Icarus Fallen: Search For Meaning In An Uncertain World

by Chantal Delsol

It would be difficult to find a more perceptive description of Western man and the world he now inhabits than that provided by Chantal Delsol in Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World. With style and lucidity, Delsol likens contemporary Western man to the mythical figure Icarus, fallen back to earth after trying to reach the sun, alive but badly shaken and confused. During the twentieth century, Delsol argues, man flew too closely to the sun of utopian ideology. Having been burned, he is now groping for a way to orient himself. But the ideas he once held so dear-inevitable progress, the possibility of limitless social and self-transformation-are no longer believable, and he has, for the most part, long since rejected the religious tradition that might now have provided an anchor. Delsol's portrait is engrossing. She explains how we have come simultaneously to embrace the "good" but reject the "true"; how we have sacralized rights and democracy; and how we have lost our sense of the tragic and embraced the idea of "zero risk." Already a well-known political thinker in her native France, this is Delsol's first book to appear in English. Icarus Fallen should establish her as one of the most insightful social and cultural writers working on either side of the Atlantic.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Theory, Sociology, Society

350 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2003

About the author

Chantal Delsol is a French philosopher, political historian and novelist. Founder of the Hannah Arendt research institute founded in 1993. She is openly Catholic, and a disciple of Julien Freund and Pierre Boutang, describes herself as a "liberal-conservative".

Chantal Delsol main political ideas are liberalism, federalism, as well as the principle of subsidiarity based on the idea of singularity.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chantal Delsol states at the outset that she set out to write this book as a response to the astonishment I felt as I contemplated Western society; to what appeared as a culture reeling in the winds of modernity, Icarus once again lost within the labyrinth after having plummeted from his hubristic striving for the sun of utopian ideology. Having had the wax that gripped his feathers melted by the furious heat of total war, death camps, gulags, mass starvation and economic collapse, man plunged back to the terra firma from whence he departed, but this time shorn of his fervent belief in the perfectibility of humanity, historical inevitability, fraternal equality, and the continuous transformation of society into something pure and transcendent. Despairingly he became aware of the fact that evil remained in the world, that economics, religion, morality, and politics—far from having been banished as was once promised and believed—asserted their influence with a vengeance. Within this tragic unfolding, Western society gingerly began to lay the paths that have led to this contemporary stage at which Delsol bemusedly stares. And this observation has allowed her to produce a keenly perceptive and deeply insightful dissection of the problems that assail modern man.

Delsol's interpretation is masterful: she outlines how contemporary society has lost its faith in both the religious structures and progressive ideologies that previously provided cohesion and meaning to man's existence on this earth and offered compelling reasons for the trials and sacrifices that he was forced to make on a daily basis. With his eye firmly on either a spiritual reward in the afterlife, or a material reward from aiding society's drive towards utopian perfection, man previously could accept hierarchy or inequality, tribulation or hardship as the necessary price of these transcendent ends. Now, in the later stages of postwar modernity, man has been forced to abandon these belief systems and finds himself alone, without any certitude, perforce required to accept his biological life as his only reason for existence and terrifying death as his only guarantee. Unable to endure this stark, disturbing truth, contemporary society has proceeded to ignore—or pretend to ignore—this awareness and embrace the individual with a perfervid eagerness that used to inflame his prewar faiths.

Thus has the individual become paramount, aided and abetted by a profusion of rights and laws and an intolerance for inequality or any surety that would enclose him and restrain his freedom in any manner. Delsol sees everywhere the displacement of honor, wherein a personal grandeur was earned, by dignity, in which a diminished grandeur is demanded; of enduring virtues by temporary values that change to accommodate society's fluctuations; of the acceptance of the good with a concomitant rejection of the true; of the establishment of a culture of complacency stressing short-term fulfillment over a prior tendency towards a longer-term striving towards a greater end; the consecration of rights that demand freedom and protection at all times and at any cost, and a broad equality of all wherein every individual serves a function, proves a (ever replaceable) cog in society's wheel. She describes how Black Market religions, economics, politics, and moralities inevitably arise wherever society has made an effort to suppress or eradicate them, and—being unchecked by legal restraints—often prove worse than when an open part of the culture. Her examination of the origin and effects of political correctness are absolutely first rate, as are her descriptions of how the loss of an understanding of tragedy and tragic existence, of finitude and the hopeless futility of attempts to rid the natural world of evil or irrationality, have beset modern man, challenging his rational strictures and worrying his soul. Perhaps her most intriguing avenue of investigation is the one that explores how, lacking any fixed points of reference for establishing an ethics, the primary method with which contemporary man determines good vs. evil is through emotion and indignation; moral judgement is predicated upon the reaction to being confronted with the revolting or scandalous. This ethics of indignation, non-rational and emotive, has spread far and wide.

