Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 13th February 2008

If the Archbishop were really an intellectual, he'd answer the questions he wordily posed

Journalists are not good at handling intellectuals. When we come face to face with one of these we treat it like something encountered in a zoo. If it has a beard, so much the better. Equipped (we suppose) with inferior intellects ourselves, we approach the creature as if it were possessed of a mysterious attribute whose qualities we are unqualified to fathom. We delve for a clutch of associated words — ‘learned’, ‘scholarly’, ‘academic’ — as though they meant the same thing; we describe the creature as having ‘one of the finest minds of his generation’; and then we go on, with ill-concealed sniggers, to hint that this person is unworldly, indecisive or out-of-touch.

Thus the intellectual gains a kind of immunity from critical examination, at the cost of not being taken seriously as a man of action. Commentors, meanwhile, are excused the tiresome chore of actually asking whether the intellectual’s intellect is any good. Keith Joseph got similar treatment. So does Gordon Brown, of whom we repeat (because we have heard it somewhere) that he is ‘astonishingly well-read’, and that he has a deep knowledge of political philosophy and can quote the names of all the leading authors, and passages from their books. How much of their work he has really absorbed and understood we hardly think it our place to ask, being able only to establish that he is conversant with it. Confronted with incoherence, we make the same allowances as Dorothea, who had ‘a vivid memory of evenings in which she had supposed that Mr Casaubon’s mind had gone too deep during the day to be able to get to the surface again’.

What we never do (and nor did Dorothea) is take these people on their own terms as intellectuals, and examine their capabilities. Somebody should. Now I’ve read his speech I’m unconvinced that, though Dr Williams’s beard may be real, his intellect is of the towering kind that justifies the term ‘intellectual’ — if by that word we imply a capacity for focused reasoning, penetrating logic and argument from principle. My best guess is that he’s no more than a scholar: a voracious reader, with a retentive memory and a dogged capacity for cross-references to the thoughts and writings of others.

I keep reading that the Archbishop delights in ‘studied ambiguity’, but all we can find in his speech is a tendency, like Mr Casaubon’s, to shy at philosophical fences, taking refuge by diving back down into detail. We encounter, too, a prolixity all too common among academics: a wallowing around in clauses, sub-clauses, circumlocutions and academic jargon which is not an indication of intellectuality but a substitute for it. It is rude and lazy to write sloppy English at self-indulgent length: it shows disregard for the reader, and tends to shield the argument — it there is one — from examination, lost in thickets of verbiage.

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David Moss, http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/ABC.htm

February 15th, 2008 12:49pm Report this comment

The Archbishop claims to have made a counter-intuitive and paradoxical discovery -- that we can only have personal lives because we live in a state where the law applies. That's not paradoxical, it's not counter-intuitive and it's not a discovery -- everyone already knows it.

David Moss, http://dematerialisedid.com/BCSL/ABC.htm

February 15th, 2008 1:31pm Report this comment

The Archbishop has the advantage over Mr Casaubon that there are now business schools to generate meaningless phrases for the right-on cleric to incorporate into his sermons. He quotes with approval the work of one Ayelet Shachar, an academic with a cute turn of phrase, who talks about legal jurisdictions as nothing more than "franchises" and who characterises the conflict between the law of the land and sharia as "your culture or your rights". Having fallen for that, the Archbishop agrees that it is possible to think of a "transformative accommodation" between the law of the land -- a market in which they compete -- and then, without so much as taking a breath, moves on to saying that it is unavoidable. How something which was only possible in one paragraph becomes unavoidable in the next is not explained. As to the market in which the law of the land should compete with sharia, he has already explained earlier in his paper that he thinks the law of the land derives ultimately from Abrahamic tradition. Which implies that it has nothing to do with discounted cashflows and choices based on utility, it's not a market, neither a possible market, nor an unavoidable market.

Robert H. Boyer

February 15th, 2008 4:17pm Report this comment

You have analyzed Dr. Williams Treatis as an intellectual exercise. Do you not realize the import of allow sharia law to intrude on the Great British body of law that has been the main stay of and basis of law in the English speaking world. Sharia law may have been great for maintaining order in the Muslim world of the 14th century but it has no acceptable place in Western Democracies.

Alan Rogers

March 7th, 2008 4:44pm Report this comment

Thank you Mr. Parris for putting this over-rated man in his place. I wrote to him on another issue and my letter was intercepted by a minion whose job was to protect the great man from contact with the real world. In this way empires, kingdoms and, no doubt, the C of E will decline and fall.

Neil Hoskins

March 7th, 2008 5:26pm Report this comment

@ Robert Boyer: Mr Parris wasn't expressing a view on the Archbishop's arguments, merely trying to figure out what they were and how well - or badly - put. @Matthew Parris: a marvellously entertaining essay, if I may say so. That final sentence alone could summarise not only the Archbishop, but religion in general.

Dan Allen

March 7th, 2008 7:23pm Report this comment

I admire Matthew Parris and read him regularly in the times. I don't always but usually do agree with him. He has hit the nail squarely on the head. We have a case of the emporers new cassocks. People think Williams is good because a) they've been told he's good and b) His writings are so interminable that few can get the the end let alone show the stamina to understand them. Confusing people with nonsense is not good intellect but it is definitely good theology

Bill Flavell

March 8th, 2008 6:55pm Report this comment

I am genuinely surprised that Matthew should put effort into looking for signs of intellect in the Archbishop. Why would you expect to find it in a man who believes in magic, virgin births, resurrection of the dead and, quite possibly, talking serpents? Why would you expect to find intellect in one who advocates holding the most extraordinary beliefs using the test of faith? With the briefest enquiry one can see that faith as a basis for believe suffers the unpardonable sin of being unable, totally and utterly unable, to distinguish truth from falsity. Faith, a failed epistemological method that puts no limits whatsoever on what one may take to be the truth. Let us not forget that faith warrants it permissible, no mandated if you are so minded, to fly ‘planes into buildings. Faith allows you to believe anything you wish to believe and never mind the evidence. It really is time for the world to understand that men who advocate faith as a way of knowing things are intellectually dishonest, no matter what their measured IQ. When such a substantial cover-up is required, gaps, muddles and inconsistencies are pretty much unavoidable. Really Matthew, don’t let the beard fool you. Argenta

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