Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

by R.R. Reno

The reductive explanations of the social sciences neuter the existential power of truth. Beliefs and convictions become preferences and interests. As a consequence, by the late twentieth century, the political-cultural significance of the social sciences, brain science, and sociobiology came to parallel rather than contradict the humanities’ preoccupation with race, class, and sex. Reducing the human condition to economic interests or “selfish genes” has the same political and cultural effect as multiculturalism. Both disenchant and weaken, serving the ideals of an open society. This consistency isn’t obvious. How does the vague relativism of multicultural ideology square with the social and human sciences, which aspire to empirical rigor? At that level, they are indeed at odds. We live historically, however, not philosophically. As the postwar era unfolded, Popper and Hayek’s anti-totalitarian agenda advanced in two ways. The first was the way of critique, culminating in today’s diffuse but powerful ideology of multiculturalism. The second was the way of reduction, showing that human affairs can be explained by material interests and biological processes that govern us by default. These paths—critique and reduction—are therapies of disenchantment required by the postwar consensus. They dominate intellectual life today for political-historical reasons, not because of an intrinsic intellectual advantage. We prize them because we believe they promote an open society.