Since his death Thursday evening, the tributes to Christopher Hitchens have been coming in droves. Here’s a link to some of the best:
Joe Klein at Time: “I will miss the joy of reading him, and chatting with him at parties; but more, I worry that Hitch is taking with him a world, a world of contemplative reading and writing–the very opposite of what I am doing right now, posting an immediate reaction to his death on this blog. He lived life perpetually intoxicated, not just by booze (he was happily soused during our English debate), but by books and words and thoughts and ideas. I will miss him, and all the excesses he cherished. We need more such, and are left with less.”
David Frum: Christopher was never a man to back away from a confrontation on behalf of what he considered basic decency. Yet it would be wrong to remember only the confrontational side. Christopher was also a man of exquisite sensitivity and courtesy, dispensed without regard to age or station. On one of the last occasions I saw him, my wife and I came to drop some food–lamb tagine–to sustain a family with more on its mind than cooking. Christopher, though weary and sick, insisted on painfully lifting himself from his chair to perform the rites of hospitality. He might have cancer, but we were still guests–and as guests, we must have champagne.
More after the jump.Benjamin Schwarz in The Atlantic: Like his hero, Orwell, Christopher prized bravery above all other qualities–and in particular the bravery required for unflinching honesty. And as was true of the work of Orwell, the former colonial policeman, this devotion paradoxically lent a certain military coloring to Christopher’s intellectual, literary, and political pursuits. This most intellectual of men valued intelligence, but valued courage far more–or rather, he believed that true intellect was inseparable from courage. It’s commonly said that Christopher couldn’t stand stupidity. That isn’t true: He couldn’t tolerate stupidity married to pretentiousness or dishonesty. It’s also said that Hitchens was intolerant of his adversaries. True, he saw many of his adversaries–the shabby and dishonest–as beneath contempt. Rightly so. But he could be far more than tolerant of those honest men and women who were devoted to causes he found abhorrent: He paid honor to his enemies.
Doug Wilson at Christianity Today: One time we shared a panel in Dallas, and I told the crowd there that if Christopher and I were not careful, we were in danger of becoming friends. During the time we spent together, he never said an unkind thing to me—except on stage, up in front of everybody. After doing this, he didn’t wink at me, but he might as well have.
Jacob Weisberg in Slate: Here’s what I learned from Christopher Hitchens in the 25 years I knew him. Don’t let anyone else do your thinking for you. Follow your principles to the end. Don’t flinch from the truth. Repeat until the last ounce of strength drains from your body.
Ian McEwan in The Guardian: He could have written a review, but he was due to turn in a long piece on Chesterton. And so this was how it would go: talk about books and politics, then he dozed while I read or wrote, then more talk, then we both read. The intensive care unit room was crammed with flickering machines and sustaining tubes, but they seemed almost decorative. Books, journalism, the ideas behind both, conquered the sterile space, or warmed it, they raised it to the condition of a good university library. And they protected us from the bleak high-rise view through the plate glass windows, of that world, in Larkin’s lines, whose loves and chances “are beyond the stretch/Of any hand from here!”
Alex Massie in Spectator: A foolish consistency is a terrible error and no-one, perhaps not even those dolts who hated him, could accuse Christopher of that. But though he was often a contrarian he was rarely a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. There was a point to it all and it was not a pose struck for the sake of, well, just striking a pose. That said, his poses were also an aesthetic matter: Hitch had style and he knew it and traded on it and that was all just fine. You could love it but you also, if you were being honest with yourself, envied it and, in sourer moments, almost resented it because you knew you could never match it. That was your problem, not Christopher’s. Buck up, laddie.
Andrew Sullivan has several posts about him: I could sense it coming. But I couldn’t write anything beforehand and I cannot write anything worthy of him now. So I just sat down an hour ago when I heard the news – Aaron told me as he clicked on Gawker – and sat a while and got up to write and then blubbered a bit and, staring at the screen, read through some emails from him.
Christopher’s brother, Peter, in The Daily Mail: Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it.
Christopher Buckley in The New Yorker: We were friends for more than thirty years, which is a long time but, now that he is gone, seems not nearly long enough. I was rather nervous when I first met him, one night in London in 1977, along with his great friend Martin Amis. I had read his journalism and was already in awe of his brilliance and wit and couldn’t think what on earth I could bring to his table. I don’t know if he sensed the diffidence on my part—no, of course he did; he never missed anything—but he set me instantly at ease, and so began one of the great friendships and benisons of my life. It occurs to me that “benison” is a word I first learned from Christopher, along with so much else.