The author is a French intellectual, and her analysis is aimed chiefly at France at the end of the twentieth century; however, as Western culture and society on both sides of the Atlantic have adhered and expanded around core tenets and principals, economic and political systems derived from common ancestors, her observations prove almost as ripe for North America as they are for contemporary Europe. Indeed, her explanation of the French malaise appears to me, in particular, to fit that of Canada like a non-Simpsonian glove. The United States, with its much larger religious base and unique blend of superpower status with merchant mindset, would likely prove less amenable to fitting into all of her categories; but the majority would hold true there as well. Indeed, the experience of reading Icarus Fallen was one of constant amazement at how accurately she described both the culture that exists around me, and my own youthful years spent among it. In especial, her description of the ethics of indignation struck me with its verisimilar depiction of how I used react to perceived injustices—with a white heat and furious, flushing righteousness, firm in opposition regardless of the actual facts, an instinctive response I still struggle to avoid even today.

What sets Delsol apart from other detailers of modern malaise, such as the great Christopher Lasch, is her sympathy and appreciation for all that contemporary man has endured and achieved on the road to his current predicament; where Lasch was driven to despair and contempt by much of what he saw, Delsol offers forth hope and understanding. For all of the brilliance and clarity she brings to describing the problems she perceives, she brings an equal amount to explaining why such a path was chosen and the benefits that is has provided. In addition to her essays on sociological and cultural theory Delsol has also penned a handful of novels; and she brings her considerable literary talents to the work under review. The resultant text, skillfully translated by fellow Canuck Robin Dick, makes for a luxuriant and enjoyable read; this is one of the most quotable tracts about the human condition I have had the pleasure to come across.

Unfortunately, like most such critiques Delsol's proves far abler at exegesis of what went wrong than at providing workable solutions or prescriptions. While her exhortations for man to accept his finitude by embracing the infinity of long-term views and goals, of countenancing risk and the potentiality of tragic or humiliating or devastating results as a necessary component of a well-lived life—and of understanding that neither is democracy a permanent institution nor human rights capable of exponential proliferation without cheapening their worth—are sensible and reasonable, even desirable, if we are being serious then we must admit that they are unlikely to prove a compelling force for broad societal change. Furthermore, much potential for trouble lies in the vagueness of her other or exteriority wherein man must find the greater meaning for his life, and ground the base for his morality and ethics; since she rejects any return to prior established religious hierarchies or norms—having acknowledged their excesses and unsuitability—it is unclear where exactly we should seek answers for the questions of how and why is something moral? Merely overturning existential, solipsistic interiority—realizing that existence requires an objective rather than subjective end to give itself meaning—is not enough in and of itself. Hopefully, she will address these shortcomings in her sequel The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century . Nonetheless, if her book offers no resonating solutions to contemporary malaise, it provides a truly acute and profound account of how it came to arise; and there is much profit to be had in seeing how one is reflected in this mirror that Delsol has endeavored to place before one's eyes.

[C. Townsend · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember when I discovered Chantal Delsol, but it was a while back. I reread this book to gain a great appreciation of French intellectuals, even this rare French "conservative." I hate to even use the word "conservative" to describe her as we are used to American conservatives (blah) and she is definitely not one.

She is learned, highly intelligent, erudite and relevant. As a commentator on the intellectual foibles of modernity and postmodernism she has no equal that I can think of on the "right." (on the left I can only think of the French intellectual Jean Francois Revel, who she reminds me of).

