Charles Murray on Christianity's Role in Forming the Modern West

Charles Murray

Human Accomplishment

(Image from Amazon.com)

I'm late coming to this book by Charles Murray, who is better known for more controversial views on intelligence, but it offers a thought-provoking thesis about the role of Christianity in forming the modern West:

This brings us to [the] role of Christianity in modern Europe. Mine is far from an original conclusion, but in recent decades it has not been fashionable, so I should state the argument explicitly: The Greeks laid the foundation, but it was the transmutation of that foundation by Christianity that gave modern Europe its impetus and differentiated European accomplishment from that of all other cultures around the world.

Christianity did not bestow that impetus immediately. It took more that a thousand years. Through its early centuries, Christianity as practiced was not individualistic. On the contrary, early Christianity was absorbed in the collective Christian community to which individuals routinely subordinated their own interests. It was Christian theology itself that was potentially revolutionary, teaching that all human beings are invited into a personal relationship with God, and that all individuals are equal in God's sight regardless of their earthly station. Furthermore, eternal salvation is not reserved for those who renounce the world but is available to all who believe and act accordingly. It was a theology that empowered the individual acting as an individual as no other philosophy or religion had ever done before.

The potentially revolutionary message was realized more completely in one part of Christendom, the Catholic West, than in the Orthodox East. The crucial difference was that Roman Catholicism developed a philosophical and artistic humanism typified, and to a great degree engendered, by Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274). Aquinas made the case, eventually adopted by the Church, that human intelligence is a gift from God, and that to apply human intelligence to understanding the world is not an affront to God but is pleasing to him. Aquinas taught that human autonomy is also a gift from God, and that the only way in which humans can realize the relationship with God that God intends is by exercising that autonomy. Aquinas taught that faith and reason are not in opposition, but complementary.

In sum, Aquinas grafted a humanistic strain onto Christianity that joined an inspirational message of God's love and his promise of immortality with an injunction to serve God by using all of one's human capacities of intellect and will -- and to have a good time doing it. (Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, HarperCollins, 2003, pages 402-3)

In other words, minus Christianity, there might have been no 'modern' world of science and technology, nor of other great accomplishments, a thesis that indeed "has not been fashionable" lately, as Murray notes, and is thus almost as controversial as his views on intelligence.

One might point out that by Murray's own words, "a humanistic strain" external to Christianity was just as necessary in the formation of our modern world, but I take it that without the "inspirational message of God's love and his promise of immortality" provided by Christianity, then the "injunction to serve God by using all of one's human capacities of intellect and will" might not have been as readily obeyed.

This deserves further analysis, but I'm currently under the weather and thus lack the energy to follow through.

Superbia and Vanagloria in Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Character Map

to

Jane Austen's

Pride and Prejudice

Click Map to Enlarge

(Image from Wikipedia)

A more developed character map than the one above would need to be dynamic to illustrate the changing relationships as, for example, Elizabeth Bennet's dislike and resentment toward Darcy turn to gratitude and love. Such a map would also need a summary of the various characters' personal traits, such as Darcy's excessive pride (and slight shading of vanity?) -- but also reveal the humbling of that pride by Elizabeth.

With respect to these character traits, I've used the Latin terms superbia and vanagloria for "pride" and "vanity" in today's blog heading because I want to recall that these two categories of vice have a long intellectual history in Christian thought. These were originally two of the eight evil thoughts distinguished by the fourth century monk Evagrius Ponticus in his treatise De octo spiritibus malitiae (The Eight Spirits of Wickedness, original Greek: Περὶ τῶν οκτῶ πνευμάτων τῆς πονηρίας). These eight evil thoughts eventually developed into the seven deadly sins, partly due to Pope Gregory I (aka Gregory the Great), who joined superbia and vanagloria into the single sin of pride in the late sixth century. The thirteenth-century Thomas Aquinas follows Gregory I in considering pride the root of all vices, but he separates vanity from pride, listing vanity as one of the seven deadly sins and arguing that pride lies at the root of each of the seven. Most lists of the seven that I've seen in English, however, contain pride rather than vanity (vanity being considered an aspect of pride).

I'm not sure that Jane Austen would have been aware of these specific developments in the history of Christian thought, given her lack of a formal education, but she did read widely and was concerned to distinguish pride from vanity even while recognizing their similarity. In chapter 5 of Pride and Prejudice, the somewhat priggish Mary Bennet makes a useful distinction:

"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us."

Mary's observations are ignored, but Jane Austen uses them cleverly to raise some issue and make some distinctions. These two themes of "pride" and "vanity" are returned to again later in the story, in chaper 11, when Elizabeth tells Darcy that she finds follies, nonsense, whims, and inconsistencies diverting and enjoys laughing at them whenever possible, adding, "But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without."

"Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule."

"Such as vanity and pride."

"Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride -- where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation."

Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.

Presumably, she smiles because she finds either folly, nonsense, whim, or inconsistency in Darcy's statement, probably the fourth item in this series, for Darcy's assurance that he has his pride "under good regulation" surely strikes her as manifestly inconsistent with his regular display of pride, as well as being a rather proud thing to say in any case.

Moreover, Darcy's pride is not well regulated by his superior mind. It only comes under better regulation through his love for Elizabeth, for rather than falling into a profound, bitter resentment that would merely serve to increase his injured pride upon being rejected by her, he writes her a letter that closes with an "adieu [that] is charity itself" and is taught by his love to feel the opposite of resentment, a sense of gratitude toward her for a moral lesson well learned, as he informs her himself in chapter 58:

What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

And, interestingly, he admits in that same address and shortly thereafter to having had both of the faults "pride" and "vanity." He then goes on to say that upon their later chance encounter at his estate, he had striven by every civility in his power to show her that he "was not so mean as to resent the past," by which he meant her past refusal of his first marriage proposal.

Austen thus seems keen to encourage the cultivation of virtues, so I am puzzled by her nephew's remark in his biography of her that her novels "certainly were not written to . . . inculcate any particular moral . . . except indeed the great moral . . . namely, the superiority of high over low principles, and of greatness over littleness of mind" (Austen-Leigh, Memoir, page 153). I don't dispute that she was doing the latter, but I think that she was doing the former as well, i.e., inculcating particular moral virtues.

Parmenides' Fallacy: Reply

Philip C. Bobbitt

(Image from UT Austin)

Regular readers -- or anybody who has read at least yesterday's blog entry -- will recall that I posed a question about Professor Philip Bobbitt's reference to Parmenides' Fallacy, which "compares present states of affairs not with each other . . . but with the past" (Bobbitt, Terror and Consent, pp. 208). Here's a little reminder:

My sole reason for today's blog entry is to pose a simple question:

Who first identified this fallacy as "Parmenides' Fallacy" or as the "Parmenidean Fallacy"?

I've looked around a bit on the internet but haven't found a source identifying the origin of either "Parmenides' Fallacy" or "Parmenidean Fallacy."

I didn't receive many response. If I recall (counting on my fingers . . .), there were . . . uh, one of them. An old Ozark friend, Jeanie Oliver, suggested:

why don't you email him and ask him (Phillip Bobbitt)

Since Jeanie didn't end that sentence with a question mark, I took it as an imperative and did as she had suggested, writing to Philip Bobbitt and posing my query directly to him:

Dear Professor Bobbitt,

I'm sorry to bother you, but I have a simple query concerning the fallacy that you describe in your recent book, Terror and Consent:

"Who first identified this fallacy as 'Parmenides' Fallacy' or as the 'Parmenidean Fallacy'?"

I blogged this query but have received no answer . . . aside from a suggestion that I email you:

"Parmenides' Fallacy: Query"

This isn't a very important query, so ignore it if you have no time or interest.

At any rate, I'm learning a great deal from your book.

Best Regards,

Jeffery Hodges

To my surprise, I received within an hour a reply from Professor Bobbitt answering my query as to who first identified this error in thinking as the fallacy of Parmenides:

Actually, I did. See page 10, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (2002) and see "Today's War is Against Tomorrow's Iraq", New York Times, March 10, 2003, at A19.

It was perhaps unfair to use 'Parmenides' to name this Fallacy -- after all he isn't guilty of it, but I thought the name was sufficiently allusive to be helpful.

Thank you for asking. I hope you are enjoying the book and will let me know what you think of it.

Yours,

Philip Bobbitt

That's a useful piece of information, to know that Professor Bobbitt coined the expression "Parmenides' Fallacy." To be frank, I had begun to suspect as much, for all of the online references -- of which there were not very many -- were extraordinarily recent.

Actually, I even found a reference to the "Parmenidean Fallacy" that differs from Professor Bobbitt's coinage and might signify a distinct unit of value having no clear exchange rate with Professor Bobbit's coin (but rather than try to fix an exchange rate, I'll leave that decision up to the marketplace of other people's better ideas):

Thomas Aquinas delivers a proof for the existence of God in which he first shows that there is something that necessarily exists, and then goes on to show that among the things that necessarily exist there must be something that derives its own necessity, and this "all men speak of as God." The main objection to Aquinas’ argument is that it contains a Parmenidean fallacy of substantial change. To counter this objection, we must salvage Aquinas' conclusion by reconciling parts of his argument with a natural philosophy of qualitative change. (David Siegel, "Aquinas' Argument for Necessary Existence," January 24, 2007)

This passage comes from David Siegel, an obviously bright young man studying computer science and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. By "Parmenidean fallacy," Siegel seems to mean a fallacy that Parmenides himself identified, for Siegel nods to "Parmenides' legacy by denying substantial change," which in the context appears to mean that Parmenides considered an appeal to "substantial change" (i.e., change in substance) to be a fallacy of thought.

