archive 2005-06 for neomenia - new middle ages

2006-05-04T14:02:00.000+01:00

Chicago Manual of Style Replying

2006-03-01T21:43:00.000Z

Q. I’m an editor in an academic publishing house. I’ve been advised by our best-selling author to use “eadem” (fem.) in place of “idem,” where appropriate. Recently I had an instance in which I needed to use “idem” (within the same note) in reference to two male authors. The masculine plural is “eidem.” Then I realized we might potentially need the feminine plural form some day! Yikes! Do we really want to go down this road?

A. More to the point, how would authors and editors determine the gender of every author in a bibliography? “Idem” is the standard term, and to attempt further clarification invites inaccuracy and possible offense (not to mention restraining orders).

Source: CMS

It's so cowardly to attack the church when we won't offend Islam

2006-02-28T17:46:00.000Z

Nick Cohen

Sunday February 19, 2006
The Observer

Last week, I went to the East End of London to witness the death of the avant-garde. At first glance, Gilbert and George's Sonofagod Pictures: Was Jesus Heterosexual?' exhibition at the White Cube did not look like a wake. The bright and glistening gallery is in Hoxton, a corner of town that has been full of life since it was colonised and gentrified by 'Young British Artists' in the early Nineties. As fashionable visitors move between its loft conversions and cafes, 'edgy' is the highest compliment they can bestow and 'taboo' the gravest insult. Taboos are taboo in Hoxton.

Even on a wet Thursday lunchtime, there were plenty of sightseers from the metropolitan intelligentsia enjoying the show rather than mourning the passing of their world. In prose that might embarrass an estate agent, novelist Michael Bracewell told them in the catalogue that Gilbert and George were engaged 'in rebellion, an assault on the laws and institutions of superstition and religious belief'.

Burbling critics agreed. Gilbert and George still get a 'frisson of excitement' by including 'f-words, turds, semen, their own pallid bodies and other affronts to bourgeois sensibilities' in their work, wrote a journalist with the impeccably bourgeois name of Cassandra Jardine in the Daily Telegraph. 'Is it the perfect Christmas card to send George Bush at Easter? Yeah, yeah,' added groovy Waldemar Januszczak of the Sunday Times

Their justifications for edgy art won't work any longer and not only because the average member of the educated bourgeoisie likes nothing better than f-words and pallid bodies on a visit to the theatre or gallery. After the refusal of the entire British press to print innocuous Danish cartoons, the stench of death is in the air. It is now ridiculous and impossible to talk about a fearless disregard for easily offended sensibilities.

Sonofagod is clearly trading under a false prospectus. Gilbert and George narcissistically present themselves as icons towering over a shrivelled Christ. 'God loves Fucking! Enjoy!' reads one inscription. This isn't a brave assault on all religions, just Catholicism.

The gallery owners know that although Catholics will be offended, they won't harm them. That knowledge invalidates their claims to be transgressive. An uprising that doesn't provoke a response isn't a 'rebellion', but a smug affirmation of the cultural status quo.

If they were to do the same to Islam, all hell would break loose. In interviews publicising the show, Gilbert and George showed that they at least understood the double standard. They're gay men who live in the East End where the legal groups of the Islamic far right - Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Association of Britain - are superseded by semi-clandestine organisations which push leaflets through their door saying: 'Verily, it is time to rejoice in the coming state of Islam. There will be no negotiation with Islam. It is only a short time before the flag of Islam flies over Downing Street.' Even if the artists found the audacity to take on the theocrats around them, they know no gallery would dare show the results.

The fear of being murdered is a perfectly rational one, but it is eating away at the cultural elite's myths. In the name of breaking taboos, the Britart movement has giggled at paedophilia (Jake and Dinos Chapman) and rubbed salt in the wounds of the parents of the Moors murderers' victims (Marcus Harvey). It can't go on as if nothing has happened because the contradictions between breaking some taboos but not others are becoming too glaring. They were on garish display last year when the Almeida Theatre, the White Cube of theatreland, showed Romance by over-praised American playwright David Mamet.

His characters hurled anti-semitic and anti-Christian abuse at each other and very edgy it sounded, too. The justification for his venom was that he had set the play against the backdrop of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. He meant the hatreds on stage to reflect the hatreds of the Middle East.

Readers with an interest in foreign affairs will have spotted that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is between Muslims and Jews, not Christians and Jews. Islamophobic abuse ought to have followed the anti-semitic abuse if the play was to make sense. Neither Mamet nor the Almeida had the nerve do that. Their edginess was no match for the desire of the prudent bourgeois to save his skin.

The insincerity extends way beyond the arts. Rory Bremner will tear into Tony Blair, but not Mohammed Khatami. Newspaper editors will print pictures of servicemen beating up demonstrators in Basra, which may place the lives of British troops in danger, but not Danish cartoons, which may place their own lives in danger.

You can't be a little bit free. If you are not willing to offend Islamists who may kill you, what excuse do you have for offending Catholics, the families of murdered children and British troops who won't?

via inferno xv

Twin Zimbabweans wear loin cloths in court

2006-01-28T17:26:00.000Z

Associated Press

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Twin Zimbabwean brothers, who dressed in goatskin loincloths to promote traditional African values, were charged with indecent exposure and jailed to await psychiatric tests, court officials said Friday.

Harare magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe ordered the 22-year-old twins, Tafadzwa and Tapiwanashe Fichiani, held in custody to reappear in court on indecency charges Feb. 2 when psychiatric reports will be considered.

The pair went to court Thursday wearing the loin cloths, known as nhembe, covering only their genitals.

They face a fine of Zimbabwe $25,000 (less than 30 U.S. cents).

The twins were arrested, but freed on bail earlier this month, after complaints over their attire by shoppers at a suburban mall in northern Harare.

Police said the brothers claimed to have a religious calling to return to the traditional dress of animal skins worn before the colonial era in southern Africa.

The brothers said they refused to sleep on Western-style beds and were vegetarians.

Zimbabweans generally favor conservative Western clothes. Colorful and flowing African robes are seldom seen.

The state Herald newspaper Friday quoted experts on culture and tradition saying animal skins were only worn in some ceremonial and tribal rites.

Source

Lost treasures of Constantinople test Turkey's 21st-century ambition

2006-01-27T14:51:00.000Z

The Guardian, January 25, 2006

Ian Traynor

Deep in the soft black earth beneath the cleared slum tenements of old Istanbul, Metin Gokcay points to neatly stacked and labelled crates heaped with shattered crockery. "That's mostly old mosaics and old ceramics," said the Istanbul city archaeologist. "And over there we found bones and coins."

Looking at huge slabs of limestone emerging from a depth of more than 7 metres (25ft) below ground, he adds: "That's late Roman, this is early Byzantine. This tunnel here is very interesting. Perhaps Constantine's mother had her palace over there."

The archaeologist is making mischief. For more than a millennium this city bore the name of Constantine, but whether the emperor's mother lived at this spot called Yenikapi, a powerful stone's throw from the Sea of Marmara, is a moot point. Mr Gokcay is intrigued and baffled by the subterranean stone tunnel which, measuring 1.8 metres by 1.5 metres, is too big to have been used for sewage or as an aqueduct.

But if Mr Gokcay remains in the dark as to the function of the ancient tunnel, his excavations have led to a stunning discovery that could jeopardise Turkey's most ambitious engineering project - a new rail and underground system traversing the Bosphorus and connecting Europe to Asia via a high-speed railway.

Mr Gokcay has uncovered a 5th-century gem - the original port of Constantinople, a maze of dams, jetties and platforms that once was Byzantium's hub for trade with the near east.

Cemal Pulak, a Turkish-American, from Texas, and one of the world's leading experts in nautical archaeology, said: "The ships from here carried the wine in jars and amphorae from the Sea of Marmara. The cargoes of grain came in from Alexandria. This was the harbour that allowed this city to be."

In a mood of barely suppressed excitement, armies of archaeologists and labourers have been scraping away silt and rubble for the past year and revealed a vast site the size of several football pitches. It is slowly giving up its secrets and its treasures.

Seven sunken ships have already been found buried in mud at Yenikapi, a few hundred metres inland from the Sea of Marmara and a 10-minute stroll from the mass tourist attractions of the Grand Bazaar and the Topkapi Palace.

Mr Pulak is thrilled that one of the ships, a longboat, may be the first Byzantine naval vessel ever found. All of the boats appear to have been wrecked in a storm. There are 1,000-year-old shipping ropes in perfect condition, preserved in silt for centuries. There are huge forged iron anchors, viewed as so valuable in medieval Byzantium they were highly prized items in the dowries of the daughters of the wealthy.

Treasure chest

But if the discovery of the ancient port of Constantinople promises a treasure chest of riches for historians and archaeologists, it also brings its problems. The old harbour straddles what is to become the biggest railway station in Turkey, a gleaming modern temple connecting the city's new high-speed rail and metro.

"It's a phenomenal site. But it opens a can of worms," said Mr Pulak. "This is to be the biggest station in Turkey and they'll be wanting to put huge shopping malls on the top."

The Yenikapi site is the linchpin of what the Turkish government dubs the "project of the century". The $4bn (£2.2bn) Marmaray transport project is being built by a Japanese-led consortium. There will be tunnelling under the Bosphorus for the first time ever, with high-speed trains going through the deepest underwater tunnel in the world in the middle of a high-risk earthquake zone. The tunnel itself will be built to withstand quakes of 9.0 on the Richter scale in the area of the North Anatolian Fault, which runs below the Sea of Marmara nearing the walls of Istanbul. Seismologists say a large earthquake and a mini tsunami are almost inevitable within a generation at the latest.

The ambitious new transport system is to shift 75,000 passengers an hour and to put Istanbul behind only Tokyo and New York in the global league table for urban rail capacity.

There is no doubt the Marmaray is needed urgently. In a city of 12 million, which seems to grow by the week, the traffic congestion is a nightmare and the Bosphorus bridges are gridlocked semi-permanently. So the engineers, transport officials and urban planners are in a hurry to get the infrastructure built by the end of the decade. That puts Mr Gokcay and his teams of experts under immense pressure to finish their dig.

"The transport guys say they are losing a million a day because of the archaeological delays," said one expert. "But it's ridiculous - when they were building the Athens metro the excavations took seven years. Here they want it finished in six months."

Ismail Karamut, the director of the city's museum of archaeology and a leading expert on the history of Istanbul, refuses to be intimidated by the urban planners. "This city is 2,800 years old and here we're digging right in the middle of a living city. It's not like excavating on a mountainside. The transport people can't start until we're finished. And maybe they'll have to change their project depending on what we find. We've told them we can't give them a deadline."

It is perhaps logical and fitting that the same spot that provided the shipping hub for 5th-century Constantinople should become the rail nexus for 21st-century Istanbul. But the dilemmas thrown up by trying to secure the future without destroying the past are a headache.

Ottoman gardeners

The discovered artefacts fall into the easy bit. The ships can be rebuilt using computer simulations; the anchors, ropes and coins can all be housed elsewhere. But you cannot move the ancient port - believed to be Portus Theodosiacus, in use from the 4th to the 7th centuries, after which it started silting up, then became useless for shipping. In later centuries it served just as fertile vegetable plots for Ottoman allotment gardeners.

One idea is to cordon off the old port area creating an "archaeological island" that would be an exhibit in the new transport complex. But that is a tricky solution because of the underground shafts and the vast scale of the station.

The doyen of archaeology for Constantinople, the late German researcher Wolfgang Muller-Wiener, predicted 30 years ago that the old port would be found at Yenikapi. But the site was covered in illegal tenements and could not be explored. It was the modern transport project that made discovery of the old port possible, since the site had to be cleared to make way for the railway station.

Mr Karamut said: "We knew from the ancient documents and records that there was some kind of port around there. But we didn't know exactly where. We didn't know that it could be Constantinople's first harbour."

Source

Algebraic Pathologists... er, Topologists vs Anna Byrn (a letter to Noam Chomsky)

2006-01-22T15:41:00.000Z

Sir,

In your recent Irish interview you state (allow me a lengthy quote):

There is a kind of a loose, abstract connection in the background. But if you look for practical connections, they're non – existent. I'd do the same political things if I was an algebraic pathologist and somebody could have the same linguistic views as I do and be a fascist or a Stalinist. There'd be no contradiction.

Lo and behold, we are witnessing a luminary of systematic thought signing a declaration of political impotence of all systematic thought (including your own).

What transpires is that at this point in the history of thought, it is no longer relevant what abstract system we embrace or create as philosophers. After all, we all forget (myself included) as we talk/write/read, a new person named, say, Anna Byrne, is born, and from a certain existential vantage point we have nothing to offer this baby girl. Textuality of our civilisation is no longer a guarantee of meaning. All communication is textuality. Derrida's Il n'y a pas de hors-texte is more trivial than we think and should be deemed as Il n'y a pas de communication de hors-texte. Communication per se is not the meaning.

The nature of deceit is in deceiving. Rousseau in Émile ou De l'éducation: "Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves." But honestly, what if the whole of my cosmos (nature included) is deceit?

This is not to say that no abstract philosophy, to put it trivially, "has anything good to offer", but that as a rule my philosopheme is largely textual affair, it is in-word rather than in-deed. Now, were it different, I would employ some other means of doing politics: I am good with speech? Yes, but at this point of my existence my speech, my discourse is nothing but a metaphor, a mythical sign, a promise.

Everything is a sign, a no-sign is rather a non-existent feature, according to Е. Григорьева/Y. Grigoryeva, Russian semiologist and aesthetic thinker from University of Tartu, Republic of Estonia. On her blog (1, 2) she talks about the far from 'adequate' expressive means for apprehension of things sublime or 'impossible'.

Philosopher is akin to artist inasmuch the material impotence (and thus the seminal untruth) of our philosophic act is exposed. After Adorno, we can envision philosophy just as he spoke about Art:

All that art is capable of is to grieve for the sacrifice it makes and which it itself, in its powerlessness , is.(1)

A frame of thought that is not a petty sacrifice for the sake of self-propagation, self-aggrandisement, an eloquent petty creed, goes beyond mere positing, mere textual argument.

Proverbial Derridan Il n'y a pas de hors-texte needs to be rephrased as: "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Anna Byrne est nee de hors-texte. Anna Byrne... c'est quelque chose d'impossible."

Not all extra-textuality is the salt of the earth though. Our hypothetic Anna Byrn (which is basically a common Irish name of a hypothetic unique person that may have been born to a family on this very day) may be or may be not, depending on her geniality. Unless she is a genius, Anna Byrn herself will grow up to hardly ever realise she is unique enough to strive towards uniqueness, rather than being unique because I am a princess. She herself is this Grigorieva's inadequate shape striving towards the impossible within the margins of the possible. Unless she is a genius, she will hardly evolve and she will not revolutionise herself nor these humble margins. Yet inasmuch this Anna Byrne is Derridan instead of mine, she is wholly textual creation, not a live human. And it is within such conventional philosopheme that the other, a non-textual Anna Byrn, is just impossible.

Ayn Rand's version of my Anna is equally mediocre, insofar Rand's civilization is in Ayn Rand's own words "the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from (emphasis mine - a.m.) men."(2)

Insofar both libertarian individualism and liberal societarianism have all necessary elements of ethical systems, they should not be exempt under Chomsky criterion. (Said aside: as far as my opinion goes, both are a product of a thought-pattern, to which personal freedom, dignity and uniqueness are irrelevant. It is about 'freedom from' and, essentially, it is freedom from one unfreedom for the sake of another.)

Insofar I can only build in/on my dreams, a civilization of my dreams strives in the opposite direction to mere freedom from of this world: it is striving towards the impossible and unique in Men, or in my case, toward a the impossible and unique in a hypothetic woman born today and named Anna Byrne.

Andrew Magergut

N. Chomsky's reply:

Minor transcription error: it was "algebraic topologist," not "algebraic pathologist."

On the rest, you misunderstood. It is a question of fact, not religious dogma, whether there are direct connections between discoveries in the sciences (in this case, about language and mind) and political action.* None are known, beyond the loose abstract connections that I've discussed often in print, tracing them back to their roots centuries ago. None of your conclusions follow from this statement of apparent fact. If you think the statement of fact is wrong, then the right response is to show it. I presume you would not suggest that we should claim what is false. The rest of what you write below has no connection that I can see to what I said in the interview, or have said or written anywhere else.** Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: for about 50 years, there have been efforts to find some evidence to support it. By now there is some, though it deals with matters that have nothing like the anticipated scope. Differences of visual perception that seem to relate to how languages individuate objects, etc.

Noam Chomsky

p.s. Note: It would be too lush to expect Chomsky to show much concern for metaphysical or aesthetic questions, so i guess, no point in explaining myself further to him: it will be all reduced to something like: 'I am a structural linguist, better try some other department'. The humble idea that human creativity could be a bit more holistic and graceful and mindful of the needs of human persons (as opposed to social institutes) and less evil is not something that Chomsky has time for.

* No, I am not contrarying anything, except for liberalism and leftie libertarianism being the beacon of personal freedom.
** Same as above.

Three Reviews

2006-01-15T23:06:00.000Z

Religion: The Occult Tradition by David S Katz, Cape, pp272

Hidden leanings

Jad Adams (The Guardian)

Scripture tells us that young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. In these tales of Swedenborgians, theosophists, illuminati, Mormons and Freemasons, David Katz gives us much of both as we travel from neoplatonism to American fundamentalism via the Cock Lane Ghost.

Katz, a history professor at Tel Aviv University, sees the occult tradition as a coherent intellectual stream with its beginnings in Plato, flowing through the European Renaissance and industrial revolution to arrive at American fundamentalism with its detailed mythology about the End of Days based on an esoteric reading of the Bible.

Article continues
He takes "occult" to mean hidden from the senses: the belief that there is knowledge accessible by covert means which allows practitioners to know the workings of the universe and even manipulate its operation. The occult tradition is a fusion of three streams of thought, Katz says, in a book for anyone excited by knowledge and the interpretation of ideas. First came the neoplatonists with their view that things had properties which were transferable: using the heart of a brave animal such as a cock or a lion would help promote bravery; eating the breast of loving creatures like sparrows or turtles would induce love.

The second store of ancient lore he notes is the mystical contemplation of the Judaeo-Christian gnostics. Finally come the writings that were supposedly handed down from the (mythical) figure Hermes Trismegistus, who represented a body of knowledge from Egypt, therefore predating Grecian and Roman civilisation.

These form a continuous core of belief which over the centuries has informed not just religion and politics but science, too. Katz follows historian Frances Yates in feeling it is not enough to construct a history of science by looking for thinkers in the past who got it "right"; we need to study the period when alchemy was evolving into chemistry and astrology into astronomy to see why experimental choices were made.

That makes this a deeply subversive book. Scientists, if they think about the philosophy of science at all, cleave to a 19th-century narrative which says that in all civilisations as they developed, superstition came first, then religion, then science, which at last was the truth. In fact the founders of modern science were swimming in a stream of occult lore, much of which they retained and passed on to us in disguised form.

Thus Paracelsus claimed to have discovered, by alchemical means, the very building blocks of the universe, and the key to their construction, which was chemistry. He passed on the occult notion of macrocosm and microcosm: anything true in the laboratory must be true in the universe at large. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for adhering to an Egyptian world picture with the sun as the centre of the universe and the chief divinity. The heliocentric universe could be analysed by Copernican calculations, but it was based on the Hermetic tradition.

Newton, the man credited with being the first modern scientist, devoted at least half his active working time to the interpretation of esoterica. Newton's conviction was that a misreading of the heavens goes along with a misreading of religion. God provided two alternative sources of information: the written book of scripture and the visible book of nature. Basic metaphysical truths are obtainable from both.

Coming closer to the present, Katz emphasises how much of the theory that fed into psychology and psychoanalysis was not about a sexual unconscious but a paranormal one. He invites us, in the 1870s at the height of the supposed battle between religion and science, to a seance which Darwin and Galton attended together. Co-evolutionary theorist Alfred R Wallace was preoccupied with spiritualism, eventually to the exclusion of other forms of investigation.

This is a coherent picture of the persistence of weird stuff in the lives of the famous, which will infuriate both believers and sceptics. A great deal in this book has been said before, as Katz acknowledges in his references to other scholars. His unique contributions go to show how the occult tradition continued into the 21st-century world. En route, Katz convincingly explains how India replaced Egypt as the supposed source of all ancient wisdom, a transition which pandered to the race theory popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - it permitted the replacement of a Semitic spiritual ancestry from the Middle East with an Indo-European (Aryan) ascendancy.

So, with the introduction of power politics, the occult approaches its bizarre modern form in the predictions of Armageddon by American fundamentalists. The movement was so called after its emergence between 1909 and 1915 in the form of a dozen pamphlets entitled "The Fundamentals" which were distributed by the American Bible League. They stressed the infallible literal truth of the Bible and the concept of the born-again evangelical Christian.

While this is no more than a restatement of basic Protestantism which would be familiar to Martin Luther, the evangelicals have woven into their beliefs a complex theology prophesying the last days of humankind that bears only the most tentative relationship to scripture. Thus we have belief in "the rapture", the bodily disappearance from the earth of true believers in the seven years of tribulations before the second coming of Christ.

In a controversial distinction, Katz differentiates between Christianity as generally practised and its incarnation as fundamentalism, which predicts the future through deciphering a document (the Bible) whose meaning is hidden. Thus, Katz argues, we find George W Bush making speeches which clearly echo prophetic biblical passages from Isaiah and Revelation. This is discernible to evangelicals but passes by the secular. Bush is truly preaching to the converted.

Some people's shelves groan with works on mysticism and the occult, and this would make an erudite addition for them. For those who will read only one book on the exegesis of ancient grimoires, this should be it.

Credit

De-masking the occult tradition

Michael Burleigh (The Times)

The critic Theodor Adorno once wrote that the defining characteristic of occultism was “the readiness to relate the unrelated”, rather like drawing a line of your own invention through several dots on a puzzle rather than following the numbers to draw a face. That is almost the mission statement of David Katz’s concise, erudite and often comic book: to restore a vast and coherent body of occult knowledge from the condescension of modern science or the demotic residue epitomised by the astrologer Russell Grant.

Katz covers much more than the past 500 years that he announces as his chosen period. His story begins with ancient Greece and ends with American Protestant fundamentalists planning their lives around the “Rapture”, when they will be beamed elsewhere for seven years, while the Beast busies himself with the unregenerate many. Plato believed that the universe was alive and that the world is a shadow of an ideal reality.

Neo-Platonist philosophers and the early Christian Gnostics developed these ideas. A neo-Platonist magus, or adept, could detect the hidden (or occult) properties in seemingly prosaic plants or animals, so as to redirect the “energy” in the heart of a lion to foster human fortitude; the elite Gnostics employed mystical contemplation to free the divine spark left in some people by the Higher God, while the majority made do with the botched bodies created by an evil lesser deity.

However, since the occult resembles a Russian doll, it was soon believed that Plato himself was but a conduit for a more venerable wisdom. This hailed from Egypt, which, until the relatively modern fascination with India, was regarded as the repository of truths hidden in pyramids and hieroglyphs. This belief is called Hermeticism — after the mythical Hermes Trismegistus. He was supposed to be a contemporary of Moses, an Egyptian priest, who translated the wisdom of ancient Egypt into Greek.

In fact, the relevant texts were written in about AD200, and passed off as ancient, a fact that did not curtail the enthusiasm of many Renaissance scholars for hermeticism, once a Macedonian monk turned up in Florence in 1463 bearing a selection of these writings. The translation of the entire works of Plato was put on hold so that Cosimo de’Medici could devour these occult texts.

As Katz argues, the Renaissance avatars of modern western culture inhabited a rich spiritual world to which alchemy, astrology, magic and the mysticism of the Jewish cabbala were as integral as what we might understand by science. By about 1600, the essentials of occultism were fixed, namely that the ancients possessed ultimate wisdom, and all one had to do to access this — so as to control things — was crack the hidden code.

The dividing line between occult beliefs, “religion” and “science” was diaphanous, for such august figures as Isaac Newton were obsessed with the idea that the divine architect had left hidden clues to the structure of the universe within the Bible’s descriptions of the Temple of Solomon. He devoted enormous energy to understanding the Apocalypse.

Belief in esoteric wisdom spawned esoteric societies, real or imaginary. Many people tried to join the Rosicrucian Order after its existence was rumoured, but they were destined for disappointment, since it never actually existed before being founded in the 19th century. Others transformed unremarkable medieval lodges for itinerant building workers into the equivalent of gentlemen’s clubs, where symbols derived from the building trades, such as trowels and levels, jostled with secrets allegedly brought to Scotland by the Knights Templar. When Bavarian freemasonry was itself infiltrated by a group called the Illuminati, powerful people, as well as the Catholic church, began to interpret such important events as the French revolution as the product of Masonic conspiracies. Ironically, the imaginary malign force behind the revolution became a reality in the form of the various secret societies of Napoleonic and Restoration Europe, not to speak of those progenitors of modern communism — Gracchus Babeuf and Filippo Buonarroti, the world’s first professional revolutionaries.

With his characteristically light touch, Katz outlines the main 18th- and 19th-century manifestations of the occult tradition. “Science” aided rather than impeded the rise of such things as spiritualism. The phonograph, transoceanic cables, camera and telephone actively fostered the belief that it was possible to communicate with and record the voices of the dead. After all, what was that crackling on the phone line? If occultism was rarely incompatible with high scientific endeavour, nor was it wholly divorced from religion.

The gloomy Emanuel Swedenborg, whose followers founded a sect, thought he could pass between the life to come and the present, transmigrations that enabled him to decode the “real” meaning of the Bible to which he added a book or two. In America, an angel gave Joseph Smith the golden plates of the Book of Mormon, and four years later a pair of magic spectacles enabling him to decode them, the miracle that underpins the Church of the Latter Day Saints in modern Utah.

With interest in Indian mythology stimulated by Max Müller, the Oxford anthropologist, Madame Blavatsky founded Theosophy as a means of communicating eastern mysteries to the western world, although ironically, it largely became a vehicle of Hindu nationalist self-assertion. Katz is amusing about Ernest Jones’s attempts to contain Freud’s occult enthusiasms lest these queer the scientific pretensions of psychoanalysis.

Katz brings his story up to date by treating the “dispensationalist” fundamentalist strain within American Protestantism as a branch of occultism. Although these people predicate a dire fate for Jews who have not converted to Christianity before the Second Coming, they are among Israel’s keenest supporters since, without it, the battle of Armageddon and the thousand-year reign of Christ lack scriptural location. What began in the rarefied world of Renaissance courts has become integral to the creed of 50m people in the world’s most modern nation.

GHOST BUSTERS

In 1882, the formation of The Society for Psychical Research brought together eminent scientists and thinkers with the aim of investigating the occult. A key element of its work was the attempt to prove a pillar of Victorian religion, the reality of life after death. Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge, was a keen member of the group. John Maynard Keynes said of Sidgwick, “He never did anything but wonder whether Christianity was true, and prove that it wasn’t and hope that it was.” Others associated with the Society were Gladstone, Tennyson, Ruskin, Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain.

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Who are you calling trashy and sensationalist?

Gary Lachman (The Independent)

Academic studies of the occult often seem to show up after the fact, like latecomers to a party that's been going on for hours. Once arrived, they inform readers about things they more than likely are very familiar with: most books on the occult are read by people who are already interested in it. David S Katz's The Occult Tradition is no exception. For Katz, a historian at Tel Aviv University, practically every other book on the subject is "trashy" or "sensationalist" and can be found on the "shelves of used bookstores everywhere" - apparently an unenviable fate. This more or less mandatory disclaimer protects against fellow academics who anathematise scholars who "come to see the occult tradition as having a deep meaning in their own lives", rather like those poor souls who study art and actually like it. Of course Katz is right in a way: there's been a lot of rubbish written about the occult. But only someone who's turned his nose up at those "trashy" books will find anything new here. And the irony is that a great many of those books will prove a more enjoyable read than this supercilious, patchy attempt to show how the occult has informed modern culture. Like medical textbooks on sex, Katz's work might have some use as a reference, but inspiring it isn't.

Much of what we can call the "history of the occult" is absent from this book. Central players like Rudolf Steiner, Aleister Crowley and GI Gurdjieff warrant only a namecheck, and in the case of Steiner and Gurdjieff, are misrepresented. Gurdjieff was not a "19th-century occultist;" he only came to public awareness in the 1920s, and his earliest appearance as an esoteric teacher was well within the 20th century. The home of Steiner's spiritual movement in Switzerland is Dornach, not "Dorlach"; a typo, sure, but it should have been caught. Katz unquestioningly repeats the usual account of Madame Blavatsky's "exposure" as a fraudulent medium, failing to relate that the original report, in 1885, by Richard Hodgson, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, was itself rejected as seriously flawed by the SPR a century later. Katz devotes several pages to cranky proto-Nazi occultists (a standard trope of debunkers), yet C G Jung, who wrote volumes on Gnosticism and alchemy, and more or less made the occult and the paranormal respectable areas of inquiry, is tossed a paragraph, within which, nevertheless, Katz manages to jam all the myths about Jung's supposed racism. In doing this, Katz bases his account on Richard Noll's controversial (and not a wee bit sensational) work The Jung Cult, a study that has itself been brought into question. Reading Katz, however, you wouldn't know it.

In the same way, informing us repeatedly of the many 19th-century mediums who were "outed", Katz fails to mention that the most celebrated of all, Daniel Dunglas Home, was never shown to be a fraud, and that the eye-witness accounts of his "miracles" were never refuted. Parsimoniously, Katz devotes only a sentence or two to main characters like Eliphas Levi, who practically started "occultism" as we know it, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, clearly the most well known magical society of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Allen Kardec, whose books on spiritism form the basis of a popular religion in Brazil.

Equally annoying is Katz's condescending tone when speaking of people like the philosopher and psychologist William James, who wrote incisively about mysticism, altered states of consciousness, conversion, the paranormal and other occult subjects, including the possibility of life after death. Had he bothered to include him, Katz would probably have taken the same tack with another influential philosopher, Henri Bergson, like James a president of the SPR and a rigorous investigator of the occult. Bergson, however, isn't even mentioned.

Nevertheless, there is some interesting stuff. Katz's account of Isaac Newton's biblical exegesis shows that the father of modern science was a dab hand at the occult sciences too. There's also Mark Hofmann's murderous forgeries of Mormon scripture, and the centrality of Fundamentalism (by definition Christian) to American policy in the Middle East. This is Katz's real subject: religious eccentrics. These sections partly make up for the rest of the book, but only partly. No, if you want to know how some of academia sees the occult, take a look. But if you want a real history of the thing, there are better ones.

Credit

2006-01-07T01:05:00.000Z

Mystical Genius of Our Iniquity

2005-12-10T09:02:00.000Z

The subject of mystical roots of the collective crime committed by the Russian nation in the 20 c., its poetics and spirituality, is not thoroughly investigated. A good deal of attention has been devoted to socio-psychological, socio-political and ecclesiological (perhaps even dogmatic) implications of that combined crime (or a series of crimes): sacrilege culminating in regicide, assisting to and condoning (and even praising) mass murder, debasement of human spirit, while exalting bodily strength and health and (compensatorily) paying lip service to a form of utilitarian ethic peculiarly incorporating a concoction of ancient philosophic virtues such as honesty, courage and promethean sacrifice.

Our enquiry is rather of a different kind: what are the aesthetic facets and the poetics of such crime? What does the poetic mystical soul of a criminal nation have to say? What is that soul's poetic identity and how does it transform the cosmos of Man?

In this brief initial work on the subject, two Russian poets will concern us: from the 19 c. it is M. Lermontov and his Demon. From the 20 c., E. Bagritsky and his poem TBC.

Before proceding to analyze the works of art proper, a somewhat hasty introduction to this form of literary criticism is badly needed.

It is worthwhile stating that the idea of work of art as a form of mystical test, which no doubt is meant to be a risky affair, is somewhat reflected in the Russian word for 'art' - искусство, deriving from искус, temptation, test.

Berdyev argued that both (medieval) Russian and Germanic nation(s) did not know culture in the classic Grecian or Roman sense, as the source of anything 'culture' in Europe lies primarily in the art and philosophy of Mediterannean antiquity. An art-form and a thought-model (allegedly) untouched neither by hellenism and neo-platonism nor by medieval romance and, later, Renaissance, it is an art-form/thought-model resting exclusively on the Bible and Christian patristic thought. Only the monastic elite in such important centers as Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra had access to the forbidden fruits of antiquity.

A number of archaeological bridges to Mediterranean culture, largely centered in the Black Sea coast, among others the Bulgarian town of Sozopol (one of whose churches contains iconographic images of Socrates and Plato), new archaeological findings at Sudak, Crimea as well as old-time Crimean monuments such as Chersones (Hersonissos), attest to early Russia's being not totally aloof to hellenism. Vladimir's political and spiritual alliance with Basil ii of Constantinople, which was forged not without deviousness on Vladimir's part, as he invaded the Greek Crimea, one of the factors in his persuading the emperor to agree to Vladimir's marriage with Basil's sister Anna, made the Russian-Greek ties ever stronger. Thus Russian national identity became largely Byzantine in its expressive means, through iconography and architecture, music and crafts, patristic writings and Church life.

It can be argued that our collective conscious as well as unconscious awareness of the grave sinfulness and sacrilegious character of regicide specifically deriving from a form of Byzantine statehood that embraces and protects Christianity, is at all possible only thanks to Vladimir's pressurising Greece to spiritually conquer his state for mutual benefit. Yet Vladimir's own conduct in gaining the title of the grand prince of Kiev was not without its regicidal streak too. The story of his allegedly murdering his step-brother Yaropolk (the ruling grand prince of Kiev at the time) only days before the latter's scheduled rite of baptism, points to a possible existence of alternative ways of christianizing Kiev, that perhaps were averted by elimination of a Christian ruler through regicide.

The tragic ambiguity of the ways of history is reflected in the dilemma that both religious and particularly artistic collective conscious of the nation faced and struggled with. It can be said that artistic individualism in its purest forms is hardly a Russian trait. Russian art, more than other nation's art, is always somewhat bound to the karmic forces presiding over the nation's collective ego. Even somebody as (externally) cosmopolitan and visibly 'unconcerned' (at least for the purposes of his creativity) with nationalism and politics as Nabokov, made a point in (quite shamelessly for his day and age) celebrating American collective soul in Lolita. In any case, it might not be entirely pointless to attempt to view and critique specifically Russian art from the collective Russian guilt prospective, thus adding to the traditional political, ethical, ecclesiological, socio-historical and socio-psychological ways of looking at these issues a new vantage point: a synergy between mysticism and aesthetics.

(to be continued)

__

Notes:

to be added shortly

Film: Saraband (2003)

2005-11-28T03:43:00.000Z

Title: Saraband

Year: 2003

Country: Sweden

Director: Ingmar Bergman

It is needless to present Ernst Ingmar Bergman (b. 1918) to the lovers of cinema, yet his last movie, Saraband (2003) is hardly a blockbuster and will hardly ever be. According to Bergman himself, this is “his last movie ever” and I hope it is not, because as a finale to a rich cinematic life as that of Bergman’s this movie is hardly conclusive.

Female narrator/protagonist named Marianne, a dull, uninspiring piece of acting by Liv Ullmann (a Tokyo-born Norwegian), portraying a rigid and somewhat condescending, yet polite female lawyer (“family law, divorces mostly…”) in her 60s who decides to take a trip to the country-side villa where her ex-husband Johan (dark and somber Erland Josephson) resides, following the three decades of their living apart.

The most interesting detail about the plot is an attempt at finding the key to one’s personal identity and history of a ruined life: contemptuous ex-husband, an equally morbid and contemptuous step-son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt) who feels somewhat incestuous towards his daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius), Martha (played by Gunnel Fred vaguely appearing towards the end of the film), a brain-damaged daughter of the lawyer woman herself who can’t recognize her surroundings and is confined to a dark hospice room…

Everything in the acting exudes apathy and snoozing. There’s no single breath of Bergmanian artistry neither about the plot nor about acting. Now, someone may contradict saying that every thing Bergman is just that: apathy, boredom, and snooze.

Well, it is the early Bergman, the black-and-white one of While The City Sleeps (1950) or that of The Seventh Seal (1957) is the kind of Bergman that will remain for ages in the cinematic history and we can distinctly place ourselves in the post-war void context of Europe of the day. Yet when watching Saraband I hardly knew what context I have to place myself into. This is a distinctly provincial Swedish affair, but it is also time-less: anything you point at is just not from this day and age, yet you can hardly tell what day and what age this is: it is unashamedly dusty day and age.