I highly recommend her to anyone recovering from the philosophical Sargasso Sea of the late 20th century that still infests us.

[Pieter · Rating 4 out of 5]

French professor Delsol uses the metaphor of Icarus to explain the hybris of the contempory man. Left behind his religion and relying on modern ideologies or postmodern thinking, he is no longer focused on moral laws and feels life has no meaning anymore. Given that he only believes in this life on earth and nothing thereafter, he is not willing to aim for eternity. Nor by abiding the Ten Commandments nor by sacrificing his life through life works ('oeuvres') like religious people (e.g.: Mother Theresa, Father Damian), nor by feeding and nurturing institutions like family.

Contemporary man tries to shape a new set of values: happiness, democracy, freedom, human rights. But the latter seem unsatisfying. One's goal can be to feel free, but free to what or who? Thus, it is safe to say that freedom is rather a mean than a goal. Human rights are not as absolute as some claim it to be. Communist regimes will focus on social rights, while US and Western Europe used to highlight political rights (freedom of speech,...). But the West has shifted politics into law and science (so called technopolitics). It neglects political debate but only allows cheap emotion since it has adopted political correctness as its new and only mainstream. And what about democracy that is not strong enough to prevent regimes like national socialism, communism or Islamic State being lifted to power?

For that reason, contemporary man is in the dark, for he thinks progress prevents regression. What could go wrong now we have a good man and a good structure ? Well, Delsol is not sure at all that we are finally in heaven (pardon the terminology). In fact, we have stripped man from religious norms and relied on new liberal moralism (see above). And although, contemporary man is open-minded and educated not to judge, evil is still around us. The rise of Islamic State is therefore such a shock. Where does evil come from and what is it? We don’t know and we failt to see.

It is wrong to think that religion is for the nostalgic and bitter. It belongs to man who strives for eternity, for the long run, he who dares to take risk and starts new ventures. And this shows that religion and culture goes hand in hand as culture can be described as defending creation, whereas barbarism is about destruction. If we do not want to just safeguard our material inheritance and neglect or even ignore our cultural heritage, it is definitely time for a change.

[Cristian N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended.

The insights are brilliant, the analysis is deep, the diagnostic is accurate and you can sense that magnificent French liberal thinking at work.

Nevertheless I believe that she is a better thinker and writer than a philosopher with a project and that is what makes her book on late modernity profound and thoughtful.

It is the liberal conservative dialectic that looks a bit stuck, and its restoration doesn't look promising in our brave new world.

That is her struggle and, in a way, of ours, too.

[Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just brilliant. Especially thankful for the treatment of human rights, as a modern creation prone to hypertrophy. Looking forward to the sequel.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is easy today to see that Western civilization has hit the skids. Twenty years ago, when the French political philosopher Chantal Delsol published Icarus Fallen (the English translation of a work first published in French in 1996), it was not so clear. The signs were all there, and the truth that the Enlightenment scheme had failed was not obscure. But the obvious conclusion, that we should terminate the experiment, was far from mainstream. What is good about this book is that its analysis is incisive and insightful, and thus its prophecies have proven largely accurate. What is bad about this book is that it too quickly rejects the wisdom of the past, and instead calls for that most fatal of projects, a new anthropology of man.

Delsol has published prolifically, though little in English. Two years ago, in French, she published a book titled The End of the Christian World. This occasioned a variety of commentary, mostly on the Right, because Delsol, apparently herself a practicing Catholic, is extremely pessimistic about the future of Christianity. Her basic point in that book is that just as the turn to Christianity in the late Roman Empire was part and parcel of a massive civilizational change—meaning not a political change but a way of seeing the world, a radical shift from paganism to Christianity—so we are also living through such a change. Our change, however, is essentially a reversion, to a new paganism, intolerant of Christianity and its beliefs, but very much having its own required beliefs.