Jake –
Thanks for compiling these tributes to Christopher Hitchens.
What was your exposure to Hitchens’ writing?
Mine was limited to a handful of essays in Vanity Fair and The Atlantic and one book on Bill and Hillary Clinton (“No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family”). Without a doubt, Hitchens was a prodigious and gifted writer. I admire the ferocity of his intellect and honesty.
I am not alone, however, in observing that this modern-day Thomas Paine, a vigorous defender of sola Ratio (“Reason alone”), was astonishingly irrational when he treated the subject of religion. Benjamin Schwartz says in the above tribute, “It’s commonly said that Christopher couldn’t stand stupidity. That isn’t true: He couldn’t tolerate stupidity married to pretentiousness or dishonesty.” When, then, shall we make of Hitchens’ own stupidity married not only to pretentiousness or dishonesty but gross ignorance? Terry Eagleton’s critique of the New Atheists in “Reason, Faith, and Revolution” is withering. Compared to the Old Atheists or “masters of suspicion” (Freud, Marx, Nietzsche), the New Atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) are intellectually inferior and therefore a waste of time.
All the televised interviews I saw of Hitchens leads to this conclusion: he was an unhappy man. One must ask: Is there something inherently unhappy about rationalism and atheism?
I look forward to your reply.
Christopher
POSTSCRIPT:
• Andrew O’Hehir, “Those Ignorant Atheists.” A review of Terry Eagleton’s “Reaon, Faith, and Revolution” (Salon.com)
http://www.salon.com/2009/04/28/terry_eagleton/
• Terry Eagleton’s review of Christopher Hitchens, “Hitch-22: A Memoir” (New Statesman)
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/05/christopher-hitchens-iraq-self
Christopher – Could you provide examples of what you believe to be Hitchens’s stupidity, pretentiousness, dishonesty, and ignorance on the topic of religion? If it’s just that he refuses to interact with so-called sophisticated theology, then I believe he has already provided a sufficient response: ““That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” P.Z. Myers’s “Courtier’s Reply” will work too.
Really, I think it is Eagleton and his ilk who don’t understand what they’re talking about. They seem to think that it’s fine to ridicule beliefs that are demonstrably false or vanishingly implausible, but that subtler forms of faith ought to be dealt with as a separate species of belief, as if mere logical possibility, internal consistency, and emotional resonance were enough to bump their beliefs up from vulgar superstition into the realm of Important and Respectable Ideas. Unfortunately for them, their faith is built upon the same shifting sands as that of the average ignorant churchgoer, and critics like Hitchens won’t let them bamboozle with their complex-sounding ideas without first establishing that what they’re talking about actually exists.
Also, he was an unhappy man? He looked to me to be having a blast.
ECSchmidt:
The comment section of a blog is not the place to document examples of how Hitchens’ stupidity on the subject of religion was married to pretentiousness, dishonesty and ignorance. If you’re seriously interested in pursuing this inquiry, check out the following titles:
• John F. Haught, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
William Lane Craig & Chad Meister (editors), God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Believing in God Is Good and Reasonable
• Paul Copan & William Lane Craig (editors), Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors
• Alister McGrath, Why God Won’t Go Away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty?
• Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity
• John Lennox, Gunning for God: A Critique of the New Atheism
• Phillip E. Johnson & John Mark Reynolds, Against All Gods: What’s Right and Wrong About the New Atheism
What Terry Eagleton wrote in a now famous review of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, could apply just as easily to Christopher Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great. I will substitute Dawkins’ name for Hitchens’:
“Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Christopher Hitchens on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Hitchens, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.”
Christopher
Christopher – I understand that criticism and I think in Dawkins’ case it’s quite valid.
But I sense something different in Hitchens. He knew the Bible quite well and was fairly well-read in theology. I think Eric sums up Hitch’s point of view quite well: “Before we get into specific theological questions, we must first establish whether or not the divine even exists in the first place. If the answer is no, then why waste our time with these questions?”
I think that’s a problematic response, but I do think Hitchens knew more theology than Eagleton gave him credit for. I just think Hitchens didn’t see a need to discuss it (which, as I said, is an issue).