Interesting.

Well, I've learned two things since yesterday, and these two bright spots of light are now circling each other like binary stars in the darkness of my ignorance, so I'll leave them to their brilliant dance of mutual attraction and go about my night, perceptively more enlightened.

Aquinas: Careless Curiosity

The Slothful Punished in Hell

(Nicolas le Rouge, Le grant kalendrier des Bergiers, 1496)

In a somewhat obscure passage of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (but is anything not obscure in that tome!), Hans Blumenberg observes -- on Thomas Aquinas discussing sloth (acedia) as a sin and a vice -- that for Aquinas, sloth leads both to indolence and to curiosity:

The acedia [indifference, apathy] that is dealt with here accomodates itself better to the syndrome of the 'postparadisaic' situation. Thomas uses this cardinal vice to epitomize the despondency and indolence of the man who has deviated from his vocation, who conceals from himself in this pure melancholy the seriousness of the cura, actio, and labor [care, action, and labor] that are his task. Acedia is a form of sadness that surrenders itself to its own heaviness and thereby turns away from the goal of its existence, indeed, from all purposeful behavior and 'exertion' whatever (fuga finis [flight from purpose]). Curiositas is only one of the forms that this purposelessness takes. Here lies the connection with its definition as inconsistency, as premature failure with respect to the demands of a reality that no longer holds itself open to man in immediate self-givenness. (Blumenberg, Legitimacy, page 334)

By the "postparadisiac" situation referred to here, Blumenberg means the "fallenness" of the world that renders its no longer teleologically fitted to mankind's senses and reason. Recall that Augustine used this reasoning to cast suspicion upon curiosity for its tendency to focus one's attention upon the misleading things of this world and away from one's soul. Unlike Augustine, however, Aquinas is strongly Aristotelian and therefore more interested in the empirical things of this world. One must still seek God's purposes in this cosmos, of course, but this takes focused, purposeful effort. Lack of effort, or purposelessness, results from sloth and manifests itself in carelessness, inactivity, and inexertion on the one hand and in curiosity on the other.

We may find ourselves surprised to read that the vice of sloth leads to the vice of curiosity, since that seems a kind of activity, but that is what Aquinas says in Summa Theologica II. 2, Question 35, Article 4. In Objection 3, Aquinas notes that:

[Isidore of Seville] states that from sloth seven things arise, viz. "idleness, drowsiness, uneasiness of the mind, restlessness of the body, instability, loquacity, curiosity." (Summa Theologica II. 2, q. 35, a. 4, obj. 3)

In his Reply to Objection 3, Aquinas notes that Pope Gregory I ("the Great") specifies some of the effects of sloth as belonging to the "wandering of the mind after unlawful things," concerning which Aquinas observes:

This tendency to wander, if it reside in the mind itself that is desirous of rushing after various things without rhyme or reason, is called "uneasiness of the mind," but if it pertains to the imaginative power, it is called "curiosity"; if it affect the speech it is called "loquacity"; and in so far as it affects a body that changes place, it is called "restlessness of the body," when, to wit, a man shows the unsteadiness of his mind, by the inordinate movements of members of his body; while if it causes the body to move from one place to another, it is called "instability"; or "instability" may denote changeableness of purpose. (Summa Theologica II. 2, q. 35, a. 4, rep. obj. 3)

Thus does sloth lead to action, but action without purpose, lazy, an idleness in activity, and since "idleness is opposed to carefulness" (Summa Theologica II. 2, q. 35, a. 2, obj. 3), hence to carelessness.

Hence the irony -- given the etymological link between care (cura) and curiosity (from curiosus, meaning "careful") -- of a careless curiosity.

Augustine: "the lust of the eyes"

Beelzebub

Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I quoted a passage from Hans Blumenberg's Legitimacy of the Modern Age on book 10, chapter 35 of Augustine's Confessions. Let's take a look at some 'curious' reasoning that Augustine has to say there.

