Whittaker Chambers and Solzhenitsyn
/
In a probing new piece over at American Mind, our own Daniel J. Mahoney pays tribute to Whittaker Chambers on the 70th anniversary of the publication of his extraordinary memoir, Witness. Chambers, who “did not return from Hell with empty hands,” in André Malraux’s memorable formulation, shared with Solzhenitsyn a dim view of man’s ability to orient himself morally if “blind to the things of the spirit.”
“Solzhenitsyn never attacked reason—not for a moment—but rather criticized an “anthropocentric humanism” that mistook human beings for gods and denied God’s saving presence in the human world. Václav Havel made much of the same argument in his well-received essays and speeches from the 1970s through the 1990s. But in Chambers’ and Solzhenitsyn’s cases their moderate and humane messages, alert to the evil that lurks in men’s hearts and in ideologies that attack both God and man, were willfully and mendaciously confused by our cultural elites with moral fanaticism. That effort in elite circles to in essence silence or cancel both Chambers and Solzhenitsyn is worthy of much reflection. It reveals the woke spirit avant la lettre.”