Beyond Ideology
Ratte, John
Pointing toward a new synthesis BETOND IDEOLOGY RELIGION.AND THE FUTURE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION Ninian Smart Harper & Row, $17.50, 350 pp. John Ratte THE CENTRAL question of this book - the...
...The first section of this book elaborates, by comparison and contrast, the parallels and complementarities of the two...
...In the complementarity between Buddhism and Christianity, and in the new critical stance the failures of secular ideologies have forced even on their own "believers," Smart sees a "pointing" towards "a new synthesis between Western and Asian civilization...
...The second section sketches the secular ideologies and comments also on humanism, science and its method as a way of seeking religious truth, and the need for a personalist dimension to temper the ethnocentrism of nationalism...
...The context of the question is Ninian Smart's belief that men and women act in accordance with world views, and that nationalism and liberalism and Marxism and other secular ideologies are as effective-or more so-in shaping action as the traditional theisms...
...Smart shows that parts of the Buddhist tradition are also strongly oriented towards the external, the sacramental, the numinous, most notably Pure Land Buddhism and the Tibetan forms...
...But the infrastructure of logic and style needed to convey to the reader the power these ideas hold for the writer is weak, and sometimes seems to be lacking altogether...
...The Big Ideas come through, of course: and there is intellectual stimulation and food for controversy in the chapters which juxtapose liberal Protestant thought and Buddhist metaphysics...
...I am equally convinced that Buddhism ought to continue to transform Western thought, to give us a new inwardness and compassion, and that the Christian teaching of the cosmic sacred-ness of the individual can have life in Asia long after the last vestiges of imperialism are washed away...
...And there are sentences and paragraphs that are simply impenetrable...
...In effect, each of the two traditions has both a numinous and a mystical, or inward and negating, component, but if one has to define the quintessential contribution of each form of theism to world history then Smart would say that the Buddha gives us the way which equates samsara with nirvana - reality with no- thing-ness - and Christ gives us a way which equates salvation with the Godhead sustaining all creation: reality with a very substantial and personal Other, our Father in heaven...
...John Ratte THE CENTRAL question of this book - the Gifford lectures for 1979-1980-is: what contribution can theism make to a comprehensive worldview for an "emerging global city...
...Yet it is a very difficult work to read...
...There are passages of considerable eloquence and stylistic imagine arguments which I have deployed to suggest that there is a certain complementarity between Buddhism and Christianity, and to try to relate that perception to the critical evaluation of ideologies, point unmistakably in a particular direction-namely a new synthesis between Western and Asian civilization...
...Ninian Smart Beyond Ideology nation...
...In part this difficulty lies in the poor quality of the book itself...
...Poor editing, proof-reading ("Gosple" and "redi-calism" appear on the same page) cheap paper, bleed-through, run-on words, and failure of capitalization all seem inappropriate in a work costing $17.50 and published by a major trade house...
...Since Islam and Judaism are of the type of religion which focuses on the "Other" or the "Beyond" in its numin-ous (external, powerful, arbitrary historical) form, but are less global than Christianity as a worldview, Smart makes Christianity his example of this type, and, while recognizing the continuity of a mystical tradition in Christianity, centers his attention not on the hidden Christ, but the Pantokrator of the basilica and the cathedral...
...A chapter is devoted to Mao and China in order to demonstrate the effective modernization of traditional society and the persistence of traditional (Confucianism, Buddhist, national-cultural) elements in Mao's thought and after his revolution...
...In part the difficulty lies, I think, in the imperfect transformation of a set of lectures into the linear structured phenomenon called a book...
...Professor Smart convinces me that theism is a prime, indeed an indispensable, foundation stone for a new world culture...
...In sharp contrast stands Buddhism...
...If Professor Smart's ideas about the study of religions, the types of theism, and above all, the crucial importance of theism for a unified and peaceful world are to be effectively conveyed to the twentieth century's cultural despisers of religion and their fundamentalist allies in his promised next book on "the Pacific worldview," they will have to find tighter and more focused expression than they do in Beyond Ideology...
...But then, I didn't need much convincing...
...This is not a technical work, though Professor Smart might have helped his Western readers with the same kind of tour d'horizon of Buddhism he undertakes for nineteenth and twentieth century European history, since it's more likely that they know more about World Wars than the distinctions between the Greater and Lesser Vehicle...
Vol. 109 • October 1982 • No. 17
