The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia

by Roger Kimball

“Cultural instructions.” Everyone who has handled a package of seedlings has encountered that enigmatic advisory. This much water and that much sun, certain tips about fertilizer, soil, and drainage. Planting one sort of flower nearby keeps the bugs away but proximity to another sort makes bad things happen. Young shoots might need stakes, and watch out for beetles, weeds, and unseasonable frosts. It’s a complicated business.

But at least since Cicero introduced the term cultura animi (“cultivation of the mind or spirit”), such “cultural instructions” have applied as much to the realm of civilization as to horticulture. In this wide-ranging investigation into the vicissitudes of culture in the twenty-first century, the distinguished critic Roger Kimball traces the deep filiations between cultivation as a spiritual enterprise and the prerequisites of political freedom. Drawing on figures as various as James Burnham, Richard Weaver, G. K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, John Buchan, Friedrich von Hayek, and Leszek Kolakowski, Kimball traces the interconnections between what he calls the fortunes of permanence and such ambassadors of anarchy as relativism, multiculturalism, and the socialist-utopian imperative.

With his signature blend of wit and erudition, Kimball deftly draws on the resources of art, literature, and political philosophy to illuminate some of the wrong turns and dead ends our culture has recently pursued, while also outlining some of the simple if overlooked alternatives to the various tyrannies masquerading as liberation we have again and again fallen prey to. This rich, rewarding, and intelligent volume bristles with insights into what the nineteenth-century novelist Anthony Trollope called “The Way We Live Now.”

Partly an exercise in cultural pathology, The Fortunes of Permanence is also a forward-looking effort of cultural recuperation. It promises to be essential reading for anyone concerned about the direction of Western culture in an age of anti-Western animus and destructive multicultural fantasy.

Genres: Philosophy, Cultural, Essays, History, Politics

360 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2012

About the author

American art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he received his BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and at Yale University. He first gained prominence in the early 1990s with the publication of his book, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education.

Additionally, he is editor and publisher of The New Criterion magazine and the publisher of Encounter Books. He currently serves on the board of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the board of Transaction Publishers and as a Visitor of Ralston College, a start-up liberal arts college based in Savannah, Georgia. He also served on the Board of Visitors of St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe). His latest book, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia, was published by St. Augustine's Press in June of 2012.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, my first review disappeared when I hit the wrong button. Lets try it again.

This is undoubtedly the most engaging book I read this year(school year). Kimball, a conservative art and culture critic (Wow, there is one!) explores what is lost in the culture when we are cut a drift from fundamental ideas. The book can be divided into to sections (though it is not literally divided this way). First, those ideas which threaten our society and culture - relativism, multiculturalism, benevolence from those claiming to be friends of humanity, and even the loss of shame. Interestingly he also explores the death of socialism. The second, those people and ideas which would provide an anchor to the traditional in our society, but which are savaged by the institutions of the modern - educational and cultural. This second group includes essays on - the adventure writer John Buchan; Kipling, the man and author, not the caricature; Chesterton and rejuvenation; Richard Weaver and ideas; James Burnham and the lure of power; Muggeridge and his journey towards faith; Kolakowski and the draw of intellectuals towards totalitarianism; and finally the assault on Hayek by the intellectuals.

Kimball is a wonderful author, engaging, and forced me to keep a dictionary by my side (yes, I honestly admit my vocabulary is not where it should be). For a reader who has only the briefest knowledge of these authors, this is a great introduction to their work, ideas, and impact on society. For those who read conservative sources (thank goodness for National Review) who have encountered them. For those who do not read conservative sources, for the most part, these authors are alien (I say this as I listen to NPR, where they may, briefly be encountered, and usually with a negative inflection.) These are the authors left out of the modern cannon, not encountered, revealed, or discussed. Here is the danger Kimball warns against, and one he hopes to correct.

The three essays on art and architecture in the modern cultural context I was not drawn into, which is my own fault. They are not areas of personal interest.