We will return to this pessimism, and to Christianity. But first, of Icarus Fallen. The 1990s and early 2000s, in America, felt very different from today. Sure, there were problems, but all were surmountable. America was the world’s hegemon, and always would be. Freedom everywhere was on the march, our leaders and philosophers told us; no need to inquire closely what freedom meant. The idea one might question the Enlightenment was crazy—after all, in its very name, given to us in a totally non-propagandistic manner, it showed that it had brought us light and banished darkness. Science was on the verge of curing all diseases. Democracy would soon be universal. What was not to like?

Quite a bit, it turns out. Everything, in fact. Delsol refers to our society as that of “late modernity,” and her work as a “sociology of the mind,” an attempt to analyze the “malaise” that fell over the West in the second half of the twentieth century. She analogizes our position to that of Icarus, had he lived when he fell from the sky, rather than drowned, and then returned to the Labyrinth, to ponder his situation. “He has to go back to normal life after having thought himself capable of attaining the sun, the supreme good.”

Seduced by the lies of the so-called Enlightenment, Western man thought he could transform man and society to achieve a “radiant future,” even perfection. But it was not so, and that Delsol saw this nearly thirty years ago, at the apogee of Western triumphalism, speaks to her insight. Meaning and identity had begun to be stripped from us, a process that has only accelerated in the years since. What results is a narrow, cramped vision of what man can and should be—although Delsol also refers to this as mere slumber, a “waiting for certainties to appear.” Regardless, when Icarus returns, as it were from exile, not only has he failed to reach his goals, but he also does not recognize the world he left behind.

In the first half of the book, Delsol offers cogent analysis. Western man is adrift, because he has lost both his anchors. Religious belief is no longer the wellspring of meaning, the reason for man to live in a way that transcended himself. And when he tried to substitute temporal utopias, those also failed, and so his search for meaning has proved meaningless. Yet he cannot accept that his life has no meaning. Once, given his frames, simple existence stood for something beyond the individual. But existence is no longer such a sign because it has no “exterior referents.” Existence is life, true, but since man defines himself in his quest for meaning, it is a life unmoored and unsatisfying.

For all of the history of the West, a man’s meaning derived from how he navigated the inherent conflicts of life, “between need and scarcity, authority and freedom, good and evil, life and death.” These antimonies were seen as unalterable, part of human nature. But the Enlightenment sold us the idea we could transcend all conflicts, in areas as diverse as religion, politics, and economics, and thereby perfect mankind, in both his external manifestations, and in his internal happiness, through total freedom. This was sleight-of-hand, because conflicts were not really eliminated, rather they were relativized, and it was false, because neither perfection nor happiness resulted. Yet the vision was most seductive, and man’s new meaning became the abolition of the conflicts that had driven all his prior meaning.

However, this is a negative definition of meaning, and a positive definition is needed for the good life. The usual attempt, following Enlightenment doctrine, to solve this problem was to regard freedom as defining the good life. The more freedom, the more good. But this is false; “freedom is nothing but an empty form awaiting content.” Without responsibility, there is no meaning, and if this is not recognized, man “destroys himself by mistaking the means for an end.” When existence points to nothing outside of self, man becomes obsessed, most of all, with prolonging life. Thus, rejecting religion does not ultimately lead to replacement by new referents, because those referents, of temporal perfection, are mirages and chimeras. Rather, it leads to alienation and nihilism.

What results is a black market in conflicts, where suppressed conflicts reappear in new forms. Relativize religion as a personal choice, and new sects arise. Relativize evil by creating the new category of mere personal “values,” and new (more destructive) definitions of evil emerge, such as violations of “equality.” What we get are “ersatz phenomena” which “express the human condition in a wildly distorted way.” Icarus has returned home, but he is lost. And worse, he is disappointed, angry, because what he hoped for has not come to pass.

Delsol then turns to what is downstream of this loss of meaning. We are no longer interested in truth. Fear of falsehood has been replaced with fear of evil; we have “the good without the true.” Instead, we fear truth. Objective truth is replaced with pure subjectivity, which is no truth at all. Objective evil exists for moderns, however, and it is any philosophy which claims to embody truth. Nearly all of such philosophies are right-wing; Communism gets a brief mention, but as Delsol recognizes without discussion, claims of truth are, in the modern era, monopolized by the Right. Objective good for moderns, however, does not exist, for that “would naturally entail obligation, and this would necessarily limit individual freedom. Thus, morality has been reduced primarily to the act of identifying evil.”

