BOOKS: THE HEIRS TO THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD; THE CREATION
Books: The Heirs to the Prophet Muhammad and The Creation
(PA Book Round Up #19 Reviews of Reviews)
By Thomas Riggins
THE HEIRS OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD: THE TWO PATHS TO ISLAM by Barnaby Rogerson (Time Warner, 432pp.) reviewed by Anthony Sattin in the Times Literary Supplement, July 7, 2006.
Progressives have a lot to keep up with these days. Besides having to keep tabs on the new and refurbished old theories of the right and left plus keep track of the aggressive misuse of Christian doctrine for right-wing partisan advantage, Imperialism’s assault on the Muslim world now requires us to monitor “political Islam” as well. I am assuming most Americans are more familiar with Christian and Jewish religious thought and can easily, hopefully) see through the hypocritical uses of religion by the ultra-right (waging war and claiming to follow “the Prince of Peace”, or denouncing “terrorism” and turning a blind eye to the genocidal pogrom unleashed against the Palestinian people) than they are with the understanding of Islam and its misuses.
Rogerson”s book, therefore, looks like a good introduction to the history of Islam. The reviewer calls it a “fascinating narrative.” It deals with two important aspects in the rise of Islam. The first deals with the struggle for leadership of the new Muslim community after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD (excuse the Western dating system.) The second deals with the rise of the Islamic empire “one of history’s great epic tales.” The reviewer points out that coming out of Arabia, the Muslims, within 50 years of Muhammad’s death, ruled from the Atlantic Ocean through the Middle East up into Central Asia. Quite a feat. “Yet,” Sattin writes, “rather than attest to the glory of God as revealed by the latest messenger, [the book] shows how the Arab Empire proved to be the rack on which the Prophet’s followers were broken.”
How is this conclusion reached? It is shown that as a young man engaged in the world of trade Muhammad was not so different from his fellow humans. He engaged in trade, as did many others, and “was not adverse to wealth.” But all that changed for him “once he had begun his mission.” As he succeeded in his religious endeavors and his influence grew tribute and wealth began to flow to him. Did he use it to aggrandize himself? No! He used the new wealth to help and benefit the poor and weak members of the new Islamic society.
He also preferred the simple life like “the biblical prophets” before him.
But what did his followers do after his death? Not so much the early followers who knew him personally, but the second and third generation and beyond, what did they do? This is where this second aspect (the rise of empire) is intermingled with the first one-- the leadership struggle right after the Prophet’s death. In brief, two factions began to develop: one formed around people associated with Aisha (Muhammad’s second wife) and the other around his son-in-law Ali. This is the origin of the split between the Sunni and the Shia (the Ali faction).
This split might never have happened but for the immense wealth that began to accumulate as a result of the expansion of Islam. This led to disputes about who should be leading the community as the successor of the Prophet. The wealth now led to “temptation and conflict.”
Finally these tensions led to “a civil war in which Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, son-in-law, confidant and champion, was assassinated.”
This was a disaster. As has happened too many times before in history, the money and power trumped the true meaning of the message of the religious teacher. With the murder of Ali, Rogerson writes, “ the era of holiness within the Islamic community is over, the scheming politicians, the police chiefs and the old clan chiefs are once again back in power.” Welcome to the club.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Spinoza (A Book Note)
Thomas Riggins
SPINOZA AND SPINOZISM by Stuart Hampshire, Oxford University Press, 2005, 206 pp.
Reviewed by Avishai Margalit in "The New York Review of Books" October 20, 2005.
This is a reworking of the book "Spinoza: An Introduction to His Philosophical Thought" with some revisions and new interpretive introductions. Hampshire died last year at 89 and the original version of the book was published back in 1951.
It is important to know something about the philosophy of Spinoza as he was the great grandfather, as it were, of Marxism (Hegel being the grandfather). Engel’s famous definition of freedom as the recognition of necessity comes from Spinoza, for example.
Spinoza (1632-1677) is usually associated with Descartes and the scientific revolution. He has been called the first secular thinker in modern Europe. His philosophy is even more important today because it is not based on any appeal to religion or supernatural causes. Theologians like to say the universe was created by God but God is uncreated – being the cause of himself.
But Margalit says, "Only nature as a whole, according to Spinoza, is the cause of itself, meaning that nature should be explainable by what actually happens in nature and that no appeal to a transcendent reality, or separate God, is necessary for explaining its existence." Our friends the fundamentalists are four hundred years behind on their reading lists.
Margalit also points out that Spinoza "was a prime mover in shaping the European Enlightenment," and "that his skepticism about divine authority radicalized a generation of intellectuals in the last years of the seventeenth century." This opinion is based on J. Israel’s "Radical Enlightenment" (Oxford, 2002). Spinoza is thus the great grandfather of the modern secular outlook as well as of Marxism.
Hampshire, who thinks that biology rather than mathematics, was the inspiration for Spinoza’s thought, is quoted as saying Spinoza "believed his contemporaries could not even try to understand his thought, because its conclusions were evidently incompatible with their deepest religious loyalties and moral prejudices." Those conclusions were that the universe is all there is and that the traditional religions are illusions based on over active imaginations that have abandoned "the critical power of reason."
Today the fate of the world is in the hands of people who have abandoned reason and science for the delusional reality of their imaginations. In this world, the more we can learn about Spinoza the better. Hampshire’s last book is a parting gift to us and a welcome introduction to Spinoza’s "Ethics" and "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (one of the best explanations of the Bible ever produced).
SPINOZA AND SPINOZISM by Stuart Hampshire, Oxford University Press, 2005, 206 pp.
Reviewed by Avishai Margalit in "The New York Review of Books" October 20, 2005.
This is a reworking of the book "Spinoza: An Introduction to His Philosophical Thought" with some revisions and new interpretive introductions. Hampshire died last year at 89 and the original version of the book was published back in 1951.
It is important to know something about the philosophy of Spinoza as he was the great grandfather, as it were, of Marxism (Hegel being the grandfather). Engel’s famous definition of freedom as the recognition of necessity comes from Spinoza, for example.
Spinoza (1632-1677) is usually associated with Descartes and the scientific revolution. He has been called the first secular thinker in modern Europe. His philosophy is even more important today because it is not based on any appeal to religion or supernatural causes. Theologians like to say the universe was created by God but God is uncreated – being the cause of himself.
But Margalit says, "Only nature as a whole, according to Spinoza, is the cause of itself, meaning that nature should be explainable by what actually happens in nature and that no appeal to a transcendent reality, or separate God, is necessary for explaining its existence." Our friends the fundamentalists are four hundred years behind on their reading lists.
Margalit also points out that Spinoza "was a prime mover in shaping the European Enlightenment," and "that his skepticism about divine authority radicalized a generation of intellectuals in the last years of the seventeenth century." This opinion is based on J. Israel’s "Radical Enlightenment" (Oxford, 2002). Spinoza is thus the great grandfather of the modern secular outlook as well as of Marxism.
Hampshire, who thinks that biology rather than mathematics, was the inspiration for Spinoza’s thought, is quoted as saying Spinoza "believed his contemporaries could not even try to understand his thought, because its conclusions were evidently incompatible with their deepest religious loyalties and moral prejudices." Those conclusions were that the universe is all there is and that the traditional religions are illusions based on over active imaginations that have abandoned "the critical power of reason."
Today the fate of the world is in the hands of people who have abandoned reason and science for the delusional reality of their imaginations. In this world, the more we can learn about Spinoza the better. Hampshire’s last book is a parting gift to us and a welcome introduction to Spinoza’s "Ethics" and "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (one of the best explanations of the Bible ever produced).
Friday, November 28, 2008
THE MIND OF EGYPT
BOOK REVIEW: The Mind of Egypt
By Thomas Riggins
BOOK REVIEW: The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharoahs
by Jan Assmann (translated by Andrew Jenkins)
New York, Metropolitan Books, 2002.
