Overview
We hear much talk today about post-truth. Journalists and intellectuals describe it as a shocking new phenomenon caused by recent electoral campaigns. They point to contemporary political statements as horrendous post-truths. Nothing is more misleading. #&8216;Historical engineering#&8217; is not a new phenomenon. Nor are the events to which journalists point as exemplary instances of #&8216;post-truth#&8217; particularly poignant. #&8216;Historical engineering#&8217; is the intellectual twin of #&8216;social engineering#&8217; and has been taking place on increasingly large scales since the dawn of the modern world. It is a consequence of the premises, methods, and ambitions of modern philosophy. This book is the first part of a trilogy #&8211; The Betrayal of Philosophy #&8211; that concerns the roots of the post-truth phenomenon. Its intent is to provide the philosophical world with a phantasm in which it can see not just the what of #&8216;historical engineering,#&8217; but the why: to show the flaws of modern philosophy itself. The phantasm regards the most successful modern project of historical and social engineering: the Armenian Genocide. It includes both Turkey#&8217;s #&8216;historical engineering#&8217; #&8211; its official policy of genocide negation #&8211; and the massive late Ottoman project of social and territorial engineering which led to the murder of the first Christian nation: Armenia.
Reviews
Sins of the Fathers is a text of great intellectual value and courage, which has the great merit of appearing usefully dissonant than much contemporary philosophical discourse often exhausted. If it is true that facta sunt servanda, Professor Nash-Marshall reveals herself lucid, innovative, and ground breaking. Rav Prof. Giuseppi Laras: Former Chief Rabbi of Milan; Emeritus Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, University of Milan Ideas have consequences. This book is a patient, scholarly study of the misuse of ideas to pile horror upon horror. It is not bad enough that ideas were used to rationalize the violence of genocide. Forgetful as the world likes to be, even a century has not been enough to remove awareness of the horror. And so another generation has undertaken the semantic gymnastics in the service of genocide denial. The gymnastic routine is invariably the same: mislabeling what happened (as if renaming it could make it different) and having prominent people show the way to misuse the terms. Thankfully, there can be good ways to use ideas as well as bad ones. This volume shows what sounds scholarship needs to achieve: to present historical truth in clear light, so that we never forget. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.: Fordham University Through the exemplary case of the Armenian Genocide, this extraordinary book delivers a powerful and piercing portrait of the treachery, trahisons des clercs, and destruction that modern philosophy’s refusal of its daimon has wrought upon the world. I eagerly await the second installment of the Betrayal of Philosophy. Antonia Arslan: international best-selling author of Skylark Farm; Professor, University of Padova
Author Biography
Siobhan Nash-Marshall holds the Mary T. Clark Chair of Christian Philosophy at Manhattanville College. Author of many academic books and articles on metaphysics – Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian Metaphysics and Boethius’s Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to the 1500s –and the problem of evil – most recently Free Will, Evil, and Saint Augustine and Evil, Pain, and the Problem of Properties – she has also written books and articles for the general public – Joan of Arc: A Spiritual Biography and What it Takes to be Free: Religion and the Roots of Democracy. In recent years, Nash-Marshall has devoted a lot of attention to genocide and genocide negationism. She has published articles on the topic – “Negazionismi,” “Lies, Damned Lies, and Genocide,” “Levi, Arslan, and Responses to Genocide” – and lectured throughout the world on it. The Sins of the Fathers is her first book length treatment of the topic. After the breakout of the war in Syria, Nash-Marshall and some friends founded CINF, through which they attempt to help the ancient Christian cultures of the world which are presently in peril.
