Nobility of Spirit

Adel des Geistes, a title of a book of essays by Thomas Mann. After 9/11 a German born American composer borrowed the title for a cantata, 'a paean to freedom and democracy based loosely on Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."' When the composer died before finishing the work Rob Riemen continued the work as a prose essay, Nobility of Spirit, a Forgotten Ideal. It is reviewed in today's Wall Street Journal by Darrin McMahon, a professor at Florida State, my alma mater.

Here's part of what he says:

The originality of Mr. Riemen's argument resides less in its defense of universal values than in its analysis of the assault they have suffered for so long. If so many intellectuals today find it difficult to utter words like "truth," "beauty," "piety" or "goodness" without mockery or ironic derision, the cause may be traced, in large part, to the abuse of those terms by philosophers and social critics since the 19th century. Over time, various forms of relativism and nihilism took hold in elite circles, as Mr. Riemen shows, especially in the wake of Nietzsche's savage attack on the West's moral underpinnings. The would-be guardians of culture became its destroyers.

It is a depressing story – from the intellectual justifications of fascism and communist totalitarianism to the perverted idea that the mass murder of 9/11 was a "courageous" act of the "oppressed." And yet Mr. Riemen's tough-minded narrative is not without its heroes: He notes that thinkers such Raymond Aron and Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus and André Malraux, defended universal values in the face of ferocious opposition. Their likes, he implies, are badly needed today. What is required is more than a little courage and the reassertion of values that have endured despite repeated attempts to destroy them.