You might think the Ancient Egyptians too remote in time to be anything other than intellectual curiosities for us. Jan Assmann, the great German Egyptologist, thinks otherwise. Early on in his masterful reconstruction of the Egyptian mind set, he tells us that "ancient Egypt is an intellectual and spiritual world that is linked to our own by numerous strands of tradition." A brief review can only barely touch on the topics discussed in this book, but I will try to give some examples of Assmann’s conclusions with reference our links to the Ancient Egyptians--they may be more extensive than you might think.
Take for example the ancient work "The Admonitions of Ipuwer" from the thirteenth century B.C., (around the time of Ramesses II) which describes "the nobles" as "full of lament" and the "lowly full of joy." Bertolt Brecht was so impressed by this work that, Assmann says, "he worked part of it into the ‘Song of Chaos’ in his play ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle.’" Ipuwer was lamenting the overthrow of established order by the lower classes-- so long has the specter of Communism been haunting the world (not just Europe) that Brecht could sense the presence of comrades over three thousand years ago! Brecht made a few slight changes, Assmann says, and the Egyptian sage’s lament became "a triumphal paean to the Revolution."
A useful Egyptian concept to know is that of "ma’at" which Assmann defines as "connective justice" which "holds for Egyptian civilization in general." Basically "connective justice" is the idea that all of actions are interconnected with those of others such that it "is the principle that forms individuals into communities and that gives their actions meaning and direction by ensuring that good is rewarded and evil punished."
Assmann likens this concept to what he calls the "connection between memory and altruism." Looking at our own times, he says this Ancient Egyptian concept is manifested in the ideas of Karl Marx (and also in Nietzsche’s "Genealogy of Morals"). He quotes Marx who wrote that [Private] "Interest has no memory, for it thinks only of itself." This is a quote from issue 305 of the Rheinische Zeitung, Nov. 1, 1842 (not as cited by Assmann issue 298 Oct. 25, 1842).
The point being that the State should look to the collective good of all citizens and not be used to further private or individual interests. It must have "memory" directed toward the general good. This is also the point of ma‘at. The Egyptian Middle Kingdom work "Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" makes this point. This implies that we could find basically "Marxist" social values being discussed in Egypt!
As Assmann points out, "Ma‘at is the law liberating the weak from the oppression at the hands of the strong. The idea of liberation from the oppression caused by inequality is informed at least to a rudimentary extent by the idea of the equality of all human beings." It should be noted that the picture many have of ancient Egypt as a repressive slave state is the result of the Old Testament tradition. That tradition does not represent the actual state of affairs with respect to the functioning of the Egyptian state.
An examination of the literary remains of the Egyptians themselves shows an entirely different society than that portrayed in Biblical propaganda. "The Egyptian state," Assmann writes, " is the implementation of a legal order that precludes the natural supremacy of the strong and opens up prospects for the weak (the ‘widows’ and ‘orphans’) that otherwise would not exist.
Besides Biblical misrepresentations of Egyptian thought there were also the misunderstandings of the classical writers. For example, the Greek Diodorus, who left behind a description of the "Judgment of the Dead", presents the "facts" in contradiction to what we know is described in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead." In fact, Assmann avers that the Egyptian account is similar to the 25th Chapter of the "Gospel According to St. Matthew" where the reward of going to the "House of Osiris" is "replaced by the Kingdom of God." In fact, I think, many so-called Christian values and beliefs actually have their origin in Ancient Egyptian religious and ethical concepts.
We should remember that the first "monotheist," after all, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (r. cir. 1352-1338 B.C.) who stood "at the head of a lineage very different from his predecessors’, one represented after him by the Moses of legend, and later by Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed," according to Assmann. As a truth seeker he also differs from the three aforementioned in that as "a thinker, Akhenaten stands at the head of a line of inquiry that was taken up seven hundred years later by the Milesian philosophers of nature [i.e., the Greeks] with their search for the one all-informing principle, and that ended with the universalist formulas of our own age as embodied in the physics of Einstein and Heisenberg." Assmann has a very high opinion of Akhenaten!
Unlike earlier Egyptologists who think the ideas of Akhenaten were repressed by his successors (due to their--Akhenaten's ideas that is-- "deism" rather than "theism" characteristics), Assmann maintains that they were "elaborated further and integrated into" the religious teachings of the age of Ramesses and his successors. From here they eventually influenced Plato, and, since Plato was the basis of the thought of Augustine, Christianity. Although, Christianity ended up the mortal foe of the Egyptian religion and ultimately destroyed it and the culture that produced it.
Today we know more about the civilization of Ancient Egypt than has been known since its own time. We must come to grips with his new knowledge, and especially with the recovered literature of the Egyptians and "attempt" as Assmann says, "to enter into a dialogue with the newly readable messages of ancient Egyptian culture and thus to reestablish them as an integral part of our cultural memory."
This review has only skimmed the surface of this important book. I hope it inspires you to read the book itself.
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.ne
By Thomas Riggins
BOOK REVIEW: The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharoahs
by Jan Assmann (translated by Andrew Jenkins)
New York, Metropolitan Books, 2002.
You might think the Ancient Egyptians too remote in time to be anything other than intellectual curiosities for us. Jan Assmann, the great German Egyptologist, thinks otherwise. Early on in his masterful reconstruction of the Egyptian mind set, he tells us that "ancient Egypt is an intellectual and spiritual world that is linked to our own by numerous strands of tradition." A brief review can only barely touch on the topics discussed in this book, but I will try to give some examples of Assmann’s conclusions with reference our links to the Ancient Egyptians--they may be more extensive than you might think.
Take for example the ancient work "The Admonitions of Ipuwer" from the thirteenth century B.C., (around the time of Ramesses II) which describes "the nobles" as "full of lament" and the "lowly full of joy." Bertolt Brecht was so impressed by this work that, Assmann says, "he worked part of it into the ‘Song of Chaos’ in his play ‘The Caucasian Chalk Circle.’" Ipuwer was lamenting the overthrow of established order by the lower classes-- so long has the specter of Communism been haunting the world (not just Europe) that Brecht could sense the presence of comrades over three thousand years ago! Brecht made a few slight changes, Assmann says, and the Egyptian sage’s lament became "a triumphal paean to the Revolution."
A useful Egyptian concept to know is that of "ma’at" which Assmann defines as "connective justice" which "holds for Egyptian civilization in general." Basically "connective justice" is the idea that all of actions are interconnected with those of others such that it "is the principle that forms individuals into communities and that gives their actions meaning and direction by ensuring that good is rewarded and evil punished."
Assmann likens this concept to what he calls the "connection between memory and altruism." Looking at our own times, he says this Ancient Egyptian concept is manifested in the ideas of Karl Marx (and also in Nietzsche’s "Genealogy of Morals"). He quotes Marx who wrote that [Private] "Interest has no memory, for it thinks only of itself." This is a quote from issue 305 of the Rheinische Zeitung, Nov. 1, 1842 (not as cited by Assmann issue 298 Oct. 25, 1842).
The point being that the State should look to the collective good of all citizens and not be used to further private or individual interests. It must have "memory" directed toward the general good. This is also the point of ma‘at. The Egyptian Middle Kingdom work "Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" makes this point. This implies that we could find basically "Marxist" social values being discussed in Egypt!
As Assmann points out, "Ma‘at is the law liberating the weak from the oppression at the hands of the strong. The idea of liberation from the oppression caused by inequality is informed at least to a rudimentary extent by the idea of the equality of all human beings." It should be noted that the picture many have of ancient Egypt as a repressive slave state is the result of the Old Testament tradition. That tradition does not represent the actual state of affairs with respect to the functioning of the Egyptian state.
An examination of the literary remains of the Egyptians themselves shows an entirely different society than that portrayed in Biblical propaganda. "The Egyptian state," Assmann writes, " is the implementation of a legal order that precludes the natural supremacy of the strong and opens up prospects for the weak (the ‘widows’ and ‘orphans’) that otherwise would not exist.