Chapter 35 of book 10 presents Augustine's reasoning on how "the lust of the eyes" stimulates curiosity. Augustine is drawing upon 1 John 2:15-16, and I presume that he's using some edition of the Latin Vulgate:

15 nolite diligere mundum neque ea quae in mundo sunt si quis diligit mundum non est caritas Patris in eo 16 quoniam omne quod est in mundo concupiscentia carnis et concupiscentia oculorum est et superbia vitae quae non est ex Patre sed ex mundo est

Since I'm partial to the King James Version, I'll provide that one here even though it's based not on the Vulgate but on the so-called 'received text', the Greek text used by those who translated the King James Version:

15 Love not the world, neither the things [that are] in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

The expression "the lust of the eyes" is close enough to the Latin "concupiscentia oculorum," which is precisely what Augustine is using in book 10, chapter 35 of his Confessions, as we find in paragraph 54:

10.35.54 (commentary on 10.35.54)

huc accedit alia forma temptationis multiplicius periculosa. praeter enim concupiscentiam carnis, quae inest in delectatione omnium sensuum et voluptatum, cui servientes depereunt qui longe se faciunt a te, inest animae per eosdem sensus corporis quaedam non se oblectandi in carne, sed experiendi per carnem vana et curiosa cupiditas nomine cognitionis et scientiae palliata. quae quoniam in appetitu noscendi est, oculi autem sunt ad noscendum in sensibus principes, concupiscentia oculorum eloquio divino appellata est. ad oculos enim proprie videre pertinet, utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus, cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus. neque enim dicimus, 'audi quid rutilet,' aut, 'olefac quam niteat,' aut, 'gusta quam splendeat,' aut, 'palpa quam fulgeat': videri enim dicuntur haec omnia. dicimus autem non solum, 'vide quid luceat,' quod soli oculi sentire possunt, sed etiam, 'vide quid sonet,' 'vide quid oleat,' 'vide quid sapiat,' 'vide quam durum sit.' ideoque generalis experientia sensuum concupiscentia (sicut dictum est) oculorum vocatur, quia videndi officium, in quo primatum oculi tenent, etiam ceteri sensus sibi de similitudine usurpant, cum aliquid cognitionis explorant.

Here's the translation provided by the Catholic Encyclopedia website:

54. In addition to this there is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lies in the gratification of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who "are far from You perish," there pertains to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. This longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being the chief amongst the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine language, "the lust of the eyes." (1 John 2:16) For seeing belongs properly to the eyes; yet we apply this word to the other senses also, when we exercise them in the search after knowledge. For we do not say, Listen how it glows, smell how it glistens, taste how it shines, or feel how it flashes, since all these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, See how it shines, which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is. And thus the general experience of the senses, as was said before, is termed "the lust of the eyes," because the function of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the pre-eminence, the other senses by way of similitude take possession of, whensoever they seek out any knowledge.

Augustine rather persuasively shows the primacy of vision in our thinking by this above example, for his point is valid in both Latin and English (and doubtless other languages), for we do say "See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is," all of which does tend to demonstrate the "pre-eminence" of the eyes over the other sensory organs.

Having established this primacy of vision, Augustine goes on to show how the eyes lead us astray:

55. But by this is it more clearly discerned, when pleasure and when curiosity is pursued by the senses; for pleasure follows after objects that are beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savoury, soft; but curiosity, for experiment's sake, seeks the contrary of these,—not with a view of undergoing uneasiness, but from the passion of experimenting upon and knowing them. For what pleasure is there to see, in a lacerated corpse, that which makes you shudder? And yet if it lie near, we flock thither, to be made sad, and to turn pale. Even in sleep they fear lest they should see it. Just as if when awake any one compelled them to go and see it, or any report of its beauty had attracted them! Thus also is it with the other senses, which it were tedious to pursue. From this malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know. Hence, too, with that same end of perverted knowledge we consult magical arts. Hence, again, even in religion itself, is God tempted, when signs and wonders are eagerly asked of Him,—not desired for any saving end, but to make trial only.

With this passage, Augustine establishes that our curiosity is not just content with taking pleasure simply from contemplating objects of beauty but even seeks out the contrary of these, ugly objects that ought to repel one, which thereby demonstrates the sickness of our perverse curiosity.

There's a certain plausibility to Augustine's remarks on the "malady of curiosity" -- thereby rendering understandable why he expelled those curious interests from his heart (paragraph 56) -- but he applies his critique to all of curiosity's interests, even the seemingly innocuous, as his remarks in paragraph 57 show:

How is it, when sitting at home, a lizard catching flies, or a spider entangling them as they rush into her nets, oftentimes arrests me? Is the feeling of curiosity not the same because these are such tiny creatures? From them I proceed to praise You, the wonderful Creator and Disposer of all things; but it is not this that first attracts my attention.

Augustine confesses that what first attracts his attention are not simply the wonders exhibited in nature, the contemplation of which would lead to praise for the Creator, but even nature's minor dramas, which draw the attention of his eyes and attract his morbid curiosity, making him forgetful of God, as he goes on to remark:

[W]hen this heart of ours is made the receptacle of such things, and bears crowds of this abounding vanity, then are our prayers often interrupted and disturbed thereby; and while in Your presence we direct the voice of our heart to Your ears, this so great a matter is broken off by the influx of I know not what idle thoughts.