What truly caught my eye in the film, is the beauty of a landscape. Meet pristine hills, valleys, forests and brooks. Young Julia Dufvenius wearing just a white night gown and a pair of leather soldier boots (director’s erotic fantasy, no doubt), entering that forest bog water, surrounded by the age-old firs… It is truly not of this world. The austere interior of a Scandinavian country villa adds to the ghostly atmosphere.

If not for the (Scandinavian-style) cynicism of the protagonists, I would have thought the movie is just dull and melodramatic. It is this witty cynicism of the replicas that makes up for the lack of spice to the acting.

A lot of things are said and written about Scandinavian puritanical culture and its drawbacks and strengths. Perhaps, Bergman wanted to un-spoil us in terms of expectation. It is true that today’s cinema audience is not just spoiled; our cinematic tastes are in ruin. We hardly know what we want from a good movie any longer, unless ‘we’ means an utterly retarded blockbuster audience. As regards timelessness, as well as in terms of fitting into the here and now, I think Bergman simply lost it, given that he still accentuates things that hardly need to be accentuated nowadays, as opposed to when Bergman was young: social rigidity of the old-time puritans masking their cynicism and hypocrisy, lack of meaning about this puritanical world for those in dire need of meaning, the everlasting void of a country parish life (Bergman’s beloved theme) exemplified by an empty church (except that Bach is played in it), family constraints and psychological deformity that puritan family life exudes.

Despite these drawbacks, the two male actors playing father and son respectively: Erland Josephson and Börje Ahlstedt are quite good in portraying a dead father-and-son relationship as well as the latter’s feelings of misery are done excellently. This is probably the best and the strongest side to the movie. Were I given a chance, I would do a movie just with them two and the young girl briefly appearing in her night gown and soldier boots (alright, I will let that one in) to serve cookies and tea to them.

The final scene: that of the mother visiting her mentally handicapped daughter is vividly existential; a good illustration of how mother’s suffering is recycled into a semblance meaning: “It’s as if for the first time I felt my daughter.”

Kierkegaard On Freedom And The Scala Paradisi

2005-11-11T12:37:00.000Z

Louis P. Pojman

"I am aware of freedom in my choice only when I
surrender myself to necessity and in surrendering to
forget it"

(Stages on Life's Way)

"The most wonderful gift that is given to humans is
choice, freedom. If you want to keep and preserve it,
there is only one way - in the very moment [that
you recognize your possession of it] unconditionally
to give it back to God and yourself along with it"

(Papers X 2 A 428).

In this essay I wish to outline Søren Kierkegaard's notion of freedom as it unfolds in his writings and plays a central role in his anthropology and the schema of salvation. One might say that freedom is the central concept in his philosophy of religion, and that it provides one with an ariadne thread with which to wind one's way through the myriads of tunnels and diversions of his works. All his other notions, e.g., anxiety, despair, subjectivity, and faith, are expressions of this notion. There is a question whether 'freedom' is really more than one notion in the melancholy Dane's work, but I shall assume Kierkegaard's own view on the matter
that the concept is one but has various forms or levels of meaning, of which some are more adequate than others.

The first thing to note about the concept is that it is not a simple concept in any of its phases. In fact, Kierkegaard treats all of his concepts as complex and dialectical, having significance only in opposition to another concept. Good only is understood in relationship to evil as its necessary other, love through indifference, salvation through despair and suffering. Freedom is always seen in tension with necessity, whether it be in the form of facticity, historical necessity, fate, divine grace, and/or guilt. While Kierkegaard, as a student, was deeply troubled with the problem of predestination (and with it fatalism), and concerned to show that it was a false doctrine, he was careful to steer away from Pelagianism and ended up embracing a modified, synergistic version of Augustinianism in which freedom is paradoxcially coupled with a notion of original sin and divine election.

There is a major opposition between Augustine and Pelagius. The first will crush all in order to raise it. The second refers itself to man as he is. The first system views Christianity in three stages: creation; the sin-fall and with it a condition of death and impotence; and a new creation, whereby man becomes placed in a position where he can choose and thereby, if he chooses - Christianity. The other system refers itself to man as he is (Christianity accommodated to the world). The importance of the theory of inspiration is seen from the first system. Here one sees the relation between the synergistic and the semi-pelagian conflict. It is the same question, only that the synergistic conflict has the Augustinian system's idea of a new creation as its presupposition (Papers I C 73, March 1843).

Secondly, Kierkegaard makes a distinction between freedom as free will (liberum arbitrium) and as liberation (libertas). The first category is identified with indifferentia aequiliberi (arbitrary or indifferent freedom), the freedom of Buridan's Ass who starves to death because he cannot decide between two equidistant bundles of hay. 2 Unconditioned freedom is a chimera, no where to be found in the world. There are always pressures, forces on the mind, emotional factors
weighting down the soul that produce tendencies to action. Indeed, Kierkegaard is hardly interested in freedom of outward action, of whether I have a choice to raise my arm or not.

Freedom is essentially an inward state which has to do with our loyalties, commitments, and beliefs. Freedom is not so much what we do, as the subjective how with which we do it. It is the good or bad will, the motive and intention. In the last analysis freedom as voluntary choice happens in the eternal "Now" which breaks into the normal course of determined action. It is a metabasis eis allo genos (something of an altogether other dimension from ordinary events), a mystery which signals divine grace and omnipotence. 4 In the last analysis, at its apex, freedom becomes liberation from guilt and restless autonomy. It is a surrender to its owner: "The most wonderful gift that is given to humans is choice, freedom. If you want to keep and preserve it, there is only one way - in the very moment [that you recognize your possession of it] unconditionally to give it back to God and yourself along with it" (Papers X 2 A 428).

Let us turn to Kierkegaard's notion of the fall and redemption and see how this description of freedom functions in his scala paradisi, his ascent to heaven. We may mark off Kierkegaard's eternal pilgrimage in nine stages, beginning with the human creation (every person) in "dreaming innocence" and ending with the summum bonum in supreme blessedness. Briefly, the stages are as follows:

1. Dreaming Innocence: each soul is in the same state as Adam and Eve before the Fall, except that now there are environmental pressures towards sin that there were not then.

2. The Advent of the Prohibition: goodness can only come to life with its dialectical opposite evil (SV IV, p. 185). But the possibility of illegitimate autonomy creates pressures that the unequipped soul can hardly withstand. This creates the vertigo of freedom in which the Fall becomes probable.

3. The Fall: freedom's first movement in which it yields to the pressures brought on by the possibility of autonomy. It "looks down" and "lets go" of the good. This is the first sin, though every other sin has essentially the same logic. Each person is Adam who sins for the first time, bringing sin into the world anew.

4. Slavery to Sin: this is the state of mind which results from the first free fall, a dispositional quality which makes every succeeding sin easier and more natural.

5. The Abyss of Despair: the dissatisfaction the soul experiences, caused by anxiety, that holy hypochondria, which reminds us that we were made for something better. There are various levels in this abyss, the very worst are those in which the disturbing voice of anxiety (the Spirit) is quieted, the Demonic, where the soul is locked-in within its own autonomy (lndesluttedhed).

6. The Ascent to the Good: here prevenient grace through anxiety for the good moves the soul towards the good and creates the possibility of faith (as a gift).

7. Freedom's Second Movement: the open and welcome response to prevenient grace and the possibility of faith, where the soul yields up its autonomy and gives itself back to God.

8. Slavery to God: a dispositional quality of total dependency on God corresponding to stage 4 (slavery or total dependency in sin), but the soul has been sick and must be gradually healed by divine medicine and reconditioning in a sick world. Hence, the suffering as a mark of salvation which is caused both by the healing process within and the opposition from without.

9. Eternal Blessedness: eternity in which the soul is united in love with God. The key stages are 3 and 7. They are described in some detail in The Concept of Anxiety and the Philosophical Fragments respectively (and to some degree in Sickness unto Death and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript). The former work is a brilliant reinterpretation of original sin, which makes each of us responsible for our own Fall. Every person finds himself guilty before God, which implies personal responsibility for a misrelationship. Anxiety is the symptom as well as the cause of the misrelationship. Anxiety is the psychological equivalent of a metaphysical state
of independence from the source of one's being.

In innocence, anxiety is present as a dream, adumbrating the sin-fall in the forms of premonitions and vague apprehensions. The sense of inner nothingness as well as the "prohibition" and "voice of judgment" cast their ghastly shadows onto the wall of our imagination somewhat as the shadows in Plato's cave. In this case, however, they both allure and repel, albeit, vaguely as in the faint remembrance of a dream after awakening. Then the time comes when the situation of which we have dreamed takes place. It is described as being on the edge of a cliff, overlooking an abyss. Something of the abyss' Nothingness calls us alluringly, and, in spite of our dread for what attracts, we look down. We are at once both extremely repelled and
deeply attracted by this Nothingness; and this increasing ambivalence of anxiety produces a state of dizziness in us, causing us to begin to faint. In the process of sinking, we grasp for something to hold onto, and it turns out to be finitude (any temporal object in place of eternity which had been our proper focus and which we ought to have grasped). Holding on to our object for balance, we faint for an instant (Øeblikket, the glance of an eye), and when we have regained our consciousness, we realize that we have chosen finitude and have been degraded by this poor choice.

One may compare Anxiety with dizziness. He, whose eye gazes down into the swallowing deep, becomes dizzy. But what is the cause of this? It is just as much the fault of his eye as the abyss, for what if he had not looked down? Thus anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which occurs because spirit will establish the synthesis, and freedom now stares down into its own possibility
and then grips finitude to hold onto. In this dizziness freedom faints. Psychology cannot come further than this and will not. In the same moment all is changed, and when freedom again rises, it sees that it is guilty. In between these two moments lies the leap which no science has explained or can explain. He who becomes guilty through anxiety, is as ambivalently [tvetydige] guilty as it is possible to be. Anxiety is a female weakness in which freedom swoons.

Psychologically, the sin-fall always occurs in impotence; but anxiety is also the most selfish, and no concrete expression of freedom is so selfish as the possibility of every concretion. This is again the overwhelming experience which determines the individual's ambivalent, sympathetic
and antipathetic relationship. There is in anxiety the selfish infinity of possibility which does not tempt like a choice, but disturbingly makes anxious with its sweet anxiety [Beaengstelse] (SV IV, p. 331 ; Lowry translation, p. 55).

This is the phenomenology of the original sin, whether it be ours or Adam's, but mutatis mutandis it is also a description of the process of every sin, which in a sense is a new fall. In dreaming innocence there was an inchoate sense of Nothingness disturbing the state of tranquility. This Nothingness is identified here as the abyss. The abyss as a metaphor is attached to every possible state of affairs, for qua possible (rather than actual) it is not known (through acquaintance), but simply vaguely adumbrated by a certain pre-understanding. For consciousness, the possible arises out of Nothing in the present moment and projects itself as future. It insinuates that the individual is capable of actualizing the possible. Possibility always brings with it a certain "prohibition" or inherent antithesis, as well as the intuition of judgment.

These heighten the intensity of the ambivalent emotions involved in the experience of anxiety. The whiffing vortex sensation which we experience at the heart of anxiety (as when we panic) seems to overwhelm the self so that it becomes too weak or giddy to see rightly or do what is in its best interest. The self is dizzy and "faints" or "swoons", and on awakening discovers that it is guilty. Although anxiety is the conditioning factor and the process of the Fall has a certain causal necessity, ultimately free will is responsible for the fall. "What is the cause of this? It is just as much the fault of his eye as the abyss, for what if he had not looked down? ''6 The implication is that, although the ego feels the repulsive attraction to gaze at possibility, he could have looked away if he had willed it strongly enough. In the Edifying Discourses there is a passage which may shed some light here. "When the navigator is out on the open seas, when all changes around him, the billows are born and then die; then he must not fix his gaze on them; for they change. He states up at the stars. ''7 That is, he holds on to infinitude instead of finitude, he chooses the eternal and unchangeable instead of the temporal and changeable. "Freedom now stares into its own possibility and then grips finitude to hold onto." It would seem that there are actually two acts of freedom here: (1) looking and (2) gripping. Is he guilty because he has stared or because he has gripped finitude? Is the leap the staring or the gripping? The implication may be that even after the ego in freedom looks down instead of upwards, it still has the possibility of gripping infinity. But we may interpret the passage as implying that once having looked, the grasping onto finitude follows necessarily. The matter may be left in doubt, for as Vigilius says, "Psychology cannot come farther than this and will not."

What is clear is that the leap of freedom has occurred. "In between these two moments lies the leap which no science has explained or can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety, is as ambivalently guilty as it is possible to be." One moment the individual is in innocence and feels the unrest of anxiety within, urging him to look. The next moment, after the faint, he arises and finds that he is guilty. Vigilius Haufniensis makes it clear that the cards are stacked against the poor dreamer (a suggestive description for innocence before the Fall), and that with every sin, sin becomes more normal, so that it becomes harder and harder to resist sin. Here we see an "ensnared freedom" indeed, a freedom that has a distinct predilection to swoon into the possibility of finitude. One may rightly question the justice of God in predisposing us in this way, for it seems that the overwhelming probability is that each of us will "freely" fall and continue to do so. But, if I understand Kierkegaard correctly (and he is never clear here), it may well be the
case that the Fall is paradoxically a good thing (felix culpa) without which the summum bonum cannot be attained - for to know the good entails knowing evil.

Kierkegaard never says this explicitly, but I leave it to you, my listener or reader, to suggest a better explanation.

The second movement of freedom, in which the metabasis eis allo genos happens in the upward direction, occurs once the dregs of guilt and sin have been experienced and anxiety, the holy homesickness, a sort of prevenient grace prepares the self for faith. The description is found in greatest detail in the Philosophical Fragments (especially chapter 4 and the Interlude). Here Johannes Climacus sets forth two philosophies of salvation, the Platonic way (represented by Philosophical Idealism) and the Revelational way (represented by Christianity). In the former
the truth is immanent within us, so that our freedom is sufficient to discover the truth that liberates. One needs no teacher to discover the truth within. The revelational way depicts us as an alien to truth, so that the truth must come to man, if it comes at all, as a gift, bestowed from without. In this way the teacher becomes a necessary condition for discovering the truth. He becomes a benefactor in that he freely gives what we would not otherwise be able to obtain, for he creates the possibility of faith. If man is void of truth and in untruth, there is no possibility for learning or receiving the truth in the present condition. So he must be given a new capacity, a receptacle for containing the truth within. This new organ is faith.

Faith is not the truth, nor is the capacity for faith a guarantee of possessing the truth. It is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for possessing the truth (or "containing" the truth). That is, knowledge of the truth in this revelational sense involves choice, a decision to live entirely according to this truth, a "looking upwards" and gripping the ladder to paradise. Here we have the working out of the synergism mentioned in the reference to Augustine on page 142 (above). Salvation is a cooperative venture between God and man. The capacity for divine truth, as well as a revelation of the truth, is given freely by God, but the individual must choose whether or not to accept it. Rejection is still possible. Grace does not force man against his will "If I do not have the condition...all my willing is of no avail; although as soon as the condition is given, the Socratic principle [the power to will] will again apply.

Nevertheless, there is a strong inclination to accept God. Faith, sensu eminenti, is not an act of the will, but a miracle of grace. As Frater Taciturnus says in Stages on Life's Way: My choice is not free. I am aware of freedom in my choice only when I surrender myself to necessity, and in surrendering to forget it... I cannot go to any man, for I am a prisoner, and misunderstanding, and...misunderstanding again are the iron bars before my window; and I do not elect to go to God, for I am compelled .... My situation is as if God had chosen me me, not I God. There is left to me not even the negative expression of being something of importance, namely, that it is I who come to Him. If I will not summit to bearing the smart of necessity, I am annihilated, or have no place to exist among men except in misunderstanding. If I bear the smart of necessity, then there will come about the transformation (Stages on Life's Way, pp. 3220. The passages are set in distinct dialectical tension, both election and voluntary choice being paradoxically required for salvation. Exactly how the will works here is left as much a mystery as it was in Vigilius' description of the Fall. In a classic journal entry the synergistic tension between grace and free will ("subjectivity") is set forth like this:

No one is saved by works [the humanly subjective] but by grace - and corresponding to that - by faith. Good! But can I then do nothing myself with regard to becoming a believer? Either one must now immediately answer unconditionally, NO; and thus we have the election-through-grace in a fatalistic sense, or one must make a little admission. The thing is that man isalways suspicious against the subjective, and since one establishes that we are saved by faith, one grasps immediately the suspicion, that here too much as been conceded. So one adds: but no one can give himself faith. It is a gift of God which I must pray for.

Good! But can I even pray [in my own power] or must we go further and say: No, to pray (especially for faith) is a gift of God, which no man can give himself; it must be given him? And what then: Then I must again be given the ability to pray correctly for it, that I must correctly pray for faith and so forth. There are many, many envelopings, but they must at one point or another be stopped by the subjective. That man makes the scale so great, so difficult, can be praiseworthy as majesty's expression for God's infinity; but however do not allow yourself to exclude the subjective; unless we want to have fatalism (Papers X 2 A 301, 1849).

The dialectic between God's grace and human freedom must "at one point or another be stopped by the subjective." Humans have a role to play in salvation which, although quantitatively it may seem miniscule in comparison to God's part, is still decisive in the final analysis.

But here we notice both a symmetrical and an asymmetrical relationship between the role of freedom in the Fall and in Salvation. Just as in the Fall freedom is depicted as a response to pressures in favor of a possibility, now the possibility of faith rather than of finitude and sin, but unlike in the Fall, the probabilities do not seem to be in favor of the freedom's leap. The question immediately arises, if the cards are stacked against humans in the Fall so that no one of God's creatures ever succeeds in avoiding sin, why aren't the cards of grace stacked in man's favor so that no human can avoid choosing faith?

It seems to me that Kierkegaard does not succeed in getting God off the hook with regard to evil, for given the strong inclination towards the Fall, which seems necessary for salvation, we should expect an equally strong tendency towards saving faith which constitutes the promise of the summum bonum. The asymmetry seems invidious to God's plan and calls for improvement. What is lacking, and what Kierkegaard's scala paradisi calls for, is something like a notion of purgatory wherein God's call continues to work on those ruined by the Fall, until the apocatastasis is reached and all are finally won back to his love. For in the end even as human freedom is too weak to resist in, so it is too wise to resist grace. The logical conclusion of Kierkegaard's schema of the divine comedy is universal salvation.

All's well that ends well.

____

Notes:

1. Cf. Kierkegaard'sPapers I A 4, 5, 7, 10, 19, 20, 43,295 and C 40.
2. "If sin has come in by an act of an abstract liberum arbitrium (which no more existed in
the beginning as later in the world, since it is a mere mental chimera), neither is there
anxiety."

Samlede Vaerker IV, p. 320 (Lowry translation of The Concept of Dread, p. 45). "The
abstract freedom of choice (liberum arbitrium) is a fantasy, as if a human being at every moment of his life stood continually in this abstract possibility, so that consequently he never moves from one spot, as if freedom were not also an historical condition - this has been pointed out by Augustine and many others. We may make this clear simply by the following example. Take a weight, even the most accurate gold weight - when it has been used only a week, it already has a history. The owner knows this history, e.g., that it tilts towards off-balance one way or the other, etc. This history continues with use. So it is with the will. It has a history, a continual progressive history. A person can fall so far that he eventually loses even his capacity to choose. With this, however, the history is not concluded, for, as Augustine correctly says, this condition is the punishment for sin - and is again sin" (Papers X 4 175, 1851).

"Usually freedom of will is presented as an extraordinary good. It is, but it is also
depends on how long it is going to last. Usually one makes the mistake of thinking that this itself is the good and that this freedom of choice lasts one's life time. But what Augustine says of true freedom (as opposed to freedom of choice) is very true and very much a part of experience - namely that a person has the most lively sense of freedom when with complete and decisive determination he impresses upon his deeds the inner necessity which excludes the thought of other possibilities. Then freedom of choice or the agony of will comes to an end" (X 4 A 177, 1851). Cf. also Papers X 2 A 428.

3.Cf. Either~Or II p. 232 and my The Logic ofSubfectivity, p. 103f.
4."The greatest good which can be done to anyone, greater than any end to which it can be created, is to make it free. In order to be able to do this omnipotence is necessary... If we correctly understand omnipotence, clearly it must have this quality of taking itself back in the very manifestation of its all-powerfulness, so that the result of this act of omnipotence will be an independent being. This is why one person cannot make another person free, because the one who has the power is imprisoned in it and consequently always has a false relation to him whom he wishes to free....Omnipotence alone can take itself back while giving, and this relationship is nothing else but the independence of the recipient" (Papers VII A 181).
5.Cf. The Concept of Dread, Chapters i and 2 for the best description of the first part of the schema and the Philosophical Fragments for a detailed description of the second part.
6.SV IV, p1331 (Lowry tr. p. 55).
7.SV III, p. 25.
8.Fragments, p. 77f.

A Case for Canonisation

2005-11-10T10:47:00.000Z

Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince xv

It is not my wish to engage in any political ecclesiastical polemic with anybody, but rather quietly reflect on historical roots of Christian institutions, being unruly and bold enough to suggest a new devotion.

The idea of renunciation of worldly gains and interests, however profitable these may be for the improvement of living conditions and human dignity is essential if one is to acquire Christian mindset.

Yet how does this reconcile with the advent of Christianity to the social and especially institutional sphere, the methods employed by Christian leaders to build Christian establishment, Christian law-and-order, Christian empires? Would it be just for the Christian Emperor Constantine the Great to execute his wife and son on the basis of his own judgement? Or should the decision of a Christian Empress Irene to blind her son in the same purple chamber where she gave birth to him, be deemed just? Would it be Christianly just of the Grand Princess Olga of Kiev to do what she did? (According to the chronicles, she pretended to enter into peace negotiations with the hostile Drevlians tribe and urged them to send a dove from each house in their city. When Olga received the doves, she sent them back with a burning branch tied to each one. The doves returned home and set a great many fires which burned the Drevlian city to the ground.) All of the above rulers are officially saints in our Church.

My answer is yes, if the grounds for that act are lawful enough within the framework of the prevailing legal system of the day and place. After all, Christianity does not exactly forbid the ruler to obey the prevailing legal custom. Pontius Pilate is portrayed as just within his legal framework. The blood is on anybody (Jewish nation, for example) save the judge himself.

Justinian’s Institutes famously open like this:

“Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine and human [italics mine – A.M.]; the science of the just and the unjust.” (Book I)

Christian ruler, by virtue of his unique role as mediator between the worldly and the divine is somewhat exempt from ordinary common-sense approach to ethics. He no longer acts as a mere mortal, but as a guardian of law and order, both divine and human, rooted in statecraft, that "science of the just and the unjust".

Back to Machiavelli: a moment of obedience to the Church is clearly manifest in Il Principe. The chapter Concerning Ecclesiastical Principalities praises the popes of Rome, their courage in preserving the unity of the Church by the means of their political skill.

In his thought Machiavelli can be said to have re-affirmed the lawful bonds between worldly statecraft and the Gospel.

Thus, in my view, Machiavelli could and should long ago have been canonized and proclaimed confessor of faith and Doctor of the Church.

Basic info on Machiavelli's thought can be found here.

Notices

2005-11-04T10:16:00.000Z

Dürer & Cusanus: the Real, the Ideal, & the Quantification of the Body

2005-11-04T02:40:00.000Z

Allister Neher

Abstract:

For Albrecht Dürer the study of human proportions and the study of perspective were correlative fields of inquiry, and central to the quest for a naturalistic science of painting. Their conjunction and natural point of coincidence, it will be argued, is to be found in Dürer's stereometrical studies of the human figure. In these studies perspective and proportions are joined to create a system for manipulating representations of the human form. This paper will set out the central ideas that direct this approach to representation, and relate them to the philosophy of Nicholas Cusanus's De docta ingnorantia. Both Dürer's art theory and Cusanus's epistemology link the real and the ideal through the language of quantification. This paper explores a structural commonality in their different approaches to the question of truth and the development of knowledge.

This paper arose from a structural intuition about truth as it is conceived in Albrecht Dürer’s art and in Nicholas Cusanus’s philosophy. The phrase “structural intuition” is borrowed from Martin Kemp, while severed from his empiricist epistemology. [1] I find it an apt phrase for what I am trying to articulate. In historical studies we are often struck by similarities that appear to connect disparate activities and inquiries, and make them seem fitting counterparts in their culture. This fittingness can show itself in many ways. With Dürer and Cusanus it is revealed through their use of the language of geometry. The role that was given to mathematics in Renaissance reflections on the nature of knowledge and reality is not a new subject. The aim of this paper is to set out a new aspect of it.

I

My discussion of Dürer will have as its focus his studies on human proportions. I would like to enter this discussion by considering an evaluation that has often been made of these studies. Frequently, they are treated as a curiosity, a kind of intellectual excess that must have been due to some private preoccupation or obsession that led Dürer out of the realm of art theory and into the purely descriptive science of anthropometry (illustration 1). [2] Federico Zuccaro, for instance, thought that Dürer’s efforts were simply a waste of time, artistically irrelevant, an amusement for those more inclined to explore Nature’s wonders than to represent them. [3] Even Erwin Panofsky, perhaps Dürer’s most sympathetic commentator, offered an assessment of these studies that in one aspect agreed with Zuccaro’s conclusion. In “The History of the Theory of Proportions as a Reflection of the History of Styles,” Panofsky tells us

Dürer’s Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportions marks a climax which the theory of proportions had never reached before nor was to reach ever after. It also marks, however, the beginning of its decline. Dürer himself succumbed, to a degree, to the temptation of pursuing the study of human proportions as an end in itself: by their very exactitude and complexity his investigations went more and more beyond the bounds of artistic usefulness, and finally lost almost all connection with artistic practice. . . .And if we remember that the smallest unit of his metrical system, the so-called “particle” (Trümlein), was equal to less than a millimeter, the chasm between theory and practice becomes obvious. [4]

Zuccaro, Panofsky, and others who would join them in expressing such reservations about Dürer’s project are of course quite right: one does not need the kind of detail that Dürer provides in order to be able to produce worthy and compelling naturalistic figures. I would like to propose though a different perspective from which to view the contribution made by these studies to the history of representation. For while they do appear to be early contributions to the science of anthropometry, they can also be seen as part of a project to further sophisticate the techniques of representation, and advance the visual arts.

Dürer fashioned a number of approaches to the study of human proportions. For my purposes they are not so different that one cannot stand in for the rest. As my example, then, let me choose the one referred to in the quotation from Panofsky.

The general framework within which Dürer made his measurements was derived from the Vitruvian canon (illustration 2). Leaving aside long-standing debates about the proper interpretation of Vitruvius, the general idea behind his approach is that one establishes human proportions by organic differentiation, not through the use of an absolute module. One measures the relation of fingers to hand, hand to forearm, forearm to arm, and all limbs in relation to the length of the body. All of these relations are expressed as fractions of total body length, giving one a harmonious, organic unity of the whole. Of course one needs a system of measurement in order to state fractional relations, and the system that Dürer proposed has a certain debt to Alberti:

I will, in this book, teach how to measure out the human figure with a rule, which I make long or short according as the figure is to be large or small. I make the rule always one sixth of the length of the figure. . . . Then I divide the rule into ten equal parts and each part I call a zall, each zall I divide into ten and call each tenth a teil, each teil into three and call each third a trümlein. [5]

As Panofsky suggested, this seems to be a rather refined system of measurement for an artist’s workshop of that time, where concerns rarely extended beyond the larger divisions of the body (illustration 3). This is true, if one is talking about the typical artist of Dürer’s era, but Dürer’s theoretical ambitions did not make him a typical artist. He took the Italian idea of a “science of painting” seriously, and he was trying to advance that science. Dürer was living in an era that would to bring about a complete transformation of humankind’s relation to the world. As is well known, between 1300 and 1600 Western European civilization gained control of the basic quantificational techniques that would allow it to dominate nature in ways that would be without parallel. [6] One hundred years after Dürer’s studies on human proportions the transformation was essentially complete, announced in this famous pronouncement by Galileo:

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze, but the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth. [7]

No artist would have endorsed this more whole-heartedly than Dürer. In fact, he had already expressed his support for this vision, for the future of art, in the dedication of his Treatise on Measurement:

In our Germany, most excellent Wilibald, are to be found at the present day many young men of a happy talent for the Art Pictorial, who without any artistic training whatever, but taught only by their exercise of it, have run riot like an unpruned tree, so that unhesitatingly and without compunction they turn out their works, purely according to their own judgment. But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances, not undeservingly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who themselves are ignorant of this art. Since this is in very truth the foundation of the whole graphic art, it seems to me a good thing to set down for studious beginners a few rudiments, in which I might, as it were, furnish them with a handle for using the compass and the rule, and thence, by seeing Truth itself before their eyes, they might become not only zealous of the arts, but even arrive at a great and true understanding of them. [8]

Dürer dedicated his treatise on measurement to Willibald Pirckheimer because Pirckheimer, and the circle of humanist scholars around him, saw Dürer as the person who could elevate German painting to the level of a truly serious intellectual endeavour; art would become the representational science of Nature. And, given the naturalistic aims of the era, this would also be an advance for art. “Depart not from Nature,” Dürer enjoins us, “for Art is rooted in Nature, and whoever can pull it out, has it.” [9]

So, what has Dürer pulled out in his studies on proportions, and how is it to be returned to representation? His meticulous, seemingly excessive, studies of the human body have a direct relation to its representation. The connection I want to establish can be made most clearly through another set of studies—stereometrical drawings—that originally had a somewhat different purpose (illustration 4). Dürer’s stereometrical drawings can be enlisted to graphically link his labours on proportions to his contributions to perspective, and provide an explanation of why the former are artistically relevant to an art underpinned by the latter.

Like Piero della Francesca and other Italian artists, Dürer made numerous studies of geometrical solids and how to represent them in correct perspective. The stereometrical man of illustration 4 is obviously an assemblage of geometrical solids, and he could easily be represented from any perspective. He does not of course much resemble a man; however, he could be worked to a closer approximation of the human form. With the appropriate measurements, the cube that serves as his head, for example, could be refined into a multi-planed solid with the basic configuration of a human head (illustration 5). There is no reason in principle why this process could not be continued, and the head refined to an ever-increasing number of planes, even to planes no bigger than one Trümlein, at which point the geometrical construction would be indistinguishable from the organic object. The cubic, grid-like structure that typically surrounds the head of the figure in one of Dürer’s complete proportion studies (illustration 1) would facilitate such a process of refinement, in that it would offer the framework for both the proportional measurements of a head and its formation in perspective. Evidently, this procedure could be extended to any other part of the body and to the body as a whole (illustration 6). Thus, one would have complete control of the object of representation through the means of representation, which, in the opinion of Dürer and his followers, would be a considerable advancement in the “science of painting.”

One would need the diligence and infinite patience of a Dürer to realise a painting in this way, but it is certainly an attainable goal, especially in our era. If many of Dürer’s images seem curiously modern that is not surprising, for the systems of perspective and proportions that are used in contemporary computer-imaging programmes are direct descendants of his techniques. Dürer did not of course have it in mind to create a kind of manual computer-imaging programme. There is no doubt though that he meant for his various studies to be united in the service of naturalistic depiction, as I think is indicated by illustration 6, and testified to by the following passage: “In order that this teaching of mine might be better understood I have already published a book about Measurements, that is to say of lines, planes, bodies, and the like, without which this my theory [on human proportions] can not be properly understood. It is therefore necessary for all who would try this art that they be well instructed in Measurements and know how to draw a plan and elevation of anything.” [10] If proportions and perspective are harmonised mathematically, then the essential structures are in place for the creation of a universal system for the representation of any body, real or ideal, at ever-increasing levels of complexity.

II

Let us now turn to the other figure I want to bring into these reflections. Even though my intention is not to tell a tale of influence that links Dürer to Nicholas Cusanus, it would not be difficult to do so. Although Cusanus (1401-1464) was dead before Dürer (1471-1528) was born, it is probable that he had a place in Dürer’s intellectual environment. After all, Cusanus was one of the few Germans to achieve a high position in Italian intellectual circles. Dürer associated with the humanist scholars of Nuremberg who of course admired Italian intellectual culture and were familiar with Cusanus’s writings. It has been documented that many of the members of this circle owned the works of Cusanus, for example, Hartmann Schedel and Conrad Celtis. Furthermore, Dürer’s closest friend was Willibald Pirckheimer, the most eminent of the Nuremberg humanists, and Pirckheimer’s grandfather knew Cusanus. Everything considered, it would be something of a surprise if Dürer knew nothing of Cusanus’s doctrines. But this not a question I want to pursue. [11] As I stated at the outset, my interest is only in revealing a structural affinity between Dürer’s approach to visual truth and Cusanus’s analysis of epistemological truth.

Some see Cusanus as the last medieval philosopher, some as the first philosopher of the Renaissance, and others as a Janus faced figure posed on the threshold between the two eras. The last description fits my understanding of him. Although Cusanus was an inventive and powerful renaissance thinker, his approach to philosophy was profoundly influenced by his scholastic heritage. Nevertheless, from within the framework of scholasticism Cusanus was able to introduce questions that pointed beyond it. This was affected, principally, through a rethinking of scholasticism’s debt to Platonism, a rethinking that was felt throughout Cusanus’s wide-ranging interests.

The central question for Cusanus was the relation between the sensible and the intelligible, between what Plato called the world of appearances and the realm of the forms. This was a question that he posed in relation to both empirical knowledge and theology. Many medieval thinkers had been eager to try to bridge the gap between the sensible and the intelligible, for human beings needed assurance that their knowledge of the imperfect particulars given to them in experience held something of the truth found in the perfect, intelligible forms that these particulars were mere instances of. Similarly, as imperfect creatures in God’s world, human beings needed to believe that there was some means by which they could immediately come to know their creator. The fundamental insight of Cusanus’s philosophy was that the gap between the sensible and the intelligible, between appearances and forms, could not be bridged. This was the founding idea of his work De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance). [12]

Consider first what this implies for theology. God as the infinite Maximum cannot be comprehended through the means by which we comprehend the world of experience. For the Maximum is not the superlative in a graduated chain of comparisons that has led up to it: it is not like the largest mammal or tallest mountain. We cannot know God through the natural progression of knowledge in this world. In fact, the Maximum is the antithesis to every possible comparison. The difference is qualitative not quantitative: the most intelligent person in the world is still an infinite distance from God’s omniscience, and any increase in intelligence will not make that distance less than infinite. Something similar holds for our claims to empirical knowledge. Any actual existent known to us is inferior to the ideal, and this inferiority is a necessary inferiority. All real circles exist in the realm of “more or less,” whereas the ideal circle, what Plato would call the intelligible form of circularity, is by definition independent of questions of “more or less.” There is an unbridgeable gap between the real and the ideal.

This does not mean though that the human effort to understand the world and God must end in failure. There is a positive doctrine that comes from accepting this irremovable barrier: De docta ignorantia. It is because of its separation from the intelligible that the sensible gains its significance. No empirical knowledge is possible that is not related to the ideal. The character of the ideal is its delimitation, its determinateness. The character of empirical knowledge is its determinability, its capacity to refine itself as an ever-closer approximation of the ideal. The ideal, then, to use a mathematical concept, is the limit to which empirical knowledge strives, but can never reach. In Kantian terms, the ideal is a condition of possibility for our knowledge of our world.

How does all this relate to Dürer? Because humankind is God’s creation, and because we gain our knowledge of the ideal through sensibility, the world of sense in Cusanus’s philosophy receives a promotion: it is no longer the source of base knowledge and deception from which we must escape. Rather, it is the foundation of knowledge and the impetus for the movement of thought towards the ideal. Correspondingly, those who explore and articulate the world of sense also receive a promotion. In his set of dialogues Idiota, Cusanus has a layman instruct an orator and a philosopher about the nature of knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge, he tells them, is not to be found in the writings of others and the authority of the ancients. It is to be found in experience, in the everyday activities of everyday life: in the weighing, measuring and counting found in the market place, for example. Knowledge for Cusanus presupposes comparison, which is, more precisely, measurement. Measurement itself presupposes a common unit and a homogeneous quantitative order.

