Pseudo-philosophy in the Grauniad

Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney and a lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. It is apparent that this particular philosopher also fancies himself an expert on the novel and its social import. More of an expert, indeed, than Salman Rushdie. Clearly Giles Fraser does not specialise in that branch of philosophy known as logic, unless there is now a school of post-modern logic.

“But this won't do either. Certainly Enlightenment thought offers a challenge to the moral poison that often oozes from superstition. Even so, secular rationality is no fail-safe prophylactic against murderous ideology. The 20th century offered up enough genocidal "isms" to make that point. Hatred has the capacity to nestle within the most enlightened breast. So far, so obvious. But what's apparently not so obvious to Rushdie is that the most effective answer to bad religion is under his very nose: the novel itself.”

Let us examine that argument more closely:

1. Enlightenment thought offers a challenge to moral poison that often oozes from superstition.
2. Secular rationality is no fail-safe prophylactic against murderous ideology.
3. There is a more effective challenge to bad religion (the novel itself)

Whilst to me the premises seem fairly safe, the conclusion is not entailed.

“The novel is a sacred space where all voices need to be heard. Which is why he (Rushdie) proposed that even "the most secular of authors ought to be capable of presenting a sympathetic portrait of a devout believer". This is something Rushdie now seems increasingly incapable of achieving. He has become a true believer himself.”

The above amounts to no more than unsupported assertion. Why should the novel be a ‘sacred space’? What a monster it would be if it were to encompass ‘all voices’. Particularly irritating is the rhetorical fog of the final pair of sentences in that paragraph. No evidence is given that the insight of Salman Rushdie’s novels is in any way impaired by his polemics, and there is a sinuous inference that to be a true believer in enlightenment principles is equivalent to being a devout believer in religion. Giles Fraser seems to be espousing relativism of a most obfuscatory stripe.