This belief in objective evil necessarily conflicts, though it is not often admitted, with the belief in subjective and relative morality. “Our era is singularly dogmatic, in spite of its slogans of relativism and tolerance. It not only forbids certain opinions but mandates the acceptance of certain ideas.” Objective good therefore reappears, in the spontaneous rise of verities no man is allowed to question, such as “human dignity” (meaning, again, the Enlightenment program of emancipation and egalitarianism), “democracy,” and “environmentalism.” That these “goods” are justified only by individual satisfaction, and are thus free-floating, derived from nothing, and therefore wholly illegitimate, is simply ignored.

Morality has therefore disappeared, or rather, been transmuted into a mere inquiry as to whether an individual is fulfilling himself. This results in complacency, and slavery to what pleases a man. This “legitimizes and recognizes all thoughts, all behavior, and all ways of life—on the condition, of course, that they do not oppose complacency itself. . . . Thus, the highest virtue of our time is open-mindedness.” This open-mindedness denies any exterior point of reference; it is emancipation made flesh. And if the good is defined as what pleases, the bad must be what “displeases or terrifies.” This is an emotional, not a logical or rational, judgment. (Delsol never mentions it, but the desire for emancipation and egalitarianism is the direct cause of our society’s hyperfeminization, including the exaltation of emotion as a basis for making decisions.) Whatever one thinks of this method of determining morality, it cannot form a framework for a society, because by definition it is subjective and individualized. In fact, the man who thinks his morality is generally applicable is dangerous and must be subdued—not by violence, Delsol says, for she wrote long before 2023 when state-endorsed violence against wrongthink and wrongthinkers is common, but by mockery and exclusion from polite society.

Nonetheless, a permissible general morality has emerged in the modern world. Delsol admits that this is somewhat contradictory to her claim that all morality has been relativized and individualized, and she identifies the source of this permissible morality as a type of apostasy, an inversion of the prior morality of the West, which was essentially Christian. (This is apparently the theme she develops in her 2021 book.) Once again, we return to emancipation and egalitarianism as the pillars of the new morality, reinforced with “collective resentment.” (Delsol mentions colonialism, but a better current example is hatred directed at successful whites.)

Finally, in the second half of the book, titled “The Urgent Need for a New Anthropology,” we get Delsol’s thinking on solutions, along with the deterioration of her book. The end of worldviews, and of aspiration, and the fear of decision-making suggest that we have entered an era of technocratic, as opposed to prudential, governance (not outlined but presumably a reference to the managerial state first identified by James Burnham). Rights are sacralized; the demand for (unearned) dignity replaces the demand for (earned) honor. Both have the aim of personal grandeur, but they are very different, as is the society they produce. Rights expand limitlessly, because they have no limiting principle, and are based in emotion.

Delsol seems to be reaching for the correct, if ancient and obvious. “[H]appiness should really be defined as a balance of opposites: liberty and responsibility, security and risk.” But this is the apogee of Icarus Fallen, which rapidly falls apart in its second half. The reader’s eye twitches as he reads on. “Progress, no longer equated with the exponential development of certain gains, must rather be defined as the continuing perfection of humanity as it continues to reveal itself, and the continuing perfection of humanity as revealed through a constant inquiry into what constitutes happiness.” We need a “constant refining of the definition of happiness, grounded in a better anthropology.” “[O]nly an unceasing anthropological quest can give us a better chance to discover just which avenue progress should take.”