Merchants may know how to operate in the world of experience better than bookish scholars, but they are rarely inclined to explore it and articulate the means through which it is known. If we want to make the principles of our knowledge explicit, and if we want to draw out the ideal from what is given to us in experience, we will need more astute and careful observers. We will need scientists and artists, or, in an era in which they are not clearly distinguished, we will need artist/scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Dürer.

Dürer’s stereometrical studies of the human figure are the perfect counterpart to Cusanus’s doctrines. It is striking how they are almost literal instantiations of the mathematical images that Cusanus relies upon to explicate his ideas. In De docta ignorantia, when trying to explain the nature of the unbridgeable gap between the real and the ideal, Cusanus asks the reader to think of the relation between a polygon and a circle. We can increase indefinitely the number of sides that a polygon has but it will never become a circle, even when it has a million sides, or a billion, and is visually indistinguishable from a circle. Dürer’s stereometrical drawings, we will remember, can be understood in relation to just such an idea of continual geometrical refinement. Student of the sensible world and its quantificational determination, Dürer pursued the ideal in the sensible with ever-increasing precision, up to the limits of his system of measurement, which were also the limits of representation, and, in Cusanus’s philosophy, the limits of human knowledge. It would be difficult to think of a more fitting way to exemplify Cusanus’s doctrines on the nature of knowledge and how it is achieved.

It might be remarked though that the fit is not what it appears to be: whereas Cusanus was concerned with the process by which our knowledge moves towards an ideal (an abstract general concept) Dürer was concerned with how to better represent individual figures (instances of the abstract general concept ‘human being’). Such a remark captures only part of the truth for it overlooks the more universal aspect of Dürer’s investigations. Dürer did indeed want artists to be able to better represent individual figures, that was his most concrete artistic aim. But the more general goal of his studies was to find the proportions appropriate to the human form. Dürer famously gave up the normative ideal of one, true set of proportions, and turned instead to studying the proportions found in a variety of human types. The fact that he moved from a normative quest to a descriptive project does not entail though that he decided to confine himself to the realm of particulars. Dürer measured hundreds of individuals so that he could deduce from his measurements the proportions of different general types. What he could not do was find a descriptive model that would allow these to be resolved in turn at another, more general, conceptual level. He was nevertheless continually adding sides to Cusanus’s polygon, while providing further mathematical information for the depiction of individuals.

A question that remains to be addressed is how deep does this structural affinity between Dürer’s art theory and Cusanus’s epistemology run? Are the statements we find in Dürer’s writings that touch on questions of knowledge compatible with Cusanus’s doctrines? Given that Dürer was not a philosopher and his writings were typically aimed at artists, I do not think that this matter can be satisfactorily resolved. Dürer’s pronouncements are often too vague to betray an allegiance to a definite philosophical position. That said relevant passages do seem to run in the same direction as Cusanus’s doctrines. Consider this well-known one from the fourth book on human proportion: “The Creator fashioned men once for all as they must be, and I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” [13] He then goes on to add: “We are considering about the most beautiful human figure conceivable, but the Maker of the world knows how that should be. Even if we succeed well we do but approach towards it somewhat from afar.” [14] All of this seems very much in line with Cusanus’s Christian Platonism. The ideal human form, of necessity, exists in the mind of God. We can only approach an understanding of that ideal through studying the totality of real human beings and their imperfect ways of participating in it. This of course will not give us God’s knowledge, but it will give us an understanding that can be a more or less successful approximation of the ideal.

Illustrations:

fig 1

fig 2

fig 6

fig 4

fig 5

fig 3

____

Notes:

[1] Martin Kemp, Visualizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

[2] Albrecht Dürer, Four Books of Human Proportion (New York: Dover, 1972). We know that Dürer finished the manuscript in 1523. It appears that he delayed publication because he acquired, on the recommendation of his friend Willibald Pirckheimer , the noted humanist scholar, ten books considered to be of interest to painters from the library of Bernhard Walther, the Nuremberg astronomer and mathematician. Dürer died April 6, 1528. The manuscript was posthumously published in 1532.

[3] Federico Zuccaro, “L’Idea de’ pittori, scultori e architetti” in D. Heikamp, Scritti d’arte di Federico Zuccaro (Florence, 1967) p. 250.

[4] Erwin Panofsky, “The History of the Theory of Proportions as a Reflection of the History of Styles” in Meaning and the Visual Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955): pp. 103-104.

[5] Dürer, Four Books of Human Proportion, Second Book, first pages of manuscript.

[6] For a recent treatment of the subject see Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[7] Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Stillman Drake (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 237-238.

[8] I have chosen to use the translation of the dedication from Of the Just Shaping of Letters, (New York: Dover, 1965), pp. 1-2. The Dover edition is a reprint of a 1917 Grolier edition in which the translator is not recognized. Originally Of the Just Shaping of Letters was part of the Treatise on Measurement, which was published in 1525. The Treatise on Measurement has been translated into English under the title The Painter’s Manual by Walter L. Strauss (New York: Abaris Books, 1977).

[9] Quoted in Jane Campbell Hutchison, Albrecht Dürer: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 69.

[10] Albrecht Dürer, The Writings of Albrecht Dürer, ed. and trans. William Martin Conway (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1958), p. 231.

[11] For a brief discussion of this topic and further references see Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 129-130. See as well Campbell Hutchison, pp. 60-61.

[12] Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, trans. and intro. H. Lawrence Bond (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), pp. 85-206.

[13] Albrecht Dürer, The Writings of Albrecht Dürer, p.250.

[14] Ibid., p.251.

Appleyard on Science and the Soul

2005-10-31T07:37:00.000Z

Richard Webster

Some years ago the poet Ted Hughes expressed his dislike of science in characteristically trenchant terms:

Scientific objectivity has its own morality ... and this is the prevailing morality of our time. It is a morality utterly devoid of any awareness of the requirements of the inner world. It is contemptuous of the ‘human element’. This is its purity and its strength. The prevailing philosophies of our time subscribe to this contempt with a nearly religious fanaticism, just as science itself does.

Bryan Appleyard might well have used these words as the epigraph to his new book, for they express its theme forcefully and succinctly. Appleyard himself is even more succinct and only a little less forceful. ‘Science is effective,’ he writes, ‘but what does it tell us about ourselves and how we must live? The brief answer to this is: nothing.’

At the heart of his argument lies the view that Western science is not simply a neutral method of acquiring knowledge but that it is ‘a metaphysic like any other.’ The foundations of this metaphysic were laid by Galileo, for his discovery was that one of the most effective ways of understanding the world ‘is to pretend that we do not exist.’ Appleyard comments that few faiths or cults can ever have made such a bizarre demand of their adherents as that which is contained in the doctrine of scientific objectivity:

It is precisely as if some sect had insisted only that its followers believe they were invisible and all else would follow. Such a faith would be confined, we assume, to a few eccentrics and inadequates. Yet science’s demand is even more extreme, and we do not notice our own acquiescence, our own eccentricity. And we do not notice because, astonishingly, the demand produces results. It works.

It is this view which runs through his essay on the history of science in which he traces the development of physics from Plato and Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas to Galileo, Descartes and Newton and their modern descendants. Modern science gradually emerges not as the embodiment of reason but as a form of worldly mysticism whose zeal for accumulating knowledge about the inanimate and the non-human, and whose ‘rational’ commitment to technological power and material wealth has almost completely obscured its radical anti-humanism. The view that the achievements of modern science are best understood not as a testimony to the power of human reason, but as products of an irrationalist cult which is governed by a doctrine of radical self-denial will seem bizarre and extreme to many. One of the most striking aspects of Appleyard’s argument, however, is its detailed congruence with so many aspects of our cultural history. If we were to judge the argument purely by its degree of ‘fit’ with the empirical evidence it might well be thought that it is neither bizarre nor extreme but reasonable, balanced and perceptive. It is precisely because Appleyard’s central proposition does contain a core of truth, however, that his book, for all its incidental wealth, is ultimately so disappointing.

Part of the problem has to do with the medicine which he prescribes for our cultural malaise. With impressive tough-mindedness he rejects some of the alternative therapies which are currently on offer. He provides an excellent critique of the ecology movement and goes on to rebut firmly the mysticism of science-gurus such as Fritjof Capra. Such scepticism, however, only makes his own prescription more surprising. For when, five pages before the end of the book, he finally produces it, it turns out to be the oldest nostrum of them all and even comes in a bottle clearly labelled ‘the immortal soul’. ‘People throughout history,’ writes Appleyard, ‘have felt they have souls. This feeling is real...’. Human souls exist, he argues, in the same way that Santa Claus exists, because both are embodied in the language of those who believe in them. An imaginary monster exists in the same way, but it has less existence because fewer people believe in it: ‘To be a dreamed-of dragon is one form of existence,’ he writes, ‘to be a believed-in Father Christmas is another, higher form.’ That any writer can seriously propose that we can save our culture from the corrosive power of science by affirming the existence of a human soul which is accorded the same ontological reality as Santa Claus is remarkable. In fairness to Bryan Appleyard it must be said that most of his book is much more sensible than its conclusion.

This conclusion, however, clearly points to the central weakness in the book’s larger argument. Where it founders is on the question of the relationship of science to religion. Appleyard in his role as cultural historian is ever ready to be seduced by superficial schisms into ignoring the huge continuities of Western history. ‘Science contradicts religion as surely as Judaism contradicts Islam’ he writes, ‘– they are absolutely and irresolvably conflicting views.’ The most obvious problem here is that Islam developed directly out of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and shares much of its world-view with Judaism – whose prophets Muslims revere. At the same time modern science was the almost exclusive creation of zealous Christians who were seeking not to escape their faith but to confirm and magnify it. Descartes, Newton and Robert Boyle, to name but three representative figures, all believed they had triumphantly succeeded through their science in bearing witness to the majesty and rationality of God.

Although Appleyard seems to be sporadically aware of the deep religiosity of Western science, he cannot bring himself to accept that many of the sins he attributes to ‘science’ might more accurately be traced back to ‘religion’. He is, I believe, quite right to stress the degree to which post-Newtonian scientism, with its hunger for mathematical clarity and conceptual simplicity, is implicitly hostile to the self and to human complexity. But his observation would carry much more weight were it attended by the recognition that science’s contempt for the human is rooted in the Christian doctrine of contemptus mundi and in the traditional desire of the Christian intellectual to escape upwards from the Satan-ridden world of human beings, into the divine empyrean. When Stephen Hawking declares that his aspiration as a physicist is ‘to know the mind of God’ he is speaking out of this same tradition. His words should remind us that the epistemology of Western science has been both shaped and scarred by Christian asceticism, the asceticism which was developed throughout the middle ages in the monasteries of the West and disseminated most triumphantly by the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

In his determination to blame ‘science’ for all our ills Appleyard distorts this profound cultural continuity, averting his eyes from it whenever he can. In doing so he fails adequately to recognise that ‘modern science’ is not monolithic, and that Darwinian biology in particular is potentially subversive of the very crypto-theological values which post-Newtonian physics revered, and which Appleyard opposes under the impression that he is opposing ‘science’ itself. If the truly subversive implications of some of Darwin’s insights have yet to emerge, it is largely because Darwin himself failed to break out of the prison-house of theological assumptions he had inherited from Christian scientists such as Newton, Boyle and Paley. One reaction to this failed escape is for us all to throw up our hands and loudly proclaim our belief in the reality and complexity of the human soul in the hope that by doing so we can triumph over science. The other reaction is to think more carefully, more sensitively and more systematically about the very aspects of human reality which science has traditionally neglected. Only if we do this is it possible that our intellectual culture may yet triumph over its own history, and over the spiritual extremism which shaped modern rationalism and bequeathed to us a contempt for the ‘human element’ whose religious origins we too readily forget.

Title Reviewed:

Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man
by Bryan Appleyard, 283pp. Picador

The Legacy of Freud

2005-10-31T07:13:00.000Z

Richard Webster

‘Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing it is.’[1]

These words of Gershon Legman express well something of the confusion, fear and anxiety which have surrounded the subjects of sex and violence for very many centuries.

This confusion clearly affects individuals at the most intimate and private level. But it is also significant in intellectual terms. For to think at all about subjects which are hedged round by such powerful taboos requires not simply lucidity of intellect, but emotional fluency of the kind we do not normally associate with the scientific mind. To think clearly requires even more unusual capacities. It also calls for a degree of intellectual rebelliousness which is rare among those trained in the natural sciences. Sigmund Freud is frequently held to have possessed all of these qualities. The American writer Lucy Freeman begins her popular study of Freud and the psychoanalytic movement by observing that nearly twenty-one centuries have passed since Plato wrote, ‘the life that is unexamined is not worth living’, and advised man to ‘Know thyself’. She goes on to describe the birth of psychoanalysis in the following terms:

For close to two millenniums Plato’s celebrated dictum seemed to pose an impossible challenge to mankind. Then, at the dawn of the twentieth century, a lone doctor in Vienna, Sigmund Freud, conducted what Alexander Pope, in 1733, called ‘the proper study of mankind’. Freud made startling discoveries that were to revolutionise the thinking of the world about the mind of man. Five centuries before Christ, Heraclitus had said, ‘The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored.’ But one man, Sigmund Freud, not only crossed the frontier of that far country, but penetrated its heartland, and through his writings and personal influence made the inner landscape available to all who dared follow.2

Lucy Freeman’s journalistic fluency, and the seemingly naive assurance with which she disposes of more than two millennia of intellectual history, make it very tempting to dismiss her words as yet another example of the myth-making which has always surrounded the figure of Freud. Yet the most striking feature of Freeman’s brief conspectus of Western thought is just how much truth it contains. For one of the simplest but most startling facts of intellectual history is that, until the beginning of the twentieth century, European thinkers made virtually no significant contribution to the scientific study of human nature and human behaviour. For at least half a century after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species we possessed no systematic theory which even attempted to explain the exceptionally violent nature of our own species, the extraordinary range and complexity of our non-reproductive sexual behaviour or the depth and power of some of the most ordinary human emotions. The fierce taboos and the atmosphere of religious unreason which surrounded nearly every form of intimate human relationship for centuries, had, it would seem, triumphed over science itself. Here, at least, the advance of human knowledge, which in almost all other areas had proved irresistible, had been held back.

That Freud eventually challenged many of these ancient taboos cannot be disputed. As the intrepid intellectual adventurer he was, he led an assault on the highest peak of human knowledge in a manner which has seemed to many observers not simply impressive, but in some respects magnificent. Yet the view that his expedition was triumphant – that Freud actually succeeded in solving the enigma of human nature – is one which, in the last twenty years or so, has been questioned or rejected by a series of increasingly hostile critics. Indeed the sheer volume of such attacks has sometimes led to the mistaken impression that psychoanalysis is already a defeated force. Freud, however, has proved more difficult to vanquish than many of his opponents have calculated. As Walter Kendrick has written, ‘How can you simply kill the Father who taught you that his death must be your desire?’[3] Although some psychoanalysts themselves now profess a degree of defensive agnosticism about Freud’s theories, the movement which he founded continues to show many signs of vigorous life. If the figure of Freud no longer bestrides the intellectual landscape in triumph, it seems at times that he still lies across it like Gulliver, diminishing his critics by the sheer scale and grandeur of his enterprise, and shrugging off as pin-pricks the lances which they hurl against him. ‘Why,’ asks Phyllis Grosskurth in a recent study of Freud’s inner circle, ‘has Sigmund Freud’s life and work commanded such undiminished interest? Today – as we approach the end of the century – he appears to have been its leading intellectual force, a far more tenacious influence than Karl Marx.’[4] More recently still, in a book which sets out to answer some of Freud’s critics, the American historian Paul Robinson expressed optimism about the future of psychoanalysis:

Unless I am seriously mistaken ... Freud’s recent critics will do him no lasting damage. At most they have delayed the inevitable process by which he will settle into his rightful place in intellectual history as a thinker of the first magnitude. Indeed the very latest scholarly studies of Freud suggest that the anti-Freudian moment may already have begun to pass.[5]

Robinson goes on to quote the view of Harold Bloom that ‘No twentieth-century writer – not even Proust or Joyce or Kafka – rivals Freud’s position as the central imagination of our age.’[6] The fact that such views as these can still be seriously advanced is a mark of the status psychoanalysis continues to enjoy in at least some quarters of intellectual culture. One of the reasons that psychoanalysis has proved so resilient in the face of recent attacks is that Freud’s theories were themselves formulated in an environment of hostility. Those who follow Freud are thus able to account for the continuing scepticism about his ideas by invoking the same arguments which he deployed against his original detractors. One of the arguments resorted to most frequently is that which explains all criticism of psychoanalysis as a product of ‘resistance’. Like many of Freud’s ideas this notion contains an element of truth. For there can be no doubt that some people do reject his theories because of a conscious or unconscious aversion to their sexual content. But what defenders of psychoanalysis rarely if ever acknowledge is that theories about sexual behaviour which are wrong are just as likely to be met with resistance as theories which are right. The argument about unconscious resistance is therefore a diversion from the main issue. What is far more important about some recent criticism of Freud is that a number of scholars who do not regard the subject-matter of psychoanalysis as offensive or indelicate remain genuinely doubtful about the validity of psychoanalytic theory. They are dissatisfied with it because it fails to do the only thing we ultimately have a right to demand of explanatory theories – it fails to explain.

I share this dissatisfaction. Psychoanalysis is, I believe, one of the most subtle of our many attempts to use reason in a ‘magical’ rather than in a scientific manner – to use reason, that is to say, not in order to provide a genuine solution to an intellectual problem, but in order to provide a defence against the forces which we fear, and against aspects of our own nature which arouse anxiety. Freud saw himself as the rational foe of religion. Significantly, however, far from setting out radically to subvert the values of Judaeo-Christian asceticism which were deeply internalised in his own culture, Freud made the Lamarckian assumption that such asceticism had become part of our biological inheritance, so that it now belonged to our very nature. It is for this reason that his notion of therapy contains an implicit endorsement of the oldest of all ascetic ideals – the glorification of the spirit at the expense of the body:

We liberate sexuality through our treatment, but not in order that man may from now on be dominated by sexuality, but in order to make a suppression possible – a rejection of the instincts under the guidance of a higher agency ... We try to replace the pathological process with rejection.[7]

Driven by what some have construed as fierce intellectual honesty, Freud declined to excise sexuality from human nature completely. To some extent at least we have benefited from his attitude. But throughout the twentieth century, from the time of D. H. Lawrence to the time of Gershon Legman, Nancy Friday and their successors, there have been many who have rebelled against Victorian primness with far more gusto and far more enthusiasm for the realm of the obscene than can ever be glimpsed in the writings of any psychoanalyst. In the climate of explicitness which these latter-day rebels have helped to create it is now possible to see that psychoanalysis is far less adventurous and far less open than we once thought. Significantly, the science of sexuality which Freud brought into being is couched in a language purged of obscenity. Not only this, but Freud’s own attitude towards some of the commonest forms of sexual behaviour, including masturbation, homosexuality and many aspects of women’s sexuality, was one of distaste bordering on disgust. This attitude is reflected in psychoanalytic theories which are, in many respects, a flight away from the very forms of sexual behaviour which Freud claimed fearlessly to confront.

Given this cryptic conservatism it is perhaps not surprising that some writers have regarded Freud’s doctrines as being compatible with traditional religious beliefs. One of Freud’s earliest and most enthusiastic followers, the Protestant pastor Oskar Pfister, saw psychoanalysis as a gospel of love comparable with that preached by Jesus. More recently both Erik Erikson in his portrait of Luther, and Norman O. Brown in his Life Against Death have pointed to the numerous similarities between Luther’s view of the human condition and that found in psychoanalysis.[8] The resemblances which Brown and Erikson found between Lutheran Protestantism and classical psychoanalysis can scarcely be disputed. Some of those who are members of a Protestant church, or who hold any form of religious belief, may take comfort in discovering that the revealed truths perceived by Luther are in harmony with the analytic hypotheses produced by Freud. Those who possess greater intellectual caution, however, or those who hold no religious beliefs, may well feel some scepticism in the face of such an easy congruence of ancient faith and modern reason. They will be prompted to ask to what extent we should regard psychoanalysis not as a scientific approach to human nature but as a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For if psychoanalysis seems in some quarters to have attained the weight and seriousness of orthodoxy it is perhaps for no other reason than that it is a form of orthodoxy itself – a subtle reconstruction in a challenging and modern form of some of the most ancient religious doctrines and sexual ideologies. This view of psychoanalysis has sometimes been taken by other writers. But it has not been taken very far. One of the reasons for this is that today, in our sceptical materialism, we tend to be profoundly unfamiliar with the doctrines and eschatology which once lay at the heart of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. So powerful has the ethos of secular rationalism become that we rarely recognise the fundamental role which has been played in history by irrational fantasies – by religious dreams of redemption and world-purification, by miracles, rituals and magic, by the belief in angels, demons and witches, by visions of cosmic struggles between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, by the fear of Satan and the belief in the eternal punishment of the wicked.

Such fantasies were once the very essence of religious orthodoxy, and it was in the white-hot religious zeal which was associated with them up to and beyond the time of the Reformation that our modern rational conscience was originally forged. But one of the effects of our internalisation of the rational Protestant conscience has been actually to obscure the conditions in which that conscience was created. Out of its very severity the Protestant mind has tended progressively to repudiate the very supernaturalism which originally licensed its strictness, together with all those aspects of Christianity which no longer seem compatible with its modern rational form. As a result, although the doctrines of Heaven and Hell, of Original Sin and of the Last Judgement may have some nominal significance for us, they are no longer part either of our imaginative or of our intellectual reality. The fantasies which were once expressed in Christian demonology and in Christian visions of hell have been progressively relegated to the thriving sub-cultures of Satanism and science fiction, of horror comics and pornography. In the dissociated post-religious culture which has in this way been brought into being, Christians and rational humanists alike are often unable to bring themselves to believe that the very forms of fantasy they have been conditioned to revile once lay at the orthodox heart of the religious tradition which our culture tends still to revere. Our modern cultural predicament has been most succinctly and poignantly expressed by the novelist John Updike: ‘Alas we have become, in our Protestantism, more virtuous than the myths which taught us virtue; we judge them barbaric.’[9] Our culturally orthodox lack of familiarity with our own culture has not only brought about the virtual destruction of our historical consciousness, but it has also profoundly affected every area of contemporary intellectual life. Above all it has determined our reaction to modern theories of human nature. In considering such theories what must always be borne in mind is that it is only in the last century or so that secular theories of human nature have become at all common. Before that time intellectuals generally felt little need of such theories. They felt no need of them for the simple reason that they subscribed, almost without exception, to the creationist theory of human nature which is contained in Judaism, in Christianity and in Islam. It was only in the early part of the nineteenth century, as the ‘truths’ of revealed religion were increasingly discredited, that an acute need for secular theories of human nature began to emerge.

The confident assumption which is generally made by modern rationalist thinkers is that the propositions about human nature which are contained in such theories as Marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, functionalism, and structural anthropology, are of a quite different order to the propositions about human nature which are contained within the Judaeo-Christian theory which they effectively replace. Whatever judgement may be passed on particular theories, it is at least generally assumed that modern thinkers have succeeded in freeing themselves from the superstitious and theological modes of thought which dominated those intellectuals who belonged to an era of faith. It is, however, just this assumption which needs to be questioned. For although such secular theories as psychoanalysis and structural anthropology have evidently shed the theism of Christianity, it is not at all clear that they have repudiated the view of human nature which was once associated with creationist theology, and with Judaeo-Christian doctrines of sin and redemption. Modern theorists of human nature, indeed, trapped as they are within a culture which has systematically mystified its own strongest traditions, are rather in the position of the mariner who sets out to sea without a chart. When he lands at a different point on the same continent from which he originally set sail, there is always the danger that he may fail to recognise this, and announce instead that he has discovered a new world. In the last hundred years such thinkers as Marx, Freud, Sartre and Lévi-Strauss have, I believe, repeatedly made just such a voyage. Setting out from a culture alienated from its traditional beliefs, disconsolately counting the small change of its new spiritual poverty, they have returned richly laden with belief and certainty in order to announce the discovery of the Brave New Worlds of dialectical materialism, of psychoanalysis, of existentialism and of structuralism. Many thinkers have greeted these discoveries with relief and enthusiasm. But because of their profound lack of familiarity with the orthodoxies of their own culture, they have often failed to recognise that the New Worlds in question are in reality but part of the old religious continent which was once their own, and that what they have embraced are not fresh theories of human nature but Judaeo-Christian orthodoxies which have been reconstructed in a secular form, safe from the attacks of science precisely because they are presented as science.

Any culture which is founded upon the internalisation of a body of sacred doctrine, but which allows that body of doctrine to fall into obscurity, is always in danger of recreating old errors in new secular forms, and of allowing unexamined forms of irrationalism to determine its very definition of rationality. It is to this danger that our own culture has succumbed over and over again during the past century. What I have set out to do in this book is to show in detail how the creation of psychoanalysis in the closing years of the nineteenth century and its development and reception during the twentieth century has followed just this pattern. At the same time I have tried to use what amounts to an essay in cultural analysis in order to untie some of the complex intellectual knots which have been tied in our understanding of sexuality and of human nature by Freud and his followers. I have devoted a whole book to a theory I believe to be mistaken partly because I think it is mistaken in a particularly interesting way, and partly in order to establish the need for an alternative theory of human sexuality and human nature. It is because my ultimate aim is constructive, rather than destructive, that I have not yielded to the temptation to dismiss the psychoanalytic movement out of hand as being without intellectual value or significance. In the past twenty or thirty years there have been a number of attacks on psychoanalysis which have taken such a view. But I believe that one of the great dangers in any critique of Freud is that of underestimating the real achievements of those who have written within the psychoanalytic tradition. For this tradition has every claim to be regarded as richer and more original than any other single intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. Many of Freud’s earliest followers were themselves highly creative and the writings of Otto Rank, Ernest Jones, Victor Tausk and Hans Sachs still reward careful reading. In its subsequent development the psychoanalytic tradition has included the original and sometimes heterodox contributions of Wilhelm Reich, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby, Bruno Bettelheim, Anthony Storr and Nancy Chodorow. Valuable contributions have also been made by many other psychoanalytic writers – I think in particular of the American analysts Lawrence Kubie and Joel Kovel.[10]

The writings of all these analysts make up what is, relatively speaking, an extremely interesting intellectual tradition. But this acknowledgement of the breadth and vitality of the work which Freud has helped to inspire must immediately be qualified. In the first place it is important to bear in mind the larger cultural context in which psychoanalysis grew up. For it might well be claimed that the reasons for the ‘success’ of the psychoanalytic tradition have been almost entirely negative. If psychoanalysis has attracted some of the most lively intellectuals of the twentieth century it is not, I believe, because of the truth which psychoanalytic theories contain, or their explanatory value. It is perhaps because psychoanalysis is, with the increasingly fragile exception of literary criticism, the only branch of the human sciences which even begins to recognise the existence of the human imagination in all its emotional complexity. In this respect it might well be said that the incorrect theory elaborated by Freud has been infinitely preferable to no theory at all, and in the vast desert of twentieth-century rationalism it is scarcely surprising that many have seen, in the drop of imaginative water which is contained in Freud’s theories, a veritable oasis of truth. But there is another reason why the vitality of the psychoanalytic tradition should not be taken as confirmation of the validity of Freud’s theories. This is because a great deal of it is owed not to any intellectual factor but to Freud’s own remarkable and charismatic personality and to the heroic myth which he spun around himself during his own lifetime. Freud himself consciously identified with Moses, and the prophetic and messianic dimensions of his character have been noted again and again even by those who have written sympathetically about psychoanalysis. It would be difficult to overestimate the extent to which Freud’s messianic personality has profoundly distorted the perception of his theories.

One of the most important roles of the messianic personality has always been that of acting as the fearless transgressor. The messiah is that person who appears to have the inner strength openly to attack established authorities or flout laws and taboos in order to further his chosen cause. It is by systematically transgressing taboos that he relieves his followers of the burden of guilt and anxiety they would otherwise feel as a result of pitting themselves against their elders, or against established orthodoxies. It was in just such a role that Freud cast himself when he created the psychoanalytic movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. The need which he filled by doing this should be clear enough. For in any intellectual culture which is oppressed by rigorous taboos the most powerful though least conscious desire of its members will be to transgress these taboos and in this way seek relief from what Chesterton, in an essay on Freud, called ‘our monstrous burden of secrecy’.[11] To suppose that such a transgression may be easily made is to fail to appreciate both the power of taboo and the extent to which intellectuals, simply because they have been selected according to the criterion of academic success, tend to be conformist by nature. Ultimately it is only to authority, whether or not this authority derives from genuine explanatory power, that the majority of intellectuals will defer. If what is at stake is the transgression of some of the most sacred principles of rationalism, then no ordinary authority will suffice. What is needed is nothing less than the authority of a messiah.

Perhaps the most significant of Freud’s achievements lay in the way he intuitively perceived this need and went on to use the aura and authority of scientific rationalism in order to create around himself a ‘church’ whose doctrines sought to subvert the very rationalism they invoked. The kind of need which was answered in this way is conveyed well by some words of André Gide, who speaks of having found in Freud ‘rather an authorisation than an awakening. Above all he taught me to cease doubting myself, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands which were not after all uninhabitable since I found him already there.’[12] Gide’s experience is one that reflects that of countless other twentieth-century artists and intellectuals. In Germany Thomas Mann spoke admiringly of Freud’s heroic achievement and of his insight into human nature. In England W. H. Auden greeted psychoanalysis enthusiastically, writing of Freud:

To us he is no more a person

Now but a whole climate of opinion.

In France the novelist Romain Rolland emerged as one of Freud’s most enthusiastic admirers. Meanwhile, in America, Freud gained an even wider following both among writers and scholars. After reading some of Freud’s work the novelist Theodore Dreiser wrote in the following terms of his achievement:

Every paragraph came as a revelation to me – a strong revealing light thrown on some of the darkest problems that haunted and troubled me and my work. And reading him has helped me in my studies of life and men ... [H]e reminded me of a conqueror who has taken a city, entered its age-old, hoary prisons and there generously proceeded to release from their gloomy and rusted cells the prisoners of formulae, faiths and illusions which have racked and worn man for hundreds and thousands of years ... The light that he has thrown on the human mind! Its vagaries and destructive delusions and their cure! It is to me at once colossal and beautiful![13]

Again and again Freud has been hailed, as he is here by Dreiser, as the bringer of cultural and intellectual liberation. Yet if Freud has indeed established himself as one of the most significant messianic figures in modern intellectual culture this is perhaps itself a reason for preserving our scepticism about his mission. For from the time of Moses to the time of Marx it has been one of the characteristics of messianic prophets that their apparent willingness to attack established authorities has concealed a deeper adherence to orthodoxy than their followers have ever suspected. Frequently, indeed, the movements of liberation which they have led have actually ended by redoubling the very forms of repression they have ostensibly opposed. If Freud has not often been seen in this light it is perhaps because the very success which he has enjoyed by casting himself in the role of intellectual liberator has brought with it the kind of idealisations and projections to which all messiahs are subject. One of the most fundamental psychological transactions in all religious movements stems directly from followers’ feelings of unworthiness in relation to their messiahs. As a result of these feelings they frequently find themselves inwardly compelled to disown not only their own rebelliousness but also their own generosity, their own intuitive sensitivity, their richly humanistic social hope and even their own intellectual originality. Unconsciously all these qualities are denied or minimised and reattributed to the messiah. The image of the messiah is in this way enriched by gifts and talents which followers are either too anxious or too submissive to proclaim as their own. This kind of transaction may frequently be observed within the psychoanalytic movement itself where psychoanalytic theorists with genuine insights into human behaviour have failed to develop them through an inability to challenge Freud’s authority. Instead they have sometimes represented ideas which are in fundamental conflict with classical psychoanalytic theory as having been in some way ‘derived’ from Freud. In consequence their own sensitivity to human motivation – which is sometimes incomparably greater than that shown by Freud himself – comes to be associated with psychoanalysis and thus to increase still further Freud’s own authority and cultural status. This has even been the case with some of the best-known psychoanalytic writers, including Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Erik Erikson and Heinz Kohut, who are regarded within the psychoanalytic movement as highly original or even ‘dissident’ thinkers. For because their theoretical rebellions against Freud have been conducted within a larger pattern of submission to Freud’s authority, these thinkers have never been able to bring about the intellectual revolution which alone might have rescued psychoanalysis from itself.[14]

As a result Freud’s own reputation has been preserved and the status of his theories protected. There can be no doubt at all that his work is shot through, in a somewhat random manner, with real insights into human nature. But Freud repeatedly shows that he is unable to organise these insights systematically. Frequently, indeed, his own complex, and sometimes bizarre theories have the effect of strangling the insights which are scattered throughout his writings. Partly because of these sporadic insights the pseudo-science which Freud eventually succeeded in constructing is highly plausible. But it remains a pseudo-science for all that – perhaps the most complex and successful which history has seen. If the psychoanalytic movement were not important or if it had made little intellectual impact, Freud’s pseudo-science could be ignored or briefly rebutted. But Freud’s influence on contemporary intellectual life has been so large and his psychological assumptions have proved so enduring that it is difficult to re-examine human sexual behaviour – or any other form of human behaviour – without finding that our very perception of this behaviour is distorted by psychoanalysis. It is for this reason, I believe, that the task of untangling sexual behaviour from the psychoanalytic theories in which it has become enmeshed is such an important one.

___

Notes:

[1] Gershon Legman, quoted in Gay Talese, Thy Neighbour’s Wife, Pan, 1980, p. 389

[2] Lucy Freeman, Freud Rediscovered, 1980, New York: Arbor House, pp. 1–2.

[3] Walter Kendrick, review of Jeffrey Masson’s Freud: The Assault on Truth, Voice Literary Supplement, June 1984.

[4] Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, Jonathan Cape, 1991, p. 14.

[5] Paul Robinson, Freud and His Critics, University of California Press, 1993, p. 269

[6] Harold Bloom, ‘Freud, the Greatest Modern Writer’, New York Times Book Review, 23 March 1986, quoted in Robinson, p. 270.

[7] Freud, Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, ed. Herman Nunberg and Ernst Federn, vol. II, New York: International Universities Press, 1967.

[8] Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther, New York: W. W. Norton, 1958; Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959.

[9] John Updike, in his introduction to F. J. Sheed(ed.), Soundings in Satanism, Mowbrays, 1972, p. vii. The best-known modern example of this attitude will be found in Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God (SCM Press Ltd, 1963), in which the traditional doctrines and beliefs of Christianity are systematically repudiated. John Robinson’s position is very close to that outlined by the Anglican lay-theologian John Wren-Lewis, whose words he quotes:

I cannot emphasise too strongly that acceptance of the Christian faith became possible for me only because I did not have to go back on my wholesale rejection of the superstitious beliefs which surrounded me ... There is a misplaced sense of loyalty which makes many Christians feel reluctant to come out in open opposition to anything that calls itself by the same name, or uses words like ‘God’ and ‘Christ’; even Christians who in practice dislike superstition as much as I do still often treat it as a minor aberration to be hushed up rather than a radical perversion to be denounced ... In fact a very large part of what passes for religion in our society is exactly the sort of neurotic illness which Freud describes, and the first essential step in convincing people that Christianity can be true in spite of Freud is to assert outright that belief based on the projection mechanisms he describes is false, however much it may say ‘Lord, Lord.’ It is not enough to describe such beliefs as childish or primitive, for this implies that the truth is something like them, even though more ‘refined’ and ‘enlightened’, whereas in reality nothing like the ‘God’ and ‘Christ’ I was brought up to believe in can be true. It is not merely that the Old Man in the Sky is only a mythological symbol for the Infinite Mind behind the scenes, nor yet that this Being is benevolent rather than fearful; the truth is that this whole way of thinking is wrong, and if such a Being did exist he would be the very devil

(quoted in Honest to God, p. 43).

The theology of John Robinson and John Wren-Lewis is by no means as novel as might be supposed. Historically speaking this kind of theology has its origins in extreme Puritanism. In 1650 the Leveller Gerrard Winstanley wrote that the traditional Christian, who ‘thinks God is in the heavens above the skies, and so prays to that God which he imagines to be there and everywhere ... worships his own imagination which is the devil’ (quoted in Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Penguin, 1975, p. 140). It is both interesting and significant that while Wren-Lewis and Winstanley both decry ‘superstitions’ neither of them can dispense with the concept of ‘devil’ and both end by eschewing reasoned criticism of the beliefs they oppose in favour of a kind of exasperated demonology.

