The skies of Babylon; diversity, nihilism, and the American university

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2008

The skies of Babylon; diversity, nihilism, and the American university.

Bercier, Barry.

Intercollegiate Studies Institute

2007

165 pages

$25.00

Hardcover

Religion and contemporary culture

LA227

Bercier (theology, Assumption College) finds that a "P.C." (political correctness) anger and nihilism has infected western higher education. Turning to Thomas Hobbes, he further finds that the current "P.C." anger of the higher education elites are in fact rooted in a much older anger, an anti-traditional and anti-Western animus directed against the Catholic Church. He then defends the Church against the critiques of Hobbes and argues that Hobbes's attack on tradition "is an education to slavish self-abnegation and a terrible personal openness to totalitarian power." In short, Leviathan has become the Babylon of Genesis. He then returns to the topic of contemporary higher education, suggesting it move away from singular focus on the universal abstract reasoning of modern science or classical philosophy and turn towards a narrative of Western heritage and political freedom.

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