Besides Biblical misrepresentations of Egyptian thought there were also the misunderstandings of the classical writers. For example, the Greek Diodorus, who left behind a description of the "Judgment of the Dead", presents the "facts" in contradiction to what we know is described in the Egyptian "Book of the Dead." In fact, Assmann avers that the Egyptian account is similar to the 25th Chapter of the "Gospel According to St. Matthew" where the reward of going to the "House of Osiris" is "replaced by the Kingdom of God." In fact, I think, many so-called Christian values and beliefs actually have their origin in Ancient Egyptian religious and ethical concepts.
We should remember that the first "monotheist," after all, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (r. cir. 1352-1338 B.C.) who stood "at the head of a lineage very different from his predecessors’, one represented after him by the Moses of legend, and later by Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed," according to Assmann. As a truth seeker he also differs from the three aforementioned in that as "a thinker, Akhenaten stands at the head of a line of inquiry that was taken up seven hundred years later by the Milesian philosophers of nature [i.e., the Greeks] with their search for the one all-informing principle, and that ended with the universalist formulas of our own age as embodied in the physics of Einstein and Heisenberg." Assmann has a very high opinion of Akhenaten!
Unlike earlier Egyptologists who think the ideas of Akhenaten were repressed by his successors (due to their--Akhenaten's ideas that is-- "deism" rather than "theism" characteristics), Assmann maintains that they were "elaborated further and integrated into" the religious teachings of the age of Ramesses and his successors. From here they eventually influenced Plato, and, since Plato was the basis of the thought of Augustine, Christianity. Although, Christianity ended up the mortal foe of the Egyptian religion and ultimately destroyed it and the culture that produced it.
Today we know more about the civilization of Ancient Egypt than has been known since its own time. We must come to grips with his new knowledge, and especially with the recovered literature of the Egyptians and "attempt" as Assmann says, "to enter into a dialogue with the newly readable messages of ancient Egyptian culture and thus to reestablish them as an integral part of our cultural memory."
This review has only skimmed the surface of this important book. I hope it inspires you to read the book itself.
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.ne
Monday, November 3, 2008
DARWIN AND THE CARDINAL
Catholic Cardinal Gets it Right on Evolution [PA Archives]
By Thomas Riggins
Ultimately the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than the life of an oyster-- David Hume
Two pieces in the Times last week (“Finding Design in Nature” by Christoph [Cardinal] Schonborn, July 7, 2005 and “Leading Cardinal Redefines Church’s View on Evolution: He Says Darwinism and Catholicism May Conflict” by Cornelia Dean and Laurie Goodstein, July 9, 2005) finally resolves, for me at least, the question of the relation between a scientific outlook on the world and the outlook of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Schonborn is the archbishop of Vienna and chief editor, the Times reports, of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). His understanding of science seems to be based on the works of Aristotle. The Cardinal begins his essay critical of “neo-Darwinian dogma” (I admit that the Cardinal is probably an expert on dogma if not Darwinism). He says the Darwinists have misinterpreted Pope John Paul II (another noted scientist) who said in 1996 that evolution is “more than just a hypothesis.” They think this means that Darwinism is “somehow compatible with Christian faith.”
They are wrong, says the Cardinal. I think he has it right. I will even go a bit further. Not only is Darwinism incompatible with the Christian faith (as interpreted by the Catholic sect), but any scientific understanding of the world at all is incompatible with it and any other system claiming to have some timeless absolute knowledge based on revelation rather that testable empirical investigations.
The Cardinal grants that there might be “evolution” in the sense of “common ancestry”-- we might indeed all come out of the primal ooze -- but not in the Darwinian sense of “random variation and natural selection.” He quotes the eminent evolutionary biologist, and sect leader, John Paul II, who said, “The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality [there is NO scientific evidence for this] which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose [it does?] a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”
Cardinal Schonborn says we must note that the term “finality” is a philosophical term which means “final cause, purpose or design.” Well, at least he agrees that it is not a scientific term. We should also note that modern philosophy, at least since the sixteenth century, has rejected any type of “finality” in this sense. The Cardinal is using a term confined almost exclusively to sectaries, who need it to justify their otherwise outlandish beliefs.
Three centuries ago, and a century before Darwin, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) described what the “finality” of the world looked like to human reason unprejudiced by viewing the world through the prism of superstition. “Look around this universe,” he wrote: “What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences.... How hostile and destructive to each other!... The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children”(quoted from Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire).
This is not what Cardinal Schonborn sees when he looks at the universe. He sees with the eyes of “the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church.” He then quotes his new boss (Benedict XVI): “We are not some causal and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” Does that even make sense. How can you look at the heaps of skulls left behind by Pol Pot, or by the genocide in Rwanda and now in Dafur, or think of the thousands of children killed by the US in the name of “freedom” in Iraq, Central America and Vietnam, or think of the people lost in the Tsunami -- or contemplate the babies born with hideous birth defects or with AIDS or cancer-- how can any of that jive with being a loved and willed thought of God?
Only in your religious dreams can you hold the Pope’s ideas-- but let us not, as the Cardinal does, confuse this with “human reason” or “science.”
The news article, by Dean and Goodstein, gives some reactions by scientists and others to the Cardinal’s ideas. As might have been expected religious fundamentalists and proponents of design in nature theories are very happy with the essay. On the other hand “some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology.”
“‘Unguided,’ ‘unplanned.’ ‘random’ and ‘natural’ are all adjectives that biologists might apply to the process of evolution, said Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown and a Catholic. But even so, he said, evolution ‘can fall within God’s providential plan.’ He added: ‘Science cannot rule it out. Science cannot speak on this.’” There is a lot of conceptual confusion here. Just what kind of “providential plan” is “unguided,” “un-planned,” and “random?” What is clear is that all this talk about seeing design in nature is a lot of pre-scientific twaddle left over from the Middle Ages.
In closing, we should note that it is not just Darwin with which the church has difficulty. The church still can’t make up its mind about Galileo. Here is a quote from Benedict XVI when he was still just Cardinal Ratzinger and the head of the Inquisition: “At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.” And the Sun goes around the Earth.
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
By Thomas Riggins
Ultimately the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than the life of an oyster-- David Hume
Two pieces in the Times last week (“Finding Design in Nature” by Christoph [Cardinal] Schonborn, July 7, 2005 and “Leading Cardinal Redefines Church’s View on Evolution: He Says Darwinism and Catholicism May Conflict” by Cornelia Dean and Laurie Goodstein, July 9, 2005) finally resolves, for me at least, the question of the relation between a scientific outlook on the world and the outlook of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Schonborn is the archbishop of Vienna and chief editor, the Times reports, of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992). His understanding of science seems to be based on the works of Aristotle. The Cardinal begins his essay critical of “neo-Darwinian dogma” (I admit that the Cardinal is probably an expert on dogma if not Darwinism). He says the Darwinists have misinterpreted Pope John Paul II (another noted scientist) who said in 1996 that evolution is “more than just a hypothesis.” They think this means that Darwinism is “somehow compatible with Christian faith.”
They are wrong, says the Cardinal. I think he has it right. I will even go a bit further. Not only is Darwinism incompatible with the Christian faith (as interpreted by the Catholic sect), but any scientific understanding of the world at all is incompatible with it and any other system claiming to have some timeless absolute knowledge based on revelation rather that testable empirical investigations.
The Cardinal grants that there might be “evolution” in the sense of “common ancestry”-- we might indeed all come out of the primal ooze -- but not in the Darwinian sense of “random variation and natural selection.” He quotes the eminent evolutionary biologist, and sect leader, John Paul II, who said, “The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality [there is NO scientific evidence for this] which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose [it does?] a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”
Cardinal Schonborn says we must note that the term “finality” is a philosophical term which means “final cause, purpose or design.” Well, at least he agrees that it is not a scientific term. We should also note that modern philosophy, at least since the sixteenth century, has rejected any type of “finality” in this sense. The Cardinal is using a term confined almost exclusively to sectaries, who need it to justify their otherwise outlandish beliefs.