[10] Although I have included in this list psychoanalytic writers who have, in my view, made interesting contributions to psychology, the inclusion of any particular writer should not be construed as an unqualified endorsement of their work. In the case of John Bowlby, for example, it remains my impression that, for all the immense value of his work in changing hospital practice, his theoretical contribution tends to be accepted uncritically by too many writers (particularly those who are out of sympathy with Freud), simply because it appears to have empirical foundations and a sounder relation to Darwinian theory than can be claimed by classical psychoanalysis. For an interesting view of Bowlby, see Jeremy Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory, Routledge, 1993. See also Michael Rutter’s Maternal Deprivation Reassessed, 2nd edition, Penguin, 1981. Rutter’s criticisms of Bowlby, though mildly put, add up to a significant repudiation of the lofty estimate which Bowlby formed of his own theories.

I yoke together Lawrence Kubie and Joel Kovel because of Kovel’s White Racism: A Psychohistory, Allen Lane, 1972, in which Kovel acknowledges his debt to Kubie’s ‘The Fantasy of Dirt’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. VI, 1937. Kovel is one of the few psychoanalysts to have appreciated something of the value and profundity of Kubie’s paper

[11] Chesterton, quoted in Frank Cioffi (ed.), Freud: Modern Judgments, Macmillan, 1973, p. 24

[12] Gide, quoted by Cioffi, p. 23.

[13] Dreiser, quoted in Ronald W. Clark, Freud: The Man and the Cause, Paladin, 1982, p. 421.

[14] Although he makes no such sweeping claim as I have made here, it is interesting that Paul Roazen has written that ‘whereas others have taken pains to differentiate their work from Freud’s, Erikson actually ascribed his own ideas to Freud. Erikson does not always seem to want to acknowledge his own originality’ (Freud and His Followers, Penguin, 1979, p. 500).

Mysteries of a Monastic Prison

2005-10-17T12:36:00.000+01:00

Marina Gourina

History of the Ivanovsky Cloister in Moscow goes back to remote ages. According to one version, its foundation is linked to the name of Ivan the Severe (the Terrible). According to another, the construction of the monastery dates back to the rule of Ivan III. It is known that the architecture style of the original church dedicated to the Beheading of John the Forerunner corresponds to that of 14-15 c. The name of the cloister derives from the main altar of the church of the Beheading of John the Forerunner. That feast day happens to be the namesake of Ivan (John) the Severe. In the popular usage the cloister was nicknamed Ivan the Fasting, since according to church canons, feast of the Beheading of St. John is also a day of very strict fast. Until 1764 there were no peasant serfs registered as a property of the cloister [estate], hence it existed exclusively thanks to the donations of the royal family and high-rank patrons, as well as the common lay people. Special attention was given to the cloister by the first Romanovs: Mikhail Feodorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich. They hugely contributed to the decoration of the monastic shrine and visited the monastery not just on the patronal feast, but on other days too.

This Moscow cloister was notorious as a place where many women of aristocratic lineage were tonsured against their will. Their families would typically make sumptuous offerings for the monastery [and] towards the upkeep of their female relation. It is here, often under the guise of mentally ill, female ‘secret [prisoners]’ of the Ivestigations Department (Сыскной приказ) and the Secret Investigations Bureau (Тайная розыскных дел канцелярия) would be sent, typically involved in political and criminal cases. Also, schismatic women from the Schismatics Bureau (Раскольничья контора) were assigned to the cloister. Adepts of the ‘ancient creed’ were transported in secrecy, wrecked by torture or, as it was called then, ‘purified by blood’. And they were held in the ‘stone sacks’ under supervision of the cloister sisters.

The most famous prisoner of the Ivanovsky Cloister was Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova, commonly known as Saltychikha. The ‘torturess and murderess’ spent a half of her life in the cloister. According to the forensic detectives, over the period of six to seven years Daria Saltykova murdered by various methods 139 people, among whom there were mainly women (only 3 of her victims were men), including young girls of 10-12 years of age.

In the Summer of 1762 peasant serf Hermolai Ilyin who had subsequently lost three of his wives, which were beaten to death on orders of Saltychikha, fled from the estate to St. Petersbourg where he complained to the recently coronated Catherine II. The empress ordered the College of Justice (юстиц-коллегия) to begin an investigation regarding torture and murder. On 2 October 1768 a sentence of life imprisonment in the Ivanovsky Cloister was given to Saltykova, preceded by the ‘civil execution’ ceremony at the Red Square. Saltykova was flogged and transported to the Ivanovsky Cloister. There a windowless wooden structure was built for her, so for a long time she lived in complete darkness. Next to the door a guard stood 24 hours. A nun would bring food and a candle; after meals the candle would be taken away. In the Imperial verdict there was also a prescription: “From this reclusion take her out in such a place during church services where she would be able to hear one, without entering the church proper.” In the ‘penitentiary [cell]’ (покаянная) Saltychikha spent 11 years.

Ivanovsky Cloister was also a place of imprisonment for many noble persons and even those belonging to the royal family. The cloister received a name of a “prison for the persons of exceptional status”. First prisoners of the monastery were people of the royal families who were tonsured against their will. For instance, from the Protection Cloister in Vladimir, where she was tonsured by force, tsarina Pelagea Mikhailovna of Petrov-Saltykov family, second wife to the older son of Ivan the Severe, was sent here. She adopted the name Paraskeva as a (monastic) postulant. In 1610, separated from her husband, Maria Petrovna Shuyskaya, a wife of the tsar’ Vasily Ivanovich Shuysky, became a nun of the cloister.

History of the Ivanovsky cloister is linked to the fate of another woman, whose name is known to all in Russia. It is the princess Tarakanova, daughter of Elisaveta Petrovna and Alexey Razumovsky. (A real one, as opposed to the impostor Tarakanova, captured and brought over from Europe by Alexey Orlov.) According to legends, the daughter of Elisaveta was raised in Russia until the age of 11 and then sent to Holland. Later she was brought from abroad where she lived incognito till the age of 40. In Russia she was received by Catherine II, after which she agreed to mysteriously disappear away from social circles, so as not to become a weapon in the hands of vain people and not to cause upheaval in the land. One day, accompanied by mounted guards, a spacious carriage with carefully blinded windows approached the gates of the cloister. The woman was taken to the abbess. From the abbess the mysterious female guest was taken to a small two-room stone cell with windows overlooking the courtyard. It is in this cell the princess was to spend a quarter of the century until her death.

Until her tonsure, Tarakanova was named Augusta. In the Ivanovsky Convent she was given the name of Dosithea. It should be noted, her imprisonment combined certain comfort with harshness and austerity. For instance, there was a Dutch-tile stove in the cell. A female cell attendant, lodged in the ante-room, was assigned to the mysterious nun. Apart from the yearly ‘special fund’ from the Treasury, large sums of money came from the unknown people. Years later, Dosithea became accustomed to her situation, keeping busy with handwork, the proceeds of which she would give to the poor or for the building of churches. In the reign of Pavel (Paul) I Dosithea was allowed to receive guests: both aristocracy and commoners visited her.

Much about life of Dosithea we know from the testimony of a Moscow merchant Filipp Nikiforovich Shepeliov, tea and sugar merchant. According to him, she was medium height, thin, slender, notwithstanding her not so young age. Her demeanor showed breed and good education. Dosithea spoke a foreign language with high-rank personalities, whom the abbes would allow to pay short visits to the recluse. A portrait of the empress Elisaveta Petrovna hung in her cell. Her curtained windows would often attract onlookers, so that a full-time guard had to turn them away. The army chief of staff for Moscow count Gudovich attended her funeral. Gudovich was married to Praskovia Kirillovna, the niece of Alexei Grigorievich Razumovsky. It may be that the count wanted to pay the last respects to his wife’s third-degree cousin. Another remarkable fact: Dosithea was buried not in accordance with the ancient rule, at the Ivanovsky Cloister's own graveyard, but in the Novospassky Monastery where the boyard (later royal) dynasty of Romanovs was buried. In 1910, a hundred years since the death of nun Dosithea, a graveyard chapel was built, remains of which were preserved to this day.

In the reign of Mikhail Feodorovich a certain Daria lived in the Ivanovsky Cloister, who took the monastic name of Martha. She died on 1 March 1638. Who she was we do not know, yet, according to the tombstone inscription, this woman was a fool-for-Christ. It could be that she did that on purpose to hide her noble name and lineage.

Later in history, Ivanovsky Cloister was gradually transformed from a prison into a charitable institution for the poor. This noble undertaking was established by the empress Elisaveta Petrovna. Later a school of iconography for the sisters and a crèche for abandoned babies were founded at the Ivanovsky Convent. A variety of workshops, such as: tailoring, shoe-making, handcrafts, gold-embroidery and metal works for church vestments and accessories were set in place. Qualified female tutors taught the illiterate church grammar and catechism. Also there were lectures of church music. Nuns in the workshops not only had serve the needs of the cloister, but also by their work improve its financial situation.

In 1918 the monastery was closed down, the buildings were taken over by a succession of state security agencies known under various acronyms. In 1941 it became the Law School.

In 1980s the church was occupied by Moscow Region Central State Archives. The main courtyard and surrounding buildings, by the same Law School, in front of which the Department of Interior built an ugly black monument to the state security employees fallen in the 1941-45 war. The main gateway was filled with bricks, crosses were taken down from the bell towers.

In 1989 voices began to be heard for the transfer of the Ivanovsky Cloister to an Independent Fund of the Revival of the Church Art, in order to establish on its premises a contemporary church art center with a fully functioning chapel.

In 1992 some of the premises were given to the Fraternity of Saint Prince Vladimir. In the House of clergy an Orthodox College (Gymnasium) was open and a charity house in the former hospital building. The church of St. Elisaveta was re-opened for worship. Restoration of the monastery continues.

Marina V. Gourina is a teacher of the Moscow State College of Teaching

Hedonism

2005-10-16T08:11:00.000+01:00

James J. Fox

(Greek hēdonē, pleasure).

The name given to the group of ethical systems that hold, with various modifications, that feelings of pleasure or happiness are the highest and final aim of conduct; that, consequently those actions which increase the sum of pleasure are thereby constituted right, and, conversely, what increases pain is wrong.

HISTORY

The father of Hedonism was Aristippus of Cyrene. He taught that pleasure is the universal and ultimate object of endeavour. By pleasure he meant not merely sensual gratification but also the higher forms of enjoyment, mental pleasures, domestic love, friendship, and moral contentment. His followers, however, reduced the system to a plea for self-indulgence.

To the Cyrenaic succeeded the School of Epicurus, who emphasized the superiority of social and intellectual pleasures over those of the senses. He also conferred more dignity on the hedonistic doctrine by combining it with the atomic theory of matter; and this synthesis finds its finished expression in the materialistic determinism of the Roman poet Lucretius. Epicurus taught that pain and self-restraint have a hedonistic value; for pain is sometimes a necessary means to health and enjoyment; while self-restraint and prudent asceticism are indispensable if we would secure for ourselves the maximum of pleasure. With the decay of old Roman ideals and the rise of imperialism the Epicurean philosophy flourished in Rome. It accelerated the destruction of pagan religious beliefs, and, at the same time, was among the forces that resisted Christianity.

The revival of hedonistic principles in our own times may be traced to a line of English philosophers, Hobbes, Hartley, Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, the two Austins, and, more recently, Alexander Bain, who are popularly known as Utilitarians. Herbert Spencer adopted into his evolutionary theory of ethics the principle that the discriminating norm of right and wrong is pleasure and pain, though he substituted the progress of life for the hedonistic end.

EXPOSITION

Contemporary Hedonists are sometimes classed into egoistic and altruistic. The classification, however, is not quite satisfactory when applied to writers; for many Hedonists combine the egoistic with the altruistic principle. The distinction, however, may conveniently be accepted with regard to the principles that underlie the various forms of the doctrine. The statement that happiness is the end of conduct at once raises the question: whose happiness? To this egoism answers: the happiness of the agent; while altruistic Hedonism replies: the happiness of all concerned, or, to use a phrase that is classic in the literature of this school, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number". Perhaps the only thoroughgoing egoistic Hedonist is Thomas Hobbes, though in many places Bentham too, proclaims himself the uncompromising apostle of selfishness (egoism), while elsewhere he, like J.S. Mill, expands into altruism. The intrinsic difficulties in the task of constructing any decent code of morals on the egoistic principle, together with the destructive criticism which any such attempts encountered, led Hedonists to substitute the happiness of all concerned for the happiness of the individual. The transit from the one to the other is attempted through a psychological analysis which would show that, through the operation of the law of association of ideas, we come to love for their own sake objects which in the first instance we loved from a selfish motive. This is true to a certain extent, but the cases in which it may occur fall far short of the range which the principle would have to cover in order to justify the theory. Besides, by adopting the happiness of others as the end, the Hedonist loses the only semblance of a proof which he had to offer in support of his first contention, that happiness is the end, viz. that every man does desire happiness and can desire nothing else; it is only too plain that not everybody desires the happiness of everybody else. Another modification was introduced to meet the criticism that, if pleasure is the standard of right and wrong, sensual indulgence is just as good as the noblest form of self-sacrifice. The Hedonists, or at least some of them, replied that not merely the quantity of pleasure but also the quality is to be taken into account. There are higher and lower pleasures; and the higher are more desirable than the lower; therefore conduct which aims at the higher is the better. But if pleasures are thus to be divided into higher and lower, irrespective of quantity, the hedonistic standard is, by the very fact, displaced, and some other ultimate scale of moral valuation is appealed to or implied. The subjective norm, pleasurable feeling, is made to retire in favour of some unnamed objective norm which dictates what the agent ought to pursue. This is the suicide of Hedonism. Other advocates of the system have, contrary to its initial principle, introduced a primary altruistic impulse co-ordinate with and controlling the egoistic as a spring of action.

CRITICISM

The fundamental errors of Hedonism and the chief unanswerable objections to the theory may be briefly summed up as follows:

(1) It rests on a false psychological analysis; tendency, appetite, end, and good are fixed in nature antecedent to pleasurable feeling. Pleasure depends on the obtaining of some good which is prior to, and causative of, the pleasure resulting from its acquisition. The happiness or pleasure attending good conduct is a consequence, not a constituent, of the moral quality of the action.

(2) It falsely supposes that pleasure is the only motive of action. This view it supports by the fallacy that the pleasurable and the desirable are interchangeable terms.

(3) Even if it were granted that pleasure and pain constitute the standard of right and wrong, this standard would be utterly impracticable. Pleasures are not commensurable with one another, nor with pains; besides no human mind can calculate the quantity of pleasure and pain that will result from a given action. This task is impossible even when only the pleasure of the agent is to be taken into account. When the pleasure and pain of "all concerned" are to be measured the proposal becomes nothing short of an absurdity.

(4) Egoistic Hedonism reduces all benevolence, self-sacrifice, and love of the right to mere selfishness. It is impossible for altruistic Hedonism to evade the same consummation except at the cost of consistency.

(5) No general code of morality could be established on the basis of pleasure. Pleasure is essentially subjective feeling, and only the individual is the competent judge of how much pleasure or pain a course of action affords him. What is more pleasurable for one may be less so for another. Hence, on hedonistic grounds, it is evident that there could be no permanently and universally valid dividing line between right and wrong.

(6) Hedonism has no ground for moral obligation, no sanction for duty. If I must pursue my own happiness, and if conduct which leads to happiness is good, the worst reproach that can be addressed to me, however base my conduct may be, is that I have made an imprudent choice.

Hedonists have appropriated the term happiness as an equivalent to the totality of pleasurable or agreeable feeling. The same word is employed as the English rendering of the Latin beatitudo and the Greek eudaimonía, which stand for a concept quite different from the hedonistic one. The Aristotelean idea is more correctly rendered in English by the term well-being. It means the state of perfection in which man is constituted when he exercises his highest faculty, in its highest function, on its highest good. Because they fail to give due attention to this distinction, some writers include eudæmonism among hedonistic systems. Hedonism sometimes claims the credit of much beneficent effort in social reform in England which has been promoted by professed Utilitarians; and everywhere movements popularly designated as altruism are pointed out as monuments to the practical value of the hedonistic principle "the greatest good of the greatest number". But it must be observed that this principle may have another genesis and another part to play in ethics than those assigned to it by Hedonism. Besides, as Green has pointed out, the Utilitarians illogically annexed it, and the fruits it bore in their political activity are to be credited to it in its democratic, rather than in its hedonistic, character.

Arab Mystical Poetry

2005-10-07T22:48:00.000+01:00

Denis de Rougemont

It happens that as early as the ninth century there occured an 'unlikely' fusion of Iranian Manichaeism, Neo-Platonism, and Mohammedanism in Arabia, and the fusion was reflected in a religious poetry employing erotic metaphors that are strikingly akin to those of courtly rhetoric. In the twelfth century the chief writers of this kind of poetry were al Hallaj, al Gazali, and Suhrawardi of Aleppo. All three were troubadours of supreme Love, of the Veiled Idea, which they treated as beloved object but also as symbol of a longing for the divine.

Suhrawardi, who died in 1191, supposed Plato - whom he knew at second-hand from Plotinus, Proclus, and the Athenian school - to be a successor of Zoroaster. Indeed his Neo-Platonism displays marked Persian mythical features. In particular, the doctrines about an antithetical relation of the World of Light and the World of Darkness which he borrowed from the Zend-Avesta were those that had inspired Manes and that became the root of the Catharist faith. These doctrines - exactly as happened later with those of the Cathars were transmuted into a chivalrous love rhetoric, the nature of which is indicated by the titles of two mystical treatises, The Lovers' Familiar and The Romance of the Seven Beauties. Moreover, at the time these and other similar treatises appeared there arose in a section of Islam a theological controversy of the same kind as occured a little later in the medieval world in the West. It is true that the in the Mohammedan world the controversy was made more intricate by a denial that man is able to love God (as the evangelica summary of the Law commands him.) According to Mohammedanism, a finite creature can only love what is finite. In ordere therefore to express that love of the divine which they believed themselves to be experiencing, Arab mystics of the twelfth century had to resort to symbols having a secret meaning. But, apart from this peculiarity - not without parallel in the situation of courtly rhetoric - the problems set up by the poetry of the Near East and by that of the West are identical.

Orthodox Mohammedanism was no more able than Roman Catholicism to allow that there is in man an element which on being cultivated will bring about the fusion of individual souls with the Divinity. But it was precisely this potential union of Creator and creature that was being implied in the erotico-religious language of Arab mystic poetry. The symbolism employed by the poets caused them accordingly to be accused of holding a disguised Manichaeism, and the charge cost al Hallaj and Suhrawardi their lives. There is something poingnant in the discovery that the grounds of the controversy are those which reappear in the case of the troubadours, and, later on - in, mutatis mutandis, the case of the great Western mystics from Meister Eckhart to John of the Cross.

[to be continued]

Overview: The Roots of Catholic Eschatology

2005-10-02T16:21:00.000+01:00

P. J. Toner

Easchatology is a branch of systematic theology which deals with the doctrines of the last things (ta eschata). The Greek title is of comparatively recent introduction, but in modern usage it has largely supplanted its Latin equivalent De Novissimis. As the numerous doctrinal subjects belonging to this section of theology will be treated ex professo under their several proper titles, it is proposed in this article merely to take such a view of the whole field as will serve to indicate the place of eschatology in the general framework of religion, explain its subject-matter and the outlines of its content in the various religions of mankind, and illustrate by comparison the superiority of Christian eschatological teaching.

As a preliminary indication of the subject-matter, a distinction may be made between the eschatology of the individual and that of the race and the universe at large. The former, setting out from the doctrine of personal immortality, or at least of survival in some form after death, seeks to ascertain the fate or condition, temporary or eternal, of individual souls, and how far the issues of the future depend on the present life. The latter deals with events like the resurrection and the general judgment, in which, according to Christian Revelation, all men will participate, and with the signs and portents in the moral and physical order that are to precede and accompany those events. Both aspects -- the individual and the universal - belong to the adequate concept of eschatology; but it is only in Christian teaching that both receive due and proportionate recognition. Jewish eschatology only attained its completion in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles; while in ethnic religion eschatology seldom rose above the individual view, and even then was often so vague, and so little bound up with any adequate notion of Divine justice and of moral retribution, that it barely deserves to be ranked as religious teaching.

I. ETHNIC ESCHATOLOGIES

Uncivilized societies

Even among uncivilized cultures the universality of religious beliefs, including belief in some kind of existence after death, is very generally admitted by modern anthropologists. Some exceptions, it is true, have been claimed to exist; but on closer scrutiny the evidence for this claim has broken down in so many cases that we are justified in presuming against any exception. Among the uncivilized the truth and purity of eschatological beliefs vary, as a rule, with the purity of the idea of God and of the moral standards that prevail. Some savages seem to limit existence after death to the good (with extinction for the wicked), as the Nicaraguas, or to men of rank, as the Tongas; while the Greenlanders, New Guinea negroes, and others seem to hold the possibility of a second death, in the other world or on the way to it. The next world itself is variously located -- on the earth, in the skies, in the sun or moon -- but most commonly under the earth; while the life led there is conceived either as a dull and shadowy and more or less impotent existence, or as an active continuation in a higher or idealized form of the pursuits and pleasures of earthly life. In most savage religions there is no very high or definite doctrine of moral retribution after death; but it is only in the case of a few of the most degraded cultures, whose condition is admittedly the result of degeneration, that the notion of retribution is claimed to be altogether wanting. Sometimes mere physical prowess, as bravery or skill in the hunt or in war, takes the place of a strictly ethical standard; but, on the other hand, some savage religions contain unexpectedly clear and elevated ideas of many primary moral duties.

Civilized Cultures

Coming to the higher or civilized societies, we shall glance briefly at the eschatology of the Babylonian and Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Greek religions. Confucianism can hardly be said to have an eschatology, except the very indefinite belief involved in the worship of ancestors, whose happiness was held to depend on the conduct of their living descendants. Islamic eschatology contains nothing distinctive except the glorification of barbaric sensuality.

(a) Babylonian and Assyrian

In the ancient Babylonian religion (with which the Assyrian is substantially identical) eschatology never attained, in the historical period, any high degree of development. Retribution is confined almost, if not quite, entirely to the present life, virtue being rewarded by the Divine bestowal of strength, prosperity, long life, numerous offspring, and the like, and wickedness punished by contrary temporal calamities. Yet the existence of an hereafter is believed in. A kind of semi-material ghost, or shade, or double (ekimmu), survives the death of the body, and when the body is buried (or, less commonly, cremated) the ghost descends to the underworld to join the company of the departed. In the "Lay of Ishtar" this underworld, to which she descended in search of her deceased lover and of the "waters of life", is described in gloomy colours; and the same is true of the other descriptions we possess. It is the "pit", the "land of no return", the "house of darkness", the "place where dust is their bread, and their food is mud"; and it is infested with demons, who, at least in Ishtar's case, are empowered to inflict various chastisements for sins committed in the upper world.

Though Ishtar's case is held by some to be typical in this respect, there is otherwise no clear indication of a doctrine of moral penalties for the wicked, and no promise of rewards for the good. Good and bad are involved in a common dismal fate. The location of the region of the dead is a subject of controversy among Assyriologists, while the suggestion of a brighter hope in the form of a resurrection (or rather of a return to earth) from the dead, which some would infer from the belief in the "waters of life" and from references to Marduk, or Merodach, as "one who brings the dead to life", is an extremely doubtful conjecture. On the whole there is nothing hopeful or satisfying in the eschatology of this ancient religion.

(b) Egyptian

On the other hand, in the Egyptian religion, which for antiquity competes with the Babylonian, we meet with a highly developed and comparatively elevated eschatology. Leaving aside such difficult questions as the relative priority and influence of different, and even conflicting, elements in the Egyptian religion, it will suffice for the present purpose to refer to what is most prominent in Egyptian eschatology taken at its highest and best. In the first place, then, life in its fullness, unending life with 0siris, the sun-god, who journeys daily through the underworld, even identification with the god, with the right to be called by his name, is what the pious Egyptian looked forward to as the ultimate goal after death. The departed are habitually called the "living"; the coffin is the "chest of the living", and the tomb the "lord of life ". It is not merely the disembodied spirit, the soul as we understand it, that continues to live, but the soul with certain bodily organs and functions suited to the conditions of the new life. In the elaborate anthropology which underlies Egyptian eschatology, and which we find it hard to understand, several constituents of the human person are distinguished, the most important of which is the Ka, a kind of semi-material double; and to the justified who pass the judgment after death the use of these several constituents, separated by death is restored.

This judgment which each undergoes is described in detail in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. The examination covers a great variety of personal, social, and religious duties and observances; the deceased must be able to deny his guilt in regard to forty-two great categories of sins, and his heart (the symbol of conscience and morality) must stand the test of being weighed in the balance against the image of Maat, goddess of truth or justice. But the new life that begins after a favourable judgment is not at first any better or more spiritual than life on earth. The justified is still a wayfarer with a long and difficult journey to accomplish before he reaches bliss and security in the fertile fields of Aalu. On this journey he is exposed to a variety of disasters, for the avoidance of which he depends on the use of his revivified powers and on the knowledge he has gained in life of the directions and magical charms recorded in the Book of the Dead, and also, and perhaps most of all, on the aids provided by surviving friends on earth. It is they who secure the preservation of his corpse that he may return and use it, who provide an indestructible tomb as a home or shelter for his Ka, who supply food and drink for his sustenance, offer up prayers and sacrifices for his benefit, and aid his memory by inscribing on the walls of the tomb, or writing on rolls of papyrus enclosed in the wrappings of the mummy, chapters from the Book of the Dead. It does not, indeed, appear that the dead were ever supposed to reach a state in which they were independent of these earthly aids. At any rate they were always considered free to revisit the earthly tomb, and in making the journey to and fro the blessed had the power of transforming themselves at will into various animal-shapes. It was this belief which, at the degenerate stage at which he encountered it, Herodotus mistook for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. It should be added that the identification of the blessed with Osiris ("Osiris N. N." is a usual form of inscription) did not, at least in the earlier and higher stage of Egyptian religion, imply pantheistic absorption in the deity or the loss of individual personality. Regarding the fate of those who fail in the judgment after death, or succumb in the second probation, Egyptian eschatology is less definite in its teaching. "Second death" and other expressions applied to them might seem to suggest annihilation; but it is sufficiently clear from the evidence as a whole that continued existence in a condition of darkness and misery was believed to be their portion. And as there were degrees in the happiness of the blessed, so also in the punishment of the lost (Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, London, 1901).

(c) Indian

In the Vedic, the earliest historical form of the Indian religion, eschatological belief is simpler and purer than in the Brahministic and Buddhistic forms that succeeded it. Individual immortality is clearly taught. There is a kingdom of the dead under the rule of Yama, with distinct realms for the good and the wicked. The good dwell in a realm of light and share in the feasts of the gods; the wicked are banished to a place of "nethermost darkness". Already, however, in the later Vedas, where these beliefs and developed expression, retribution begins to be ruled more by ceremonial observances than by strictly moral tests. On the other hand, there is no trace as yet of the dreary doctrine of transmigration, but critics profess to discover the germs of later pantheism.

In Brahminism (q.v.) retribution gains in prominence and severity, but becomes hopelessly involved in transmigration, and is made more and more dependent either on sacrificial observances or on theosophical knowledge. Though after death there are numerous heavens and hells for the reward and punishment of every degree of merit and demerit, these are not final states, but only so many preludes to further rebirths in higher or lower forms. Pantheistic absorption in Brahma, the world- soul and only reality, with the consequent extinction of individual personalities - this is the only final solution of the problem of existence, the only salvation to which man may ultimately look forward. But it is a salvation which only a few may hope to reach after the present life, the few who have acquired a perfect knowledge of Brahma. The bulk of men who cannot rise to this high philosophic wisdom may succeed, by means of sacrificial observances, in gaining a temporary heaven, but they are destined to further births and deaths.

Buddhist eschatology still further develops and modifies the philosophical side of the Brahministic doctrine of salvation, and culminates in what is, strictly speaking, the negation of eschatology and of all theology -- a religion without a God, and a lofty moral code without hope of reward or fear of punishment hereafter. Existence itself, or at least individual existence, is the primary evil; and the craving for existence, with the many forms of desire it begets, is the source of all the misery in which life is inextricably involved. Salvation, or the state of Nirvana, is to be attained by the utter extinction of every kind of desire, and this is possible by knowledge -- not the knowledge of God or the soul, as in Brahminism, but the purely philosophical knowledge of the real truth of things. For all who do not reach this state of philosophic enlightenment or who fail to live up to its requirements -- that is to say for the vast bulk of mankind -- there is nothing in prospect save a dreary cycle of deaths and rebirths with intercalated heavens and hells; and in Buddhism this doctrine takes on a still more dread and inexorable character than pre-Buddhistic Brahminism.

(d) Persian

In the ancient Persian religion (Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Parseeism) we meet with what is perhaps, in its better elements, the highest type of ethnic eschatology. But as we know it in the Parsee literature, it contains elements that were probably borrowed from other religions; and as some of this literature is certainly post-Christian, the possibility of Jewish and even Christian ideas having influenced the later eschatological developments is not to be lost sight of. The radical defect of the Persian religion was its dualistic conception of deity. The physical and moral world is the theatre of a perpetual conflict between Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the good, and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman), the evil, principle, co-creators of the universe and of man. Yet the evil principle is not eternal ex parte post; he will finally be vanquished and exterminated. A pure monotheistic Providence promises at times to replace dualism, but never quite succeeds -- the latest effort in this direction being the belief in Zvran Akarana, or Boundless Time as the supreme deity above both Ahriman and Ormuzd. Morality has its sanction not merely in future retribution, but in the present assurance that every good and pious deed is a victory for the cause of Ahura Mazda; but the call to the individual to be active in this cause, though vigorous and definite enough, is never quite free from ritual and ceremonial conditions, and as time goes on becomes more and more complicated by these observances, especially by the laws of purity. Certain elements are holy (fire, earth, water), certain others unholy or impure (dead bodies, the breath, and all that leaves the body, etc.); and to defile oneself or the holy elements by contact with the impure is one of the deadliest sins. Consequently corpses could not be buried or cremated, and were accordingly exposed on platforms erected for the purpose, so that birds of prey might devour them. When the soul leaves the body it has to cross the bridge of Chinvat (or Kinvad), the bridge of the Gatherer, or Accountant. For three days good and evil spirits contend for the possession of the soul, after which the reckoning is taken and the just men is rejoiced by the apparition, in the form of a fair maiden, of his good deeds, words, and thoughts, and passes over safely to a paradise of bliss, while the wicked man is confronted by a hideous apparition of his evil deeds, and is dragged down to hell. If the judgment is neutral the soul is reserved in an intermediate state (so at least in the Pahlavi books) till the decision at the last day. The developed conception of the last days, as it appears in the later literature, has certain remarkable affinities with Jewish Messianic and millennial expectations. A time during which Ahriman will gain the ascendancy is to be followed by two millennial periods, in each of which a great prophet will appear to herald the coming of Soshyant (or Sosioch), the Conqueror and Judge who will raise the dead to life. The resurrection will occupy fifty-seven years and will be followed by the general judgement, the separation of the good from the wicked, and the passing of both through a purgatorial fire gentle for the just, terrible for sinners, but leading to the restoration of all. Next will follow the final combat between the good and the evil spirits, in which the latter will perish, all except Ahriman and the serpent Azhi, whose destruction is reserved to Ahura Mazda and Scraosha, the priest-god. And last of all hell itself will be purged, and the earth renewed by purifying fire.

(e) Greek

Greek eschatology as reflected in the Homeric poems remains at a low level. It is only very vaguely retributive and is altogether cheerless in its outlook. Life on earth, for all its shortcomings, is the highest good for men, and death the worst of evils. Yet death is not extinction. The psyche survives - not the purely spiritual soul of later Greek and Christian thought, but an attenuated, semi-material ghost, or shade, or image, of the earthly man; and the life of this shade in the underworld is a dull, impoverished, almost functionless existence. Nor is there any distinction of fates either by way of happiness or of misery in Hades. The judicial office of Minos is illusory and has nothing to do with earthly conduct; and there is only one allusion to the Furies suggestive of their activity among the dead (Iliad XIX, 258-60). Tartarus, the lower hell, is reserved for a few special rebels against the gods, and the Elysian Fields for a few special favourites chosen by divine caprice.

In later Greek thought touching the future life there are notable advances beyond the Homeric state, but it is doubtful whether the average popular faith ever reached a much higher level. Among early philosophers Anaxagoras contributes to the notion of a purely spiritual soul; but a more directly religious contribution is made by the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, to the influence of which in brightening and moralizing the hope of a future life we have the concurrent witness of philosophers, poets, and historians. In the Eleusinian mysteries there seems to have been no definite doctrinal teaching - merely the promise or assurance for the initiated of the fullness of life hereafter. With the Orphic, on the other hand, the divine origin and pre- existence of the soul, for which the body is but a temporary prison, and the doctrine of a retributive transmigration are more or less closely associated. It is hard to see how far the common belief of the people was influenced by these mysteries, but in poetical and philosophical literature their influence is unmistakable. This is seen especially in Pindar among the poets, and in Plato among the philosophers. Pindar has a definite promise of a future life of bliss for the good or the initiated, and not merely for a few, but for all. Even for the wicked who descend to Hades there is hope; having, purged their wickedness they obtain rebirth on earth, and if, during three successive existences, they prove themselves worthy of the boon, they will finally attain to happiness in the Isles of the Blest. Though Plato's teaching is vitiated by the doctrine of pre-existence, metempsychosis, and other serious errors it represents the highest achievement of pagan philosophic speculation on the subject of the future life. The divine dignity, spirituality, and essential immortality of the soul being established, the issues of the future for every soul are made clearly dependent on its moral conduct in the present life in the body. There is a divine judgment after death, a heaven, a hell, and an intermediate state for penance and purification; and rewards and punishments are graduated according to the merits and demerits of each. The incurably wicked are condemned to everlasting punishment in Tartarus; the less wicked or indifferent go also to Tartarus or to the Acherusian Lake, but only for a time; those eminent for goodness go to a happy home, the highest reward of all being for those who have purified themselves by philosophy.

From the foregoing sketch we are able to judge both of the merits and defects of ethnic systems of eschatology. Their merits are perhaps enhanced when they are presented, as above, in isolation from the other features of the religions to which they belonged. Yet their defects are obvious enough; and even those of them that were best and most promising turned out, historically, to be failures. The precious elements of eschatological truth contained in the Egyptian religion were associated with error and superstition, and were unable to save the religion from sinking to the state of utter degeneration in which it is found at the approach of the Christian Era. Similarly, the still richer and more profound eschatologies of the Persian religion, vitiated by dualism and other corrupting influences, failed to realize the promise it contained, and has survived only as a ruin in modern Parseeism. Plato's speculative teaching failed to influence in any notable degree the popular religion of the Greco-Roman world; it failed to convert even the philosophical few; and in the hands of those who did profess to adopt it, Platonism, uncorrected by Christianity ran to seed in Pantheism and other forms of error.

II. OLD-TESTAMENT ESCHATOLOGY

Without going into details either by way of exposition or of criticism, it will be sufficient to point out how Old Testament eschatology compares with ethnic systems, and how notwithstanding its deficiencies in point of clearness and completeness, it was not an unworthy preparation for the fullness of Christian Revelation.

(1) Old Testament eschatology, even in its earliest and most imperfect form, shares in the distinctive character which belongs to Old Testament religion generally. In the first place, as a negative distinction, we note the entire absence of certain erroneous ideas and tendencies that have a large place in ethnic religions. There is no pantheism or dualism no doctrine of pre-existence (Wisdom, viii, 17-20 does not necessarily imply this doctrine, as has sometimes been contended) or of metempsychosis; nor is there any trace, as might have been expected, of Egyptian ideas or practices. In the next place, on the positive side, the Old Testament stands apart from ethnic religions in its doctrine of God and of man in relation to God. Its doctrine of God is pure and uncompromising monotheism; the universe is ruled by the wisdom, Justice, and omnipotence of the one, true God. And man is created by God in His own image and likeness, and destined to relations of friendship and fellowship with Him. Here we have revealed in clear and definite terms the basal doctrines which are at the root of eschatological truth, and which, once they had taken hold of the life of a people, were bound, even without new additions to the revelation, to safeguard the purity of an inadequate eschatology and to lead in time to richer and higher developments. Such additions and developments occur in Old Testament teaching; but before noticing them it is well to call attention to the two chief defects, or limitations, which attach to the earlier eschatology and continue, by their persistence in popular belief, to hinder more or less the correct understanding and acceptance by the Jewish people as a whole of the highest eschatological utterances of their own inspired teachers.

