Darkly, Through The Looking Glass

The power of Occidentalism and its appeal have little to do with the application of western power or imperialism itself. It often does not appear in places where the application of western power has caused serious devastation. It is somewhat sui generis, inspired by an existential resentment of modernity itself. And like most critiques of modernity, its origins lie within the West itself, in the romantic revolt against the Enlightenment, in the Fascistic struggle against liberalism.

Occidentalism describes the main tropes of anti-westernism and its enduring recurrence in agreeable, if somewhat breathless prose. It is a tour d’ horizon rather than a work of serious scholarship or rigorous political analysis. Margalit is one of the most interesting contemporary moral philosophers. He has produced original analysis of the concept of a ‘‘decent society’’ and of the ethics of memory. Buruma has written extensively on Europe and Japan and is a frequent contributor to that pillar of the liberal establishment, The New York Review of Books. Yet their combined effort is less than the sum of their parts. Occidentalism is marked neither by the fine philosophical analysis we associate with Margalit; nor by the profound historical ironies that distinguish the best of Buruma’s work.

Occidentalism is directed as much against those who condescendingly explain away terrorism, pathological nationalisms, or third world dictators by attributing their existence to western power. But it refuses to draw Manichean distinctions between the West and the rest, urging the West not to close itself in response to such attacks.

But in the final analysis, this book is more an expression of bewilderment than real political insight. There are liberals who have written with much more insight about illiberal ideologies, most notably, Isaiah Berlin, who could give a vivid sense of what all the fuss was about. This book, by contrast, seems more like a reassertion of liberal platitudes in the wake of 9/11. And it misses the irony of the contemporary American response to Occidentalism: the charge of godlessness is being met with the most evangelical, religious and crusading politics that recent American history has seen.