I would recommend this book to anyone, liberal, conservative, or moderate, who is interested in the impact of ideas on our society and culture, and wants to be exposed to a wider range than what commonly prescribed to by modern society.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether you consider yourself conservative or liberal, this is a must read for a great argument for the wealth and worth of our western values. One must remember a conservative as many are are truly the liberals, in that they value the best of humanity.

[Jocelyn Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're a traditionalist and you support rigorous education of the Western canon of philosophy and literature, you'll probably enjoy this. It provides background for Dr Jordan Peterson fans.

[Matt Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kimball writes an excellent collection of essays, that examine general cultural attitudes, literary and artistic production and tastes, and politics. All of these circle around a central theme: the need for elitism, and discriminating taste, in culture, art, and politics. A society that resists the elite does not, Kimball shows, result in a more democratic society, but in a society that is actually injurious to democracy, as such a society makes the demos> unable to do the necessary work of differentiation and decision-making, the things needed for robust and effective self-governance. This is a powerful, and persuasive, thesis, and Kimball's multi-faceted presentation of it is admirable. Kimball also does a great service to us by re-introducing us to artists and thinkers whose work has been forgotten or marginalized, and providing us with a pattern for our own elitist differentiation.

My one problem is when Kimball discusses politics. While his articulation of the problematic nature Leftist thinking--of utopianism--is incredibly strong, his tracing of the "pathology" of liberalism back to Godwin is fascinating, and his connecting of politics to artistic production is intriguing, Kimball's political analysis is marred by two significant issues. First, Kimball has trouble differentiating between progressivism, and its often necessary critiques (something he even accepts and points out in places), with revolutionary utopianism. While he names them separately, Kimball's critiques seem to often conflate and collapse these into each other. The second issue results from the first. Kimball often admits that many of his exemplars of politics, like Hayek and Burke, are as readily identified with a right understanding of liberalism as with conservatism. Yet, as his articulation of such categories are imprecise, it is just as easy to accuse Hayek, Burke, et. al., of resisting (or, in some cases, leaving) one form of utopianism for a poorly articulated alternative form.

Yet these are minor annoyances. Kimball is a superb writer, with rich erudition, great wit, and a style that mixes levity and profundity easily. This collection of essays is strong and intriguing, and Kimball's updating Matthew Arnold's general defense of "culture" for the era of post-Communism and milquetoast communitarian multiculturalism is a cri de coeur for all of us who want the good, beautiful, and true.

[Brant Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who uses obscure English or borrowed words like "natch," "apodosis," or "mignon"; "rebarbative" or "surcease"? Or (in writings outside this book) "dégringolade"? Isn't it a pretense of elitism, such ostentatious pedantry?

Well, yes -- though not in all the negative connotations those words have taken on. Pretense, Kimball definitely has ... though the original Latin "praetendere" -- to spread out -- is a more fitting meaning that "pretended." ("There is a lot of wisdom in etymology," Kimball says. Page 18.) And elitism, too, in that what Kimball most wants to do is to spread out before the world (or teach, "pedante") that which is most choice or best -- the elite -- from Western culture. So, just as Kimball selects nice words that suffer more from desuetude than the contempt of familiarity, he ranges broadly among English writings or translations to spread out before the world what is best, if underappreciated, forgotten in Western culture. His range is breathtaking: As principal chapter subjects he treats the critic Matthew Arnold, Fort McHenry, Pericles of Athens, John Buchan (20th century English author), Rudyard Kipling, G.K. Chesterton, Martha Nussbaum (contemporary law professor), Richard Weaver, Austrian art critic Hans Sedlmayr, the awful Bard Hessel Museum of "art" (scare quotes intended), proto-socialist William Godwin, critics of socialism Joshua Muravchik, James Burnham and Leszek Kolakowski, to name just some. But, a spin through their writings (an already impressively voluminous corpus to survey) implicates Kimball in a sweeping appreciation of Western culture, especially as it has congealed in English speaking countries. His goal is to diagnose and throw some effort at a cure for the cultural amnesia characteristic of our age, restore an appreciation for the permanent aspects of human nature and culture, and rectify the anarchy that results from the confluence of such internal maladies as multiculturalism and relativism and external threats as Islamofascism.