Among these idle thoughts are those to which his curiosity directs him, especially thoughts about the world and its curiosities. The world would seem not to lend itself to being the object of investigation -- though as we have seen in yesterday's post, Augustine does allow a place for learning useful knowledge -- for it is "so vast a wilderness, replete with snares and dangers" (paragraph 56), a place of temptation like the one in which Christ was tempted.

Augustine's critique of curiosity would leave little room for an open-ended scientific investigation of nature, for nature is not clearly a reasonable place but a trap set to catch any unwary person whose attention has been drawn away from God.

If this were Christianity's last word on the subject, then we wouldn't hear any claims today that modern science rests upon Christianity's belief in a rational God who has designed nature for our contemplation.

Fortunately, Christianity has some other words, such as those we've found in the voice of Aquinas, but Augustine casts a long shadow...

Hans Blumenberg: "The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity"

Sandro Botticelli, Augustine of Hippo

Studious, not Curious

(Image from Wikipedia)

Hans Blumenberg has a wonderful chapter in his Legitimacy of the Modern Age, titled "Curiosity Is Enrolled in the Catalog of Vices," which shows the significance of Augustine of Hippo in classifying "curiositas" as a vice.

As we saw yesterday, Aquinas accepted this classification but strove to justify inquiry as a virtue. Indeed, he opposes curiosity to studiousness in his Summa Theologica, for in the "Second Part of the Second Part: Question 166," Aquinas states in "Objection 2" that "studiousness is opposed to curiosity," a distinction that still receives serious attention today, as shown in an article by Alice Ramos, "A Secular Contract, A Sacred Calling" (pdf) for Pi Lambda Theta's journal educational HORIZONS (Volume 83, Number 4, Fall 2005).

Blumenberg situates Augustine's classification of curiosity as a vice within Augustine's turn away from Manichaean Gnosticism toward orthodox Christianity and argues that Augustine retained a Gnostic distrust in the cosmos as an intricate structure within which mankind can remain trapped. For the Gnostics, the trap was set by an ignorant demiurge (though in Manichaean Gnosis, this view is somewhat ameliorated, a point that Blumenberg apparently missed), whereas for Augustine's Christian theology, the problem lies rather in the fallenness of the cosmos, which can distract the curious man away from the proper attention to his salvation.

According to Blumenberg:

Curiositas is indeed a category applied in turning away from Gnosticism, but the world in which it can become a possible cardinal vice is no longer the cosmos that is open to man and symmetrically intelligible in all directions from the center but rather a sphere filled with Gnostic attributes in which man is [literally] 'eccentric' -- for nowhere in Augustine either does Stoic geocentrism play a role relevant to man's understanding of himself.

Augustine's world is not fulfilling but seductive, and curiositas is a 'temptation' (forma tentationis) in the double sense that to test oneself on and with what is resistant and uncommon (tentandi causa) is at the same time to be tempted (tentatio). In its extreme form this 'tempted attempt' of the appetite for experience and knowledge directs itself at God Himself, since even in religion there is hidden the attempt -- the 'experiment' with God -- to demand signs and miracles not as promises of salvation but merely to satisfy curiosity. In this attitude God is taken into service and made into a means to the enjoyment of purely worldly experience. This makes clear what it means when Augustine again and again insists in his thinking on a strict differentiation between enjoyment and usefulness, between frui and uti. He sees the basic character of the world in its utilitas [usefulness] as the instrumentality ad salutem [for salvation], whereas a fulfilled and fulfilling existential relation is only to be expected from the fruitio [enjoyment, delight] directed at God. The ordering principle of human life, which can be spelled out in the form of the ethical virtues, is fixed in the maxim that one should correctly distinguish between the usefulness and the enjoyment of things. At the same time there emerges a criterion for the positively evaluated attitude to which curiositas is contrasted: All theory is concerned with disclosing the instrumental relevance of the things in the world, the serviceability inherent in them. But this means that the Augustinian interpretation of knowledge of the world is no longer the 'pure' theory of Hellenistic philosophy.

Curiosity violates this ordering principle of use and enjoyment and betrays its content of disorder precisely by the fact that in its extreme and logical consequence (as Augustine defines it), it subjects even God to the criterion of utilitas, so as to be able to seek fruitio in the human self alone. (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, pages 312-313)

In short, curiosity as a vice overturns the established order of things by making God 'useful' for human beings 'enjoyment' of themselves and thereby distracting them from a proper concern with their salvation and entangling them in improper pursuit for frivolous knowledge of a world whose fallenness serves as a temptation to mankind's equally fallen mind.