What exactly Delsol means by this, and many similar phrases, is vague, and probably deliberately so. It appears to mean we should reject both religious and politico-ideological bases for meaning, because they both “sacrifice time to immortality”; “they obliterated the present, a process that totalitarianism displays to us in all its abuses.” The reader begins to realize that Delsol does not see the Enlightenment as any worse than what came before; she cannot escape the frame that formed her. She is like the proverbial fish who does not know what water is, even if she is the rare fish who claims he knows what water is. She chastises religious belief over and over, instead praising the ideologies of the Enlightenment because “it was with the laudable aim of giving all value to immanence that modern ideologies denied religious eternity and made heaven come down to earth.” Yes, this promise “turned out to be an even more tangible fraud”—but religion is also a fraud, and “the coercive way generations of sons found themselves bound to common traditions” was a great evil, for after all “so many inherited certainties, institutions, and behavior patterns turn out to be indefensible,” they “transmit ideas that lead nowhere,” “they are but empty suits of armor.”

In any case, life is now fragmented, because man has neither belief in life after death nor the conviction that he can create a type of immortality through changing the world in which he lives. In both cases, man desires a “life-work” that will live after him, whether that work is himself or his society. But death is still the all-pervasive truth. So, naturally, Delsol turns to—AIDS. The reader’s eye twitches more violently. Throughout this book, Delsol talks about AIDS as some kind of special and unique malady, one which supposedly revealed to the West that death is still here. That’s dumb. By 2003, by 1996, and far earlier, it was very clear that all AIDS revealed was that ending stigmatization and suppression of homosexuals was a huge mistake. Yet again and again, Delsol bizarrely refers to AIDS, the “unstoppable epidemic,” the example, for her, par excellence of “irrational exploding within the rational, ancient evils irrupting in the heart of a highly perfected universe.”

The reader begins to realize what the problem with this book is. Delsol cannot shake off the lie she has been indoctrinated with her whole life, that the Enlightenment was a force for good, while everything in the past was a force for bad. She complains that religious belief has been destroyed, but then reflexively chants that we are “convinced, and with good reason, that something has been gained by the venture.” She does not tell us what was gained; we are just to know she is not benighted, as someone would be who uncritically referred to premodern religious belief. We get many mentions of the “tyranny of the clergy,” “the oppression of religion,” and such claptrap. She spouts falsehoods such as “The modern will to re-create man was a reaction against the previous dominant way of thinking, [which was] often an anthem in praise of the status quo.” She rails against a fictitious “essentialism” of the pre-Enlightenment era, which she falsely claims “was at the root of the modern revolt” and was “extreme, grotesque, sometimes fanatical.” She characterizes the pre-Enlightenment approach to life as “ignorance, oppression, and the certainty of death,” and claims “essentialism doomed itself by programming its mortal enemy.” She suggests we instead realize that “the figures of being in the world are at once both structural and flexible.” But that last is old wisdom, and as for the rest, her picture of the pre-Enlightenment West is simply a wholesale acceptance of the foolish lying parodies sold us by Enlightenment sophists.

Delsol is a political theorist, so one expects fresh insights about political theory, but she says nothing about politics that would not be approved by our current Regime. “Liberal democracy” is a “miracle,” don’t you know? “Modern democracy has without question proven its ability to make society more livable than it ever had been before. It has given to its peoples the three benefits that we assume all peoples dream of: peace, personal freedom, and material comfort. The democratic man is a fulfilled man.” Having turned democracy, that is, “liberal democracy,” into a false god, ascribing to it miracles in reality unconnected to it, she then offers repeated drivel, such as “it is precisely the modesty of its objectives that produces its marvelous results” and that “this unprecedented success is due to democracy’s fundamental modesty and to its suspicion of utopias.” This “miracle” has “provided heretofore unknown happiness,” though it is threatened by corruption, “the media’s self-censorship and lies,” corporatism, and relativism.

It is at this point that the reader’s whole body starts to spasm. If so-called liberal democracy, the apotheosis of Enlightenment poison, is so great, to what should we attribute the previous hundred pages of complaint? Delsol does not say. She does admit that democracy “fundamentally rests on personal liberty,” and therefore “by definition fears defined certainties”—the core problem she has just written very many pages about. Reading between the not-very-clear lines, it seems what Delsol means to contrast is liberal democracy against totalitarian ideology. But as Ryszard Legutko pointed out some years ago, modern liberal democracy shares a great deal with Communist ideology; it is not in fact either democratic or liberal. Maybe this was just invisible in the mid-1990s—though it was visible to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 1970s. Then Delsol also admits that democracy, in the same way as all political systems, does not have “everlasting durability or stability.” “Nothing demonstrates that its perfection will remove us from history.” What comes next? Don’t ask inconvenient questions, peasant. The topic is just dropped.