Definitely worth reading. Still no fractional stars available, so my 4.33 rating shows up as a 4.

[David Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initial Criticisms of On The Fortunes of Permanence by Roger Kimball

Right away in his first essay, "The Fortunes of Permanence," he elevates Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy and seems to set himself the task of reviving an Arnoldian worldview. There is much to be said for Arnold's view of the world over against current deconstructionist, nihilistic, and relativist perspectives but what is a resurrected Arnold? Still a corpse. Read "Dover Beach" again and tell me if there is enough there to sustain us into the future. Arnold elevated culture above Christ and moaned in a wasteland.

In the second essay, "Institutionalizing Our Demise: America vs. Multiculturalism," Kimball ends on an odd note. He cites an anecdote about Thomas Jefferson going to church and someone saying he was going even though he did not believe a word of it Jefferson replied in effect that it was a pragmatic and socially useful religion and the anecdote ends as if Jefferson has said something that is profound and overwhelming. Kimball along with Gertrude Himmelfarb commends this view of religion as 'not unworthy.' Kimball a little bit later commends Irving Kristol's assertion that our task is not to reform 'the secular rationalist orthodoxy' but to breathe life into 'the older, now largely comatose, religious orthodoxies.' This is a strange goal. Whatever this doctrine is, it is not Christian. Are Christians to try to revive Islam? Are Jews supposed to try to revive Christianity? This reminds me of historical attitudes in which people would take exception to someone putting their religion above their country though Kimball may not go that far. This is something military chaplains are supposed to do, it seems: pursue service to all religions. To such persons I imagine the response, "Do you know Who's I am?" It seems to me there is even a temptation offered in this essay similar to the devil's offers to Christ in the desert: Be content to have your religion flattered as morally useful to the nation and relinquish any claims to it's being true.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another has well said, “Roger Kimball finds the broken threads of our past, shows how western culture is dying like an ice cube held in the hand, and suggests how to recognize the tiny philosophical fireflies that, if we had been paying attention, we could have whacked like a mole in the womb.”

Until recently I had not heard of Roger Kimball, political commentator & author Andrew Klavan says "Roger Kimball is without doubt one of the best cultural observers of our day. The scope of his knowledge and the depth of his insight are alike breathtaking. To read him is to step away from the noise of post-modern bedlam into a place of enduring sense and wisdom."

In the book Kimball shows that relativism has replaced objectivity, history, and values. Western culture no longer possesses common values and therefore we lose the virtues we once used to achieve those values. Kimball traces the "isms" of the last three centuries (Marxism, communism, fascism, socialism, progressivism) which seem to change their names each time the scam is up. Kimball shows that Progressives are progressive only in the same sense as cancer.

Some may find (as I did) a few chapters a bit over your (my) head but I would encourage you to persevere you will be glad you did. A great read!

[George Siehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful and articulate examination of governance from the perspective of principles, not politics. Kimball draws from a deep bench of thinkers including Pericles and Thucydides, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Churchill and other contemporary figures such as Hayek, Muggeridge,, and the late Polish philosopher Kolakowski. Each has contributed to the intellectual foundations that privilege freedom over ever-centralizing governments. I was drawn to this book by a newspaper review that cited Kimball's examination of the writings of such fiction authors as John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling, and G.K. Chesterton. Each of these chapters is well worth the read. This is not light reading and, as noted, a handy dictionary is recommended. I ranked it as four stars, withholding the fifth because I was disappointed with the lack of more robust citations to his sources. His treatment of the ideas he mentions raises the desire to dig into them in greater depth.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a sense of deja vu reading this book. It felt like I had read many of the same arguments by Roger before. He diagnoses the challenges and dysfunctions of Western civilization, but it is not a jeremiad, it lacks a strong call to action. It is more clinical than that. Kimball has a huge vocabulary and is good at choosing the best word, but be warned, you will need a dictionary handy. There will be a 1 word per thousand that you will have to look up.

[Johns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well-written critical analysis of our currently drooping civil society. This author is that rare variety of literate author that presses me to keep a copy of my Oxford English Dictionary handy. A rewarding literary slog for every serious reader.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rock solid essays.