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The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God
 
 
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The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God (Paperback)

by George Weigel (Author) "At the far western end of the axis that traverses Paris from the Louvre down the Champs Elysees and through the Arc de Triomphe, crossing..." (more)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; New edition edition (7 Feb 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0465092683
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465092680
  • Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13.5 x 1.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 636,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review
"Sheds light on the history of the twentieth century for everyone."

Product Description
Why do Europeans and Americans see the world so differently? Why do Europeans and Americans have such different understandings of democracy in the twenty-first century? Why is Europe dying, demographically? In The Cube and the Cathedral, George Weigel offers a penetrating critique of "Europe's problem" and draws out its lessons for the rest of the democratic world. Contrasting the civilization that produced the starkly modernist "cube" of the Great Arch of La Defense in Paris with the civilization that produced the "cathedral," Notre-Dame, Weigel argues that Europe's embrace of a narrow and cramped secularism has led to a crisis of civilizational morale that is eroding Europe's soul and failing to create the European future. Even as thoughtful Europeans and Americans wrestle with these grave issues, many European political leaders continue to insist-most recently, during the debate over a new European constitution-that only a public square shorn of religiously informed moral argument is safe for human rights and democracy. The most profound question raised by The Cube and the Cathedral is whether there can be any true "politics"-any true deliberation about the common good, and any robust defense of freedom-without God. George Weigel makes a powerful case that the answer is "No"-because, in the final analysis, societies and cultures can only be as great as their spiritual aspirations.
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First Sentence
At the far western end of the axis that traverses Paris from the Louvre down the Champs Elysees and through the Arc de Triomphe, crossing the Seine at the Pont de Neuilly, is La Grande Arche de la Defense-like the more famous Pompidou Center, one of the grands projets of the late French president, Francois Mitterland. Read the first page
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars EUROPE: ALL IS NOT LOST, YET, 13 Nov 2006
By Michael JR Jose (the UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Anyone wanting a quick way to assets the general merits and intellectual muscle flexed in the book should glance at the chapter headed `Two Ideas of Freedom', contrasting the secular and sacred versions of Freedom with luminous brevity. However, the general easy-reading contemporary nature of the prose will be better gauged from the later chapter `The Cost of Boredom', which sums up why white post-Christian Europe cannot be bothered to procreate with sufficient vigour to stem its population decline, and our `postpolitical wilderness' of rule by faceless bureaucrats.

As an American theologian and the biographer of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel is well placed to speak with perspective on Europe's current problems. The main thrust of the book is a critique of atheistic secular humanism (ASH) and its many virus variants which have infected the Euro-Russian continent. The emphasis is on the 20th century, and picks up the root philosophical and cultural causes of World War I and II, and the rebellion of the `Les Soixante-Huitards' (1968 riots) with remarkably fluent and coherent reference to Western European history as far back as the High Middle Ages of Aquinas and Occam (1200-), and glancing reference much further back. The Cube is the intellectual symbol of the sterile closed-universe ASH viewpoint, the architectural colossus of 'La Grande Arche' of Paris, being an open cube of white marble and glass about 40 stories tall and 348 feet wide. The cathedral is the rather more famous church of Notre Dame, which despite its ancient complexities and beauty in spire and tower, would `fit comfortably inside the Grand Arch'. This current edition is dated 2005, and probably just missed the rioting and looting and epidemic of car-burnouts that afflicted France that year.

It is difficult to do anything like reviewing justice to this book at one reading, but one of the central themes is that `western Europe is committing a form of demographic suicide' (p.5), with a general greying of the population and coming universal pensions crisis due to a birthrate being less than the replacement rate. He might have added that Russia currently has an annual death-rate that exceeds the birthrate by 750,000, but his purpose does not extend to a proper vilification of communism. The root cause of our lack of reproductive enthusiasm is analysed to be spiritual nihilism, emptiness, and lack of purpose in life, having rejected the Christian roots of our historical culture. Its criticism of the purblind inability of the EU to see the problem, let alone grapple with it, will gladden the hearts of those who oppose this political con-trick that is the eurozone--despite the (to me) astonishing revelations he makes of the catholic Christians who were the architects of the whole scheme.

He is frequently at pains to trace the intellectual, cultural, and moral roots of western Europe (the eastern empire is sparingly but properly referenced, and not ignored as is so often the case). Recently the ruling EU elites totally refused to recognise the Christian heritage of Europe in the drafting of its 70,000 word constitutional treaty. Our roots apparently jumping from the classical civilisation of Greece and Rome to that of the humanist Enlightenment of Descartes and Kant (which merely extracted the parts it liked from Christian culture, and promptly forgot what it takes to develop and preserve them, which is a living faith in a Judaeo-Christian God.)

He invites us to contemplate a striking list of Christian scientists, artists, politicians, leaders, warriors, and philosophers--and asks us to imagine Europe [history itself, I would say. Just consider that we only discovered the gas oxygen about 225 years ago. We could not even begin to describe the chemistry of burning or human respiration before this], without their contribution. And this is a list which is so wide-ranging that it includes Milton, Mendel, Michaelangelo, Wesley and Wilberforce, while it omits Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Handel, and dozens of others.

The other main theme is euro `Christophobia', which is detailed in many ways, from the persecutory attitude to the Catholic Professor Rocco Buttiglione in his proposed place in the EU government, to the universal demand for tolerance which includes rather madly includes rigid intolerance of any discussion of the Christian religion or its place in influencing civic society. Altogether, this adds up to the best analysis of secularism that I have ever read.

The statement of the very obvious that is the underlying theme of the themes, is that western European civilisation was built by the Catholic church. There is more balance and a gentler tone here in the treatment of the subject, but the author is generally in line with Thomas Woods book, `How the Catholic Church built Western Civilisation'. Which is well paired with this one, before or after making little difference.

The only weakness of this book is that it understates its case. It would be easy to adduce more evidence of outright damage and incoherence of ASH in our literature alone (Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Sartre, Nietzsche, Camus), and then as a whisky chaser consider the intellectual flight from science. Professor Robin Dunbar's `The Trouble with Science', published in 1995 traces the problem in Britain back at least twenty years. And is still seen in the rapid and ongoing rejection of chemistry and physics in the school system throughout, from GCSE at 16, to university graduate, a trend which is steadily shutting down departments in these subjects as I write. My second reading of this book starts right now, and I can also see how it would help one or two of my friends, with Christmas about to hove into view. Read them and pray.
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