Claiming that evil is created by its environment was a favourite intellectual ploy during the Marxist wave 40 years ago. Now it’s making a comeback as social constructivism. The idea, that is, that man is nothing but a social construct and can be fully explained as a product of his environment.
But social constructivism has its limits, because it’s based on an image of man that turns a blind eye on the abyss over which we have no control. The consequence: solutions for political and psychological conflicts fail to take proper account of reality, as the blind optimism of the last few years over the Arab Spring made abundantly clear.
Anders Ellebæk Madsen in Kristeligt Dagblad, Denmark, September 9
Eric Koch’s new book, New Beginnings, was launched on September 20. The book is available from 
I would assume the author’s reference to ‘the abyss over which we have no control’ implies the inability of ‘social constructivists’ to take (proper) account of the indeterminate and perpetual entanglement of ‘the religious’ and the historised ‘national’ realms.