(2) The first of these defects is the silence of the earlier and of some of the later books on the subject of moral retribution after death, or at least the extreme vagueness of such passages in these books as might be understood to refer to this subject. Death is not extinction; but Sheol, the underworld of the dead, in early Hebrew thought is not very different from the Babylonian Aralu or the Homeric Hades, except that Jahve is God even there. It is a dreary abode in which all that is prized in life, including friendly intercourse with God, comes to an end without any definite promise of renewal. Dishonour incurred in life or in death, clings to a man in Sheol, like the honour he may have won by a virtuous life on earth; but otherwise conditions in Sheol are not represented as retributive, except in the vaguest way. Not that a more definite retribution or the hope of renewal to a life of blessedness is formally denied and excluded; it simply fails to find utterance in earlier Old Testament records. Religion is pre-eminently an affair of this life, and retribution works out here on earth. This idea which to us seems so strange, must, to be fairly appreciated, be taken in conjunction with the national as opposed to the individual viewpoint [see under (3) of this section]; and allowance must also be made for its pedagogic value for a people like the early Hebrews. Christ himself explains why Moses permitted divorce ("by reason of the hardness of your heart" Matt., xix 8); revelation and legislation had to be tempered to the capacity of a singularly practical and unimaginative people, who were more effectively confirmed in the worship and service of God by a vivid sense of His retributive providence here on earth than they would have been but a higher and fuller doctrine of future immortality with its postponement of moral rewards. Nor must we exaggerate the insufficiency of this early point of view. It gave a deep religious value and significance to every event of the present life, and raised morality above the narrow, utilitarian standpoint. Not worldly prosperity as such was the ideal of the pious Israelite, but prosperity bestowed by God as the gracious reward of fidelity in keeping His Commandments. Yet, when all has been said, the inadequacy of this belief for the satisfaction of individual aspirations must be admitted; and this inadequacy was bound to prove itself sooner or later in experience. Even the substitution of the national for the individual standpoint could not indefinitely hinder this result.

(3) The tendency to sink the individual in the nation and to treat the latter as the religious unit was one of the most marked characteristics of Hebrew faith. And this helped very much to support and prolong the other limitation just noticed, according to which retribution was looked for in this life. Deferred and disappointed personal hopes could be solaced by the thought of their present or future realization in the nation. It was only when the national calamities, culminating in the exile, had shattered for a time the people's hope of a glorious theocratic kingdom that the eschatology of the individual became prominent; and with the restoration there was a tendency to revert to the national point of view. It is true of the 0.T. as a whole that the eschatology of the people overshadows that of the individual, though it is true at the same time that, in and through the former, the latter advances to a clear and definite assurance of a personal resurrection from the dead, at least for the children of Israel who are to share, if found worthy, in the glories of the Messianic Age.

It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to trace the growth or describe the several phases of this national eschatology, which centres in the hope of the establishment of a theocratic and Messianic kingdom on earth. However spiritually this idea may be found expressed in Old Testament prophecies, as we read them now in the light of their progressive fulfillment in the New Testament Dispensation, the Jewish people as a whole clung to a material and political interpretation of the kingdom, coupling their own domination as a people with the triumph of God and the worldwide establishment of His rule. There is much, indeed, to account for this in the obscurity of the prophecies themselves. The Messias as a distinct person is not always mentioned in connexion with the inauguration of the kingdom, which leaves room for the expectation of a theophany of Jahve in the character of judge and ruler. But even when the person and place of the Messias are distinctly foreshadowed, the fusion together in prophecy of what we have learned to distinguish as His first and His second coming tends to give to the whole picture of the Messianic kingdom an eschatological character that belongs in reality only to its final stage. It is thus the resurrection of the dead in Isaias, xxvi, 19, and Daniel, xii, 2, is introduced; and many of the descriptions foretelling "the day of the Lord", the judgment on Jews and Gentiles, the renovation of the earth and other phenomena that usher in that day while applicable in a limited sense to contemporary events and to the inauguration of the Christian Era, are much more appropriately understood of the end of the world. It is not, therefore, surprising that the religious hopes of the Jewish nation should have be come so predominantly eschatological, and that the popular imagination, foreshortening the perspective of Divine Revelation, should have learned to look for the establishment on earth of the glorious Kingdom of God, which Christians are assured will be realized only in heaven at the close of the present dispensation.

(4) Passing from these general observations which seem necessary for the true understanding of Old Testament eschatology, a brief reference will be made to the passages which exhibit the growth of a higher and fuller doctrine of immortality. The recognition of individual as opposed to mere corporate responsibility and retribution may be reckoned, at least remotely, as a gain to eschatology, even when retribution is confined chiefly to this life; and this principle is repeatedly recognized in the earliest books. (See Gen., xviii, 25; Ex., xxxii, 33; Num., xvi, 22; Deut., vii, 10; xxiv, 16; II K;., xxiv, 17; IV K., xiv, 6; Is., iii, 10 sq.; xxxiii, 15 sqq.; Jer., xii, 1 sq.; xvii, 5-10; xxxii, 18 sq.; Ezech. xiv, 12-20; xviii, 4, 18 sqq.; Psalms, passim; Prov., ii, 21 sq.; x, 2; xi, 19, 31; etc.) It is recognized also in the very terms of the problem dealt with in the Book of Job.

But, coming to higher things, we find in the Psalms and in Job the clear expression of a hope or assurance for the just of a life of blessedness after death. Here is voiced, under Divine inspiration, the innate craving of the righteous soul for everlasting fellowship with God, the protest of a strong and vivid faith against the popular conception of Sheol. Omitting doubtful passages, it is enough to refer to Psalms xv (A.V. xvi), xvi (A.V. xvii), xlviii (A.V. xlix ), and lxxii (A.V. lxxiii). Of these it is not impossible to explain the first two as prayers for deliverance from some imminent danger of death, but the assurance they express is too absolute and universal to admit this interpretation as the most natural. And this assurance becomes still more definite in the other two psalms, by reason of the contrast which death is asserted to introduce between the fates of the just and the impious. The same faith emerges in the Book of Job, first as a hope somewhat questionably expressed, and then as an assured conviction. Despairing of vindication in this life and rebelling against the thought that righteousness should remain finally unrewarded, the sufferer seeks consolation in the hope of a renewal of God's friendship beyond the grave: "O that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come" (xiv, 13 sq.). In xvii, 18 - xvii, 9, the expression of this hope is more absolute; and in xix, 23-27, it takes the form of a definite certainty that he will see God, his Redeemer: "But I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth [dust]; and after this my skin has been destroyed, yet from [al. without] my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold, and not another" (25 - 27). In his risen body he will see God, according to the Vulgate (LXX) reading: "and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skill, and in my flesh I shall see my God" (25 - 26).

The doctrine of the resurrection finds definite expression in the Prophets; and in Isaias, xxvi, 19: "thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall rise again. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust" etc.; and Daniel, xii, 2: "and many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake: some unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting shame and contempt" etc., it is clearly a personal resurrection that is taught -- in Isaias a resurrection of righteous Israelites; in Daniel, of both the righteous and the wicked. The judgment, which in Daniel is connected with the resurrection, is also personal; and the same is true of the judgment of the living (Jews and Gentiles) which in various forms the prophecies connect with the "day of the Lord". Some of the Psalms (e. g. xlviii) seem to imply a judgment of individuals, good and bad, after death; and the certainty of a future judgment of "every work, whether it be good or evil", is the final solution of the moral enigmas of earthly life offered by Ecclesiastes (xii, 13-14; cf. iii, 17). Coming to the later (deuterocanonical) books of the 0. T. we have clear evidence in II Mach. of Jewish faith not only in the resurrection of the body (vii, 9-14), but in the efficacy of prayers and sacrifices for the dead who have died in godliness (xi, 43 sqq.). And in the second and first centuries B.C., in the Jewish apocryphal literature, new eschatological developments appear, chiefly in the direction of a more definite doctrine of retribution after death. The word Sheol is still most commonly understood of the general abode of the departed awaiting the resurrection, this abode having different divisions for the reward of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked; in reference to the latter, Sheol is sometimes simply equivalent to hell. Gehenna is the name usually applied to the final place of punishment of the wicked after the last judgment, or even immediately after death; while paradise is often used to designate the intermediate abode of the souls of the just and heaven their home of final blessedness. Christ's use of these terms shows that the Jews of His day were sufficiently familiar with their New Testament meanings.

III. CATHOLIC ESCHATOLOGY

In this article there is no critical discussion of New Testament eschatology nor any attempt to trace the historical developments of Catholic teaching from Scriptural and traditional data; only a brief conspectus is given of the developed Catholic system. For critical and historical details and for the refutation of opposing views the reader is referred to the special articles dealing with the various doctrines. The eschatological summary which speaks of the "four last things" (death, judgment, heaven, and hell) is popular rather than scientific. For systematic treatment it is best to distinguish between (A) individual and (B) universal and cosmic eschatology, including under (A):

* death;
* the particular judgment;
* heaven, or eternal happiness;
* purgatory, or the intermediate state;
* hell, or eternal punishment;

and under (B):

* the approach of the end of the world;
* the resurrection of the body;
* the general judgment; and
* the final consummation of all things.

The superiority of Catholic eschatology consists in the fact that, without professing to answer every question that idle curiosity may suggest, it gives a clear, consistent, satisfying statement of all that need at present be known, or can profitably be understood, regarding the eternal issues of life and death for each of us personally, and the final consummation of the cosmos of which we are a part.

(A) Individual Eschatology

Death

Death, which consists in the separation of soul and body, is presented under many aspects in Catholic teaching, but chiefly

* as being actually and historically, in the present order of supernatural Providence, the consequence and penalty of Adam's sin (Gen., ii, 17; Rom., v, 12, etc.);
* as being the end of man's period of probation, the event which decides his eternal destiny (II Cor., v, 10; John, ix, 4; Luke, xii, 40; xvi, 19 sqq.; etc.), though it does not exclude an intermediate state of purification for the imperfect who die in God's grace; and
* as being universal, though as to its absolute universality (for those living at the end of the world) there is some room for doubt because of I Thess., iv, 14 sqq.; I Cor., xv, 51; II Tim., iv, 1.

Particular Judgment

That a particular judgment of each soul takes place at death is implied in many passages of the New Testament (Luke, xvi, 22 sqq.; xxiii, 43; Acts, i, 25; etc.), and in the teaching of the Council of Florence (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 588) regarding the speedy entry of each soul into heaven, purgatory, or hell.

Heaven

Heaven is the abode of the blessed, where (after the resurrection with glorified bodies) they enjoy, in the company of Christ and the angels, the immediate vision of God face to face, being supernaturally elevated by the light of glory so as to be capable of such a vision. There are infinite degrees of glory corresponding to degrees of merit, but all are unspeakably happy in the eternal possession of God. Only the perfectly pure and holy can enter heaven; but for those who have attained that state, either at death or after a course of purification in purgatory, entry into heaven is not deferred, as has sometimes been erroneously held, till after the General Judgment.

Purgatory

Purgatory is the intermediate state of unknown duration in which those who die imperfect, but not in unrepented mortal sin, undergo a course of penal purification, to qualify for admission into heaven. They share in the communion of saints (q. v.) and are benefited by our prayers and good works. The denial of purgatory by the Reformers introduced a dismal blank in their eschatology and, after the manner of extremes, has led to extreme reactions.

Hell

Hell, in Catholic teaching, designates the place or state of men (and angels) who, because of sin, are excluded forever from the Beatific Vision. In this wide sense it applies to the state of those who die with only original sin on their souls (Council of Florence, Denzinger, no. 588), although this is not a state of misery or of subjective punishment of any kind, but merely implies the objective privation of supernatural bliss, which is compatible with a condition of perfect natural happiness. But in the narrower sense in which the name is ordinarily used, hell is the state of those who are punished eternally for unrepented personal mortal sin. Beyond affirming the existence of such a state, with varying degrees of punishment corresponding to degrees of guilt and its eternal or unending duration, Catholic doctrine does not go. It is a terrible and mysterious truth, but it is clearly and emphatically taught by Christ and the Apostles. Rationalists may deny the eternity of hell in spite of the authority of Christ, and professing Christians, who are unwilling to admit it, may try to explain away Christ's words; but it remains as the Divinely revealed solution of the problem of moral evil. Rival solutions have been sought for in some form of the theory of restitution or, less commonly, in the theory of annihilation or conditional immortality. The restitutionist view, which in its Origenist form was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 543, and later at the Fifth General Council, is the cardinal dogma of modern Universalism (q. v.), and is favoured more or less by liberal Protestants and Anglicans. Based on an exaggerated optimism for which present experience offers no guarantee, this view assumes the all-conquering efficacy of the ministry of grace in a life of probation after death, and looks forward to the ultimate conversion of all sinners and the voluntary disappearance of moral evil from the universe. Annihilationists, on the other hand, failing to find either in reason or Revelation any grounds for such optimism, and considering immortality itself to be a grace and not the natural attribute of the soul, believe that the finally impenitent will be annihilated or cease to exist -- that God will thus ultimately be compelled to confess the failure of His purpose and power.

Apocatastasis

(Gr., apokatastasis; Lat. restitutio in pristinum statum, restoration to the original condition).

A name given in the history of theology to the doctrine which teaches that a time will come when all free creatures will share in the grace of salvation; in a special way, the devils and lost souls.

This doctrine was explicitly taught by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in more than one passage. It first occurs in his "De animâ et resurrectione" (P.G., XLVI, cols. 100, 101) where, in speaking of the punishment by fire assigned to souls after death, he compares it to the process whereby gold is refined in a furnace, through being separated from the dross with which it is alloyed. The punishment by fire is not, therefore, an end in itself, but is ameliorative; the very reason of its infliction is to separate the good from the evil in the soul. The process, moreover, is a painful one; the sharpness and duration of the pain are in proportion to the evil of which each soul is guilty; the flame lasts so long as there is any evil left to destroy. A time, then, will come, when all evil shall cease to be since it has no existence of its own apart from the free will, in which it inheres; when every free will shall be turned to God, shall be in God, and evil shall have no more wherein to exist. Thus, St. Gregory of Nyssa continues, shall the word of St. Paul be fulfilled: Deus erit omnia in omnibus (I Cor., xv, 28), which means that evil shall, ultimately, have an end, since, if God be all in all, there is no longer any place for evil (cols. 104, 105; cf. col. 152). St. Gregory recurs to the same thought of the final annihilation of evil, in his "Oratio catechetica", ch. xxvi; the same comparison of fire which purges gold of its impurities is to be found there; so also shall the power of God purge nature of that which is preternatural, namely, of evil. Such purification will be painful, as is a surgical operation, but the restoration will ultimately be complete. And, when this restoration shall have been accomplished (he eis to archaion apokatastasis ton nyn en kakia keimenon), all creation shall give thanks to God, both the souls which have had no need of purification, and those that shall have needed it. Not only man, however, shall be set free from evil, but the devil, also, by whom evil entered into the world (ton te anthropon tes kakias eleutheron kai auton ton tes kakias eyreten iomenos). The same teaching is to be found in the "De mortuis" (ibid., col. 536). Bardenhewer justly observes ("Patrologie", Freiburg, 1901, p. 266) that St. Gregory says elsewhere no less concerning the eternity of the fire, and of the punishment of the lost, but that the Saint himself understood this eternity as a period of very long duration, yet one which has a limit. Compare with this "Contra Usurarios" (XLVI, col. 436), where the suffering of the lost is spoken of as eternal, aionia, and "Orat. Catechet.", XXVI (XLV, col. 69), where evil is annihilated after a long period of time, makrais periodois. These verbal contradictions explain why the defenders of orthodoxy should have thought that St. Gregory of Nyssa's writings had been tampered with by heretics. St. Germanus of Constantinople, writing in the eighth century, went so far as to say that those who held that the devils and lost souls would one day be set free had dared "to instil into the pure and most healthful spring of his [Gregory's] writings the black and dangerous poison of the error of Origen, and to cunningly attribute this foolish heresy to a man famous alike for his virtue and his learning" (quoted by Photius, Bibl. Cod., 223; P.G. CIII, col. 1105). Tillemont, "Mémoires pour l'histoire ecclésiastique" (Paris, 1703), IX, p. 602, inclines to the opinion that St. Germanus had good grounds for what he said. We must, however, admit, with Bardenhewer (loc. cit.) that the explanation given by St. Germanus of Constantinople cannot hold. This was, also, the opinion of Petavius, "Theolog. dogmat." (Antwerp, 1700), III, "De Angelis", 109-111.

The doctrine of the apokatastasis is not, indeed, peculiar to St. Gregory of Nyssa, but is taken from Origen, who seems at times reluctant to decide concerning the question of the eternity of punishment. Tixeront has well said that in his "De principiis" (I, vi, 3) Origen does not venture to assert that all the evil angels shall sooner or later return to God (P.G., XI, col. 168, 169); while in his "Comment. in Rom.", VIII, 9 (P.G., XIV, col. 1185), he states that Lucifer, unlike the Jews, will not be converted, even at the end of time. Elsewhere, on the other hand, and as a rule, Origen teaches the apokatastasis, the final restoration of all intelligent creatures to friendship with God. Tixeront writes thus concerning the matter: "Not all shall enjoy the same happiness, for in the Father's house there are many mansions, but all shall attain to it. If Scripture sometimes seems to speak of the punishment of the wicked as eternal, this is in order to terrify sinners, to lead them back into the right way, and it is always possible, with attention, to discover the true meaning of these texts. It must, however, always be accepted as a principle that God does not chasten except to amend, and that the sole end of His greatest anger is the amelioration of the guilty. As the doctor uses fire and steel in certain deep-seated diseases, so God does but use the fire of hell to heal the impenitent sinner. All souls, all impenitent beings that have gone astray, shall, therefore, be restored sooner or later to God's friendship. The evolution will be long, incalculably long in some cases, but a time will come when God shall be all in all. Death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed, the body shall be made spiritual, the world of matter shall be transformed, and there shall be, in the universe, only peace and unity" [Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes, (Paris, 1905), I, 304, 305]. The palmary text of Origen should be referred to "De principiis", III, 6, 6; (P.G. XI, col. 338- 340). For Origen's teaching and the passages wherein it is expressed consult Huet, "Origeniana", II, qu. 11, n. 16 (republished in P.G., XVII, col. 1023-26); and Petavius, "Theol. dogmat., De Angelis", 107-109; also Harnack ["Dogmengeschichte" (Freiburg, 1894), I, 645, 646], who connects the teaching of Origen on this point with that of Clement of Alexandria. Tixeront also writes very aptly concerning this matter: "Clement allows that sinful souls shall be sanctified after death by a spiritual fire, and that the wicked shall, likewise, be punished by fire. Will their chastisement be eternal? It would not seem so. In the Stromata, VII, 2 (P.G., IX, col. 416), the punishment of which Clement speaks, and which succeeds the final judgment, constrains the wicked to repent. In chapter xvi (col. 541) the author lays down the principle that God does not punish, but corrects; that is to say that all chastisement on His part is remedial. If Origen be supposed to have started from this principle in order to arrive at the apokatastasis--and Gregory of Nyssa as well--it is extremely probable that Clement of Alexandria understood it in the same sense" (Histoire des dogmes, I, 277). Origen, however, does not seem to have regarded the doctrine of the apokatastasis as one meant to be preached to all, it being enough for the generality of the faithful to know that sinners will be punished. (Contra Celsum, VI, 26 in P.G., XI, col. 1332.)

The doctrine, then, was first taught by Origen, and by Clement of Alexandria, and was an influence in their Christianity due to Platonism, as Petavius has plainly shown (Theol. dogmat. De Angelis, 106), following St. Augustine "De Civitate Dei", XXI, 13. Compare Janet, "La philosophie de Platon" (Paris, 1869), I, 603. It is evident, moreover, that the doctrine involves a purely natural scheme of divine justice and of redemption. (Plato, Republic, X, 614b.)

It was through Origen that the Platonist doctrine of the apokatastasis passed to St. Gregory of Nyssa, and simultaneously to St. Jerome, at least during the time that St. Jerome was an Origenist. It is certain, however, that St. Jerome understands it only of the baptized: "In restitutione omnium, quando corpus totius ecclesiæ nunc dispersum atque laceratum, verus medicus Christus Jesus sanaturus advenerit, unusquisque secundum mensuram fidei et cognitionis Filii Dei . . . suum recipiet locum et incipiet id esse quod fuerat" (Comment. in Eph., iv, 16; P.G., XXVI, col. 503). Everywhere else St. Jerome teaches that the punishment of the devils and of the impious, that is of those who have not come to the Faith, shall be eternal. (See Petavius, Theol. dogmat. De Angelis, 111, 112.) The "Ambrosiaster" on the other hand seems to have extended the benefits of redemption to the devils, (In Eph., iii, 10; P.L., XVII, col. 382), yet the interpretation of the "Ambrosiaster" on this point is not devoid of difficulty. [See Petavius, p. 111; also, Turmel, Histoire de la théologie positive, depuis l'origine, etc. (Paris, 1904) 187.]

From the moment, however, that anti-Origenism prevailed, the doctrine of the apokatastasis was definitely abandoned. St. Augustine protests more strongly than any other writer against an error so contrary to the doctrine of the necessity of grace. See, especially, his "De gestis Pelagii", I: "In Origene dignissime detestatur Ecclesia, quod et iam illi quos Dominus dicit æterno supplicio puniendos, et ipse diabolus et angeli eius, post tempus licet prolixum purgati liberabuntur a poenis, et sanctis cum Deo regnantibus societate beatitudinis adhærebunt." Augustine here alludes to the sentence pronounced against Pelagius by the Council of Diospolis, in 415 (P.L., XLIV, col. 325). He moreover recurs to the subject in many passages of his writings, and in Book XXI "De Civitate Dei" sets himself earnestly to prove the eternity of punishment as against the Platonist and Origenist error concerning its intrinsically purgatorial character. We note, further, that the doctrine of the apokatastasis was held in the East, not only by St. Gregory of Nyssa, but also by St. Gregory of Nazianzus as well; "De seipso", 566 (P.G., XXXVII, col. 1010), but the latter, though he asks the question, finally decides neither for nor against it, but rather leaves the answer to God. Köstlin, in the "Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie" (Leipzig, 1896), I, 617, art. "Apokatastasis", names Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia as having also held the doctrine of apokatastasis, but cites no passage in support of his statement. In any case, the doctrine was formally condemned in the first of the famous anathemas pronounced at the Council of Constantinople in 543: Ei tis ten teratode apokatastasis presbeuei anathema esto [See, also, Justinian, Liber adversus Originem, anathemas 7 and 9.] The doctrine was thenceforth looked on as heterodox by the Church.

It was destined, nevertheless, to be revived in the works of ecclesiastical writers, and it would be interesting to verify Köstlin's and Bardenhewer's statement that it is to be traced in Bar Sudaili, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Scotus Erigena, and Amalric of Bena. It reappears at the Reformation in the writings of Denk (d. 1527), and Harnack has not hesitated to assert that nearly all the Reformers were apocatastasists at heart, and that it accounts for their aversion to the traditional teaching concerning the sacraments (Dogmengeschichte, III, 661). The doctrine of apokatastasis viewed as a belief in a universal salvation is found among the Anabaptists, the Moravian Brethren, the Christadelphians, among rationalistic Protestants, and finally among the professed Universalists. It has been held, also, by such philosophic Protestants as Schleiermacher, and by a few theologians, Farrar, for instance, in England, Eckstein and Pfister in Germany, Matter in France. Consult Köstlin, art. cit., and Grétillut, "Exposé de théologie systématique" (Paris, 1890), IV, 603.

(B) Universal and Cosmic Eschatology

The Approach of the End of the World

Notwithstanding Christ's express refusal to specify the time of the end (Mark, xiii, 32; Acts, i, 6 sq.), it was a common belief among early Christians that the end of the world was near. This seemed to have some support in certain sayings of Christ in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, which are set down in the Gospels side by side with prophecies relating to the end (Matt., xxiv; Luke, xxi), and in certain passages of the Apostolic writings, which might, not unnaturally, have been so understood (but see II Thess., ii, 2 sqq., where St. Paul corrects this impression). On the other hand, Christ had clearly stated that the Gospel was to be preached to all nations before the end (Matt., xxiv, 14), and St. Paul looked forward to the ultimate conversion of the Jewish people as a remote event to be preceded by the conversion of the Gentiles (Rom., xi, 25 sqq.). Various others are spoken of as preceding or ushering in the end, as a great apostasy (II Thess., ii, 3 sqq.), or falling away from faith or charity (Luke, xviii, 8; xvii, 26; Matt., xxiv, 12), the reign of Antichrist, and great social calamities and terrifying physical convulsions. Yet the end will come unexpectedly and take the living by surprise.

The Resurrection of the Body

The visible coming (parousia) of Christ in power and glory will be the signal for the rising of the dead. It is Catholic teaching that all the dead who are to be judged will rise, the wicked as well as the Just, and that they will rise with the bodies they had in this life. But nothing is defined as to what is required to constitute this identity of the risen and transformed with the present body. Though not formally defined, it is sufficiently certain that there is to be only one general resurrection, simultaneous for the good and the bad. Regarding the qualities of the risen bodies in the case of the just we have St. Paul's description in I Cor., xv (cf. Matt., xiii, 43; Phil., iii, 21) as a basis for theological speculation; but in the case of the damned we can only affirm that their bodies will be incorruptible.

The General Judgment

Regarding the general judgment there is nothing of importance to be added here to the graphic description of the event by Christ Himself, who is to be Judge (Matt., xxv; etc.)

The Consummation of All Things

There is mention also of the physical universe sharing in the general consummation (II Pet., iii, 13; Rom., viii, 19 sqq.; Apoc., xxi, 1 sqq.). The present heaven and earth will be destroyed, and a new heaven and earth take their place. But what, precisely, this process will involve, or what purpose the renovated world will serve is not revealed. It may possibly be part of the glorious Kingdom of Christ of which "there shall be no end". Christ's militant reign is to cease with the accomplishment of His office as Judge (I Cor., xv, 24 sqq.), but as King of the elect whom He has saved He will reign with them in glory forever.

Credit: Catholic Encyclopedia [1909], volume v

Jewish Eschatology

2005-10-02T15:38:00.000+01:00

Kaufmann Kohler

The Day of the Lord.
Gen. xlix. 1; comp. Gen. R. xcviii., "the Messianic end" ; Isa. ii. 1; also "the end," Dent. xxxii. 20; Ps. lxxiii. 17; Ben Sira vii. 36, xxviii. 6; comp. "Didache," xvi. 3): The doctrine of the "last things." Jewish eschatology deals primarily and principally with the final destiny of the Jewish nation and the world in general, and only secondarily with the future of the individual; the main concern of Hebrew legislator, prophet, and apocalyptic writer being Israel as the people of God and the victory of His truth and justice on earth. The eschatological view, that is, the expectation of the greater things to come in the future, underlies the whole construction of the history of both Israel and mankind in the Bible. The patriarchal history teems with such prophecies (Gen. xii. 3, 16; xv. 14; xviii. 18; xxii. 18; xxvi. 4); the Mosaic legislation has more or less explicitly in view the relation of Israel to the nations and the final victory of the former (Ex. xix.. 5; Lev. xxvi. 45; Num. xxiii. 10, xxiv. 17-24; Deut. iv. 6; vii. 6 et seq. ; xxviii. 1, 10; xxx. 3 et seq. ; xxxii. 43; xxxiii. 29). But it was chiefly the Prophets who dwelt with great emphasis upon the Day of the Lord as the future Day of Judgment. Originally spoken of as the day when Yhwh as the God of heaven visits the earth with all His terrible powers of devastation (comp. Gen. xix. 24; Ex. ix. 23, xi. 4, xii. 12; Josh. x. 11), the term was employed by the Prophets in an eschatological sense and invested with a double character: on the one hand, as the time of the manifestation of God's punitive powers of justice directed against all that provokes His wrath, and, on the other hand, as the time of the vindication and salvation of the righteous. In the popular mind the Day of the Lord brought disaster only to the enemies of Israel; to His people it brought victory. But this is contradicted by the prophet Amos (iii. 2, v. 20). For Isaiah, likewise, the Day of the Lord brings terror and ruin to Judah and Israel (Isa. ii. 12, x. 3, xxii. 5; comp. Micah i. 3) as well as to other nations (Isa. xiv. 25, xxiv.-xxv.). In the same measure, however, as Israel suffers defeat at the hand of the great world-powers, the Day of the Lord in the prophetic conception becomes a day of wrath for the heathen world and of triumph for Israel. In Zeph. i-iii. it is a universal day of doom for all idolaters, including the inhabitants of Judea, but it ends with the glory of the remnant of Israel, while the assembled heathen powers are annihilated (iii. 8-12). This feature of the final destruction, before the city of Jerusalem, of the heathen world-empires becomes prominent and typical in all later prophecies (Ezek. xxxviii., the defeat of Gog and Magog; Isa. xiii. 6-9, Babel's fall; Zech. xii. 2 et seq., xiv. 1 et seq.; Hag. i. 6; Joel iv. [iii.] 2 et seq.; Isa. lxvi. 15 et seq.), the Day of the Lord being said to come as "a fire which refines the silver" (Mal. iii. 2 et seq., 9; comp. Isa. xxxiii. 14 et seq.). Especially strong is the contrast between the fate which awaits the heathen and the salvation promised Israel in Isa. xxxiv.-xxxv., whereas other prophecies accentuate rather the final conversion of the heathen nations to the belief in the Lord (Isa. ii. 1 et seq., xlix. lxvi. 6-21, Zech. viii. 21 et seq., xiv. 16 et seq.).

Resurrection of the Dead.
In addition to this conception of the Day of the Lord, the Prophets developed the hope of an ideal Messianic future through the reign of a son of the house of David—the golden age of paradisiacal bliss, of which the traditions of all the ancient nations spoke (see Dillmann's commentary to Gen. ii-iii., p. 46). It would come in the form of a world of perfect peace and harmony among all creatures, the angelic state of man before his sin (Isa. xi. 1-10, lxv. 17-25: "new heavens and a new earth"). It was only a step further to predict the visitation of all the kingdoms of the earth, to be followed by the swallowing up of death forever and a resurrection of the dead in Israel, so that all the people of the Lord might witness the glorious salvation (Isa. xxiv. 21-xxv. 8, xxvi. 19). The hope of resurrection had been expressed by Ezekiel only with reference to the Jewish nation as such (Ezek. xxxvii.). Under Persian influence, however, the doctrine of resurrection underwent a change, and was made part of the Day of Judgment; hence in Dan. xii. 2 the resurrection is extended to both the wicked and the righteous: the latter "shall awake to everlasting life," the former "to shame and everlasting horror" (A. V. "contempt").

The Formation of an Eschatological System.
It is certainly incorrect to speak of an eschatological system of the Bible, in which there is no trace of an established belief in the future life. Both Ben Sira and Tobit still adhere to the ancient view of Sheol as the land of the shades (see Sheol). It was the future destiny of the nation which concerned the Prophets and the people; and the hope voiced by prophet, psalmist, and liturgical poet was simply that the Lord as the Only One will establish His kingdom over the whole earth (Ex. xv. 18; Micah ii. 13, iv. 7; Obad. 21; Zech. xiv. 9; Isa. xxiv. 23; Ps. xciii. 1, xcvi. 10, xcvii. 1, xcix. 1). This implied not only the reunion of the twelve tribes (Ezek. xxxvii. 16 et seq.; Zeph. iii. 20), but the conversion of the heathen surviving the divine day of wrath as well as the downfall of the heathen powers (Zeph. iii. 8-9; Zech. xiv. 9-19; Isa. lvi. 6, lxiii. 1-6; Ps. ii. 8-12). It seems that, because of the tribulation which the house of Zerubbabel had to undergo—not, as Dalman ("Die Worte Jesu," p. 243) thinks, "because the Messiah was not an essential part of the national hope"—the expectation of a Messiah from the house of David was kept in the background, and the prophet Elijah, as the forerunner of the great Day of the Lord who would reassemble all the tribes of Israel, was placed in the foreground (Ecclus. [Sirach] xlviii. 10; I Mace. xiv. 41). See Elijah.

The "Kingdom of God."
It is difficult to say how far the Sadducees or the ruling house of Zadok shared in the Messianic hope of the people (see Sadducees). It was the class of the Ḥasidim and their successors, the Essenes, who made a special study of the prophetical writings in order to learn the future destiny of Israel and mankind (Dan. ix. 2; Josephus, "B. J." ii. 8, §§ 6, 12; idem, "Ant." xiii. 5, § 9, where the term εἱμαρμένη is to be taken eschatologically). While announcing the coming events in visions and apocalyptic writings concealed from the multitude (see Apocalyptic Literature), they based their calculations upon unfulfilled prophecies such as Jeremiah's seventy years (Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10), and accordingly tried to fix "the end of days" (Dan. ix. 25 et seg.; Enoch, lxxxix. 59). The Talmud reproachingly calls these men, who frequently brought disappointment and wo upon the people, "mahshebe ḳeẓim" (calculators of the [Messianic] ends: Sanh. 97b; comp. 92b, 99a; Ket. 111a; Shab. 138b; 'Eduy. ii. 9-10; for the expression , see Dan. xii. 4, 13; Assumptio Mosis, i. 18, xii. 4; II Esd. iii. 14; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxvii. 15; Matt. xiii. 39, xxiv. 3). It can not be denied, however, that these Ḥasidean or apocalyptic writers took a sublime view of the entire history of the world in dividing it into great worldepochs counted either after empires or millenniums, and in seeing its consummation in the establishment of "the kingdom of the Lord," called also, in order to avoid the use of the Sacred Name, ("the kingdom of heaven"). This prophetic goal of human history at once lent to all struggle and suffering of the people of God a higher meaning and purpose, and from this point of view new comfort was offered to the saints in their trials. This is the idea underlying the contrast between the "kingdoms of the powers of the earth" and "the kingdom of God" which is to be delivered over at the end of time to the saints, the people of Israel (Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14, 27). It is, however, utterly erroneous to assert, as do Schürer ("Geschichte," ii. 504 et seq.) and Bousset (" Religion des Judenthums," pp. 202 et seq.), that this kingdom of God meant a political triumph of the Jewish people and the annihilation of all other nations. As may be learned from Tobit xiii. 11 et seq., xiv. 6, quoted by Schürer (l.c. ii. 507), and from the ancient New-Year's liturgy (see also 'Alenu), "the conversion of all creatures to become one single band to do, God's will" is the foremost object of Israel's Messianic hope; only the removal of "the kingdom of violence" must precede the establishment of God's kingdom. This hope for the coming of the kingdom of God is expressed also in the Ḳaddish (comp. Lord's Prayer) and in the eleventh benediction of the "Shemoneh 'Esreh," whereas the destruction of the kingdom of wickedness first found expression in the added (nineteenth) benediction (afterward directed chiefly against obnoxious informers and heretics; see Liturgy), and was in the Hellenistic propaganda literature, the Sibyllines (iii. 47, 767 et al.), emphasized especially with a view to the conversion of the heathen.