Augustine is not the sole word on this subject, for we've already seen Aquinas put Augustine in his proper place. Moreover, the early Medival Christians were greatly concerned with knowledge and its transmission, as a recently published book promises to show:

No period in the intellectual history of North-Western Europe has been so formative as the early Middle Ages, when missionaries transferred the learning accumulated for centuries in the Mediterranean basin to recently founded centres of religious scholarship in the ever expanding Christian world. The aim of this scholarship focused, first and foremost, on a proper understanding of the Bible as God's Word and Nature as God's Creation. During this period the foundations of medieval learning were laid in the monasteries and schools by men from distant shores who considered it their calling to entrust this precious knowledge to future generations of indigenous scholars. In this process, Syrians ended up in England, Irishmen in Italy, and Anglo-Saxons in Frisia and Bavaria and thus helped build a common intellectual culture in Europe. Even though the memories of these missionaries were fed with vast amounts of reproducible knowledge far beyond the capacity of modern man, the most important means of storing and conveying knowledge was the written word stored in what was then modern technology: the parchment codex. The composition of these books reflect the extent and diversity of early medieval learning. Sometimes they contain a single work, but often enough they contain compilations of diverse material which at first sight shows little coherence to the modern reader, and rightly so. In a way such miscellanies are mini-libraries. Nevertheless, they are storehouses of wholesome learning in their own right; further study reveals a rationale in such collections that leads us to a monastic learning environment, in some cases even to the classroom. The present volume demonstrates how the study of texts and manuscripts combined opens up windows on the early medieval world of learning as represented by glossaries, proto-encyclopedias, biblical companions, hagiographical guides, didactic verse, or descriptions of the world in word and image. The essays demonstrate that scholars have too often concentrated on the study of single texts, but especially that the compilations of manuscripts and libraries reflect the kind of knowledge that was required of monks, ministers and missionaries for the contemplation, celebration and promulgation of the Christian message.

Such is the promise contained in the blurb for Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, a book of articles edited by R.H. Bremmer Jr. and K. Dekker as book 9 in the Mediaevalia Groningana New Series (Peeters Publishers).

Clearly, then, the early Medieval Christians, perhaps despite Augustine, were greatly 'curious' about the knowledge amassed over the centuries of the then fading Graeco-Roman world and were transmitting it to northwestern Europe through a process in which "Syrians ended up in England" -- though this sort of intellectual exchange was soon to be cut off by Islamic conquest of the Near East.

But this is enough heavy reading for today, and for those who wish to indulge their idle curiosity, feel free to visit this site to satisfy your ocular and aural desires both. For those who wish not to do so, consider this a test of your resolve and do not go there.

Christianity and Reason: The 'Vice' of Curiosity...

Saint Thomas Aquinas

On the 'vice' of curiosity...

(Image from Wikipedia)

...as exemplified by this blog and its topics.

Today, I am curious about the 'vice' of curiosity. So was Aquinas. In his Summa Theologica, in the "Second Part of the Second Part," he raises "Question 167," which concerns "Curiosity" and actually poses two questions:

"Can the vice of curiosity regard intellective knowledge? ... Article 1. Whether curiosity can be about intellective knowledge?"

"Is it about sensitive knowledge? ... Article 2. Whether the vice of curiosity is about sensitive knowledge?"

Notice that in both sub-questions, Aquinas presupposes that curiosity is a vice, i.e., the opposite of a virtue. This view of curiosity as a vice comes down to Aquinas from Christian tradition, and he cites such varied sources as the quasi-canonical intertestamental Jewish book by the 2nd-century BC Ben Sirach and the late 4th- to early 5th-century AD Christian theologian Augustine.

Now if one reads carefully what Aquinas says in "Question 167," one sees that he in fact defends properly attained knowledge -- both intellective (i.e., of the intellect) and sensitive (i.e., of the senses) -- from the accusation of being attained through practicing the vice of curiosity.

Nevertheless, curiosity itself is a vice.

Curiosity is an "intellective" vice, for example, in the following case borrowed from Ben Sirach:

Fourthly, when a man studies to know the truth above the capacity of his own intelligence, since by so doing men easily fall into error: wherefore it is written (Sirach 3:22): "Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability . . . and in many of His works be not curious," and further on (Sirach 3:26), "For . . . the suspicion of them hath deceived many, and hath detained their minds in vanity."