Delsol is no better on society’s building blocks. We are told that, as a result of the Enlightenment, both men and women . . . [review completes as first comment]

[Brett Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, spellbinding, and how the heck did she do that?

This is one of those very few books in my library that may produce more note pages than there are pages in the book itself. Delsol is a rare individual with the capacity to see through the societal veil with near perfect clarity, then explain it to the rest of us in a manner so revealing in its simplicity, we wonder why we never saw the truth to begin with. Most remarkably, she reveals underlying psychology – a field generally considered witchcraft to those of us in the hard sciences - with the same kind of precision. I can’t say every paragraph was a revelation, but I can safely say nearly every page was. Delsol does for her subject what the periodic table did for those confusing elements. The world makes sense now. Delsol ranks with Allan Bloom and Michael J. Sandal as one of the giants in modern political philosophy.

In a very approximate nutshell, Icarus Fallen is about the evolution of Enlightenment ideals into what they are now, and the impacts those changes have on Western civilization. If this book doesn’t terrify the Western world for what it has become, nothing will.

For me there are, however, three distractions. First is the Forward by Virgil P. Nemoianu, which sounds like a partisan stab from the American political Right. If anyone needs to read this book, which is quite balanced, it is the American Left. Few copies will be read by liberals after Nemoianu’s second sentence. The next distraction is the publisher, ISI Books. ISI has published wonderful titles like this, and absurdities like Darwin Day In America with all the usual Creationist talking points that resonate with a scientifically illiterate public. This gives the impression ISI has a dogma to satisfy because with the small volumes they sell it’s not about the money. Lastly, Delsol herself bruises her image with her position on the natural world and popular responses to its demise. Instead of a measurable fact, it seems to be denied as, “Clearly a contemporary variant of pantheism.” Here she reads like the Church resistant to Copernicus. Could it be that the natural world is viewed less as a playground for Hippies, and more of a moral matter, perhaps for some, of God’s creation superior to market demands? All in all, this is a remarkable book, I hope everyone makes time to read.

[The American Conservative]

'Delsol does argue for a revival of the idea that a plurality in a democracy can come up with a workable concept of the good and apply it to society without violating anyone’s rights—however, she ignores the role of activist judges in subverting that very plurality, thwarting the new paradigm she envisions. She is a penetrating critic of modern democracy, and while she does not propose its abolition or even drastic change, she does call for the “transformation” of our system into something that more closely reflects reality and the good. Unfortunately she goes no further, leaving the reader to wonder what, in concrete terms, this transformation might look like.

Still, if Icarus Fallen provides no vaccine for the modern malady, it is nevertheless the keenest diagnosis to date of what ails Western man.'

Read the full review, "What Ails Us," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Ziggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know this is a work of philosophy written by a philosopher, but why do philosophers feel compelled to write like philosophers? The author is obviously intelligent. And she has many interesting things to say. But why, oh why, does she choose to write so abstractly and distantly, as if she were a god or omniscient narrator, surveying all mankind from above, so far above the Earth that all individuals begin to look like one “man”. Books written like this, no matter how brilliant, leave me cold and wondering why such a book is written in the first place, certainly not to engage or persuade the reader. I’m also turned off by generalizations. Her subject is “contemporary man” who, she says, is suffering from an illness but doesn’t know it. The ultimate generalization.

This book was born out of astonishment, astonishment at things being said by the media, politicians, her friends, even her kids. Who can’t relate to that. But instead of trying to help the reader by describing exactly what was said that bothered her so much and then exploring the possible causes and consequences of such astonishing actions and beliefs, she ascends to the pulpit to give a sermon on “contemporary man.” So, the reader is forced to piece together from her philosophical musings what exactly has astonished her into writing such a dense book.