Jake –
You did not mention your exposure to Hitchens’ writing. I am curious to hear what you have read from him.
If theism is only valuable if we prove the existence of God, then it also holds that atheism is only valuable if we prove the non-existence of God. The metaphysical existence or non-existence of God is impossible to prove. Therefore, should we not bother with either theism or atheism?
Jake (since you seem willing to actually respond rather than just reassert) -
Why is it problematic to refuse to allow theists to bypass the fundamental question of a god’s existence before moving on to other areas of theology? What could a non-believer have to say in such a discussion anyway? Theology is for the already-believing, is it not? To the believer it can be meaningful, but to the non-believer it’s just playing with words.
CB’s Eagleton quote above is weak. The issue is whether or not theology is about anything at all. Using as analogies subjects that are undeniably substantive (biology, philosophy, politics) just begs the question. Allow me to tweak the quote a little in a way that’s less flattering to Eagleton: “Imagine someone holding forth on astrology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Daily Mail horoscope section, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Christopher Hitchens on theology.”
Eric – Briefly, I think it’s problematic because it makes for a very surface level conversation. One of Eagleton’s gripes – and I think this is a fair one – is that atheist critics of Christianity tend to pick out the weakest arguments and most absurd examples of faith and attack at that point, which is rather like the equally tiresome tendency amongst Christians intent to refute Darwinism to pick out one excerpt and misunderstand it or misrepresent it.
For example, the quickest way to piss off Dawkins is to misrepresent natural selection as being guided by “chance.” The difficulty here is, typically, that the inquirer has read some two-bit book by Henry Morris where some perhaps less careful biologist is excerpted using the word “chance.” From that, he misconstrues what Dawkins intends to say about natural selection and, usually, gets whatever we’re going to call Dawkins’ version of the hitchslap. (As in this case, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/06/05/richard-dawkins-responds-to-a-muslim-intelligent-designer/)
Dawkins, rightly, calls the person out for reading poorly and failing to understand what is actually being claimed. I think a similar critique could be made of the way the New Atheists speak of God. Are there jackass Christians out there who speak of God in absurdly simplistic language and invite misreading and misrepresentation? Of course. But that doesn’t make them a fair representation of Christian belief. I think the far more fair-minded (and enjoyable, if you enjoy a good debate) approach is to focus on the best that school of thought has to offer and read them. If you want to learn about conservatism, you don’t read Ann Coulter. You read Douthat. You get the idea. The issue is that I think the caricatures of theistic belief so common in the New Atheists would likely be so objectionable to one of the great Christian theologians that they’d be quite tempted to repudiate the entire portrayal of Christianity, as found in Dawkins or even Hitchens. God is not a celestial man in the sky in the thought of Aquinas, for instance. It’s much more complex than that. That’s just one example.
ECSchmidt:
Following the logic you quote – “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence” – atheism can be dismissed because no atheist has proven the metaphysical non-existence of God (just as no theist has proven the metaphysical existence of God)? Following your logic – “theology is for the already-believing” – I would argue that naturalism is for the already-believing.
Christopher
Christopher – Atheism does not assert that no gods exist, although this is a common misunderstanding of the position. Atheism asserts nothing, in fact. It is simply a refusal to accept the unjustified claims of others concerning the supernatural. It’s really just basic skepticism.
I am an agnostic because I don’t know whether or not there are any supernatural entities. I am an atheist because I am not a theist. Unlike the theist, I rest in agnosticism because I don’t see any justification for moving from agnosticism to belief. Atheism is the default position.
ECSchmidt – I do not accept your benign characterization of atheism. You say “atheism asserts nothing.” That is incorrect. Following its etymological origin, atheism asserts that there is no god (atheos, from a- ‘without’ + theos ‘god’). That is a proposition that atheism cannot prove.
Christopher – Okay, then make up a word that’s acceptable to you and apply my position to that word.
ECSchmidt:
I’m not making up etymological origin of the word “atheist.” That is what it means, period.
You do understand that the meanings of words change, right? There are no “period”s when it comes to language.
The meanings of words can be fluid but the etymological origin of words are fixed. The etymological origin of the word atheism is ‘without god.’
To return to the original topic, if you perceive Hitchens as a trustworthy, reliable, and knowledgeable guide to God and Christianity, then God help you.
I can’t tell if this is some sloppy attempt at satire, or if you really have no sense of irony, but either way, it’s been a great flop.