Book Review: The Betrayal of the West

Just finished reading The Betrayal of the West by Jacques Ellul. Below is a book review I posted on Amazon (after discovering that no one had done so before).

Its almost 30 years since Ellul wrote Betrayal of the West, nevertheless some of his words remain prophetic - chiling to the core. Ellul's thesis is clear: The West and its ideals have been betrayed - ironically by the West itself. The price the West has to pay for progress is the betrayal of the values that brought the West progress.

Ellul writes at his passionate best in this book, as one senses his conviction and pain in articulating the decline of Western civilization. The book is essentially divided into three main categories.

In Chapter 1, Ellul starts of by articulating the various reasons the West has had a bad name over the past 200 years (slavery, colonialism etc...). Unlike postmoderns however, Ellul does not buy into the argument upon which many anti-Western advocates take, simply because those who oppose the West - rightly - are only able to do so because of the freedom that the West has originially conferred upon them.

2. In Chapter 2, Ellul enters into a magnificent discourse on the relevancy of the Left, and takes the argument into a never-seen before level with his stunning discussion of why those who are truly betrayed are those who have no means of articulating their sufferings. Terming them as the "truly poor", this group of people include the Tibetans, the Kurds and the Harki tribe in North Africa.

3. Finally Ellul concludes his treatise with his analysis of how the West has been betrayed. This takes place at three levels (and as usual, stamped with the mark of Ellul's originality): i) The Betrayal of Reason of History: The Utopist, the Geometer and the Technician, ii) The Betrayal of the Individual: The Executioner and iii) The Betrayal of Love and Freedom: The Grand Inquisitor...

In Ellul's words:

"Our speed is constantly increasing, and it does not matter whither we are
going. We are caught up in the madness and hybris of the dance of death: the
important thing is the dance, the saturnalia, the bacchanalia, the
lupercalia. We are no longer worried about what will emerge from it or
about the void to which it points...there is no goal, nothing transcendent, no
value to light the way; the movement is enough"

"Fragmentary theater and deciphered Moliere, poetry without words and music
that is sheer noise, destructured language, Lacan, Derrida, and all their
second-rate imitators who think that absolute incomprehensibility offers a way
out, when in fact we have shut the door on all possibilities and hopes, and have
sunk into a resignation that knows no future"

And my personal fav, which sort of sums up the tension of his arguments:

"The West has always claimed to be on the side of David against Goliath, and
it continues to make this claim. The difficulty is that the West is now a
Goliath, one of the might of the earth, yet it cannot but still judge itself
according to its old values"

The book is no longer in print (unless you are willing to part with good money to get it ordered). I obtained my copy from NUS library. However, a pdf version is available here. Theology Today has also reviewed this book.