Bloomsbury (2017)
Douglas Murray's new book, The Strange Death of Europe, addresses very contemporary concerns to do with immigration, identity and Islam. But it's in some ways a rather old-fashioned read, as one might expect from a neoconservative who continues a long (peculiarly German) tradition of cultural pessimism - Oswald Spengler anyone?
Far from being an incendiary text full of urgency and the visionary promise of a future beyond the ruins, it's a nostalgic, somewhat lugubrious work oscillating between world-weariness on the one hand and a sense of loss on the other; less angry call to arms, more solemn eulogy. But perhaps that's its strength and what distinguishes Murray's work from that of far-right nationalists; he's not demanding that Europe awake! but suggesting that Europeans take time to quietly reflect and, in so doing, rediscover not just old forms, but find new feelings.
Never going so far as to renounce entirely the need for action, Murray nevertheless understands the importance of engaging in what Nietzsche terms invisible activities and which Heidegger relates to a notion of transcendence (the human capacity to reshape and revalue the world via an essential form of contemplation).
In other words, The Strange Death of Europe is a book for thinking, nothing else.
Thus, whilst Murray discusses in detail the large-scale events unfolding all around us and clearly indicates the problems these events bring in their wake, he wisely refrains from offering any final solutions. Critics who pour scorn on the book for failing to provide such answers have missed the point.
Similarly, when they laugh at Murray's suggestion that the fate of Europe might depend on our attitude towards church buildings, they fail to grasp what he means is that our singularity as Europeans is made manifest in our art and architecture. And, of course, in our literature; one of the nicely surprising sections of Murray's book is his discussion of the novelist Michel Houellebecq.
Having said this, there are aspects of Murray's book that disappoint. For example, whilst I broadly accept his political analysis of postmodern Europe, I don't find what Lyotard termed incredulity toward metanarratives paralysing in the way Murray suggests. Nor do I feel ravaged by decades of deconstruction and desperate to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Although an atheist, one gets the impression that Murray is moving towards the Heideggerean conclusion that, ultimately, only a god can save us. But if only he stopped thinking nihilism in such dramatic nineteenth-century terms and playing the crypto-theologian, Murray might recognise that our loss of faith and inability to act with absolute certainty paradoxically signifies our spiritual superiority to all fanatics and fundamentalists who daren't ever doubt or deviate from scripture.
For me, it's infinitely preferable to live in a secular society that delights in shallowness and gay insincerity, than in a theocratic society plumbing the depths of religious stupidity. In order to counter Islamism, we need to become more ironic and irreverent, not less. And a little bit more Greek; superficial out of profundity.