Three centuries ago, and a century before Darwin, the great Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) described what the “finality” of the world looked like to human reason unprejudiced by viewing the world through the prism of superstition. “Look around this universe,” he wrote: “What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences.... How hostile and destructive to each other!... The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children”(quoted from Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire).
This is not what Cardinal Schonborn sees when he looks at the universe. He sees with the eyes of “the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church.” He then quotes his new boss (Benedict XVI): “We are not some causal and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” Does that even make sense. How can you look at the heaps of skulls left behind by Pol Pot, or by the genocide in Rwanda and now in Dafur, or think of the thousands of children killed by the US in the name of “freedom” in Iraq, Central America and Vietnam, or think of the people lost in the Tsunami -- or contemplate the babies born with hideous birth defects or with AIDS or cancer-- how can any of that jive with being a loved and willed thought of God?
Only in your religious dreams can you hold the Pope’s ideas-- but let us not, as the Cardinal does, confuse this with “human reason” or “science.”
The news article, by Dean and Goodstein, gives some reactions by scientists and others to the Cardinal’s ideas. As might have been expected religious fundamentalists and proponents of design in nature theories are very happy with the essay. On the other hand “some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology.”
“‘Unguided,’ ‘unplanned.’ ‘random’ and ‘natural’ are all adjectives that biologists might apply to the process of evolution, said Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown and a Catholic. But even so, he said, evolution ‘can fall within God’s providential plan.’ He added: ‘Science cannot rule it out. Science cannot speak on this.’” There is a lot of conceptual confusion here. Just what kind of “providential plan” is “unguided,” “un-planned,” and “random?” What is clear is that all this talk about seeing design in nature is a lot of pre-scientific twaddle left over from the Middle Ages.
In closing, we should note that it is not just Darwin with which the church has difficulty. The church still can’t make up its mind about Galileo. Here is a quote from Benedict XVI when he was still just Cardinal Ratzinger and the head of the Inquisition: “At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.” And the Sun goes around the Earth.
--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
PAUL RICOEUR: A MARXIST APPRECIATION
REMEMBERING PAUL RICOEUR: 1913-2005 (French Philosopher) [Political Affairs Archives]
By Thomas Riggins
The May 24 New York Times has reported the death of one of Frances’s most famous philosophers (“Paul Ricoeur, 92, Wide-Ranging French Philosopher, Is Dead” by Margalit Fox”). Many of Ricoeur’s ideas are interesting even when they clash with the Marxist philosophical outlook. We can always learn from those who don’t share our philosophical commitments.
Fox quotes Dr. C. E. Reagan who said about Ricoeur, “In the history of philosophy, he would take positions that appeared to be diametrically opposed, and he’d work to see if there was a middle ground.” In that spirit I propose to see what middle ground Marxists might be able to share with Ricoeur ( I don't think we will find too many-- but at least two come to mind: peace is better than war and democracy is a postive good)) whose philosophy, forbiddingly, is a species of “phenomenological hermeneutics.”
This is not as bad as it sounds. Phenomenology is the “science” of how we experience the world and hermeneutics is a fancy word for “interpretation.” It comes from the Greek for ”interpret” (originally used for interpreting the Bible) and ultimately from the name of the Greek God “Hermes” (Roman Mercury) who was the messenger of Zeus.
Christopher Norris (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. by Ted Honderich) wrote that Ricoeur found in his “middle ground” way of thinking a “kindred dialectic” with Marxism. Norris points out the double aspect of interpretation (it has a “positive” and “negative” moment). His interpretation of Freud is one example: the negative-- psychoanalysis looks for the past repressed information in the unconscious mind in order to find the positive-- a cure to repression and a new possibility for the future. He also sees this in Marxism: the negative-- class struggle, oppression, revolution leads to the positive-- a new society of human equality [hopefully].
G. B. Madson (The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. by Richard H. Popkin) tells us that Ricoeur comes out of the tradition of the German Fascist philosopher Martin Heidegger(this sounds bad and it is bad but not as bad as it sounds). This tradition breaks with the mainstream of modern philosophy from Descartes through Russell and their contemporary followers (almost all philosophers but not professors of literature and cultural criticism).
The first part of the break is not so bad. Modern philosophers have a tendency to start with the isolated consciousness of a particular person, the ego, and then try to see how this ego can get to an external world independent of its own thinking mind. We can agree with Heidegger that human beings find themselves, “always already”, as Madson says “in a world.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The gesture of hermeneutics is a humble one of acknowledging the historical conditions to which all human understanding is subsumed in the reign of finitude.” No problem. We awake to find ourselves always already in a specific historical context-- e.g., I’m a French worker or a German bourgeois, etc. Let’s agree not to start with the ego. But we are going to go downhill from here.
We all agree with the historical consciousness as a starting point. We do not need Heidegger or his followers to tell us this. It is a basic core belief of Marxism already. Let us assume that I am a sugarcane cutter in 1950’s Cuba. My consciousness is determined by what Ricoeur calls its “historicality.” Madson says, “As Ricoeur characterizes it, effective historical consciousness is ‘the massive and global fact whereby consciousness, even before its awakening as such, belongs to and depends on that which affects it.” In other words, Mr. Cutter belongs to and depends upon the world dominated by Mr. Plantation Owner and overseen by Mr. President Batista (and globally Uncle Sam).
Ricoeur continues, “The action of tradition [effective history] and historical investigation are fused by a bond which no critical consciousness could dissolve without rendering the research itself nonsensical.” This leads to the conclusion, Madson says, that the Enlightenment is wrong in thinking effective history must be overcome in order to really understand the “truth.” When Ricoeur proclaims that truth is historical you begin to think he must be on to something. But wait!
We are informed that this way of thinking rejects the “correspondence theory of truth”. This is the theory accepted by Marxism. A proposition is true if it corresponds to a state of the external world. “My car is red” is true if and only if my car is red. But we find out, says Madson, that “a core tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that genuine understanding is not representational but essentially transformative.”
Mr. Cutter has been reading the Communist Manifesto and has decided that there is no correspondence between a just society and the world of Mr. Plantation Owner. He is told, “I’m sorry, but we don’t use the correspondence theory anymore.” What does it mean to say truth is transformative. Well, you read the Manifesto and it transforms you, you “appropriate” it and interpret it in your historical context-- Cuba 1950”s-- very different from Germany in 1848.
Mr. Cutter objects. He thinks the Manifesto is appropriate for any class society, that Marx and Engels had it mind to lay down general truths corresponding to the entire historical epoch of capitalism. Well then, we have missed “one of the most distinctive tenets of philosophical hermeneutics: The meaning of a text is not reducible to the meaning intended by its author.” Its meaning is now what you make of it.
Ricoeur is quoted: “The text’s career escapes the finite horizon lived by its author. What the text says now matters more than what the author meant to say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within the circumference of a meaning that has broken its moorings to the psychology of its author.”
This may be going too far. Original intent is important. We must first understand the text’ before we can interpret it. How to make sense of the phrase “what the text says now’? This means to Ricoeur something like “what it says to me”. But this sounds like relativism. Anyone can read Marx, etc., anyway s/he chooses. It is not relativism, says Madson. Philosophers in this school reject dogmatism and “maintain that it is never possible to demonstrate conclusively the validity of one’s interpretations, they also maintain, against all forms of relativism, that it is nevertheless always possible to argue for one’s interpretations in cogent, nonarbitrary, reasoned ways [the Enlightenment lives on!]. In other words... if our interpretations can reasonably lay claim to being true, they must adhere to certain argumentative criteria, such as coherence and comprehensiveness.”
