Hazhir Teimourian - Middle East Analyst and Commentator
Home : Contact : Archives

1x1gif

printer friendly text only (hold shift for new window)

WHAT IS GOOD?

"The search for the best way to live" by AC Grayling

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson 241pp £18.99)
 

How APPROPRIATE THAT I should be reading this survey of ideas about the good life in Western history here in Greece, where the everyday philosophising of Homo sapiens was first raised to the level of formal discussion in academies and given the name of philosophy. Furthermore, as you watch the local people with their relaxed lifestyles, you cannot help but reflect on the qualities of the ideal life yourself. In the hot afternoons, under canopies of vines and mulberry trees, young couples whisper their own versions of eternal truths to each other over glasses of beer and Kalamata olives (favourites of Herodotus), before going for a long splash in the clear waters, while their elders take a snooze on a shaded balcony or play backgammon - a Persian borrowing - in the alleyways.

But, of course, by the good life philosophers mean more than 'A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou', and the scope of Anthony Grayling's latest book is far wider than a recital of who said what over the past 3,000 years about how individuals could have pleasant lives insulated from the nasty habits of the world around them. Certainly the book is partly that, which adds to its charm; but it is primarily about life lived in society, with the interests of greater humanity prominent in the mind. It offers a grandstand view of the age-old debate (sometimes conducted openly, most of the time in secret) on whether the political structure of society should be devoted to liberating the individual to pursue his own happiness as best he can, provided he harms no other, or whether he should be forced to obey a priesthood that claims to be in communication with a higher wisdom and to know what is best for him: usually that he prepare himself through suffering for a promised longer existence after death.

Perhaps not since Julian Huxley's Towards a New Humanism (1957), or his Essays of a Humanist (1964), has a British humanist of such stature provided his generation with so sweeping a panorama of the fortunes of humanism. This ought not to deter those of a religious persuasion from reading this book, for Grayling is careful to put forth their best arguments in the debate. He also includes among the great humanists of the past millennium Christian thinkers of the Renaissance like Erasmus, who remained loyal to Rome in the struggle of the Reformation, and philosophers like Kant, who, while not a Christian, believed that morality would not be justifiable without a deity out there in the universe.

One of the joys of the book is Grayling's profiling of the movers and shakers in the struggle. His sketches of Erasmus, Hume, Mill and Nietzsche, for example, are the most enjoyable that I have ever read. Nor does he talk down to us non-philosophers. Nowhere does he, for instance, tell us the nationality of any of his subjects. We are expected to know. And instead of sprinkling his book with footnotes, which irritate some readers, he suggests for our further reading a list of books in connection with each chapter - for, of course, he regards reading as 'one of the greatest pleasures of the good life'.

Being a good humanist, Grayling is equally aware of the possibility of fanaticism on the part of those who regard themselves as rationalists: those, for instance, 'who turned... to Marxism as an alternative nostrum, because it too offered certainty and a form of faith in the future'. But he will have none of the claim that atheists such as Stalin have shown a greater readiness to inflict pain on people than have religious tyrants. 'There have always been Hitlers and Stalins,' he says, 'in the form of various tribal chiefs, emperors, kings, popes and generals, in all periods of history; it is just that they lacked the means of their twentieth -century avatars to commit mass murder on a scale they could only dream about.' For the critics of modern science (the abuse of which has provided our newer tyrants with their horrific weapons for large-scale killing), Grayling has a graphic rebuttal: 'one can wholly understand those who welcome modern dentistry, lap-top computers, television and air travel, who marvel at the beauty of science and what it has revealed about this extraordinary universe of ours, who welcome the fact that more and more people are gaining access to the good things of life - intellectually as well as materially - and who have no wish to send anyone back to life in a hut of peat, lived under the oppression of priests and warlords, with only the rain and an early death for a horizon.'

In his final chapter, 'Laying the Ghosts', Grayling worries about the possibility of civil strife in the West today 'as votaries of imported religions grow more assertive' in seeking the privileges enjoyed by indigenous religions: 'this is where the most serious threat lies, because all the major religions blaspheme one another and each by its principles ought actively to oppose the others'. Western governments encourage all beliefs, whereas a functioning society needs a certain degree of cohesion and some basic shared values. The solution is for the public domain to be wholly secularised and religion made into a private affair. Those old Greeks have still a great many things to teach us. Anthony Grayling's voice is one of reason, decency and hope. I plan to return to this book often.

By courtesy of the Literary Review, London, August 2003.

Back to top of page
Copyright © 2007 [Hazhir Teimourian] All rights reserved.

Valid HTML 4.01!  Valid CSS!  
Webdesign by cooleague.com