World-Epochs.
In contrasting the future kingdom of God with the kingdom of the heathen powers of the world the apocalyptic writers were undoubtedly influenced by Parsism, which saw the world divided between Ahuramazda and Angro-mainyush, who battle with each other until finally the latter, at the end of the fourth period of the twelve world-millenniums, is defeated by the former after a great crisis in which the bad principle seems to win the upper hand (see Plutarch, "On Isis and Osiris," ch. 47; Bundahis, xxxiv. 1; "Bahman Yasht," i. 5, ii. 22 et seq. ; "S. B. E." v. 149, 193 et seq. ; Stade, "Ueber den Einfluss, des Parsismus auf das Judenthum," 1898, pp. 145 et seq.). The idea of four world-empires succeeding one another and represented by the four metals (Dan. ii., vii.), which also has its parallel in Parsism ("Bahman Yasht," i. 3), and in Hindu, Greek, and Roman traditions ("Laws of Manes," i. 71 et seq. ; Hesiod, "Works and Days," pp. 109 et seq. ; Ovid, "Metamorphoses," i. 89), seems to rest upon an ancient tradition which goes back to Babylonia (see Gunkel's commentary on Genesis, 1902, p. 241). Gunkel finds in the twelve millenniums of Persian belief an astronomical world-year with four seasons, and sees the four Babylonian world-epochs reproduced in the four successive periods of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The four periods occur again in Enoch, lxxxix. et seq. (see Kautzsch, "Pseudepigraphen," p. 294) and Rev. vi. 1; also in Zech. ii. 1 (A. V. i. 18), vi.1; and Dan. viii. 22; and the four undivided animals in the vision of Abraham (Gen. xv. 9) were by the early haggadists (Johanan b. Zakkai, in Gen. R. xliv.; Apoc. Abraham, xv., xxviii.) referred to the four world-empires in an eschatological sense.

A World-Week.
The Perso-Babylonian world-year of twelve millenniums, however, was transformed in Jewish eschatologyinto a world-week of seven millenniums corresponding with the week of Creation, the verse "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday" (Ps. xc. 5 [A. V. 4]) having suggested the idea that the present world of toil ("'olam ha-zeh") is to be followed by a Sabbatical millennium, "the world to come" ("'olam ha-ba'": Tamid vii. 4; R. H. 31a; Sanh. 97a; Ab. R. N. i., ed. Schechter, p. 5; Enoch, xxiii. 1; II Esdras vii. 30, 43; Testament of Abraham, A. xix., B. vii.; Vita Adæ et Evæ, 42; Rev. xx. 1; II Peter iii. 8; Epistle of Barnabas, xv.; Irenæus, v. 28, 3). Of these the six millenniums were again divided, as in Parsism, into three periods: the first 2,000 years devoid of the Law; the next 2,000 years under the rule of the Law; and the last 2,000 years preparing amid struggles and through catastrophes for the rule of the Messiah (Sanh. 97a; 'Ab. Zarah 9a; Midr. Teh. xc. 17); the Messianic era is said to begin 4,291 years after Creation (comp. the 5,500 years after Creation, after the lapse of which the Messiah is expected, in Vita Adæ et Evæ, 42; also Assumptio Mosis, x. 12). On a probably similar calculation, which placed the destruction of the Second Temple at 3828 (Sanh. l.c.), rests also the division of the world into twelve epochs of 400 years, nine and a half of which epochs had passed at the time of the destruction of the Temple (II Esdras xiv. 11; comp. vii. 28). Twelve periods occur also in the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (xxvii., liii.) and the Apocalypse of Abraham (xxix.); the ten millenniums of Enoch xxi. 6, however, appear to be identical with the ten weeks in ch. xciii., that is, 10 x 700 years. As a matter of course, Biblical chronology was always so construed as to bring the six millenniums into accord with the Messianic expectations of the time; only by special favor would the mystery of the end, known only to God, be revealed to His saints (Dan. xii. 9; II Esd. iv. 37, xi. 44; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, liv. 1, lxxxi. 4; Matt. xxiv. 36; Pes. 54b). The end was believed to be brought about by the merit of a certain number of saints or martyrs (Enoch, xlvii. 4; II Esd. iv. 36; Rev. vii. 4), or by the completion of the number of human souls sent from their heavenly abode to the earth, the number of created souls being fixed (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxiii. 4; 'Ab. Zarah 5a; Yeb. 63b). Finally, it was taught that "he who announces the Messianic time based on calculation forfeits his own share in the future" (R. Jose, in Derek Ereẓ R. xi.) and that "the advent of the Messiah is dependent upon general repentance brought about by the prophet Elijah" (Sanh. 97b; Pirḳe R. El. xliii.; Assumptio Mosis, i. 18).

Travail of the Messianic Time.
There prevails a singular harmony among the apocalyptic writings and traditions, especially regarding the successive stages of the eschatological drama. The first of these is the "travail" of the Messianic time (; literally, "the suffering of the Messiah"; comp. Pesiḳ. R. 21, 34; Shab. 118a; Pes. 118a; Sanh. 98b; Mek., Beshallaḥ, Wayassa', 4, 5; or , Matt. xxiv. 8; Mark xiii. 9, taken from Hosea xiii. 13). The idea that the great redemption shall be preceded by great distress, darkness, and moral decline seems to be based on such prophetic passages as Hosea xiii. 13 et seq.; Joel ii. 10 et seq.; Micah vii. 1-6; Zech. xiv. 6 et seq.; Dan. xii. 1. The view itself, however, is not that of the Prophets, whose outlook is altogether optimistic and eudemonistic (Isa. xi. 1-9, lxv. 17-25), but more in accordance with the older non-Jewish belief in a constant decline of the world, from the golden and silver to the brass and iron age, until it ends in a final cataclysm or conflagration, contemplated alike by old Teuton and Greek legend. It was particularly owing to Persian influence that the contrast between this world, in which evil, death, and sin prevail, and the future world, "which is altogether good" (Tamid l.c.), was so strongly emphasized, and the view prevailed that the transition from the one to the other could be brought about only through a great crisis, the signs of decay of a dying world and the birth-throes of a new one to be ushered into existence. Persian eschatology had no difficulty in utilizing old mythological and cosmological material from Babylonia in picturing the distress and disorder of the last days of the world (Bundahis, xxx. 18 et seq.; Plutarch, l.c. 47; Bahman, l.c. ii. 23 et seq., iii. 60); Jewish eschatology had to borrow the same elsewhere or give Biblical terms and passages a new meaning so as to make all terrestrial and celestial powers appear as participants in the final catastrophe. This world, owing to the sin of the first man (II Esd. iv. 30), or through the fall of the angels (Enoch, vi.-xi.), has been laden with curses and is under the sway of the power of evil, and the end will accordingly be a combat of God with these powers of evil either in the heavens above or on earth (Isa. xxiv. 21 et seq., xxv. 7, xxvii. 1; Dan. vii. 11, viii. 9; Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 29; Test. Patr., Asher, 7, Dan. 5; Assumptio Mosis, x. 1; Psalms of Solomon, ii. 25 et seq.; and see Gunkel, "Schöpfung und Chaos," pp. 171-398). The whole world, then, appears as in a state of rebellion before its downfall. A description of these Messianic woes is given in the Book of Jubilees, xx. 11-25; Sibyllines, ii. 154 et seq., iii. 796 et seq.; Enoch, xcix. 4 et seq., c. 1 et seq.; II Esd. v.-vi.; Syriac Apoc. Baruch xxv.-xxvii., xlviii. 31 et seq., lxx.; Matt. xxiv. 6-29; Rev. vi.-ix.; Soṭah ix. 15; Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa x.; Sanh. 96b-97a. "A third part of all the world's woes will come in the generation of the Messiah" (Midr. Teh. Ps. ii. 9). In all these passages evil portents are predicted, such as visions of swords, of blood, and of warfare in the sky (Sibyllines, iii. 795; comp. Luke xxi. 21; Josephus, "B. J.", vi. 5, § 3), disorder in the whole celestial system (Enoch,lxxx. 4-7; II Esd. v. 4; comp. Amos viii. 9; Joel ii. 10), in the produce of the earth (Enoch, lxxx. 2; Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 18; II Esd. vi. 22; Sibyllines, iii. 539), and in human progeny (Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 25; Sibyllines, ii. 154 et seq.; II Esd. v. 8, vi. 21). Birds and beasts, trees, stones, and wells will cease to act in harmony with nature (II Esd. v. 6-8, vi. 24).Particularly prominent among the plagues of the time, of which Baruch xxviii. 2-3 counts twelve, will be "the sword, famine, earthquake, and fire"; according to Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 13, "illness and pain, frost and fever, famine and death, sword and captivity"; but greater than the terror and havoc caused by the elements will be the moral corruptionand perversion, the wickedness and unchastity anticipated in prophetic visions, and the power of evil spirits (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, l.c. and lxx. 2-8; Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 13-19). This view of the prevalence of the spirit of evil and seduction to sin in the last days received special emphasis in the Ḥasidean schools; hence the striking resemblance between the tannaitic and the apocalyptic picture of the time preceding the Messianic advent: "In the last days false prophets [pseudo-Messiahs] and corrupters will increase and sheep be turned into wolves, love into hatred; lawlessness [see Belial] will prevail, causing men to hate, persecute, and deliver up each other; and Satan, 'the world-deceiver' (see Antichrist), will in the guise of the Son of God perform miracles, and as ruler of the earth commit unheard-of crimes" ("Didache," xvi. 3 et seq.; Sibyllines, ii. 165 et seq., iii. 63; Matt. xxiv. 5-12; II Tim. iii. 1 et seq.). The rabbinic description is similar: "The footsteps of the Messiah [, taken from Ps. lxxxix. 52; comp. the term , "the last days of the rule of Esau"="Edom—Rome"; II Esd. vi. 8-10; comp. Gen. R. lxiii.; Yalḳut and Midrash ha-Gadol, ed. Schechter, on Gen. xxv. 26; Pirḳe R. El. xxxii.] are seen in the turning of the schoolhouse into a brothel, the desolation of Galilee and Gaulanitis, the going about of the scribes and saints as despised beggars, the insolence and lawlessness of the people, the disrespect of the younger generation toward the older, and the turning of the rulers to heresy" (Soṭah ix. 15; Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa x.; Sanh. 97b; Cant. R. ii. 13; Ket. 112b; in these passages amoraim of the second and third centuries are often credited with the views of tannaim of the first; comp. also Shab. 118a with Mek., Beshallaḥ, l.c.). Simon ben Yoḥai (comp. Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa x. with Sanh. l.c.) counts seven periods of tribulation preceding the advent of the son of David. The Abraham Apocalypse (xxx.) mentions ten plagues as being prepared for the heathen of the time: (1) distress; (2) conflagration; (3) pestilence among beasts; (4) famine; (5) earthquakes and wars; (6) hail and frost; (7) wild beasts; (8) pestilence and death among men; (9) destruction and flight (comp. Isa. xxvi. 20; Zech. xiv. 5); and (10) noises and rumblings (comp. in the sixth period of Simon b. Yoḥai; comp. Test. Patr., Levi, 17, where also seven periods precede the kingdom of God).

The War of Gog and Magog.
An important part in the eschatological drama is assigned to Israel's final combat with the combined forces of the heathen nations under the leadership of Gog and Magog, barbarian tribes of the North (Ezek. xxxviii-xxxix.; see Gog and Magog). Assembled for a fierce attack upon Israel in the mountains near Jerusalem, they will suffer a terrible and crushing defeat, and Israel's land will thenceforth forever remain the seat of God's kingdom. Whether originally identical or identified only afterward by Biblical interpretation with the battle in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel iv. [A.V.iii.] 12; comp. Zech. xiv. 2 and Isa. xxv. 6, where the great warfare against heathen armies is spoken of), the warfare against Gog and Magog formed the indispensable prelude to the Messianic era in every apocalyptic vision (Sibyllines, iii. 319 et seq., 512 et seq., 632 et seq.; v. 101; Rev. xx. 8; Enoch, lvi. 5 et seq., where the place of Gog and Magog is taken by the Parthians and Medes; II Esd. xiii. 5, "a multitude of men without number from the four winds of the earth"; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, LXX. 7-10; Targ. Yer. to Num. xi. 26, xxiv. 17, Ex. xl. 11, Deut. xxxii. 39, and Isa. xxxiii. 25; comp. Num. xxiv. 7 [Septuagint, Γὼγ for "Agag"]; see Eldad and Medad).R. Eliezer (Mek., Beshallaḥ, l.c.) mentions the Gog and Magog war together with the Messianic woes and the Last Judgment as the three modes of divine chastisement preceding the millennium. R. Akiba assigns both to the Gog and Magog war and to the Last Judgment a duration of twelve months ('Eduy. ii. 10); Lev. R. xix. has seven years instead, in accordance with Ezek. xxxix. 9; Ps. ii. 1-9 is referred to the war of Gog and Magog ('Ab. Zarah 3b; Ber. 7b; Pesiḥ. ix. 79a; Tan., Noah, ed. Buber, 24; Midr. Teh. Ps. ii.).The destruction of Gog and Magog's army implies not, as falsely stated by Weber ("Altsynagogale Theologie," 1880, p. 369), followed by Bousset ("Religion des Judenthums," p. 222), the extermination of the Gentile world at the close of the Messianic reign, but the annihilation of the heathen powers who oppose the kingdom of God and the establishing of the Messianic reign (see Enoch, lvi.-lvii., according to which the tribes of Israel are gathered and brought to the Holy Land after the destruction of the heathen hosts; Sifre, Deut. 343; and Targ. Yer. to Num. xi. 26).The Gentiles who submit to the Law are expected to survive (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, lxxii. 4; Apoc. Abraham, xxxi.); and those nations that did not subjugate Israel will be admitted by the Messiah into the kingdom of God (Pesiḥ. R. 1, after Isa. lxvi. 23). The Messiah is called "Hadrach" (Zech. ix. 1), as the one who leads the heathen world to repentance (), though he is tender to Israel and harsh toward the Gentiles (: Cant. R. vii. 5). The loyalty of the latter will be severely tested ('Ab. Zarah 2b et seq.), while during the established reign of the Messiah the probation time of the heathen will have passed over (Yeb. 24b). "A third part of the heathen world alone will survive" (Sibyllines, iii. 544 et seq., v. 103, after Zech. xiii. 8; in Tan., Shofeṭim, ed. Buber, 10, this third part is referred to Israel, which alone, as the descendants of the three patriarchs, will escape the fire of Gehenna). According to Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xl. 1, 2, it is the leader of the Gog and Magog hosts who will alone survive, to be brought bound before the Messiah on Mount Zion and judged and slain. According to II Esd. xiii. 9 et seq., fire will issue forth from the mouth of the Messiah and consume the whole army. This indicates an identification of Gog and Magog with "the wicked one" of Isa. xi. 4, interpreted as the personification of wickedness, Angro - mainyush (see Armilus). In Midrash Wayosha' (Jellinek, "B. H." i. 56) Gog is the leader of the seventy-two nations of the world, minus one (Israel), and makes war against the Most High; he is smitten down by God. Armilus rises as the last enemy of God and Israel.

Gathering of the Exiles.
The great event preparatory to the reign of the Messiah is the gathering of the exiles, "ḳibbuẓgaliyyot." This hope, voiced in Deut. xxx. 3; Isa. xi. 12; Micah iv. 6, vii. 11; Ezek. xxxix. 27; Zech. xi. 10-12 and Isa. xxxv. 8, is made especially impressive by the description in Isa. xxvii. 13 of the return of all the strayed ones from Assyria and Egypt, and by the announcement that "the Gentiles themselves shall carry Israel's sons and daughters on their arms to Jerusalem with presents for the Lord" (Isa. xlix. 22, lx. 4-9, lxvi. 20). It was accordingly dwelt upon as a miraculous act in the synagogal liturgy and song (Shemoneh 'Esreh; Meg. 17a; Cant. xi. 1, xvii. 31), as well as in apocalyptic visions (Apoc. Abraham, xxxi.; II Esd. xiii. 13; Matt. xxiv. 31). God shall bring them back from the East and the West (Baruch, iv. 37, v. 5 et seq.; Ecclus. [Sirach] xxxvi. 13; Tobit xiii. 13); Elijah shall gather them and the Messiah summon them together (Ecclus. [Sirach] xlviii. 10; Sibyllines, ii. 171-187; Cant. xvii. 26; Targ. Yer. to Ex. vi. 18, xl. 9-10, Num. xxiv. 7, Deut. xxx. 4, Jer. xxxiii. 13). In wagons carried by the winds the exiles shall be borne along with a mighty noise (Enoch, lvii. 1 et seq.; Zeb. 116a; Cant. R. and Haggadat Shir ha-Shirim to Cant. iv. 16; Midr. Teh. to Ps. lxxxvii. 6), and a pillar of light shall lead them (Philo, "De Execrationibus," 8-9). The Lost Ten Tribes shall be miraculously brought back across the mighty waters of the River Euphrates (II Esd. xiii. 39-47; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, lxxvii.; Sanh. x. 13; Tan., Miḳḳez and Shelaḥ, i. 203, iii. 79, ed. Buber, after Isa. xi. 15; see Arzareth; Sambation; Ten Tribes).

The Days of the Messiah.
The central place in the eschatological system is, as a matter of course, occupied by the advent of the messiah. Nevertheless the days of the Messiah ("yemot ha-Mashiaḥ"), the time when the prophetic predictions regarding the reign of the descendant of David find their fulfilment, do not form the end of the world's history, but are merely the necessary preparatory stage to the kingdom of God ("malkut shamayim"), which, when once established, will last forever (Dan. vii. 27; Sibyllines, iii. 47 et seq., 767 et seq.; Mek., Beshallaḥ, 'Amaleḳ, end). The Messiah is merely "the chosen one" (Enoch, xlv. 3, xlix. 2, li. 3 et seq.); he causes the people to seek the Lord (Hosea iii. 5; Isa. xi. 9; Zech. xii. 8; Ezek. xxxiv. 24, xxxvii. 24 et seq.), and, as "the Son of God," causes the nations to worship Him (Enoch, cv. 2; II Esd. viii. 28 et seq., xiii. 32-52, xiv. 9, after Ps. ii. 7, lxxxix. 27 et seq.). The time of his kingdom is therefore limited according to some to three generations (Mek., l.c., after Ex. xvii. 16, ); according to others, to 40 or 70, to 365 or 400 years, or to 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, or 7,000 years (Sanh. 99a, 97b; Pesiḥ. R. 1, end; Midr. Teh. xc. 17); the number 400, however, based upon a combination of Gen. xv. 13 and Ps. xc. 15 (see Pesiḥ. R. 1), is supported by II Esd. vii. 28 et seq., where it is positively stated that after his 400 years' reign the Messiah will die to rise again, after the lapse of a week, with the rest of the righteous in the world's regeneration. It is probably to emphasize his human character that the Messiah is frequently called the "Son of Man" (Dan. viii. 13; Enoch, xlvi. 2 et seq., xlviii. 2, lxii. 7; See Man, Son of). For it is in order to fulfil the designs of God for Israel and the whole race of man that he is to appear as the triumphant warrior-king to subjugate the nations (Sibyllines, iii. 653-655), to lead in the war against Gog and Magog (II Esd. xiii. 32; Targ. Yer. to Num. xxiv. 17, 20), to annihilate all the powers of wickedness and idolatry, cleanse the Holy Land and city from all heathen elements, build the new house of the Lord "pure and holy," and become the Redeemer of Israel (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxxix. 7 et seq., lxxii. 2; Cant. xvii. 21-30; Targ. Yer. to Gen. xlix. 11, Ex. xl. 9, Num. xi. 16, Isa. x. 27; comp. Philo, "De Præmiis et Pœnis," with reference to Num. xxiv. 7): "he is to redeem the entire creation by chastising the evil-doers and making the nations from all the ends of the world see the glory of God" (II Esd. xiii. 26-38; Cant. xvii. 31). "Free from sin, from desire for wealth or power, a pure, wise, and holy king imbued with the spirit of God, he will lead all to righteousness and holiness (Cant. xvii. 32-43; Sibyllines, iii. 49, v. 414 et seq.; Test. Patr., Levi, 18; Midr. Teh. lxxii. 12; Targ. Yer. to Gen. xlix. 12, and Isa. xi. 2, xli. 1).

Time of Universal Peace.
The Messianic time, accordingly, means first of all the cessation of all subjection of Israel by other powers (, Ber. 34b; Sanh. 91b), while the kingdoms and nations will bring tributes to the Messiah (Pes. 118b; Gen. R. lxxviii.; Tan., Yelamdenu, Shofeṭim; Sibyllines, iii. 350, iv. 145, all based upon Ps. lxxii. 10 and lxviii. 32); furthermore, it will be a time of conversion of the heathen world to monotheism (Tobit xiv. 6; Sibyllines, iii. 616, 624, 716 et seq.; Enoch, xlviii. 4 et seq.; 'Ab. Zarah 24a, after Zeph. iii. 9), though the Holy Land itself will not be inhabited by strangers (Cant. xvii. 28; Sibyllines, v. 264; Book of Jubilees, 1. 5). Both earth and man will be blessed with wondrous fertility and vigor (Enoch, x. 17-19, "They will live until they have a thousand children"; Sibyllines, iii. 620 et seq., 743; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxix. 5; comp. Papias' description of the millennium given as coming directly from Jesus, in Irenæus, "Adversus Hæreses," v. 33, 3-4; Ket. 111b; Shab. 30b, "The earth will produce new fruits daily, women will bear children daily, and the land will yield loaves of bread and garments of silk," all with reference to Ps. lxxii. 16; Deut. xxxii. 1; Gen. xlix. 11; comp. Targ. Yer.). The days of the youth of the earth will be renewed; people will again reach the age of 1,000 years (Book of Jubilees, xxx. 27; comp. Isa. lxv. 20); the birth of children will be free from pain (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, lxxiii. 60, after Isa. xiii. 8; Philo, "De Præmiis et Pœnis," 15 et seq.); there will no longer be strife and illness, plague or trouble, but peace, health, and joy (Enoch, x. 16-22; Sibyllines, iii. 371; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, lxxiii. 1-5). All physical ailments and defects will be healed (Gen. R. xcv.; Pesiḥ. R. 42 [ed. Friedmann, p. 177, note]; Midr. Teh. cxlvi. 8; Eccl. R. i. 9, after Isa. xxxv. 6; comp. Matt. xi. 5). A spiritual regeneration will also take place, and Israel's sons and daughters will prophesy (Num. R. xv., after Joel iii. 1 [A. V. ii. 28], a passage which contradicts the statement of Bousset, l.c. p. 229).

Renewal of the Time of Moses.
The Messiah will furthermore win the heathen by the spirit of wisdom and righteousness which rests upon him (Sibyllines, iii. 780; Test. Patr., Levi, 18; Judah, 24; Targ. Yer. to Gen. xlix. 12 and Isa. xli. 1). He will teach the nations the Noachian laws of humanity and make all men disciples of the Lord (Midr. Teh. xxi.). The wonders of the time of Moses will be repeated on a larger scale in the time of the Messiah (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah, 8, after Micah vii. 15; comp. Hosea ii. 17; Targ.; Tan., Bo, ed. Buber, 6). What Moses, the first redeemer, did is typical of what the Messiah as the last redeemer will do (Eccl. R. i. 9). The redemption will be in the same month of Nisan and in the same night (Mek., Bo, 14); the same pillar of cloud will lead Israel (Philo, "De Execrationibus," 8; Targ. Yer. to Isa. xxxv. 10): the same plagues will be sent upon Israel's foes (Tan., Wa'era, ed. Buber, 15; Bo, 6, 19; Midr. Wayosha'; Jellinek, "B. H." i. 45); the redeemer will ride on an ass (Zech. ix. 9; comp. Ex. iv. 20); manna will again be sent down from heaven (Ps. lxxii. 16; comp. Ps. lxxviii. 24; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxix. 8); and water rise from beneath by miraculous power (Joel iv. [A. V. iii.] 18; comp. Ps. lxxviii. 15 et seq.; Eccl. R. i. 9). Like Moses, the Messiah will disappear for 90 or 45 days after his appearance (Pesiḥ. R. 15; Pesiḥ. v. 49b, after Hosea v. 15). The same number of people will be redeemed (Sanh. 111a) and the Song of Moses be replaced by another song (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah, 1; Rev. xv. 3). But, like Moses, the Messiah will die (II Esd. l.c.); the opinion that the Messiah will not taste death (Midr. Teh. lxxii. 17) seems to be of later origin, and will be discussed in connection with the account of the Messiah from the tribe of Joseph or Ephraim (see below).

The Cosmic Characters of the Messianic Time.
Jewish theology always insisted on drawing a sharp line between the Messianic days and the final days of God's sole kingdom. Hence the characteristic baraita counting ten world-rulers, beginning with God before Creation, then naming, Nimrod, Joseph, Solomon, Ahab, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander the Great, the Messiah, and ending with God last as He was the first (Pirḳe R. El. xi.; Meg. 11a is incomplete). There are, however, in the personality of the Messiah supernatural elements adopted from the Persian Soshians ("Savior") which lent to the whole Messianic age a specifically cosmic character. An offspring of Zoroaster, born miraculously by a virgin of a seed hidden in a lake for thousands of years, Soshians is, together with a number of associates, six, or seven, or thirty, to bring about the resurrection, slay Angro-mainyush and his hosts of demons, judge the risen dead, giving each his due reward, and finally renew the whole world (Bundahis, xxx.; Windischmann, "Zoroastrische Studien," 1863, pp. 231 et seq.; Böcklen, "Die Verwandtschaft der Jüdischchristlichen mit der Parsischen Eschatologie," 1902, pp. 91 et seq.). Similarly, the Messiah is a being existing from before Creation (Gen. R. i.; Pesiḥ. R. 33; Pirḳe R. El. iii.; Pes. 54a, based on Ps. lxxii. 17), and kept hidden for thousands of years (Enoch, xlvi. 2 et seq., xlviii. 6, lxii. 7; II Esd. xii. 32, xiii, 26; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxix.; Midr. Teh. xxi.; Targ. to Micah iv. 8). He comes "from a strange seed" (: Gen. R. xxiii., with reference to Gen. iv. 25; Gen. R. li., with reference to Gen. xix. 34; Gen. R. lxxxv.; Tan., Wayesheb, ed. Buber, 13, with reference to Gen. xxxviii. 29; comp. Matt. i. 3); or from the North (, which may also mean "concealment": Lev. R. ix.; Num. R. xiii., after Isa. xli. 25; comp. John vii. 27).The Messiah's immortal companions reappear with him (II Esd. xiii. 52, xiv. 9; comp. vi. 26). Derek Ereẓ Zuṭa i. mentions nine immortals (see Kohler, in "J. Q. R." v. 407-419, and comp. the transposed [hidden] righteous ones in Mandäan lore; Brand, "Die Mandäische Religion," 1889, p. 38). They are probably identical with "the righteous who raise the dead in the Messianic time" (Pes. 68a). Prominent among the companions of the Messiah are: (1) Elijah the prophet (see Elijah in Rabbinical Literature), who is expected as high priest to anoint the Messiah (Justin, "Dialogus cum Tryphone," viii., xlix.; comp. Targ. to Ex. xl. 10; John i. 21); to bring about Israel's repentance (Pirḳe R. El. xliii.) and reunion (Targ. Yer. to Deut. xxx. 4; Sibyllines, v. 187 et seq.), and finally the resurrection of the dead (Yer. Shab. i. 5-3c; Sheḳ. iii. 47c; Agadat Shir ha-Shirim, ed. Schechter, to Cant. vii. 14); he will also bring to light again the hidden vessels of Moses' time (Mek., Beshauah, Wayassa', 5; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, vi. 8; comp., however, Num. R. xviii.: "the Messiah will disclose these"); (2) Moses, who will reappear with Elijah (Deut. R. iii.; Targ. Yer. to Ex. xii. 42; comp. Ex. R. xviii. and Luke ix. 30); (3) Jeremiah (II Macc. xv. 14; Matt. xvi. 14); (4) Isaiah (II Esd. ii. 18); (5) Baruch (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, vi. 8, xiii. 3, xxv. 1, xlvi. 2); (6) Ezra (II Esd. xiv. 9); (7) Enoch (Enoch, xc. 31; Evangelium Nicodemi, xxv.), and others (Luke ix. 8; comp. also Septuagint to Job, end). The "four smiths" in the vision of Zech. ii. 3 (i. 20, R. V.) were referred by the Rabbis to the four chiefs, or associates, of the Messianic time; Elijah and the Messiah, Melchizedek and the "Anointed for the War" (Messiah ben Joseph: Pesiḥ. v. 51a; comp. Suk. 55b). The "seven shepherds and the eight princes" (Micah v. 4 [A. V. 5]) are taken to be: Adam, Seth, Methuselah (Enoch was stricken from the list of the saints in post-Christian times), Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, with David in the middle, forming the set of "shepherds"; Jesse, Saul, Samuel (?), Amos (?), Hezekiah, Zedekiah, Elijah, and the Messiah, forming the set of "princes" (Suk. 52b). These, fifteen in number, correspond to the fifteen men and women in the company of the Persian Soshians. The Coptic Elias Apocalypse (xxxvii., translated by Steindorf), speaks of sixty companions of the Messiah (see Bousset, l.c. p. 221).

The Messiah of the Tribe of Joseph.
The origin and character of the Messiah of the tribe of Joseph, or Ephraim, are rather obscure. It seems that the assumed superhuman character of the Messiah appeared to be in conflict with the tradition that spoke of his death, and therefore the figure of a Messiah who would come from the tribe of Joseph, or Ephraim, instead of from Judah, and who would willingly undergo suffering for his nation and fall as victim in the Gog and Magog war, was createdby the haggadists (see Pesik. R. 37; comp. 34.). To him was referred the passage, "They shall look unto him whom they have pierced and mourn for him" (Zech. xii. 10, Hebr.; Suk. 52a), as well as the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah (see Justin, "Dialogus cum Tryphone," lxviii. and xc.; comp. Sanh. 98b, "the Messiah's name is 'The Leper' ['ḥiwwara'; comp. Isa. liii. 4]; the passage quoted in Martini, "Pugio Fidei," p. 417, cited by Gfrörer [l.c. 267] and others, is scarcely genuine; see Eppstein, "Bereshit Rabbati," 1888, p. 26). The older haggadah referred also "the wild ox" who with his horns will "push the people to the ends of the earth" (Deut. xxxiii. 17, Hebr.) to the Ephraimite Messiah (Gen. R. lxxv.; comp. Num. R. xiv.). The Messiah from the tribe of Ephraim falls in the battle with Gog and Magog, whereas the Messiah from the house of David kills the superhuman hostile leader (Angro-mainyush) with the breath of his mouth; then he is universally recognized as king (Suk. 52a; comp. Targ. Yer. to Ex. xl. 9, 11; Targ. to Isa. xi. 4, Cant. iv. 5; Sefer Zerubbabel, in Jellinek, "B. H." ii. 56, where he is introduced with the name of Nehemiah b. Ḥushiel; comp. l.c. 60 et seq., iii. 80 et seq.)."Great will be the suffering the Messiah of the tribe of Ephraim has to undergo for seven years at the hand of the nations, who lay iron beams upon him to crush him so that his cries reach heaven; but he willingly submits for the sake of his people, not only those living, but also the dead, for all those who died since Adam; and God places the four beasts of the heavenly throne-chariot at his disposal to bring about the great work of resurrection and regeneration against all the celestial antagonists" (Pesiḥ. R. 36). The Patriarchs will rise from their graves in Nisan and pay homage to his greatness as the suffering Messiah, and when the nations (104 kingdoms) put him in shackles in the prison-house and make sport of him, as is described in Ps. xxii. 8-16, God will address him with the words "Ephraim, My dear son, child of My comfort, I have great compassion on thee" (Jer. xxxi. 20, Hebr.), assuring him that "with the breath of his mouth he shall slay the wicked one" (Isa. xi. 4); and He will surround him with a sevenfold canopy of precious stones, place streams of wine, honey, milk, and balsam at his feet, fan him with all the fragrant breezes of paradise, and then tell the saints that admire and pity him that he has not gone through half the suffering imposed upon him from the world's beginning (Pesiḥ. R. 37). The haggadists, however, did not always clearly discriminate between the Ephraimite Messiah, who falls a victim, and the son of David, who is glorified as victor and receives the tributes of the nations (Midr. Teh. xviii. 5, where the former is meant as being the one "insulted" according to Ps. lxxxix. 51 [A. V. 52]; comp. Targ. Yer. to Num. xi. 26, and Midr. Teh. lxxxvii. 6, where the two Messiahs are mentioned together). According to Tan. Yelamdenu, Shofeṭim (end), the nations will first bring tributes to the Messiah; then, seized by a spirit of confusion ("ruaḥ tezazit"), they will rebel and make war against him; but he will burn them with the breath of his mouth and none but Israel will remain (that is, on the battle-field: this is misunderstood by Weber, l.c.; comp. II Esd. xiii. 9).In the later apocalyptic literature the Ephraimite Messiah is introduced by the name of Nehemiah ben Ḥushiel, and the victorious Messiah as Menahem ben 'Ammi El ("Comforter, son of the people of God": Jellinek, "B. H." ii. 56, 60 et al.). It appears that the eschatologists were anxious to discriminate between the fourth heathen power personified in Edom (Rome) the wicked, over whom the Ephraimite Messiah alone is destined to carry victory (Pesiḥ. R. 12; Gen. R. lxxiii.; B. B. 123b), and the Gog and Magog army, over which the son of David was to triumph while the son of Ephraim fell (see Otot ha-Mashiaḥ, Jellinek, l.c.). While the fall of the wicked kingdom (Rome) was taken to be the beginning of the rise of the kingdom of God (Pesiḥ. v. 51a), the belief was that between the fall of the empire of Edom = Rome and the defeat of the Gog and Magog army there would be a long interval (see Pesiḥ. xxii. 148a; comp. Pesiḥ. R. 37 [ed. Friedmann, 163b, note]).According to R. Eliezer of Modin (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Wayassa', 4 [ed. Weiss, p. 58b, note]), the Messiah is simply to restore the reign of the Davidic dynasty ("malkut bet Dawid"; comp. Maimonides, Commentary to Sanh. xi.: "The Messiah, the son of David, will die, and his son and grandson will follow him"; on the other hand, Baḥya ben Joseph in his commentary to Gen. xi. 11 says: "The Messiah will not die"); also "the Aaronitic priesthood and Levitic service."

The New Jerusalem.
The apocalyptic writers and many rabbis who took a less sober view of the Messianic future expected a new Jerusalem built of sapphire, gold, and precious stones, with gates, walls, and towers of wondrous size and splendor (Tobit xiii. 15, xiv. 4; Rev. xxi. 9-21; Sibyllines, iii. 657 et seq., v. 250 et seq., 420 et seq.; B. B. 75a; Pes. 50a; Pesiḥ. xx. 143a; Pesiḥ. R. 32; Midr. Teh. lxxxvii.; in accordance with Isa. liv. 11 et seq., lx. 10; Hag. ii. 7; Zech. ii. 8). The "new" or "upper Jerusalem" (; Ta'an 5a; Ḥag. 12b; Test. Patr., Dan. 5; Rev. xxi. 2, 10; Gal. iv. 26; Heb. xii. 22) seen in visions by Adam, Abraham, and Moses (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, iv. 2-6) will in the days of the Messiah appear in all its splendor (II Esd. vii. 26, x. 50 et seq.; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxxii. 4); it will be reared upon the top of all the mountains of the earth piled one upon the other (Pesiḥ. xxi. 144b, after Isa. ii. 2).This expectation of course includes a "heavenly temple," "miḳdash shel ma'alah" (Enoch, xc. 29 et seq.; comp. Ḥag. l.c.; Pes. 54, after Jer. xvii. 12). The more sober view is that the Messiah will replace the polluted temple with a pure and holy one (Enoch, liii. 6, xc. 28, xci. 13; Sibyllines, iii. 77b; Psalms of Solomon xvii. 30; comp. Lev. R. ix.: "Coming from the North, the Messiah will erect the temple in the South"). The sacred vessels of the Tabernacle of Moses' time, hidden ever since, are expected to reappear (II Macc. ii. 4-8; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, vi. 7-10; Tosef., Soṭah, xiii. 1; apocryphical Masseket Kelim; Yoma 52b; Tan., Wayeḥi, ed. Buber, 3; comp. Josephus, "Ant." xviii. 4, § 1). There will be no sin any more, for "the Lord will shake the land of Israel andcleanse it from all impurity" (Pirḳe R. El. xxxiv. 21, after Job xxxviii. 13). The Messianic time will be without merit ["zekut"] and without guilt ["ḥobah"] (Shab. 151b). Yet "only the select ones will be allowed to go up to the new Jerusalem" (B. B. 75b).