Mr. Cutter decides that the Manifesto is both coherent and comprehensive and runs off to the mountains to join Fidel. Was he right to do so? Our philosophers, following Ricoeur, think that the purpose of interpretation, of understanding, of finding the “truth” is ultimately to better understand ourselves [the return of the ego]. They reject “objectivism” and want to suborn it to “communicative rationality.” People, Madson says, “reason together in such a way as to enable them to arrive at common agreements or understandings (however provisional) that enable them to live together peacefully, whether as members of a particular scientific discipline or as members of society.” A revolution would seem to be a breakdown of "communicative rationality." The war in Iraq would be another breakdown.
But Mr. Cutter and Mr. Plantation Owner can’t reason together. They don’t have a “human” relation-- only an exploitative economic one. What this philosophy represents is bourgeois liberalism. It represents “none other than the core values of liberal democracy.” Remember “truth” is not “objective.” It really is for these thinkers, “subjective.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The truth is... the lighted place in which it is possible to continue to live and think.” That really doesn’t say anything! Madson continues, “Ricoeur has asserted that “democracy is the [only] political space in which [the conflict of interpretations] can be pursued with a respect for differences”-- that is to say, with a respect for the pursuit of truth on the part of each and every individual human being. When all is said and done, the basic tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that there is only one truth, which is the democratic process itself.”
Here is another quote from Ricoeur, from Le Monde [2004] (via BBC News):
If I had to lay out my vision of the world... I would say: given
the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read,
what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me
a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do. I
call it the action that suits.
This is an interesting quote, but what does it mean? This is true for everybody, including cats and dogs. It sounds like fatalism-- my actions are the result of my past history. A strange quote from someone associated with the exitentialist movement. Why not try thinking outside the box? Anyway, who cares what Ricouer meant? I can interpretet this to suit myself as long as I am coherent and comprehensive.
Mr. Cutter was right to run off to the mountains. In this class riven world where profits come before people this was the action that suits. The thinking of Paul Ricoeur cannot lead to the liberation of humanity from the bestial reality of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. We will have to evaluate him again when we live in a classless society. R.I.P.
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
By Thomas Riggins
The May 24 New York Times has reported the death of one of Frances’s most famous philosophers (“Paul Ricoeur, 92, Wide-Ranging French Philosopher, Is Dead” by Margalit Fox”). Many of Ricoeur’s ideas are interesting even when they clash with the Marxist philosophical outlook. We can always learn from those who don’t share our philosophical commitments.
Fox quotes Dr. C. E. Reagan who said about Ricoeur, “In the history of philosophy, he would take positions that appeared to be diametrically opposed, and he’d work to see if there was a middle ground.” In that spirit I propose to see what middle ground Marxists might be able to share with Ricoeur ( I don't think we will find too many-- but at least two come to mind: peace is better than war and democracy is a postive good)) whose philosophy, forbiddingly, is a species of “phenomenological hermeneutics.”
This is not as bad as it sounds. Phenomenology is the “science” of how we experience the world and hermeneutics is a fancy word for “interpretation.” It comes from the Greek for ”interpret” (originally used for interpreting the Bible) and ultimately from the name of the Greek God “Hermes” (Roman Mercury) who was the messenger of Zeus.
Christopher Norris (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. by Ted Honderich) wrote that Ricoeur found in his “middle ground” way of thinking a “kindred dialectic” with Marxism. Norris points out the double aspect of interpretation (it has a “positive” and “negative” moment). His interpretation of Freud is one example: the negative-- psychoanalysis looks for the past repressed information in the unconscious mind in order to find the positive-- a cure to repression and a new possibility for the future. He also sees this in Marxism: the negative-- class struggle, oppression, revolution leads to the positive-- a new society of human equality [hopefully].
G. B. Madson (The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. by Richard H. Popkin) tells us that Ricoeur comes out of the tradition of the German Fascist philosopher Martin Heidegger(this sounds bad and it is bad but not as bad as it sounds). This tradition breaks with the mainstream of modern philosophy from Descartes through Russell and their contemporary followers (almost all philosophers but not professors of literature and cultural criticism).
The first part of the break is not so bad. Modern philosophers have a tendency to start with the isolated consciousness of a particular person, the ego, and then try to see how this ego can get to an external world independent of its own thinking mind. We can agree with Heidegger that human beings find themselves, “always already”, as Madson says “in a world.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The gesture of hermeneutics is a humble one of acknowledging the historical conditions to which all human understanding is subsumed in the reign of finitude.” No problem. We awake to find ourselves always already in a specific historical context-- e.g., I’m a French worker or a German bourgeois, etc. Let’s agree not to start with the ego. But we are going to go downhill from here.
We all agree with the historical consciousness as a starting point. We do not need Heidegger or his followers to tell us this. It is a basic core belief of Marxism already. Let us assume that I am a sugarcane cutter in 1950’s Cuba. My consciousness is determined by what Ricoeur calls its “historicality.” Madson says, “As Ricoeur characterizes it, effective historical consciousness is ‘the massive and global fact whereby consciousness, even before its awakening as such, belongs to and depends on that which affects it.” In other words, Mr. Cutter belongs to and depends upon the world dominated by Mr. Plantation Owner and overseen by Mr. President Batista (and globally Uncle Sam).
Ricoeur continues, “The action of tradition [effective history] and historical investigation are fused by a bond which no critical consciousness could dissolve without rendering the research itself nonsensical.” This leads to the conclusion, Madson says, that the Enlightenment is wrong in thinking effective history must be overcome in order to really understand the “truth.” When Ricoeur proclaims that truth is historical you begin to think he must be on to something. But wait!
We are informed that this way of thinking rejects the “correspondence theory of truth”. This is the theory accepted by Marxism. A proposition is true if it corresponds to a state of the external world. “My car is red” is true if and only if my car is red. But we find out, says Madson, that “a core tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that genuine understanding is not representational but essentially transformative.”
Mr. Cutter has been reading the Communist Manifesto and has decided that there is no correspondence between a just society and the world of Mr. Plantation Owner. He is told, “I’m sorry, but we don’t use the correspondence theory anymore.” What does it mean to say truth is transformative. Well, you read the Manifesto and it transforms you, you “appropriate” it and interpret it in your historical context-- Cuba 1950”s-- very different from Germany in 1848.
Mr. Cutter objects. He thinks the Manifesto is appropriate for any class society, that Marx and Engels had it mind to lay down general truths corresponding to the entire historical epoch of capitalism. Well then, we have missed “one of the most distinctive tenets of philosophical hermeneutics: The meaning of a text is not reducible to the meaning intended by its author.” Its meaning is now what you make of it.
Ricoeur is quoted: “The text’s career escapes the finite horizon lived by its author. What the text says now matters more than what the author meant to say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within the circumference of a meaning that has broken its moorings to the psychology of its author.”
This may be going too far. Original intent is important. We must first understand the text’ before we can interpret it. How to make sense of the phrase “what the text says now’? This means to Ricoeur something like “what it says to me”. But this sounds like relativism. Anyone can read Marx, etc., anyway s/he chooses. It is not relativism, says Madson. Philosophers in this school reject dogmatism and “maintain that it is never possible to demonstrate conclusively the validity of one’s interpretations, they also maintain, against all forms of relativism, that it is nevertheless always possible to argue for one’s interpretations in cogent, nonarbitrary, reasoned ways [the Enlightenment lives on!]. In other words... if our interpretations can reasonably lay claim to being true, they must adhere to certain argumentative criteria, such as coherence and comprehensiveness.”
Mr. Cutter decides that the Manifesto is both coherent and comprehensive and runs off to the mountains to join Fidel. Was he right to do so? Our philosophers, following Ricoeur, think that the purpose of interpretation, of understanding, of finding the “truth” is ultimately to better understand ourselves [the return of the ego]. They reject “objectivism” and want to suborn it to “communicative rationality.” People, Madson says, “reason together in such a way as to enable them to arrive at common agreements or understandings (however provisional) that enable them to live together peacefully, whether as members of a particular scientific discipline or as members of society.” A revolution would seem to be a breakdown of "communicative rationality." The war in Iraq would be another breakdown.