And curiosity is a "sensitive" vice, for example, when employed as follows:

Accordingly to employ study for the purpose of knowing sensible things may be sinful in two ways. First, when the sensitive knowledge is not directed to something useful, but turns man away from some useful consideration. Hence Augustine says (Confess. x, 35), "I go no more to see a dog coursing a hare in the circus; but in the open country, if I happen to be passing, that coursing haply will distract me from some weighty thought, and draw me after it . . . and unless Thou, having made me see my weakness, didst speedily admonish me, I become foolishly dull." Secondly, when the knowledge of sensible things is directed to something harmful, as looking on a woman is directed to lust....

In what Hans Blumenberg calls "The 'Trial' of Theoretical Curiosity," Aquinas plays a more positive role than Augustine, for Aquinas defends "inquiry" from the charge of "curiositas":

The Augustinian idea of the inquiry that does not maintain the proper religious connection, the non religiose quaerere [i.e., nonreligious inquiry], finds in Thomas a very characteristic modification and Aristotelianizing correction. (Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT University Press, 1983), translated by Robert M. Wallace, page 332)

Aquinas, therefore, is playing a positive role in defending inquiry, but the fact that a defense is required against the charge that inquiry is an instance of the vice curiositas is itself a fact of impressive significance.

I'll return to this tomorrow.

Islam as a 'pagan' religion?

Nicolas Poussin, The Adoration of the Golden Calf

Worshipping a false god as the true one?

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've somewhere read that Aquinas wrote his Summa contra Gentiles to be used in efforts toward converting Muslims to the Christian faith, the term "Gentiles" thus referring to "Muslims" and implying that Muslims were pagans, with whom one could not use the Old Testament for prooftexting and for whom one therefore had to turn to the light of natural reason.

Perhaps natural reason also wouldn't work if Allah is a radically voluntarist deity . . . but let that be.

I'm more interested in the Aquinas's implication that Islam is a sort of 'higher' Paganism rather than a 'lower' Christianity, if such is his view. Islam viewed as a pagan religion has recently resurfaced in the argument put forth by Alain Besançon in his article "What kind of religion is Islam?" for Commentary (May 2004), whose central point is that:

[W]hen Christians and Jews approach Islam . . . [they] may well be struck by the religious zeal of the Muslim toward a God whom they recognize as being also their God. But this God is in fact separate and distinct, and so is the relation between Him and the believing Muslim. Christians are accustomed to distinguish the worship of false gods -- that is, idolatry -- from the worship of the true God. To treat Islam suitably, it becomes necessary to forge a new concept altogether, and one that is difficult to grasp -- namely, an idolatry of the God of Israel. To put it another way, Islam may be thought of as the natural religion of the revealed God.

Besançon's point is an intriguing one but not easy to grasp. Perhaps he means that from a Christian perspective, Muslims have focused on the correct 'God' but that they worship Him in the manner that 'pagans' worship an 'idol'. You'll not my 'scare quotes', intended to alert the reader to a special use of these terms. Go and read Besançon's article at Commentary, for which one needs a subscription, unfortunately.

But while one is waiting for that subscription to take effect, one can read another online article that treats Islam as a sort of pagan religion. This article is now available to nonsubscribers and can be found at First Things, where the pseudonymous "Spengler" (of the Asia Times Online) has published "Christian, Muslim, Jew: Franz Rosenzweig and the Abrahamic Religions" (October 2007). As implied by the title, Spengler presents Rosenzweig on Islam (along with Christianity and Judaism).

Spengler notes that:

At first glance, Rosenzweig's characterization of Islam as pagan appears strange, for we habitually classify religions according to their outward forms and identify paganism with manifestations of polytheism or nature worship. Insisting on the uniqueness of Allah and suppressing outward expressions of idolatry, Islam appears the opposite of a pagan religion. Rosenzweig, however, requires us to see faith from the existential standpoint of the believer, who in revealed religion knows God through God's love. For Rosenzweig, paganism constitutes a form of alienation from the revealed God of Love; Allah, the absolutely transcendent God who offers mercy but not unconditional love, is therefore a pagan deity.

The term 'pagan' is again being used in a particular sense, this time by the Jewish thinker Franz Rosenzweig, writing in The Star of Redemption (1921), as reported by the apparently Christian "Spengler," who comments approvingly upon this use.

From a secular perspective, of course, Islam is yet another monotheism . . . like Judaism and Christianity. But from a Jewish or Christian perspective, what is one to make of it since its status as a 'revealed' religion is highly suspect, to put things mildly?

I leave it to the readers to decide, but you'll first have to read Besançon and "Spengler" to see for yourselves.