A. New Law.
Whereas the Babylonian schools took it for granted that the Mosaic law, and particularly the sacrificial and priestly laws, will be fully observed in the Messianic time (Yoma 5b et al.), the view that a new Law of God will be proclaimed by the Messiah is occasionally expressed (Eccl. R. ii. 1; Lev. R. xiii., according to Jer. xxxi. 32)—"the thirty commandments" which comprise the Law of humanity (Gen. R. xcviii.). "Ye will receive a new Law from the Elect One of the righteous" (Targ. to Isa. xii. 3). The Holy One will expound the new Law to be given by the Messiah (Yalḳ. ii. 296, to Isa. xxvi.); according to Pes. xii. 107a, He will only infuse new ideas ("ḥiddush debarim"); or the Messiah will take upon himself the kingdom of the Law and make many zealous followers thereof (Targ. to Isa. ix. 5 et seq., and Iiii. 11-12). "There will be a new covenant which shall not be broken" (Sifra, Beḥuḳḳotai, ii., after Jer. xxxi. 32). The dietary and purity laws will no longer be in force (Lev. R. xxii.; Midr. Teh. cxlvii., ed. Buber, note; R. Joseph said: "All ceremonial laws will be abrogated in the future" [Nid. 61b]; this, however, refers to the time of the Resurrection).Resurrection formed part of the Messianic hope (Isa. xxiv. 19; Dan. xii. 2). Martyrs for the Law were specially expected to share in the future glory of Israel (II Macc. vii. 6, 9, 23; Book of Jubilees, xxiii. 30), the term for having a share in the future life being "to inherit the land" (Ḳid. i. 10). The Resurrection was therefore believed to take place solely in the Holy Land (Pesiḥ. R. 1; the "land of the living" in Ps. cxvi. 9 means "the land where the dead live again"). Jerusalem alone is the city whose dead will blossom forth as the grass, for those buried elsewhere will be compelled to creep through holes in the ground to the Holy Land (Ket. 3b; Pesiḥ. R. l.c.). From this point of view the Resurrection is accorded only to Israel (Gen. R. xiii.). The great trumpet blown to gather the tribes of Israel (Isa. xxvii. 13) will also rouse the dead (Ber. 15b; Targ. Yer. to Ex. xx. 15; II Esd. iv. 23 et seq.; I Cor. xv. 52; I Thess. iv. 16).The Last Judgment precedes the Resurrection. Judged by the Messiah, the nations with their guardian angels and stars shall be cast into Gehenna. According to Rabbi Eleazar of Modi'im, in answer to the protests of the princes of the seventy-two nations, God will say, "Let each nation go through the fire together with its guardian deity," when Israel alone will be saved (Cant. R. ii. 1). This gave rise to the idea adopted by Christianity, that the Messiah would pass through Hades (Test. Patr., Benjamin, 9; Yalḳ., Isa. 359; see Eppstein, "Bereshit Rabbati," 1888, p. 31). The end of the judgment of the heathen is the establishment of the kingdom of God (Mek., Beshallaḥ, 'Amaleḳ). The Messiah will cast Satan into Gehenna, and death and sorrow flee forever (Pesiḥ. R. 36; see also Antichrist; Armilus; Belial).In later times the belief in a universal Resurrection became general. "All men as they are born and die are to rise again," says Eliezer ben Ḳappar (Abotiv.). The Resurrection will occur at the close of the Messianic era (Enoch, xcviii. 10). Death will befall the Messiah after his four hundred years' reign, and all mankind and the world will lapse into primeval silence for seven days, after which the renewed earth will give forth its dead and God will judge the world and assign the evil-doers to the pit of hell and the righteous to paradise, which is on the opposite side (II Esd. vii. 26-36). All evildoers meet with everlasting punishment. It was a matter of dispute between the Shammaite R. Eliezer and the Hillelite R. Joshua whether the righteous among the heathen had a share in the future world or not (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 2), the dispute hinging on the verse "the wicked shall return to Sheol, and all the Gentiles that forget God" (Ps. ix. 18 [A. V. 17], Hebr.). The doctrine "All Israelites have a share in the world to come" (Sanh. xi. 1) is based upon Isa. Ix. 21: "Thy people, all of them righteous, shall inherit the land" (Hebr.). At first resurrection was regarded as a miraculous boon granted only to the righteous (Test. Patr., Simeon, 6; Luke xiv. 14), but afterward it was considered to be universal in application and connected with the Last Judgment (Slavonic Enoch, lxvi. 5; comp. second blessing of the "Shemoneh 'Esreh"). Whether the process of the formation of the body at the Resurrection is the same as at birth is a matter of dispute between the Hillelites and Shammaites (Gen. R. xiv.; Lev. R. xiv.). For the state of the soul during the death of the body see Immortality and Soul.

Regeneration of the World.
Owing to the gradual evolution of eschatological conceptions, the Rabbis used the terms, "'olam ha-ba" (the world to come), "le-'atid la-bo" (in the coming time), and "yemot ha-Mashiaḥ" (the Messianic days) promiscuously or often without clear distinction (see Geiger, "Lesestücke aus der Mischnah," p. 41; idem, "Jüd. Zeit." iii. 159, iv. 124). Thus, for instance, the question is discussed whether there will be death for the Gentiles "in the coming time" or not (Gen. R. xxvi.). R. Eleazar of Modi'im, of the second century (Mek., Beshallaḥ, Wayassa', ed. Weiss, p. 59, note) distinguishes between the Messianic time("malkut bet Dawid"), the "'olam ha-ba" (the future world), which is that of the souls, and the time of the Resurrection, which he calls "'olam ḥadash" (the new world, or world of regeneration). This term, used also in the "Ḳaddish" prayer "Le-Ḥadata 'Alma" (The Renewal of the World), is found in Matt. xix. 28 under the Greek name παλινγένεσις: "In the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory" and judge the world in common with the twelve Apostles (for the last words see the twelve judges for the twelve tribes of Israel in Testament of Abraham, A. 13, and compare the seventy elders around the seat of God in heaven in Lev. R. xi.)Concerning this regeneration of the world Pirḳe R. El. i. says, with reference to Isa. xxxiv. 4, li. 6, lxv. 17; Hosea vi. 2: "Heaven and earth, as well as Israel, shall be renewed; the former shall be folded together like a book or a garment and then unfolded,and Israel, after having tasted death, shall rise again on the third day." "All the beauty of the world which vanished owing to Adam's sin, will be restored in the time of the Messiah, the descendant of Perez [Gen. R. xii.]—the fertility of the earth, the wondrous size of man [Sifra, Beḥuḳḳotai, 1-2], the splendor of sun and moon" (Isa. xxx. 26; Targ. to II Sam. xxiii. 4; comp. Apoc. Mosis, 36). Ten things shall be renewed (according to Ex. R. xv.; comp. Tan., Wayiggash, ed. Buber, 9): The sun and moon shall regain their splendor, the former endowed with healing powers (Mal. iii. 20 [A. V. iv. 2]); the fountains of Jerusalem shall flow, and the trees grow (Ezek. xlvii. 12); desolate cities like Sodom shall rise from their ruins (Ezek. xvi. 55); Jerusalem, rebuilt of precious stones, shall shine like the sun (Isa. liv. 11 et seq.); peace shall reign among the beasts (Isa. xi. 7); and between them and Israel (Hosea ii. 20 [A. V. 18]); weeping and death shall cease (Isa. 1xv. 19, xxv. 8-10); joy only shall reign (Isa. xxxv. 10); the "yeẓer ha-ra'" (evil desire) shall be slain by God (Suk. 52a). This regeneration of the world is to be brought about by a world-conflagration ("mabbul shel esh" = "a floor of fire" = ἐκπύρωσις: Sibyllines, iii. 542, 689; iv. 174; ii. 296; Hippolytus, "Refutatio Omnium Hæresium," ix. 30). This view, borrowed from the Stoics, is based upon Isa. xxxiv. 4 (comp. Bousset, "Der Antichrist," p. 159). In this world-conflagration Belial himself will be consumed (Sibyllines, iii. 73; compare the burning up of the primeval serpent Gohithar in Bundahis, xxx. 31). Thus the fire of Gehenna which consumes the wicked angels and the stars (Enoch, xc. 24 et seq., et al.) was turned into a cosmic force bringing about the world's renewal.

The Last Judgment.
The Messianic kingdom, being at best of mere earthly splendor, could not form the end, and so the Great Judgment was placed at its close and following the Resurrection. Those that would not accept the belief in bodily resurrection probably dwelt with greater emphasis on the judgment of the souls after death (see Abraham, Testament of; Philo; Sadducees; Wisdom, Book of). Jewish eschatology combined the Resurrection with the Last Judgment: "God summons the soul from heaven and couples it again on earth with the body to bring man to judgment" (Sanh. 91b, after Ps. l. 4). In the tenth week, that is, the seventh millennium, in the seventh part, that is, after the Messianic reign, there will be the great eternal judgment, to be followed by a new heaven with the celestial powers in sevenfold splendor (Enoch, xci. 15; comp. lxxxiv. 4, xciv. 9, xcviii. 10, civ. 5). On "the day of the Great Judgment" angels and men alike will be judged, and the books opened in which the deeds of men are recorded (lxxxi. 4, lxxxix. 70 et seq., xc. 20, ciii. 3 et seq., civ. 1, cviii. 3) for life or for death; books in which all sins are written down, and the treasures of righteousness for the righteous, will be opened on that day (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxiv. 1). "All the secret thoughts of men will then be brought to light." "Not long-suffering and mercy, but rigid justice, will prevail in this Last Judgment"; Gehenna and Paradise will appear opposite each other for the one or the other to enter (II Esd. vii. 33 et seq.).This end will come "through no one but God alone" (ib. vi. 6). "No longer will time be granted for repentance, or for prayer and intercession by saints and prophets, but the Only One will give decision according to His One Law, whether for life or for everlasting destruction" (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, lxxxv. 9-12). The righteous ones will be recorded in the Book of Life (Book of Jubilees, xxx. 22, xxxvi. 10; Abot ii. 1; "Shepherd of Hermas," i. 32; Luke x. 20; Rev. iii. 5, xiii. 8, xx. 15). The righteous deeds and the sins will be weighed against each other in the scales of justice (Pesiḥ. R. 20; Ḳid. 40b). According to the Testament of Abraham (A. xiii.), there are two angels, one on either side: one writes down the merits, the other the demerits, while Doḳiel, the archangel, weighs the two kinds against each other in a balance; and another, Pyroel ("angel of fire"), tries the works of men by fire, whether they are consumed or not; then the just souls are carried among the saved ones; those found unjust, among those who will meet their punishment. Those whose merits and demerits are equal remain in a middle state, and the intercession of meritorious men such as Abraham saves them and brings them into paradise (Testament of Abraham, A. xiv.). According to the sterner doctrine of the Shammaites, these souls must undergo a process of purgation by fire; "they enter Gehenna, swing themselves up again, and are healed." This view, based upon Zech. xiii. 9, seems to be something like the Christian purgatory. According to the Hillelites, "He who is plenteous in mercy inclines the scale of justice toward mercy"—a view which shows (against Gunkel, "Der Prophet Ezra," 1900, p. 15) that Judaism believed in divine mercy independently of the Pauline faith (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 3). As recorder of the deeds of men in the heavenly books, "Enoch, the scribe of righteousness," is mentioned in Testament of Abraham, xi.; Lev. R. xiv. has Elijah and the Messiah as heavenly recorders, a survival of the national Jewish eschatology.

Gehenna.
There is no Scriptural basis for the belief in retribution for the soul after death; this was supplied by the Babylonians and Persians, and received a Jewish coloring from the word "Gehinnom" (the valley of Hinnom), made detestable by the fires of the Moloch sacrifices of Manasseh (II Kings xxiii. 10). According to 'Er. 19a, the smoke from subterranean fires came up through the earth in this place; "there are cast the spirits of sinners and blasphemers and of those who work wickedness and pervert the words of the Prophets" (Enoch, cviii. 6). Gehinnom has a double purpose, annihilation (Enoch, xciv. 1 et seq.) and eternal pain (II Esd. vii. 36 et seq.). Gehinnom has seven names: "Sheol," "Abbadon," "Pit of Corruption," "Horrible Pit," "Mire of Clay," "Shadow of Death," and "Nether Parts of the Earth" (Jonah ii. 3; Ps. lxxxviii. 12 [A.V. 11], xvi. 10, xl. 3 [A.V. 2], cvii. 14; Ezek. xxvi. 20). It is also called "Tophet" (Isa. xxx. 33). It has seven departments, one beneath the other (Soṭah 10b). There are seven kinds of pains (II Esd. vii. 81 et seq.). According to rabbinical tradition, thieves are condemned to fill an unfillable tank; the impure sink into a quagmire; thosethat sinned with the tongue are suspended thereby; some are suspended by the feet, hair, or eyelids; others eat hot coals and sand; others are devoured by worms, or placed alternately in snow and fire. On Sabbath they are respited (see Dumah). These conceptions, ascribed chiefly to Joshua ben Levi, have their parallel in the apocalyptic literature appropriated by the Christian Church (see Gehenna). The punishment of the wicked endures twelve months, according to R. Akiba; the generation of the Flood will in time be released (Gen. R. xxviii.), but the punishment of those who have led others into heresy or dealt treacherously against the Law will never cease (Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 5).

Gan 'Eden.
The Garden of Eden is called the "Garden of Righteousness" (Enoch, xxxii. 3), being no longer an earthly paradise (ib. lx. 8, lxi. 12, lxx. 3). It is above the earth, and its inhabitants are "clothed with garments of light and eternal life, and eat of the tree of life" (ib. lviii. 3) in the company of the Lord and His anointed. In Slavonic Enoch its place is in the third heaven; its four streams pour out honey and milk, oil and wine (compare Sibyllines, ii. 318). It is prepared for the "righteous who suffer innocently, who do works of benevolence and walk without blame before God." It has been created since the beginning of the world, and will appear suddenly at the Judgment Day in all its glory (II Esd. vi.; comp. Pes. 54a). The righteous dwell in those heights where they enjoy the sight of the heavenly "ḥayyot" that carry God's throne (Syriac Apoc. Baruch, li. 11). As the wicked have a sevenfold pain the righteous have a sevenfold joy (II Esd. vii. 88 et seq.). There are seven divisions for the righteous, which shine like the sun (Judges v. 31; comp. Matt. xiii. 43), the moon (Ps. lxxxix. 37), the firmament (Dan. xii. 3), lightnings, torches (Nahum ii. 5 [A. V. 4]), and lilies (Ps. xlv. 1, Hebr.). Each of these divisions is placed differently before the face of God. Each of the righteous will have a mansion, and God will walk with them and lead them in a dance (Yer. Meg. ii. 73b). See Eden, Garden of.

The Banquet.
According to Ascensio Isaiæ, viii. 26, ix. 18, xi. 40, the righteous on the arrival of the Messiah receive in the seventh heaven garments of light as well as crowns and thrones. No small part in the future bliss is played by the eating of the heavenly bread or manna (Sibyllines, Proœmium, 87; Ḥag. 12b; Tan., Beshallaḥ, ed. Buber, p. 21; comp. "the mysterious food," II Esd. ix. 19), the ambrosial milk and honey (Sibyllines, ii. 318, iii. 746), and, according to R. Joshua b. Levi, "the wine prepared from the beginning of the world" (Ber. 34b; comp. Matt. xxvi. 29). The very name for the highest bliss of the future is "the banquet" (Abot iii. 16), which is the same as "sitting at the table of the Messiah" (Rev. xix. 9; Luke xiii. 28-29, xxii. 30, et al.). It is called in rabbinical literature "se'uddat ha-liwyatan" (the banquet of the leviathan), that is to say, in accordance with Job xl. 30 (A. V. xli. 6) the "ha-barim, or pious ones, shall hold their meal over it" (see Leviathan). It seems that the Persian ox, "hadhayos," whose marrow imparts immortality to the eater (Bundahis, xxx. 25), gave rise to the idea of the behemoth and leviathan meal which is dwelt on in Enoch, lx. 7 et seq.; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxix. 4; II Esd. vi. 52; Targ. Yer. to Num. xi. 26, Ps. civ. 26; B. B. 74b; Tan., Beshallaḥ, at end.But while this eudemonistic view is the popular one, based upon Isa. lxv. 13 and Ps. xxiii. 5 (Num. R. xxi.), there is also the higher and more spiritual view taught by Rab: "In the world to come there is neither eating, drinking, nor procreation, neither barter nor envy, neither hatred nor strife; but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the splendor of the Shekinah; for it is said: 'And they saw God and did eat and drink'; that is, their seeing God was meat and drink to them" (Ber. 17a). More characteristic still is the view of Rab's Palestinian contemporary R. Johanan: All the bliss for the future promised by the Prophets refers only to the Messianic time, whereas in regard to that which is in store for the righteous in the world to come it is said: "No eye hath seen it beside thee, O God" (Isa. lxiv. 3 [A. V. 4]; Ber. 34b; comp., however, Ex. R. xlv., at end, according to which God showed to Moses all the treasures in store for the doers of benevolent works). The New Testament sentence, "Many shall be last [there] that are first [here], and first [there] that are last [here]" (Matt. xix. 30, Greek), finds its explanation in the saying of a son of R. Joshua b. Levi: "A contrary order of things I have seen in the world beyond: the high in station are low there, the lowly are placed on high" (Ber. 50a).Only in the esoteric Essene circles whence the apocalyptic literature emanated were attempted all the elaborate descriptions of paradise that found their way into the Midrash Konen, the Ma'aseh Gan 'Eden, and similar midrashim of the geonic time given in Jellinek's "B. H." ii. 28, 52 et seq.; iii. 131, 191 et seq.; but these descriptions can be traced through early Christian back to Jewish sources (see "J. Q. R." vii. 595). Mystics like Naḥmanides in his "Sha'ar ha-Gemul" adopted these views; Maimonides and his school rejected them. The whole eschatological system of retribution through paradise and hell never assumed in Judaism the character of a dogmatic belief, and Talmudic Judaism boldly transferred the scene of the heavenly judgment from the hereafter to the annual Day of Judgment at the beginning of the year (R. H. 16b; see New-Year). For Samaritan eschatology see Samaritans.The account above deals only with the early stages of the Jewish eschatological views, roughly speaking, down to the end of the Talmudic period. For later development and present-day views see Immortality; Judgment, Day of; Messiah; Resurrection.Bibliography: Schürer, Gesch. 3d ed., ii. 496-556, where an extensive literature is given; Bousset, Die Religion des Judenthums im Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, pp. 199-273, 473-483, Berlin, 1903; Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity, London, 1899; E. Böcklen, Die Verwandtschaft der Jüdisch-Christlichen mit der Parsischen Eschatologie, Göttingen, 1902; Hastings, Dict. Bible; Cheyne and Black, Encyc. Bibl.; Hamburger, R. B. T. s.v. Auferstehung, Wiederbelebung der Todten, Messianische Zeit, Paradies Zukunftsmahl; Weber, System der Altsynagogalen Palestinischen Theologie, pp. 322-386, Leipsic, 1880 (to be consulted with caution); Drummond, Jewish Messiah, London, 1877; P. Volz, Jüdische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, Leipsic, 1903.K.

Credit: Jewish Encyclopedia

Psalm 88 (Misericordias domini): God as Self-Profaner

2005-10-01T11:33:00.000+01:00

(Douay-Rheims Bible)

Once have I sworn by my holiness: I will not lie unto David: 37 His seed shall endure for ever. 38 And his throne as the sun before me: and as the moon perfect for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven. 39 But thou hast rejected and despised: thou hast been angry with thy anointed. 40 Thou hast overthrown the covenant of thy servant: thou hast profaned his sanctuary on the earth.

41 Thou hast broken down all his hedges: thou hast made his strength fear. 42 All that pass by the way have robbed him: he is become a reproach to his neighbours. 43 Thou hast set up the right hand of them that oppress him: thou hast made all his enemies to rejoice. 44 Thou hast turned away the help of his sword; and hast not assisted him in battle. 45 Thou hast made his purification to cease: and thou hast cast his throne down to the ground.

46 Thou hast shortened the days of his time: thou hast covered him with confusion. 47 How long, O Lord, turnest thou away unto the end? shall thy anger burn like fire? 48 Remember what my substance is for hast thou made all the children of men in vain? 49 Who is the man that shall live, and not see death: that shall deliver his soul from the hand of hell? 50 Lord, where are thy ancient mercies, according to what thou didst swear to David in thy truth?

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Theodicy in the Testament of Job

2005-09-29T11:26:00.000+01:00

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12 And I said : "Upon what dost thou set thy hope?" And I said: "Upon the living God". 13. And he said to me : "Who deprived thee of all thou didst possess? And who inflicted thee with these plagues 9" And I said: "God". 14 And he said: "If thou still placest thy hope upon God, how can He do wrong in judgment, having brought upon thee these plagues and misfortunes, and having taken from thee all thy possessions? 15 And since He has taken these, it is clear that He has given thee nothing. No king will disgrace his soldier who has served him well as body-guard?" 16 [And I answered saying] : "Who understands the depths of the Lord and of His wisdom to be able to accuse God of injustice"? 17 [And Baldad said] : "Answer me, o Job, to this. Again I say to thee : ‘If thou art in a state of calm reason, teach me if thou hast wisdom: 18 Why do we see the sun rise in the East and set in the West? And again when rising in the morning we find him rise in the East? Tell me thy- thought about this?’’ 19 Then said I: "Why shall I betray (babble forth) the mighty mysteries of God? And should my mouth stumble in revealing things belonging to the Master? Never! 20 Who are we that we should pry into matters concerning the upper world while we are only of flesh, nay, earth and ashes! 21 In order that you know that my heart is sound, hear what I ask you: 22 Through the stomach cometh food, and water you drink through the mouth, and then it flows through the same throat, and when the two go down to become excrement, they again part; who effects this separation". 23 And Baldad said: "I do not know". And I rejoined and said to him : "If thou dost not understand even the exits of the body, how canst thou understand the celestial circuits?"

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A Hiero-Virus of Parochialism

2005-09-25T14:17:00.000+01:00

A renowned Russian cleric writes: "The divine worship lost its role of a binding framework of social, particularly city life, becoming just another decoration piece."

Considering the geography, the 'decoration piece' remark rings true (Russian Byzantine worship remains a showcase of splendour). Yet I happen to live in a 21-century Ireland where divine service is far from splendid in its decorative or craftsmanship aspect. Quite the contrary: it is largely gaudy and bleak, the music is uninspiring, vestments so-so, architecture and ornaments: dull, tasteless or both. Despite that, I would be daring enough to call Dublin parish life vibrant. People attend churches in large numbers, and there are no young lacking. Our public opinion is largely missing the point when stereotyping parish life as steeply dying.

The parish is everlasting: from the sweet monotony of its song repertoire to the undying votive lights before the statue of St Therese of Lisieux; from the friendly cough of a priest clearing the throat before the Mass to a mischievous cell phone reminding us during the divine service that we are still alive and kicking; from the undying hand of fresh paint every Summer to rejuvenated faces of the parishioners just back from Fatima. I often wonder what keeps all this from simply vanishing, as the obstinate vox populi would have it. The priests and the most zealous (and rhetorically endowed) of the parishioners would remind us about no more no less than Mystical Body of Christ.

Mystical...

mysticism [Gr.,=the practice of those who are initiated into the mysteries], the practice of putting oneself into, and remaining in, direct relation with God, the Absolute, or any unifying principle of life. Mysticism is inseparably linked with religion. Because of the nature of mysticism, firsthand objective studies of it are virtually impossible, and students must confine themselves to the accounts of mystics, autobiographical and biographical, or, as the mystics themselves say, they must experience for themselves. The terms mystic and mysticism are used very broadly in English, being extended to mean magic, occultism, or the esoteric.

I rush to the nearest Society of Saint Pius X chapel, in hope of catching yet another glimpse of that mysticism, away from the social merde of my very un-mystical existence.

The chapel greets me with a friendly clatter of shoe soles against the wooden floor of an old ex-Anglican chapel, which probably knew the days of Oliver Cromwell. Kids are playing hide-and-seek (another sign of a vibrant parish) amid the age-old creaky pews. The mass soon starts with the French (, Belgian or Swiss?) pater (both his Latin and English sound like a muffled celebration of his Francophony). Liturgically speaking, today is the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, which means the Gospel reading is from Matthew: the parable of the wedding feast. The opening in my 1962 Saint Andrew Missal (a Christmas gift by an American friend) for today unequivocally states:

The mystical marriage of Christ and his Church – the new alliance forged in the Blood of the Bridegroom – the fruitful union whence the Christian is born to a life of grace which finds fulfilment at the heavenly banquet.

The sermon time comes and the Savoyard or Swiss (or Belgian?) pater climbs the stairs to the solemn-looking awe-inspiring pulpit of dark wood. He begins by telling us to recite 1 Ave Maria (‘for the diocesan bishops’, he says; not bad for a 'schismatic' mass, I thought). In the sermon proper he goes on to say how obstinate we can be in our rejecting the wedding dress whenever one is offered to us. It would suffice to step into confession box ‘there’, he says in his muffled Savoyard/Swiss English and points at the confession box nearby. The hierarchy. The church militant and persecuted. (There I almost begin to wonder if there are Diocletian’s troops awaiting outside with torches to start burning the building with us in it. Thank heavens, there is nothing but friendly sunshine glittering through the stained glass and the noise of the car engines from a lively street intersection.) All and whatnot is at our disposal ‘to lead a good life’. (There is no mention of ‘Christian’ throughout the sermon, but sure ‘good’ would suffice here: since at this stage I feel like I am not good enough to be used even as a dishwasher for the parish coffee dock… So, ‘good’ it shall be.)

I don't feel like waiting for the sermon to end: I simply run out of the chapel. And it strikes me then, what goes on in our chapels is that a hibernating virus lives in them. A virus of parochialism and pietism. It is this intricate hiero-social parasitic bug that holds our parishes together. Mysticism hardly plays any part here and it is obvious to all of us, the participants of this, east and west alike.

Berdyev writes:

"The Sin of the traditional Christian morals tied to the world that lost Christian faith (or never had it, dare I say - A.M.) lies not in the extremes of sobriety. This sin is in the opportunistic adabtability to the bourgeois world. Christian morals in the name of obedience to the yoke of the world justify the world's being as it is, submerged in evil. These morals is impregnated by a fervour of petty undertakings and modest ranks, in fear of deeds big, heroic, soaring. The absence of wings is elevated into the rank of religious heroic virtue. What is sanctioned is petty moral professionalism. Let each one sit quietly and patiently get on with our little jobs. It is not nice to exult ourselves above the evil and deformity of the world. It is rather necessary to share in the universal ugliness, belittlement and acquiescence. Herein lies the eternal source of inertia and conservatism rooted in some peculiar form of democratic religiosity." (Berdyev, N, Smysl tvorchestva, 11)

After pondering the above over my brunch, I decided to try the Fraternity of Saint Peter, housed in the sumptuous neo-classical chapel of St. Audoen's (pronounced as in 'audience'), located in the heart of Dublin city. The chapel was full and it took me some time to find a seat. The sermon was in full swing. The pater (this time Irish, with a quaint north Dublin accent) was preaching on how in our despair we must ‘fall asleep in God’ (his chin leaning on the marble of the pulpit) because St. Theresa of Lisieux did or said so. (By the way, the exact passage runs as follows: "O Jesus, Your little bird is happy to be weak and little. What would become of it if it were big? Never would it have the boldness to appear in Your presence, to fall asleep in front of You." Saint Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul). So I immediately considered bringing my pillow with me next time I am at St. Audoen's.

Outside I saw Dermot, an old-time traditionalist friend having a smoke. We talked for a while and arranged to get together when another friend of ours is back from Greece (attending a workshop in Greek psalmody). 'I won't be in at the Greek-Catholic chapel this evening,' he naively added. (Little he knew, I simply was not in a mood for chapel-trotting anymore this Sunday.) A keen parochialist, Dermot dedicates his spare time and money to printing holy pictures. He firmly believes that it is a bunch of his holy pictures that keeps Dublin parish alive, and I sort of agree.

***

A propos the Greek Catholics. In the parish newsletter this Sunday the Greek Catholic priest announced the following news:

Matters Financial - Urgent
The cooker in Father Archimandrite's kitchen must be replaced this week, and the new one will cost nearly 600 euro. We ask your generous support to raise this amount.

Just below that you will find this interesting note:

Saint Euphrosynus the Cook

Saint Euphrosynus was a monk of the Holy Mountain [ie Mount Athos], without much talent for any particular kind of work. Finally the abbot assigned him to be a junior cook in the monastery kitchen. Remarkably delicious dishes began to appear frequently in the refectory. The chief cook could not explain this, it was found that these were dishes prepared by Euphrosynus, but that he was strictly following the recipes that the chief cook had approved. Finally one night the abbot had a vision of Euphrosynus in a beautiful garden with the angels, who gave him fruits and vegetables to use in cooking for the community. The next day, the abbot himself came into the kitchen and found Euphrosynus hard at work cooking something - with a branch of wonderful apples. The abbot started to speak, and Euphrosynus signalled him to be silent. When Euphrosynus died, the abbot made all this known to the brothers of the monastery, and since then Saint Euphrosynus is the patron saint of Christian cooks.

This made my warped imagination think in more Rabelaisian terms, so I imagined the following excerpt from the chapter in Gargantua, titled: Panurge's Excuse, and the Explanation of the Monastic Cabala in the matter of Salt Beef, to be on the newsletter as well:

"You like vegetable soup, but I prefer mine with bay leaf, with perhaps the addition of a slice of ploughman salted til the ninth hour." "I understand you," replied Friar John. "You drew that metaphor from the stockpot of the cloister. You call an ox that ploughman who is ploughing, or has ploughed. To salt for nine hours means to cook to a turn. By a certain cabalistic institution of the ancients, unwritten but passed from hand to hand, our good spiritual fathers, having gotten up for matins, would in my time go through certain important preliminaries before entering the Church. They spat in the spitteries, vomited in the vomitoria, dreamed in the dreameries, pissed in the pisseries. And all so that they might bring nothing unclean to the Divine service. Having done all this, they moved devotedly in to the Holy Chapel - for that in their jargon was the name they gave to the convent kitchen - and they devotedly saw to it that from that moment on the beef was on the fire, for the breakfast of our holy friars, brethren in Our Lord. Often they lit the fire under the pot themselves. And since the matins lasted nine hours, they had to get up earlier, and consequently as the hours increased so did their appetite and thirst - much more so than if the matins had contained only one or three hours [lessons]. The earlier they arose, thus spake the Cabala, the earlier the beef was on the fire; the longer it was on, the better it stewed, the better it stewed the tenderer it became, the less it wore down the teeth, the more it delighted the palate, the less it weighed on the stomach, and the better it nourished the good monks. And this was the sole purpose and prime aim of the founders of the monastery, who took into consideration the fact that one does not eat to live but rather one lives to eat, there being no other reason to live on this earth." (Rabelais, F.: The Histories Of Gargantua And Pantagruel 3,15)

***

I do not want to turn back, lest I see and shudder
at how fast the dark line lengthens,
at how fast the extinguished candles multiply.

(Konstantinus Kafavis)

Religious communism?

2005-09-23T04:46:00.000+01:00

Nicolai Berdyaev's contribution to Esprit's interpretation of communism

Catherine Baird

The thawing of the Cold War has encouraged new studies on the interchange of ideas between Russians and stern Europeans in the period following the Bolshevik takeover. Increased access to archives and new information from emigres who no longer fear reprisals against relatives or friends remaining within the former Soviet Union has allowed more detailed examinations of the contributions made by the Russian diaspora. This openness has also made the west more amenable to the suggestion that Russians have made a lasting contribution to the evolution of "western" ideas.

A French revolutionary movement called personalism, which originated in the 1930s, provides an instance for demonstrating the impact of Russian ideas on Europe. Not only did a substantial number of Russian emigres participate in this movement,(1) but the ideological goals of personalism also converged with a Russian philosophical tradition. Prior to the Bolshevik success in Russia, many intellectuals who participated in the Russian "Religio-Philosophic Renaissance"(2) advocated a spiritual or Christian socialism as an alternative to Marxism; committed to the principle of sobornost(3) they held as their central tenets the sanctity of the person within organic communities and increased personal responsibility. The regeneration of sobornost as a philosophical and religious precept -- it was first introduced by the Slavophiles early in the nineteenth century -- was inspired by Vladimir Soloviev (1853-1900) and entered the political forum with the publication of Vekhi (Landmarks/Milestones) in 1909.(4) Despite some success in religious matters as demonstrated in the great Orthodox Christian Church Sobor of 1917-18, Bolshevik repression of all things spiritual firmly squelched any continued growth of sobornost' in the new Soviet Russia. The major proponents of this tradition(5) left during the chaos of the civil war, or were victims of the Bolshevik's attack against the "Front of Ideas" in the summer of 1922 when some 160 intellectuals, professors, and artists were summarily exiled from Russia. One of the most prominent exiles -- and perhaps the most sympathetic to communism -- was the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948).

Upon his exile, Berdyaev, lived for two years in Berlin writing what some feel to be his most important work, Novyie srednie veka (A New Middle Ages).(6) In 1924 he moved to France to escape the vagaries of the German Mark. Having established his new home at Clamart, in the suburbs of Paris, Berdyaev began to participate in some of the "leftist" and Christian French intellectual circles: of the most prominent were the Decades de Pontigny and the Thomist, Christian humanist group led by Jacques Maritain and his wife Raissa. The Maritains' connection to Berdyaev was both one of culture -- Raissa Maritain was of Russian descent -- and philosophy as Berdyaev shared their aspirations for a new Christian and personal society. Starting in 1926, Berdyaev and Maritain attempted to integrate their respective salons at Clamart and Meudon in hopes of fostering a greater respect between the various Christian denominations, and with the intent of combining their energies towards the creation of a new Christian and personal philosophy.

One of the offshoots of this endeavour was the French personalist movement. The "at-homes" at Meudon and Clamart introduced a young philosopher from Grenoble, Emmanuel Mounier (1905-50), to the spiritual and social ideas of some of the foremost intellectuals of the new Catholic and Orthodox Left. In so doing, these meetings contributed to Mounier's development of his personalist ideology. While the influence of Jacques Maritain on Mounier has been clearly documented,(7), Berdyaev's contribution has received less attention.(8) Despite the Clamart salon, the discussion of Berdyaev's books -- especially A New Middle Ages -- at personalist study groups, and the participation of Berdyaev in the Mounier's personalist review Esprit (October 1932 - August 1941, restarted after World War Two in December 1944), historians have not examined the particular confluence of Berdyaev's ideas and personalist theory.

Due to his experiences as a Marxist (1896-1900) under Lunacharsky in Kiev and his later confrontations with the Bolsheviks, Berdyaev gradually developed a unique and devastating theory of communism. This essay posits that Esprit drew upon Berdyaev's theory to delimit their own position towards communism between 1932-39. In describing this theory, and thus the origins of Esprit's stance on communism, it finds support for the assertion that French personalism did, indeed, offer a "third way" distinct from the ideologies of Marxism or fascism, and a revolutionary plan opposed to either communist or capitalist economic theory. While the issues of Russian emigre impact in the larger sphere or the possible long-term legacies of French personalism are beyond the scope of this paper, a clear exposition of Berdyaev's contribution to Esprit's interpretation of communism will help to clarify the often debated position of personalism in interwar France.

The personalist movement in France was largely centred around two groups, l'Ordre Nouveau (f. 1931) and Esprit (f. 1932), which published reviews under the same names. It was both a philosophical and political movement which intended to overthrow the current order in France and correct perceived problems in the modern world through a reappraisal of the human being. The personalists linked the modern Angst to rational humanism's mistake of conceiving the human being as solely a natural, material entity. They insisted that each person was both spirit and matter, and advocated the development of one's spiritual side as the only means to regain true value in society and control over one's own destiny. They therefore shunned all materialist or idealist philosophies which, for the personalists, inevitably led to the sacrifice of human beings to either a technical material process or an idea -- to a "thing."

Politically the personalists espoused a policy of engagement: the active application of philosophical principles to human situations. They insisted that their members not only assist in the creation of a personalist philosophy, but also that they live their lives in accordance with these new principles. The first goal of a personalist, therefore, was to develop his/her spiritual side and aid others in a similar transformation. This policy of co-operation stemmed from their belief that a person's full spiritual development could only occur in communion with others. Hence, they advocated the development of organic, communal societies to encourage the creation of true persons, and to replace urban isolation.(9)

Although the personalists opposed individualism in its definition as: ... a system of morals, feelings, ideas and institutions in which individuals can be organized by their mutual isolation and defense .. Man in the abstract, unattached to any natural community, the sovereign lord of a liberty unlimited and undirected; turning towards others with a primary mistrust, calculation, and self-vindication; institutions restricted to the assurance that these egoists should not encroach upon one another, or to their betterment as a purely profit making association ...(10)

And although they advocated a return to some form of communal society, they were not communists. For the personalists, communism was an end product of materialism: as materialist individualism had subjugated human beings to a thing -- "profit" -- so too did materialist Marxism subject people to "class"; where individualism had created atomization, alienation, and impotence, the personalists belied that communism would relegate humanity to the "faceless collective." Desiring to present an alternative, a "third way," the personalists refused to be categorized as either "Left" or "Right." Consequently they sought the best means at their disposal to demarcate their political and ideological stance.