But Mr. Cutter and Mr. Plantation Owner can’t reason together. They don’t have a “human” relation-- only an exploitative economic one. What this philosophy represents is bourgeois liberalism. It represents “none other than the core values of liberal democracy.” Remember “truth” is not “objective.” It really is for these thinkers, “subjective.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The truth is... the lighted place in which it is possible to continue to live and think.” That really doesn’t say anything! Madson continues, “Ricoeur has asserted that “democracy is the [only] political space in which [the conflict of interpretations] can be pursued with a respect for differences”-- that is to say, with a respect for the pursuit of truth on the part of each and every individual human being. When all is said and done, the basic tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that there is only one truth, which is the democratic process itself.”
Here is another quote from Ricoeur, from Le Monde [2004] (via BBC News):
If I had to lay out my vision of the world... I would say: given
the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read,
what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me
a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do. I
call it the action that suits.
This is an interesting quote, but what does it mean? This is true for everybody, including cats and dogs. It sounds like fatalism-- my actions are the result of my past history. A strange quote from someone associated with the exitentialist movement. Why not try thinking outside the box? Anyway, who cares what Ricouer meant? I can interpretet this to suit myself as long as I am coherent and comprehensive.
Mr. Cutter was right to run off to the mountains. In this class riven world where profits come before people this was the action that suits. The thinking of Paul Ricoeur cannot lead to the liberation of humanity from the bestial reality of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. We will have to evaluate him again when we live in a classless society. R.I.P.
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
BYZANTINE PHILOSOPHY
BOOK REVIEW: BYZANTINE PHILOSOPHY by Basil Tatakis
Reviewed by Thomas Riggins
This book is one of a kind. Tatakis published it in French in 1949 and it had to wait until 2003 before an English edition appeared. The wait was worth it. This is the only book in English that covers the development of the history of philosophy and its intersection with Christianity during the entire course of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire from the fall of Rome and the Western Empire to its own fall in 1453 A.D.
Americans and Western Europeans are familiar with our local history-- Rome falls, then the Middle Ages dominated by Latin Christianity (Catholicism), the Renaissance, Reformation, and modern times.
Our way of looking at politics and religion was born out of this sequence. Marxism, is in fact, the logical outgrowth of just this history. It is sometimes difficult to understand other types of Marxisms, i.e., I mean those that have developed in the non-Western European context. Think of “Marxism with Chinese characteristics” or “the Juche Principle.”
What we learn from Tatakis’ book is that a different Christianity (Eastern Orthodox) and a different philosophical development was taking place in the Greek speaking half of the Mediterranean world throughout the entire period we in the West associate with our Middle Ages. The eastern world, dominated by Constantinople (the second Rome), retained its high level of civilization to the end. Its culture forms the background of Russia and other East European cultures.
If we want to understand Soviet Marxism we may have to look at it through the lenses of Byzantine philosophy rather than just assimilating it to the Western tradition. Even if this turns out not to be the case, this book is still a good read and opens up a world most of us have missed out on with our parochial education.
Tatakis seems not to have a secular outlook, but this rarely intrudes in his history. Early in the book we can see the coming fight between philosophy and religion (Christianity) – that is, between reason and faith. Two great schools of early Christianity were duking it out in the first couple of centuries of the Christian era – one in the great city of Alexandria, the other in Antioch. Alexandria stood for mysticism and a dogma “inaccessible to human reasoning” while Antioch stood for a non-mystical analysis of religious texts just as one “would scrutinize any human text, thus,” Tatakis says, “the reader falls into the trap of scientific rationalism.” Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that to happen! Antioch lost this fight – the Byzantines remained mystical by and large. (Note: Byzantium was the name of the little town upon which Constantinople was built so the Eastern Romans are called, by us, “Byzantines” – they called themselves “Romans”).
In the chapter on the sixth and seventh centuries we come across a bad attitude developing in Christianity that we can see is still with us. This is that “revelation” is better than our human type of “observational knowledge” and therefore “every advance in human thought” is viewed “as promoted by the devil.” Technology was OK (needed for warfare) but science as a way of explaining the world was neglected.
Nevertheless, there were some philosophers who tried to carry on the classical tradition of rational thought while being Christian at the same time. John Philoponos is especially important as his works on Aristotle, along with Aristotle, were translated into Syrian (and later into Arabic) and he was “an important agent in the formation of Syrian-Arabian philosophy.” We all know that the Arabs had a great and flowering civilization while we in the West were flea ridden barbarians – but they got it from (and added to it) the Greeks of the eastern Empire.
The next chapter covers the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. A new attitude to government developed – called “Caesaropapism” – that is, the emperor, not the pope (or in this case the Patriarch) runs the show. This reversed a 300 year tradition initiated by the thinker Themistios who taught that “virtue and piety cannot be coerced”. He convinced the emperor Valens of this and Valens allowed “everyone the freedom of choosing whatever religion he liked.” The good old days
Caesaropapism was eventually defeated by the Church. A work called “The Epanagogy” was adopted (ninth century) “which stated that the emperor, as the executor of the law, becomes the common bond for all the subjects and distributes rewards to all with perfect objectivity and according to their merits. In the Patriarch [of Constantinople], the image of the living Jesus [the Pope wouldn’t like this], being that he is committed in a profound sense to truth in acts and speech, resides the right of interpretation.”
In later times the Russians adopted this work and “it became the standard from which [they] regulated their political and ecclesiastical life.” Substitute “the party” for “the emperor” and “General Secretary” for “Patriarch” and “Marxism-Leninism” for “Jesus” and maybe we can see the cultural background upon which Soviet Marxism was built-- maybe.
Since the emperor and the Patriarch tell us all that we need to know and do (which self love should make us want to accept) this leads “to the responsibility of not allowing heretics to prevent one’s salvation.” The defenders of the faith are noted for “fanaticism and inflexibility.”
We should note that Byzantine philosophers in the eighth century, by concentrating on the study of the classical Greeks and their culture, laid the foundations for what would become the Renaissance in Italy. There was always contact between the Latin West and Greek East and westerners were always coming to study at the great schools and universities in Constantinople. The East was always ahead of the West, however.
In the chapter on the eleventh and twelfth centuries we meet Michael Psellos (1018-1096) who wrote about the philosophy of Plato and became “the promoter of philosophical movement in Byzantium, an initiative that continued from the 11th through the 15th century and was disseminated by Plethon and Bessarion to the Italy of the Renaissance and then to the rest of Western Europe.” Tatakis ends this chapter by saying, “it is not enough to say that in the 11th and 12th centuries speculative thought in the Latin West runs on the same track as it did in Byzantium. We must acknowledge that in all of the essential points of this intellectual movement, Byzantium led the way.”
We will end this review with the chapter on the last three centuries with some comments about George Gemistos Plethon (c.1360-1450) who came to live in Italy. Plethon was very advanced and definitely put philosophy in the first place ahead of religion. In “his most important work, The Laws,... [he says] philosophical thinking... reveals the naked truth to the spirit that has been liberated from dogmatism and compels the person, every person, to accept it ‘with one accord and with the same spirit.’ The position of the enlightenment philosophers would not be very different.”
We should feel some solidarity with Plethon even 550 years on as, Tatakis says, he believed “happiness emanates from the organization of the state” and in his memoirs, he “emerges... as the forerunner and anticipator of many socialist and other modern concepts.”
Does this sound like “From each according to his abilities to each according to his work”:
I mean his view that “the right to wealth is proportional to the services each person renders, a principle that secures social justice and elevates the value of labor.”
I certainly hope we won’t have to wait another 550 years to see this come about!