More on Limits to the Divine Will

Pope Benedict XVI

Open to dialogue...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Concerning yesterday's blog entry on God's will being bound by limits that are grounded in God's nature, I've done a bit more digging about online and found an interesting exchange at the Chiesa website between a Catholic scholar of Medieval philosophy and theology, Alessandro Martinetti, and a learned Muslim theologian Aref Ali Nayed: "The Church and Islam: A Sprig of Dialogue Has Sprouted in Regensburg" (Sandro Magister, Chiesa, October 30, 2006)

On this site, Sandro Magister posts material from both Martinetti and Nayed. Apparently, Nayed maintains a website of his own and had responded to Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Ibn Hazm's supposed 'voluntarism', namely, the view that Allah's will is supremely unlimited -- that He is free to contradict himself if He wishes. Nayed's initial response is not cited in full by Magister, but Martinetti quotes from it in his article:

"Unbridled will or Logos? The God of Islam and the Christian God," Alessandro Martinetti

In this article, Martinetti first quotes Nayed's own words:

Reason as a gift from God can never be above God. That is the whole point of Ibn Hazm; a point that was paraphrased in such a mutilated way by Benedict XVI's learned sources. Ibn Hazm, like the Asharite theologians with whom he often contended, did insist upon God's absolute freedom to act. However, Ibn Hazm did recognize, like most other Muslim theologians that God freely chooses, in His compassion towards His creatures, to self-consistently act reasonably so that we can use our reason to align ourselves with His guidance and directive.

Ibn Hazm, like most other Muslim theologians, did hold that God is not externally-bound by anything, including reason. However, at no point does Ibn Hazm claim that God does not freely self-commit Himself and honors such commitments Such divine free-self-committing is Qur'anically propounded 'kataba rabukum ala nafsihi al-Rahma' (Your Lord has committed Himself to compassion). Reason need not be above God, and externally normative to Him. It can be a grace of God that is normative because of God’s own free commitment to acting consistently with it.

A person who believes the last proposition need not be an irrational or un-reasonable human-being, with an irrational or whimsical God! The contrast between Christianity and Islam on this basis is not only unfair, but also quite questionable.

Granted that the Pontiff is striving to convince a secular university that theology has a place in that reason-based setting. However, this should not go so far as to make God subject to an externally-binding reason. Most major Christian theologians, even the reason-loving [Thomas] Aquinas never put reason above God.

Martinetti then observes:

In Nayed's view, then, saint Thomas "never put reason above God." But not placing reason above God is not the same thing as asserting, as Nayed does, that "God is not externally bound by anything, including reason," and that reason "can be a grace of God that is normative because of God's own free commitment to acting consistently with it."

Saint Thomas would never have subscribed to these assertions; on the contrary, he vigorously opposed them. And together with him, the Catholic magisterium does not agree with them, but disputes them. It thus rejects the depiction of a God who "freely chooses, in his compassion towards his creatures, to act reasonably in consistency with himself so that we can use our reason to align ourselves with His guidance and directives."

If asserting that reason is not normative for God, and that God is consistent with himself only out of a supremely free decision and is not externally bound to reason; if this is the same as asserting -- as it seems to me that Nayed does -- that God could exist and act in disdain of reason if only he wished to do so by an act of supreme and limitless freedom, then it is opportune to clarify that Thomas, and with him the Catholic magisterium, rejects this conviction, glimpsing in this an irrational voluntarism incompatible with right reason and with the Catholic faith, as the pope himself remarks in his "lectio" in Regensburg....

Martinetti's point would seem to be that in the Catholic view, reason is not something external to and higher than God that God must submit to, nor is reason merely a means of relating to humanity that God arbitrarily, and in an utterly unconstrained fashion, chooses to adopt.

Rather, God is rational because He is consistent with His own nature, which is a rational nature.

To Martinetti's point, Nayed responds in a follow-up article:

"Our God and Your God is One," by Aref Ali Nayed

In this, he insists that Aquinas and Ibn Hazm agree on God's unconstrained will:

Aquinas affirms, just as most Muslim theologians do, that God is omnipotent and that His Power and Will are utterly efficacious: "God is bound to nobody but Himself. Hence, when it is said that God can only do what He ought, nothing else is meant by this than that God can do nothing but what is befitting to Himself, and just".

"Although this order of things be restricted to what now exists, the divine power and wisdom are not thus restricted. Whence, although no other order would be suitable and good to the things which now are, yet God can do other things and impose upon them another order".

Nayed's citation of Aquinas here misses the point made by Martinetti. I think that when Nayed says that Islam maintains that 'Allah is bound to nothing but Himself' (if I may slightly paraphrase Nayed's citation of Aquinas), he means that Allah is bound by nothing but His own divine, unconstrained will. This is not what Aquinas means. When Aquinas says that 'God is bound to nothing but Himself' (again, my paraphrase), he means that God is bound by nothing but His own nature, which is rational.

Nayed has thus misunderstood Aquinas and thereby missed Martinetti's point.