by rational individuals behind ‘a veil of ignorance’ which would prevent them knowing anything about what their own place in that society would be, even of their own social status, gender, ethnicity, etc. Rawls thought that concern for their future wellbeing would impel them to create a society that was free-market but with a strong sense of social justice. It would therefore outwardly resemble a society modelled upon the Third Way. Social inequalities such as great wealth would be permitted if and only if they also benefited the least well off, through high taxes, or more employment”. Appealing to a Rawls fan!…
Another contributor, Ian Rizzo, Zabbar, from Malta, commented: “If only we could ditch the left-right-centre-populist ideological splits and focus on a Third Way based on reasonable rethinking and strong ethical, humanistic beliefs. … A Third Way would recognise that the right balance ought to be maintained between markets, the state and the community. Risk should be appropriately rewarded, since the economy needs to be sustained with creativity and self-sufficiency; but not to the detriment of rewarding hard work. … . A Third Way would insist that the key to our wealth and happiness lies in measures to truly improve quality of life for all… Such an objective can be reached if the Third Way is based on a philosophy where every human being is treated with equal dignity and respect. Tolerance of a diversity of views should go hand in hand with J.S. Mill’s ‘Harm Principle’ (people’s freedom should only be limited to prevent them doing harm to others).”
For Frank S Robinson of Albany, New York, there is a path for a ‘Third Way’ between rapacious capitalism and coercive communism. “The answer is Enlightenment humanism. This philosophy celebrates the flourishing of individuals, recognizing that the only thing that can ultimately matter is the feelings of beings capable of feeling. An important part of human flourishing is finding meaning. Most of us want to do that as freely as possible. This doesn’t mean disconnecting from society. Indeed, being embedded in social structures is part of how we flourish and find meaning. So we want a balance between freedom to do our own thing and the societal ties enabling us to relate to others. … Experience and rationality point to a society ruled by laws protecting us from harms by others – including capitalists – while otherwise leaving us as free as possible: free to pursue economic advantage, which makes society richer; and free to pursue happiness in our individual ways.”
Finally, Mark Bennett, Newmarket, ON asks if there is still a basis to strive for a Third Way. “Democracy is now under the influence of consumerism. … We channel our citizenship toward consumerism, giving tacit assent to our government to undergo a process of zoning. As Alain Badiou … reminds us that “1% of the global population possess 46% of the available resources while 50% of the global population possess nothing. There seems to be no solution other than democracy. So for a Third Way, democracy must undergo an evolution in which we address both environmental and human needs. It must replace the effects of hegemony with a globalized citizenship. Jürgen Habermas writes, “politics must globalize too, in order to rein in the economy. It means expanding politics beyond the nation state”.
Can we have hope?
The Third Way has been defined as: “different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state. The Third Way is in favour of growth, enterprise, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation but it is also in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about.” So as Anthony Giddens of the LSE has noted: the Third Way rejects the so-called neo liberalism philosophy. Indeed, the Third Way has been advocated by its proponents as a ‘radical-centrist’ approach, an alternative to both capitalism and what it regards as the traditional forms of socialism.
The more I have read about it, the Third Way has become harder to summarise, partly due to its flexible nature, putting ends before means, and prioritising achieving social justice rather than focusing on the methods by which it could be achieved. One way to summarise the Third Way is to say it’s about ‘rights with responsibilities’, pairing the right to education with the responsibility to put effort towards achieving good grades. On economics, a great deal of the emphasis is placed on tax revenue, and the means by which it is generated. The Third Way argues that growth is the best way to raise tax revenue, and that growth can be achieved through a free market economy, fiscal discipline and a ‘healthy human capital stock’.
The Third Way has been advocated by proponents as competitive socialism. Anthony Giddens has been a prominent proponent of the Third Way, and has suggested it is a modernisation of socialism, achieved through the social democracy movement. However, he argues that traditional socialist ideology, resting on the direct involvement of the state in economic management and planning, is flawed. He has argued that justification for the idea of the managed economy barely exists any longer. In defining the Third Way Blair once wrote: “The Third Way stands for a modernised social democracy, passionate in its commitment to social justice”, and he added: “The Third Way stands for a modernised social democracy, passionate in its commitment to social justice and the goals of the centre-left. … But it is a third way because it moves decisively beyond an Old Left preoccupied by state control, high taxation and producer interests; and a New Right treating public investment, and often the very notions of ‘society’ and collective endeavour, as evils to be undone.”
While it sounds encouraging, The Third Way has been criticized as being a vague ideology with no specific commitments: “The Third Way is no more than a crude attempt to create a bogus coalition between the haves and the haves not: bogus because it entices the haves by assuring them that the economy will be sound and their interests will not be threatened, while promising the have-nots a world free from poverty and injustice. Based on opportunism, it has no ideological commitment at all.”
All this takes us back to Frederick Turner. With an undeniable religious underpinning, he argues that a culture of hope has to draw on such matters as the preservation of the richness and variety of life, and suggests we have to replace ‘environmentally unsound technologies with the more efficient, elegant and benign ones that the new science is making possible”. He is an unashamed ecologist, but above all he seeks “a new aesthetic philosophy, critique, and theology, as humanistic as it is naturalistic, embodied in an art in which all these studies can be guided.” Is this the voice we heard up to the end of the previous century? Have we lost the confidence he exhibits? At the end of this series of blogs, I fear our world has become more hierarchical, more exploitative and less humanistic. I hope I am wrong.
