Discerning the Spirits: Gerhart Niemeyer as Culture Critic
In: The political science reviewer: an annual review of books, Band 31, S. 162-182
ISSN: 0091-3715
Gerhart Niemeyer's (1907-1997) political analysis of his last 2 decades reflects his deepening Christian faith & its expression in Western culture, literature, the arts, & education. The author, a former student of Niemeyer, blends an autobiographical perspective to his analysis of Neimeyer's writings & university lectures that touch on cultural criticism. Niemeyer found Solzhenitsyn's writings extraordinary in that spiritual renewal was found in the Gulag following the loss of freedom, possessions, modesty, & health. Niemeyer was concerned with separations within American culture, such as "thought from action, judgment from vision, nature from grace, reason from imagination" (1988). He rejected criticism that was rigid & extreme & resisted the movement of conservatism from an "up-turning" force to an ideology. He believed that art & literature could provide diagnostic insight into social & cultural decadence, but that it must also provide a positive hope for better visions of order. L. A. Hoffman