BYZANTINE PHILOSOPHY
by Basil Tatakis
translated by Nicholas J. Moutafakis
Hackett Publishing Co., 2003. 424pp.
Reviewed by Thomas Riggins
This book is one of a kind. Tatakis published it in French in 1949 and it had to wait until 2003 before an English edition appeared. The wait was worth it. This is the only book in English that covers the development of the history of philosophy and its intersection with Christianity during the entire course of the history of the Eastern Roman Empire from the fall of Rome and the Western Empire to its own fall in 1453 A.D.
Americans and Western Europeans are familiar with our local history-- Rome falls, then the Middle Ages dominated by Latin Christianity (Catholicism), the Renaissance, Reformation, and modern times.
Our way of looking at politics and religion was born out of this sequence. Marxism, is in fact, the logical outgrowth of just this history. It is sometimes difficult to understand other types of Marxisms, i.e., I mean those that have developed in the non-Western European context. Think of “Marxism with Chinese characteristics” or “the Juche Principle.”
What we learn from Tatakis’ book is that a different Christianity (Eastern Orthodox) and a different philosophical development was taking place in the Greek speaking half of the Mediterranean world throughout the entire period we in the West associate with our Middle Ages. The eastern world, dominated by Constantinople (the second Rome), retained its high level of civilization to the end. Its culture forms the background of Russia and other East European cultures.
If we want to understand Soviet Marxism we may have to look at it through the lenses of Byzantine philosophy rather than just assimilating it to the Western tradition. Even if this turns out not to be the case, this book is still a good read and opens up a world most of us have missed out on with our parochial education.
Tatakis seems not to have a secular outlook, but this rarely intrudes in his history. Early in the book we can see the coming fight between philosophy and religion (Christianity) – that is, between reason and faith. Two great schools of early Christianity were duking it out in the first couple of centuries of the Christian era – one in the great city of Alexandria, the other in Antioch. Alexandria stood for mysticism and a dogma “inaccessible to human reasoning” while Antioch stood for a non-mystical analysis of religious texts just as one “would scrutinize any human text, thus,” Tatakis says, “the reader falls into the trap of scientific rationalism.” Well, we certainly wouldn’t want that to happen! Antioch lost this fight – the Byzantines remained mystical by and large. (Note: Byzantium was the name of the little town upon which Constantinople was built so the Eastern Romans are called, by us, “Byzantines” – they called themselves “Romans”).
In the chapter on the sixth and seventh centuries we come across a bad attitude developing in Christianity that we can see is still with us. This is that “revelation” is better than our human type of “observational knowledge” and therefore “every advance in human thought” is viewed “as promoted by the devil.” Technology was OK (needed for warfare) but science as a way of explaining the world was neglected.
Nevertheless, there were some philosophers who tried to carry on the classical tradition of rational thought while being Christian at the same time. John Philoponos is especially important as his works on Aristotle, along with Aristotle, were translated into Syrian (and later into Arabic) and he was “an important agent in the formation of Syrian-Arabian philosophy.” We all know that the Arabs had a great and flowering civilization while we in the West were flea ridden barbarians – but they got it from (and added to it) the Greeks of the eastern Empire.
The next chapter covers the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. A new attitude to government developed – called “Caesaropapism” – that is, the emperor, not the pope (or in this case the Patriarch) runs the show. This reversed a 300 year tradition initiated by the thinker Themistios who taught that “virtue and piety cannot be coerced”. He convinced the emperor Valens of this and Valens allowed “everyone the freedom of choosing whatever religion he liked.” The good old days
Caesaropapism was eventually defeated by the Church. A work called “The Epanagogy” was adopted (ninth century) “which stated that the emperor, as the executor of the law, becomes the common bond for all the subjects and distributes rewards to all with perfect objectivity and according to their merits. In the Patriarch [of Constantinople], the image of the living Jesus [the Pope wouldn’t like this], being that he is committed in a profound sense to truth in acts and speech, resides the right of interpretation.”
In later times the Russians adopted this work and “it became the standard from which [they] regulated their political and ecclesiastical life.” Substitute “the party” for “the emperor” and “General Secretary” for “Patriarch” and “Marxism-Leninism” for “Jesus” and maybe we can see the cultural background upon which Soviet Marxism was built-- maybe.
Since the emperor and the Patriarch tell us all that we need to know and do (which self love should make us want to accept) this leads “to the responsibility of not allowing heretics to prevent one’s salvation.” The defenders of the faith are noted for “fanaticism and inflexibility.”
We should note that Byzantine philosophers in the eighth century, by concentrating on the study of the classical Greeks and their culture, laid the foundations for what would become the Renaissance in Italy. There was always contact between the Latin West and Greek East and westerners were always coming to study at the great schools and universities in Constantinople. The East was always ahead of the West, however.
In the chapter on the eleventh and twelfth centuries we meet Michael Psellos (1018-1096) who wrote about the philosophy of Plato and became “the promoter of philosophical movement in Byzantium, an initiative that continued from the 11th through the 15th century and was disseminated by Plethon and Bessarion to the Italy of the Renaissance and then to the rest of Western Europe.” Tatakis ends this chapter by saying, “it is not enough to say that in the 11th and 12th centuries speculative thought in the Latin West runs on the same track as it did in Byzantium. We must acknowledge that in all of the essential points of this intellectual movement, Byzantium led the way.”
We will end this review with the chapter on the last three centuries with some comments about George Gemistos Plethon (c.1360-1450) who came to live in Italy. Plethon was very advanced and definitely put philosophy in the first place ahead of religion. In “his most important work, The Laws,... [he says] philosophical thinking... reveals the naked truth to the spirit that has been liberated from dogmatism and compels the person, every person, to accept it ‘with one accord and with the same spirit.’ The position of the enlightenment philosophers would not be very different.”
We should feel some solidarity with Plethon even 550 years on as, Tatakis says, he believed “happiness emanates from the organization of the state” and in his memoirs, he “emerges... as the forerunner and anticipator of many socialist and other modern concepts.”
Does this sound like “From each according to his abilities to each according to his work”:
I mean his view that “the right to wealth is proportional to the services each person renders, a principle that secures social justice and elevates the value of labor.”
I certainly hope we won’t have to wait another 550 years to see this come about!
BYZANTINE PHILOSOPHY
by Basil Tatakis
translated by Nicholas J. Moutafakis
Hackett Publishing Co., 2003. 424pp.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
POPE BENEDICT XVI'S PERPLEXING LOGIC
Pope Benedict XVI’s Perplexing Logic [Political Affairs Archives}
By Thomas Riggins
What can progressives expect from the new pope? Not much I’m afraid. The New York Times ran an article on Sunday (4/24/05), "Turbulence on Campus in 60’s Hardened Views of Future Pope," which gives those of us who are not seasoned Vatican watchers some glimpse of how the former head of the Inquisition (previous name for the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith) thinks.
The article reveals some perplexing logical jumps in the reasoning of the pope while he was still just Joseph Ratzinger. He was supposedly a moderate liberal until he encountered feisty student protesters at Tubingin University.
We know what caused the protests. Students wanted more democratic control of the campus, plus they were against the Vietnam War and US bases in Germany. In other words they were demanding peace and freedom. This reminded Ratzinger (a former member of the Hitler Youth) of the Nazis despite the fact that "peace and freedom" was not a slogan usually associated with Hitler and the Nazis.
He didn’t really like the Nazis the article says. He grew up in Bavaria, a very Catholic area in Germany and also home to the Nazi Party. These were the good old days when being a German Catholic and anti-Semetic were almost coterminous. Having seen the local Catholic population going nuts for Hitler he "became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism." Well, Catholic moral teachings had been around in Bavaria for a long time – so where did all these Nazis come from? Catholic moral teachings, and Protestant as well, did not seem to be much of a bulwark.