But enough of what bothered me. She is prescient. She wrote this book twenty years ago and apparently saw the ugliness that was rounding the corner. She discusses the emergence of a hidden ideology which she calls “correct thinking”, the suppression through shaming of anyone who questions this “correct thinking” ideology, the proliferation and devaluation of rights, the rise of moral relativism and unwillingness to make any moral judgment, morality based on indignation and nothing else, the tendency to destroy longstanding structures because they aren’t perfect and without first considering the consequences and how to replace those structures, the odd belief that humans have the right to zero risk at any cost, and much more.

She writes beautifully and provides an abundant source of quotable lines on nearly every page. But, for me anyway, the lack of specificity, examples, illustrations of her ideas and conclusions left me scratching my head, wondering why I was putting so much effort into understanding it when she was unwilling to meet me halfway.

“Relativist ideology does not claim that “evil” can be equated with “good”, this would be a simplistic caricature. In a much more subtle fashion, it reduces evil and detects evil in the good.”

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 2003, this is an incredibly poignant and well-structured argument about contemporary man. The work is as disheartening as it is inspirational. Undoubtedly, I'll be revisting chapters in the years to come.

• "The philosophy of values, and the resultant era of dogmatic relativism we have entered, ratifies the disappearance of morality."

• "... the individual, when excessively protected, is stunted in his growth; having avoided all risks, he becomes anxious when faced with even the smallest challenge, and thus lives a petty existence. Growing with no other limit than the financial capacities of the nation, and in general even beyond them, rights viewed as entitlements ultimately make a society impotent; paradoxically, some gifts eventually impoverish."

• "We aspire with all our strength to an independent existence, and are unaware of what it means to have an independent mind."

• "...life is also nourished by what is missing."

[Colleen Somes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very profound, dense kind of book. I found myself having to reread a lot of pages to at least partially understand what the author was saying. Chantal Delsol is definitely brilliant -- the author seems to tie everything together in the last several chapters. A very thought provoking, challenging book!

[Adam Ellsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thought-provoking book that helped crystallize a lot of concept I’ve been feeling/thinking about lately. The way Delsol captures it is analogous to the ability of a great comic to write a joke that perfectly captures the underlying sentiment of what people are feeling but have not yet put so succinctly into words. A lot to digest here, and I will be revisiting it.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fascinating analysis by Chantal Delsol gives wonderful insights into the human search for the absolute good. Delsol paints the multifaceted playing field in which the traditional reference points have apparently all but disappeared. Highly recommended.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

haven't read much in my life but I'm really happy that this came up so early.

Delsol describes the modern way of looking at things in such a way that I instantly felt a bit shocked at what I see around me.
The whole Donald Trump election has taken her points and accelerated them to the max.

I have only 2 issues with this book:
1. there are about 10 misprints, they are annoying but do not lower the quality of the writing at all.
2. Delsol does not provide enough examples to her theories, although I can clearly input them into my modern conception of politics perfectly, I would have loved more examples in every chapter.

still, this is one of my favorite books now, and I will go on to read Delsol's companion book to this one.

[joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm placing this one next to Bronze Age Mindset. It lacks the punchiness and the jokes, but is Exhortation and it points as best it can at a future morality, rebuilt from the gound up.

"The new seeker, who looks for truth like Thales at the dawn of history, feels as though he has travelled back in time."

It's unfortunate for the book's impact that what was prescient 25 years ago is now become more commonplace. But it describes things which are still unfolding, so it's impressive. If being critical, I could have skipped some of the Frenchified paradoxes and over-wordy fine distinctions which pad it out, which in context come across like examples of the reality-avoidance and temporising that the whole book is opposing. Then again, she's proposing a restoration of real civilisation, not real barbarianism.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

An worthwhile attempt to answer the existential crisis the death of ideology and the subject world has created at the end of the 20th century.

[Tyler Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delsol has her finger on the pulse of contemporary man. She elucidates the intuitions many people have regarding what is wrong with the way society thinks about human existence. While I disagree with some of her suggestions for how to rectify this contemporary attitude, her contribution to the task of understanding the general culture today is invaluable. Certainly worth the read.