Here is an excerpt from The
Western Intellectual Tradition, first published in 1960, exploring the link
between Calvin (Harper’s favourite theological leader) and Totalitarianism:
Only rarely has a
thinker in the last 500 years gone back from this [Renaissance] ideal of human
potential and fulfillment. Calvin was
such a thinker who went back, and believed as the Middle Ages did, that man
comes into the world as a complete entity, incapable of any worthwhile
development. And it is characteristic
that the state which Calvin organized was, as a result, a totalitarian
state. For if men cannot develop, and
have nothing in them which is personal and creative, there is no point in
giving them freedom.[1]
Allow me to develop this line of thought further. Because Calvinism looks back to the Middle Ages, it misses out on the root idea of Renaissance
“humanism” – behind which we find notions of today’s Western “humanitarianism”
- or what we non-Calvinists would call the proper treatment of Syrian refugees. In other words, Harper’s anti-humanism goes a
long way in explaining his government’s meagre response to the crisis.
[1] J.
Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish, The Western
Intellectual Tradition: from Leonardo to Hegel (New York: Harper, 1960), p. 500.
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