Nevertheless, Ratzinger’s "deep reading" of history, philosophy and theology allowed him to connect student peaceniks with the Nazis. He decided the way to fight the student movement that he saw as "an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism" (which he "loathed") was to insist upon "unquestioned obedience" to Rome (i.e., the Pope). That’s right folks – the way to fight Nazi totalitarianism was with Papal totalitarianism. It seems to me that the Nazis also had a leader what advocated "unquestioned obedience." You might think that the young Ratzinger, with all his deep reading, would have concluded that "unquestioned obedience" was probably not a good idea, but you would be wrong.
He was tipped off that there were big problems in the Church by his experiences in Vatican Two (the council called by John XXIII in the 60’s). The article quotes his autobiography: "Very clearly, resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive." Well, he was certainly right about that!
He became "deeply troubled" by "the idea of an ecclesiastical sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determined what it wants to understand by church." What a shocking notion. The people must be protected from itself by "unquestioning obedience" to the leader. I wonder where he got those ideas from?
To top off what he saw at Vatican Two, he then had to put up with those over zealous student demonstrations on his college campus.
"Marxist revolution kindled the whole university with its fervor, shaking it to its very foundations." Good! That just what it needed. Nevertheless, the notion that a Marxist "revolution" had broken out in Tubingen is a bit of a stretch. He should have to moved to Paris in ‘68!
Ratzinger fled to Regensburg University where he was remembered by Gustav Obermair, the university president: "People of his age and background [the Hitler youth?] panicked at the thought that a new, radical, dictatorial and totalitarian regime might come out of the ‘68 uprising. Of course, this was a complete misreading of the ‘68 movement. But that is what they thought."
It doesn’t bode well for the Church that its new leader has a tendency to "completely misread" what is going on about him in society. His ideas are said to have been shaped by St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, and Plato. I don’t think Plato should be blamed for Ratzinger’s ideas. Plato subjected all ideas to the test of argument and debate, maintaining that you had to follow the argument wherever it led. The idea of "unquestioning obedience" would have been anathema to him.
Here is a great argument from Ratzinger – given at an anti-abortion meeting in 1986. "It is force that establishes right and thus, inadvertently for the many, the very bases of any authentic democracy are threatened." If you think this sounds like mumbo jumbo you are correct. In the 1985 "Ratzinger Report" the good cardinal "condemned abortion, contraception, homosexual relations, sex without marriage, ‘radical feminism’ and transsexuality." A real party pooper!
But what are his "reasons." He condemns the above because those ideas and practices, according to him, come about when people unlink sex from motherhood and marriage. This leads to activities that "uncouples man from nature." It seems homosexuality is not natural, nor is sex without marriage, but life long celibacy is ok.
Vaticanistas say he is open-minded: "He is willing to go with the best idea." But this can not be true. "Going with the best idea" is not compatible with "unquestioning obedience." What should be said is that he supports instrumentally those ideas, which further his preconceived prejudices and beliefs.
Ratzinger is quoted as having said, "I have to obey the pope. The pope told me that it is my biggest religious obligation not to have my own opinions." How anyone can have a "deep" understanding of philosophy and say such things is incomprehensible. Now that he is Benedict XVI will he demand that Catholics not have their own opinions? Anyway, how is it even possible not to have your own opinions?
By Thomas Riggins
What can progressives expect from the new pope? Not much I’m afraid. The New York Times ran an article on Sunday (4/24/05), "Turbulence on Campus in 60’s Hardened Views of Future Pope," which gives those of us who are not seasoned Vatican watchers some glimpse of how the former head of the Inquisition (previous name for the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith) thinks.
The article reveals some perplexing logical jumps in the reasoning of the pope while he was still just Joseph Ratzinger. He was supposedly a moderate liberal until he encountered feisty student protesters at Tubingin University.
We know what caused the protests. Students wanted more democratic control of the campus, plus they were against the Vietnam War and US bases in Germany. In other words they were demanding peace and freedom. This reminded Ratzinger (a former member of the Hitler Youth) of the Nazis despite the fact that "peace and freedom" was not a slogan usually associated with Hitler and the Nazis.
He didn’t really like the Nazis the article says. He grew up in Bavaria, a very Catholic area in Germany and also home to the Nazi Party. These were the good old days when being a German Catholic and anti-Semetic were almost coterminous. Having seen the local Catholic population going nuts for Hitler he "became convinced that the moral authority based in Catholic teachings was the sole reliable bulwark against human barbarism." Well, Catholic moral teachings had been around in Bavaria for a long time – so where did all these Nazis come from? Catholic moral teachings, and Protestant as well, did not seem to be much of a bulwark.
Nevertheless, Ratzinger’s "deep reading" of history, philosophy and theology allowed him to connect student peaceniks with the Nazis. He decided the way to fight the student movement that he saw as "an echo of the Nazi totalitarianism" (which he "loathed") was to insist upon "unquestioned obedience" to Rome (i.e., the Pope). That’s right folks – the way to fight Nazi totalitarianism was with Papal totalitarianism. It seems to me that the Nazis also had a leader what advocated "unquestioned obedience." You might think that the young Ratzinger, with all his deep reading, would have concluded that "unquestioned obedience" was probably not a good idea, but you would be wrong.
He was tipped off that there were big problems in the Church by his experiences in Vatican Two (the council called by John XXIII in the 60’s). The article quotes his autobiography: "Very clearly, resentment was growing against Rome and against the Curia, which appeared to be the real enemy of everything that was new and progressive." Well, he was certainly right about that!
He became "deeply troubled" by "the idea of an ecclesiastical sovereignty of the people in which the people itself determined what it wants to understand by church." What a shocking notion. The people must be protected from itself by "unquestioning obedience" to the leader. I wonder where he got those ideas from?
To top off what he saw at Vatican Two, he then had to put up with those over zealous student demonstrations on his college campus.
"Marxist revolution kindled the whole university with its fervor, shaking it to its very foundations." Good! That just what it needed. Nevertheless, the notion that a Marxist "revolution" had broken out in Tubingen is a bit of a stretch. He should have to moved to Paris in ‘68!
Ratzinger fled to Regensburg University where he was remembered by Gustav Obermair, the university president: "People of his age and background [the Hitler youth?] panicked at the thought that a new, radical, dictatorial and totalitarian regime might come out of the ‘68 uprising. Of course, this was a complete misreading of the ‘68 movement. But that is what they thought."
It doesn’t bode well for the Church that its new leader has a tendency to "completely misread" what is going on about him in society. His ideas are said to have been shaped by St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, and Plato. I don’t think Plato should be blamed for Ratzinger’s ideas. Plato subjected all ideas to the test of argument and debate, maintaining that you had to follow the argument wherever it led. The idea of "unquestioning obedience" would have been anathema to him.
Here is a great argument from Ratzinger – given at an anti-abortion meeting in 1986. "It is force that establishes right and thus, inadvertently for the many, the very bases of any authentic democracy are threatened." If you think this sounds like mumbo jumbo you are correct. In the 1985 "Ratzinger Report" the good cardinal "condemned abortion, contraception, homosexual relations, sex without marriage, ‘radical feminism’ and transsexuality." A real party pooper!
But what are his "reasons." He condemns the above because those ideas and practices, according to him, come about when people unlink sex from motherhood and marriage. This leads to activities that "uncouples man from nature." It seems homosexuality is not natural, nor is sex without marriage, but life long celibacy is ok.
Vaticanistas say he is open-minded: "He is willing to go with the best idea." But this can not be true. "Going with the best idea" is not compatible with "unquestioning obedience." What should be said is that he supports instrumentally those ideas, which further his preconceived prejudices and beliefs.
Ratzinger is quoted as having said, "I have to obey the pope. The pope told me that it is my biggest religious obligation not to have my own opinions." How anyone can have a "deep" understanding of philosophy and say such things is incomprehensible. Now that he is Benedict XVI will he demand that Catholics not have their own opinions? Anyway, how is it even possible not to have your own opinions?
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