This intention was apparent in the first issue of Esprit (October 1932). Emmanuel Mounier explained the "personalist" were revolution by which they hoped to combat the current disorder. Other articles, especially those written by Georges Izard, presented Esprit's critique of individualism, capitalism, and the current form of government in interwar France. However, the task of elaborating Esprit's position with regard to communism was left primarily to Nikolai Berdyaev. His article "Verite et mensonge du Communisme" carefully analyzed the precepts of Marxism in order to demonstrate that Marxism's popularity was due to its accurate presentation of certain human truths that had been ignored by democrats and capitalists and forgotten by Christians. Its menace, however, lay in materialist "lies" which Marx had based his theories upon, and which proffered only despair for humankind. In conclusion, Berdyaev suggested that human beings transcend the false promises of both capitalism and communism in fur of a truly beneficial personalist alternative. Berdyaev's contribution provoked a large response from the French press and even drew the enthusiastic commendation from Andre Gide.(11)

As Emmanuel Mounier chose Berdyaev to make this first expression of Esprit's position on communism, it might be pertinent to ask why his critique was selected by the personalists. An obvious answer is that Berdyaev had been a Marxist (1896-1900), and he saw first-hand the results of the Bolshevik coup and their attempts at implementing communism in Russia. Having been evicted from Russia for his protests against the new regime, it would seem that he was an authoritative source on the negative aspects of communism. Yet this answer does not address the unique aspects of Berdyaev's view of communism which differentiates him from the more typical "White Russian" opponent to Bolshevism and, indeed, from many of his religio-philosophical Russian counterparts.

Berdyaev's view of communism was a culmination of critical thought, begun in 1901 when Berdyaev, during his exile in Vologda for participating in a Marxist group under Lunacharsky, turned from materialist Marxism to idealism.(12) As idealism gave way to a new commitment to Orthodox Christian ideas and an increasing loyalty to the traditions of Russian philosophy especially Slavophile thought and the concept of sobornost -- Berdyaev began an ontological assessment of the historical development of socialist thought. Although Berdyaev was extremely sympathetic to socialist aspirations, his goal was to place socialism philosophically on a more rigorous basis.

At the time of Esprit's inauguration, Berdyaev had just completed his most comprehensive and precise appraisal of Marxism, Khristianstvo i klassovaia bor'ba (Christianity and Class War).(13) He drew upon the critique of Marx presented in this book and upon his conception of history as presented in Smyisl istorii (The Meaning of History)(14) in his article "Verite et mensonge du Communisme." These two crucial studies reveal the depths of Berdyaev's analysis of communism, its philosophical origins in Marxism, and his final conviction in its futility as a vital tenet for the destiny of humankind. As the title of his article for Esprit suggests, Berdyaev did not condemn Marxism outright: he acknowledged its truths while demonstrating its centrally flawed approach in order to assert that if Christianity and its personalist ideas were properly applied, Marxist lies would easily be defeated by Christian truths.

II

In his view of history, Berdyaev saw Christianity as the culmination of two main traditions: a religious tradition which he divided into the Greek and Jewish religions, and a racial tradition composed of the Aryan (Indo-European) and Jewish races.(15) For him, the Greek religion attributed to their many gods not only superhuman strength, but also very human characteristics. They placed significant change beyond the reach of human beings: a god might feel like helping humans; he might just as easily destroy them; people had some recourse through sacrifice and prayer, but the success of these supplications was never guaranteed. Moreover, because the Greeks believed in a cyclical pattern to life, they never saw specific events and changes as part of a concrete progression. The Jews, while not possessing a particularly merciful God, believed that their actions influenced their ascension toward the Messiah:

... the Jewish historical consciousness gave rise to the religious millennium which aspired toward the future in a passionate demand and longing for the fulfilment of the millenary Kingdom of God on earth, and the advent of the Day of Judgement when evil would finally be vanquished by good, and when an end would come to the injustice and sufferings common to the terrestrial destiny of mankind.(16)

In the Jewish tradition, human salvation depended upon solving social injustice.(17)

I believe that socialism is based upon a Jewish religious principle, upon the eschatological myth and the profound dualism of the Jewish consciousness ...This dualism ... gave rise to the religious millennium which aspired toward the future in a passionate demand and longing for the fulfilment of the millenary Kingdom of God on earth, and the advent of the Day of Judgment when evil would finally be vanquished by good, and when an end would come to the injustice and sufferings common to the terrestrial destiny of mankind.(18)

In Berdyaev's racial polarity, the Aryans were obsessively preoccupied by their individual souls and life after death. They never concerned themselves with the collective good.(19) The Jews, on the contrary, possessed a collective destiny: "the alliance of the Jewish spirit with the destiny of the people ... make of the Jews a collective people."(20) Consequently the Jews could not ignore any person's plight if they wished to fulfil their own destiny. Berdyaev asserted that, in the formation of Christianity, these traditions were mingled, and that specific characteristics of each appeared in the European Christian world.

From this conception of history, Berdyaev went on to describe the progression of these influences in European history. Capitalism -- an expression of excessive individuality or Aryan philosophy -- became the reigning economic ideology. In legitimizing individual profit it allowed the exploitation and enslavement of the proletariat and the atomization of society. Urbanization completed the destruction of collective life. The response of the now alienated masses was socialism:

Socialism, I believe, is the outcome of the disintegration of human society and communal life, and of man's isolation produced by the extreme development of individualism. The terror of abandonment and isolation in the face of destiny, and the lack of all communion with other people, incite man to re-establish some form of communal and compulsory life.(21)

Although Berdyaev had serious problems with the compulsory aspect of socialism, he did agree that excessive individualism had been a curse to most of mankind and he fully supported some sort of socialist change in economic and social relations.

However, Berdyaev asserted that a particular variety of socialism -- Marxism -- was not solely a protest against the great wrongs committed in the name of individualism, but also a consequence of the Jewish tradition. As proponents of the collective and, with their faith in human progression, the Jews espoused a "Heaven on earth" -- utopia.

This intense longing [for utopia] symbolizes the religious collectivism of the Jewish people. It could accept neither Christ nor the mystery of His Crucifixion because he came as the bearer of a meek and not a triumphant truth on earth. His whole life and death were a repudiation of the longing for terrestrial beatitude cherished by the Jewish people.(22)

As the individualism of the Aryan tradition tended to excess, so too did the collectivism and utopianism of the Jewish tradition. Flatly contradicting the supposedly "scientific" base of Marx's philosophy, Berdyaev asserted that Marx simply propounded the old Jewish messianic ideal:

... his [Marx's] proletarian theory was not scientific but religious, messianic, mythical; he created the myth of the messiah-proletariat, the unique class free from the original sin of exploitation, the elect people of God, saviours of mankind, endowed with every virtue.(23)

Demonstrating his loyalty to Christian dogma, Berdyaev clearly condemned Marxism for its sin of idolization.

Philosophically, he found Marx's sequence of social change highly illogical. Marx insisted that humans must undergo the abuses of capitalism in order to see that "exploitation is an evil and a sin, even the greatest evil and the worst sin," before they could achieve the communist utopia.

But his [Marx's] moralism is perverted, even demoniacal: he looks on evil as the only highway towards good, an increase of darkness is the only means of getting light; brotherhood, equality, and friendship among men are born out of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, violence and repression bring freedom in their train.(24)

Berdyaev was perplexed as to how the proletariat, encouraged to be "bitter, envious, vindictive, and prone to violence" by Marxism, could suddenly create "a new and better social system ... new and better relations been men."(25) He also disagreed with Marx's irrational assertion that capitalism was the ultimate evil. "In the end what remains of his [Marx's] (and still more his successors') work is a crude libel in which the bourgeois classes [sic] are accused of deliberately criminal intentions."(26)

Marx attacked capitalism because it "turns relations of men into relations of things."(27) Berdyaev recognized this as Marx's best and most authentic truth, but he then applied this condemnation to Marx's own theory. If capitalist materialist economics dehumanized man, then there must be more to life than labour, and man must have a spiritual side which is stifled in the capitalist system. Hence if capitalism is wrong, then beyond the economic and materialist world must exist living men and creative beings whose work and energy are appreciated. Therefore, economics is no more than the struggle of living creatures; it is a part of their creative activity. "There is no substantial economic reality; consequently, all economic categories are only historical categories, and not eternal principles as the classical bourgeois political economy teaches."(28)

Having established this, Marx then contradicted himself: he asserted that all men belong to a class, which is a thing, an object. Marx derided capitalism for objectifying man and then proceeded to do exactly the same thing with his own system. "The very process of dehumanization which Marx denounced in capitalism, takes place in materialistic Communism ... Both may turn man into a technical function."(29) Marx followed the capitalists in placing economics above humanity, he replaced the capitalist idol of profit with his own idol -- class; he reduced "man in his highest manifestations and his deepest spiritual experiences to a subordinate function of the class."(30)

Regarding his own era, Berdyaev unveiled the continued addictive and corrupting power of bourgeois capitalism. In France, the efforts of trade unions had improved the economic situation of the proletariat, who, being appeased by better conditions, began to support reform and not revolution. Socialism lost its fervour as the proletariat aspired to become bourgeois:

Socialism is definitely becoming a party which supports good order; the practical reforming elements are coming uppermost in social democracy, and the revolutionary and messianic pathos is vanishing. Communists are most indignant at this state of affairs, but they are themselves only the bourgeois of tomorrow or the day after.(31)

Not only was the appeal of Marxism declining, said Berdyaev, but the one example of proto-communism, the Soviet Union, had in fact completely adopted capitalist ethics:

Communism has taken the form of State Capitalism and allows no professional and trade associations which do not depend directly on itself. After having absorbed personality, society in turn finds itself absorbed by the state, which is thus enabled to become an oppressor and exploiter, to invent new sorts of slave-labour, to turn working-men once again into bond-men, and to perfect a new system of tyranny.(32)

Thus for Berdyaev, Marx had completely failed in his attempt to destroy capitalism. Rather Marx had developed a system that was completely corrupted by materialist capitalism.

Berdyaev could not accept a Marxism that subjected people to the "faceless collect" as a solution to the slavery of capitalism. For Berdyaev, "class" could not be "good, intelligent, or noble," only each specific person could exhibit these characteristics. Berdyaev again pointed to Marx's only success in Soviet Russia:

But will the success of the proletariat, the abolition of classes, the establishment of this organized rationality be a victory for man? He was borne down in the past by classes and class warfare. Will he survive in the future? No. He will definitively disappear, leaving only a "collective" behind him.(33)

His critique of Marxism was therefore both religious and philosophical.

III

In "Verite et mensonge du Communisme" Berdyaev asserted that the failure of Christianity in the social sphere had left room for a messianic, religious movement like Marxism which replaced true love for God with the idolization of class. The best defence against Marxism was therefore a correct and complete application of Christian principles in economics and society. Philosophically, it was possible to dismantle Marxism on the basis of its poor logic and to condemn it as a perversion corrupted by materialist capitalism. He thus provided a view of communism in his article for Esprit which accepted its social economic, and Christian truths, but denied all aspects of its utopianism, "faceless" collectivism, and materialism.

With his article, Berdyaev clearly differentiated Esprit's personalism from the leftist spectrum of communism; he accomplished this, not by simply deriding all Marxist principles, but rather by demonstrating how the weaknesses of Marxism outweighed its strengths. He also gave Esprit a unique Christian critique of communism which complemented the spiritual bias of the personalist movement. These particular elements of Berdyaev's critique largely explain Emmanuel Mounier's decision to solicit his contribution -- although Berdyaev's notoriety as a philosopher and opponent of Marxism was probably an added incentive.

The importance of his article to the personalists at Esprit was indicated by an editorial introduction -- the only one included in this issue -- which compared Berdyaev to Oswald Spengler and Hermann Keyserling as a crucial interpreter of the times:

Accuser l'occident, ce n'est pas renier les ressources qu'il detient encore. Mais il faut d'abord enfoncer l'accusation avecc violence pour nous sortir de notre suffisance. A Spengler et a Keyserling il est une autre reponse que la vanite de nos fautes. On pourra ne pas suivre M. Berdiaeff dans les voies de salut qu'il nous propose. On ne pourra lui reprocher de n'avoir pas pose le probleme dans son axe.(34)

Esprit further illustrated the validity of Berdyaev's arguments by publishing a critical traveller's view of the conditions in the Soviet Union written by Jean Sylveire.

At a time when most such commentaries were quite positive about the Soviet experiment and the new regime, this article exposed heretofore unrevealed aspects of the costs of implementing communism: passport laws, massive deaths caused by starvation and brutality, the suffering of the Russian people.(35) Such attention devoted to the problems of other nations also demonstrated Esprit's commitment to a world vision, and with this issue came the inauguration of its policy of exposing the plight of the Russian people to the world.

Emmanuel Mounier's decision to choose Berdyaev was probably facilitated by his personal knowledge of the Russian exile's views. Between 1928 and 1932 the greatest influences on the development of Mounier's thought had occurred in the "at-homes" at Meudon (Jacques Maritain's house) and Clamart (Berdyaev's home).(36) At these venues he had listened to and recorded the discussions of some of the foremost intellectuals of the French Catholic Left and the Russian emigre intelligentsia on a myriad of issues. Thus, Mounier had the opportunity to assess quite varied opinions and theories from several substantial and well-known theoreticians. In the end, he chose Berdyaev.

From December 1930 to February 1931, Maritain hosted a series of discussions on economic theory with the Abbe Lallement presenting his views on capitalism and then encouraging discussion. Obviously, the issue of communism was frequently raised at these meetings. What is apparent from the notes which Mounier recorded from these sessions is a frequent naivety regarding communism, especially on the part of Jacques Maritain. Condemning capitalism as a system which gave no concrete value to work and thus inevitably exploited the worker, Maritain firmly placed himself beside Marx -- if only Marx could be separated from atheism.

J'avoue que si le communisme n'etait pas aussi radicalement athee et maintenant ce minimum de propriete individuelle qui est necessaire a l'homme, je ne verrais aucune raison de n'y pas entrer.(37)

Perhaps the group at Meudon understood the delicate nuances of Maritain's view, but when Mounier wished to start a personalist revolution which advocated communalism and yet was definitely not communist, it becomes clear why he hesitated to present such a view to the public.

Maritain did agree with Berdyaev about Marx's greatest truth: that capitalism turns relations of men into relations of things, and that it is essential to regard man in his essence as primary. However, he did not offer any critique, as did Berdyaev, about Marx's failure along the same lines; Marx also subjugated people to a thing, to "class." Rather, Maritain fully applauded Marx's dialectical theory and bemoaned that lack of a similar, concrete program like Marx's in the current era.

Il nous faut aussi un schema (comme Marx): si non nous succomberons devant ceux qui en presenteront un. Nous manquons imagination.(38)

When the Abbe Lallement suggested that Marxism was a very real danger which might potentially grow throughout the world, and that it was more inhmane than capitalism, Maritain responded that the people of Russia were better off now under the "napoleonic" Bolsheviks than they were under the Tsar and that their conditions could not be considered less favourable!(39) In fact he asserted that the Russian spiritual revolution which Berdyaev hoped to encourage was so well on its way that in fifty years the communists might develop a complementary regime to the Christian humanism that he himself proposed.(40)

The content of Mounier's notes from the Meudon discussions show clearly that the Maritains were well aware of the deprivations caused by the massive collectivization drive in the Soviet Union at this time. They even put forth numbers of those dispossessed, increased costs of living and the industrial growth. A speaker, W. Bitt, presented a surprisingly well-documented lecture on conditions in the Soviet Union on 1 February 1931 which described inflation, problems with housing and abandoned children, the destruction of the Kulaks, and the massive growth of "enemies of the people." Despite this the Maritains continued to support many elements of the Bolshevik regime.

As Mounier notes:

Raissa et lui [Jacques Maritain] ne peuvent croire qu'il n'y avait pas chez eux [Bolcheviks] un amour des hommes et de leur oeuvre en vue des hommes. Maritain rappelle l'ascetisme de Lenine qui, lui a dit un temoin oculaire, quand il fut blesse, n'avait pas de chemise de rechange.(41)

And Maritain himself gave a solid defence of Lenin:

Je pense a souci scrupuleux d'orthodoxie chez Lenine qui employait de gros bouquins a definir une distinction pour que la doctrine fut solidement etablie comme une theologie. Cette idee d'un bien du peuple devait les guider et comporter, du moins chez certains une part d'amour.(42)

Although Berdyaev was present at several of these meetings, the notes of Mounier suggest that he was uncharacteristically quiet. However, at the end of a long discourse on capitalism, spiced with Maritain's support of communism, Berdyaev finally quipped: "sur tes chef communists, parle de folie rationaliste, mais aussi d'un amour du peuple."(43) (Mounier's emphasis)

Mounier continued to struggle with defining the correct position vis-a-vis communism as preparations to launch Esprit became more concrete and exact. At the end of November 1930 he talked with his fellow collaborators -- Georges Izard, Marcel Arland, and Andre Deleage -- and Maritain about the most politically appropriate attitude towards the Soviet Union. Maritain again asserted his support: pointing out that the big newspapers in France and England were completely hostile to the U.S.S.R. and thus regarded as its biggest enemies,(44) he suggested that Esprit would be well advised, "Leur donnner maximum de sympathie. Et ne pas intervenir."(45)

Maritain admitted that the economic system established in the U.S.S.R. embraced ideals that a personalist movement could never accept. Again he condemned its atheism. But instead of suggesting concrete actions by which the personalists could assist a spiritual revolution within Russia, Maritain simply suggested that they had "attendre une renaissance des ames."(46) Andre Deleage went further: he insisted that they all should "pray" for the Soviet Union.(47) When Mounier tried to turn the discussion to more tangible alternatives, suggesting that the U.S.S.R. was heading towards damnation and that its example might provide a valuable lesson for their nascent collectivist movement, Deleage responded abruptly: "Damnes, c'est de l'Eglise morte, cela ne m'interesse plus."(48)

In contrast with his French comrades seeming disinterest in transforming their ideas into action, Mounier found in Berdyaev another firm supporter of engagement. Through books like Christianity and Class War, The Meaning of History and The Russian Revolution, Berdyaev had risked censorship and derision in order to express his assessment of communism. He also participated in polemic forums like Vekhi in an attempt to educate and temper the Russian intelligentsia. The coming of the revolution and the Bolshevik coup did not silence him. Between 1917 and 1922 he wrote four books, submitted articles to critical appraisals of the revolution such as Iz glubiny (From the Depths).(49) Through his lecturing, writing, and regular discussion groups at his house he constantly challenged the Bolshevik regime; while he accepted the reality of the revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, he insisted that Marxism must be surpassed by a true spiritual and Christian revolution.(50) The effectiveness of his actions may be judged by the Bolshevik response. After bringing him before the head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, for an inconclusive meeting in 1920, he was permanently exiled from the Russia in 1922 as an "enemy of the people."

Even in exile Berdyaev continued his attempts to explain the messianic elements of Marxism. Holding discussion groups at his home, first in Berlin and then, after 1924, in Paris, he tried to persuade both natives and emigre Russians about the dangers of Marxism and the need for a spiritually humanist revolution. Unfortunately his reception, especially among the Russian emigrants, was less than gratifying. Many of the older Russians felt completely betrayed by the Bolsheviks and desired only a restoration of the Tsar. For them, Berdyaev's complicated assessment of Marxism and the revolution, branded him as no more than a communist.(51) Russian socialists who had lost out to the Bolsheviks, primarily the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, still refused to listen to his spiritual critique of Marxism; they preferred to engage in polemics about how the Bolsheviks had perverted the revolution.(52) They tended to label Berdyaev a religious reactionary.

In the Russian milieu, Berdyaev's one success was among the young. Both in Berlin and Paris he inspired the "Post-Revolutionaries" who were quite taken with his ideas of transforming the Bolshevik success into a spiritual revolution in Russia. The small, elite, "Post-Relutionaries" believed "that in spite of communism, Russia was still pursuing her inner, spiritual elution in accordance with her deepest national, historic, and religious traditions which would finally free her from Marxism."(53) This group interested Mounier, sufficiently so that as Esprit developed he asked them to contribute information about the U.S.S.R. to the review. Signing themselves "the Four," Helene Iswolsky and three other eager young Russians regularly collaborated on articles in Esprit and from her research, Iswolsky was able to compile the information to write two commentaries Women in Russia (1937) and L'homme 1936 en Russe Sovietique (1936).(54) Unfortunately the group soon disbanded, as did similar ones: the harsh realities of emigre life left them with little time and less money to put their ideas into effect.(55)

The lack of a sympathetic Russian audience combined with a belief that non-Russians poorly understood the complexities of the Bolshevik success(56) led Berdyaev to accept Emmanuel Mounier's invitation to write the article on communism for the first issue of Esprit.(57) For Berdyaev, participation in Esprit was a way to continue his battle against materialism and further the cause of a spiritual revolution:

The journal [Esprit] was occupied in elaborating a social program of a spiritual nature. This was the trend among these youths with which I most closely empathized. The young "Esprit" [group] felt I was sympathetic to their personalist philosophy of which I myself was a radical advocate, defending the social project of personalism, so close to socialism, not Marxist, but of a newly abundant type.(58)

Moreover, he found the young French personalists at variance with the older tradition in France which seemed surprisingly abstract and divorced from reality. Having heard that the French intellectuals regarded themselves as the "touchstone" of political movements, he found the reality rather different upon his arrival in France: he rarely saw any political figures at intellectual meetings, and the intellectuals never entered political circles. Thus he felt more sympathy with the new generation of French intellectuals, like Mounier, who were prepared to consider concrete political action, rather than, "just stew in their own juice."(59) In his autobiography, Berdyaev describes Mounier as "a very knowledgable man, and active Catholic, in social orientation -- very leftist."(60) Thus Berdyaev seemed to have found in Esprit a way to carry on his quest, begun in Russia, for a more logical, honest, and personal approach to social issues.

In accordance with the theory of Isaiah Berlin, the Russian intelligentsia's central principle of living, and not just talking about their ideas, was strongly manifest in Berdyaev.

There may be said to exist at least two attitudes toward literature and the arts in general ... For short, I propose to call one French, the other Russian. The French writers of the nineteenth century on the whole believed that they were pureyors ... the artist's private life was no more concern to the public than the private life of a carpenter ... This attitude of mind (which I have deliberately exaggerated) was rejected with the utmost vehemence by almost every major Russian writer of the nineteenth century ... The most characteristic Russian writers belied that writers are, in the first place, men; and that they are directly and continually responsible for all their utterances, whether made in novels or in private letters, in public speeches or in conversation. This view, in turn, affected western conceptions of art and life to a marked degree, and is one of the arresting contributions to thought of the Russian intelligentsia.(61)

The adoption of this principle in the west appears to have affected the approach of some young French intellectuals like Emmanuel Mounier. Hence the participation of Berdyaev in this new, largely unknown review which at its height would garner no more than three thousand subscribers may be further explained by the convergence of his active Russian approach with Mounier's own commitment to engagement. Neither man was content to write abstractly about their ideas, they had to live them and take risks for them. Berdyaev's four arrests under both the Tsar and the Bolsheviks and his forced exiles proved his willingness to engage reality. He served as a living example for Mounier, who insisted that all members of Esprit,

... had to apply its [personalist] principles to everyday life, in their family, in their business affairs and in their profession ... They also had to oppose all manifestations of modern disorder and tyranny: whether caused by the excesses of capitalism or by communist and Nazi influences.(62)

However, perhaps the most important reason for asking Berdyaev to outline Esprit's position towards communism was political. In 1930s France, the radical division of "Right" and "Left" made it very difficult for a young group to situate itself along a third path.(63) In accepting sponsors and contributors, they decided to forego the writers Malraux and Jouhandeau because they were too closely linked to the communists. Henri Massis was also excluded because of his ties to the right-wing review Action Francaise.(64) Mounier openly acknowledged the difficult climate of the times when he wrote Berdyaev to confirm his agreement to submit the article on communism:

... Vous avez compris, entre autres choses, que nous sommes disposes a une tres libre et audacieuse enquete sur le terrain social et politique. C'est pous dire que je vous demande d'ecrire l'etude que vous avez bien voulu nous promettre avec toute la liberte et toute l'ampleur requise. N'attenuez ni ne diminuez rien: il nous faut travailler avec grandeur, et les raisons qui pourraient vous faire ailleurs refuser cette etude seront celles memes pour lesquelles nous vous la prendrons.(65)

Berdyaev, an exile from the Soviet Union due to his opposition of communism and a respected philosopher, carried no such stigmas. Moreover, his well-known commitment to an ontological Christian approach as well as his own advocacy of a "third way" made Berdyaev eminently suitable for Esprit's purposes.

Having declared its opposition to the status quo in France -- to capitalism and liberal bourgeois democracy -- Esprit required a different approach to communism than the simple capitalist denunciation of all things socialist.

On ne saurait opposer au communisme une forme de restauration quelconque ou bien l'exemple de la civilisation capitaliste et bourgeoise des XIXe et XXe siecles. Lorsque le Temps se dresse en face de l'Eternite, on ne peut lui opposer que 1 elle-meme, non une autre forme du temps, deja perimee.(66)

Berdyaev demonstrated the validity of a socialist ethic while condemning the philosophical approach of Marxism; he did not deny the need for a "Christian socialism," but rather insisted on immaculate philosophical usage and impeccable "means." By illustrating how Marxism degraded the person and human spirituality as much as capitalism had, Berdyaev cleared a path for Esprit to propose a social policy which would encourage equality and diminish exploitation while always maintaining the primacy of the spiritual.

Esprit's continued allegiance to Berdyaev's theory was demonstrated in their defence against a possible interdiction by Rome which was launched in 1936. Accused of several sins against the church it sent a manifesto to Rome to clarify their position with regard to Christianity, the personalist revolution, and communism.

Ce que le communisme a de si redoutable, c'est cette combinaison de la rite et du mensonge: il s'agit avant tout de ne pas nier la verite mais de la degager de l'erreur.(67)

By using the exact terminology employed by Berdyaev for the title of his first article in Esprit, Mounier acknowledged the personalist debt to his ideas.

Although it may be debated whether Esprit maintained its commitment to the "third way" and Berdyaev's Christian and philosophical critique of communism after World War Two, its initial orientation was certainly highly affected by the Russian philosopher. During the 1930s, Esprit maintained the position on communism which was presented in Berdyaev's "Verite et mensonge du communisme." If understand how important it was for Esprit to differentiate itself from the "right" and the "left" in proposing its spiritual personalist revolution and how Berdyaev so clearly identified the errors in communism, we cam see why one historian has stated:

Berdyaev's analysis, adopted by Mounier, became a classic statement of Esprit's position on Marxism and lies at the root of its often complex and widely criticised relations with French communism.(68)

The importance of Berdyaev's contribution cannot be diminished. Esprit was often accused by its critics on the "right" of simply propounding another version of communism. That the French Marxists refused to acknowledge Esprit and in fact were sometimes its harshest critics, did not affect this challenge. It is only by looking at the specific philosophical position created by Berdyaev and espoused by the review that we can see the variance of Esprit's position with that of Marxism and truly say that it did advocate a "third way." This, in turn, may help to explain the origins of the present-day call for a new order and a distinct "third way" which has emerged as a force in postcommunist Europe and, indeed, even in postcommunist Russia. Ideological alternatives like those proposed by Berdyaev did exist in Russia prior to the revolution: some proponents were simply defeated by the events of 1917; others were forced to emigrate after the fact and find new, fertile ground in foreign lands where their ideas could be preserved and disseminated for a later era.

Credit: Canadian Journal of History, April 1995

__

Notes:

1Recently, it has been posited that personalism was in fact begun by a Russian emigre -- Alexandre Marc (b. 1904) -- who coined the term personalist, and helped to found what was perhaps the first personalist group l'Ordre Nouveau with his 1931 manifesto that declared: "we are neither individualists nor collectivists, we are personalists!" See Christian Roy, Alexandre Marc and the Personalism of L'Ordre Nouveau, 1920-1940 (Montreal, 1987), MA. Thesis, and Alexandre Mare et la Jeune Europe, 1904-1934: L'Ordre Nouveau et aux origines du Personalism (Montreal, 1992), PhD Dissertation. Other prominent Russian participants in the French personalist movement were the Existentialist philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, Helene Iswolsky, daughter of the Russian ambassador to Paris before World War One, Vladimir Nabokov, Marc Chagal, Father Sergei Bulgakov, Igor Stravinsky, and Georges Florovsky.

2"Renaissance" is the term which the Russians involved in this philosophical and religious movement between the 1890s and 1917 employed. In the west, the like-minded intellectuals of this period combined with the artistic Symbolist movement are usually labelled "Silver Age."

3The philosophical conception of sobornost' was first elaborated by the Slavophiles (1840-61) who drew from the example of the Orthodox Christian Church Sobor or "meeting of equals" a social ideal in which the community became an organic entity of freely united individuals.

4Vekhi (Landmarks), (West. Petersburg, 1909). Vekhi was a compilation of articles written by Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, P. Struve, M. Gershenzon, A. Izgoev, B. Kistiakovsky, and S. Frank. It criticized the Russian intelligentsia's blind commitment to materialism and promoted the primacy of the spiritual in all things. The common goal of Vehki was to enlighten the intelligentsia and urge them to seek legitimate philosophical foundations for their ideology instead of being seduced by "simplistic dogmas" like Marxism.

5The major sobornyi philosophers include Semen Frank, Pavel Florensky, Nikolai Loss Sergei Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vasili Zenkovsky, and Pavel Novgorodtsev. Although the limits of this essay prevent a closer examination of the multiple and perhaps more important contributions of some of these figures, it may be noted that they remained closely linked to Nikolai Berdyaev during the period of exile and, although none were very involved in the French personalist movement, they did help Berdyaev explain the unique elements of Russian philosophy to interested French, German, British, and American intellectuals.

6Nikolai Berdyaev, Novyie srednie veka [A New Middle Ages], (Berlin, 1923). Translated into French in Paris in 1927 and into English in New York in 1933. In Berlin, Berdyaev began the Russian Religious Philosophical Academy, participated in the formation of the Russian Christian Students Movement under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A., lectured, wrote, and finally published several heretofore forbidden manuscripts.

7John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930-1950 (Toronto, 1981).

8Historians of French personalism tend to focus on the French roots of personalism and, although they acknowledge antecedents in German and Russian thought, a full discussion of these trends goes beyond the scope of their studies. See for example, Hellman op. cit., Joseph Amato, Mounier and Maritain: A French Catholic Understanding of The Modern World (Alabama, 1975), Michael Kelly, Pioneer of the Catholic Revival: The Ideal and Influence of Emmanuel Mounier (London, 1979), and Etienne Borne, Mounier (Paris, 1972) for some of the more concrete discussions about Berdyaev's influence.

On the alternative side, biographers of Berdyaev -- Donald Lowrie, Rebellious Prophet. A Life of Nikolai Berdyaev (New York, 1960) -- and Russian philosophical historians -- N. Lossky, History of Russian Philosophy (New York, 1952) -- are more concerned with the Russian developments and influence of Berdyaev. They briefly mention his impact in France while concentrating on the unique developments of his thought within the Russian tradition.

9See John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930-1950.

10Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism (London, 1952), pp. 18-19.

11Nikolai Berdyaev, "Verite et mensonge du Communisme," Esprit, (Oct. 1932). Andre Gide, Journal 4 Jan. 1933. Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle, Les Non-Confomistes de annees 30 (Paris, 1961), pp. 117-120). Mounier wrote to Berdyaev: "Je dois vous redire combien votre article a souleve d'enthousiasme de tous cotes. I1 a ete certainement un des plus remarques de notre premier numero." Emmanuel Mounier, Mounier et sa generation (Paris, 1956), p. 103.

12See Nikolai Berdyaev Subjectivism i individualism v obshchestvennoi filosofii (Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy (St. Petersburg, 1901).

13Nikolai Berdyaev, Khristianstvo i klassovaia bor'ba (Paris, 1931).

14Nikolai Berdyaev, Smyisl istorii, The Meaning of History, trans. George Reavey, (New York, 1962). First published in 1922 in Berlin.

15Ibid., p. 90.

16Ibid.

17Ibid., p. 21.

18Ibid., p. 90.

19Ibid., pp. 82-88.

20Ibid., p. 90.

21Ibid., p. 148.

22Ibid., p. 96.

23Berdyaev, Christianity and Class War, trans. Donald Atwater, (New York, 1933), p. 44.

24Ibid., p. 45.

25Ibid., p. 71.

26Ibid., p. 21. Although the sense is correctly conveyed, this translation is a bit erroneous. A literal translation reads: "Having received the rude pamphlet, peculiar to Marxists, they accuse the bourgeois class of consciously villainous intentions (Poluchalcia grubyi pamflet, osobenno u marksistov, obvinenie burzhuaznykh kalssov v soznatel'no zlodeiskikh namereniiakh)." Berdyaev, Khristianstvo i klassovaia bor'ba, p. 19.

27Ibid., p. 39.

28Ibid., p. 39.

29Nikolai Berdyaev, "Marx versus Man," Russian Philosophy, James Edie, James Scanlan, and Mary Zeldin, eds., Vol III. (Chicago, 1969), p. 163.

30Berdyaev, Christianity and Class War, p. 33.

31Ibid., p. 48. Berdyaev actually stated that "Socialism unavoidably is becoming bourgeois (Sotsializm neotvratimo delaetsia burzhuaznym "in the original Russian text. Berdyaev, Khristianstvo i klassovaia bor'ba, p. 50.

32Ibid., pp. 76, 77.

33Ibid., pp. 42-43. The original Russian text is again more forceful: "... man will disappear, leaving behind only the special collective and not man (chelovek ischeznet okonchatel'no, budet spetsial'nyi kollektiv, a ne chelovek)" Berdyaev, Khristianstvo i klassovaia, pp. 43-44.

34Esprit, October 1932, p. 322.

35Jean Sylveire, "Contre?" Esprit, October 1932, pp. 300-22.

36Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, pp. 23, 28-31, 38-40.

37Emmanuel Mounier, Entretiens II, 20 Dec. 1930, unpublished.

38Ibid.

39Ibid.

40Ibid. This was a surprisingly prophetic statement in light of the changes which have occurred in the former Soviet Union in the last seven years.

41"Entretiens II, Feb. 1931, unpublished.

42Ibid.

43Entretiens II, 20 Jan. 1931, unpublished.

44It should be noted that this remark of Maritain was not accurate. Several large English and French newspapers were quite positive about the Soviet Regime such as The Guardian.

45Mounier et sa generation, 66. John Hellman has shown that Maritain was well-aware of his limitations regarding a concrete critique of communism and that he in fact suggested that Mounier enlist Berdyaev's help in defining Esprit's position towards communism. Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, p. 40.

46Mounier et sa generation, p. 66.

47Alors prions, c'est tout," ibid.

48Ibid.

49Nikolai Berdyaev, "Dukhi Russkoi Revolutsii," Iz glubiny, (Moscow, 1917).

50Nikolai Berdyaev, Samopoznanie: opyt filosofskoi avtobiografii (Paris, 1949), p. 275.

51Helene Iswolsky, Light Before Dusk. A Russian Catholic in France, 1923-1941 (Toronto, 1942), pp. 95, 96.

52Robert Williams, Culture in Exile (Ithaca, 1972), pp. 242-52. It is interesting to note that the philosophical and political elements of Berdyaev's critique of Marxism concurred with many of the attacks of these displaced socialists. In particular, the writings of Leon Trotsky agree with Berdyaev that Bolshevism soon became "State capitalism." However there is no evidence as of yet, that any committed socialist came over to Berdyaev's position. Presumably they had no wish to engage in the introspection of their positions demanded by his critique and found it easy to condemn it simply as religious nonsense.

53Iswolsky, p. 105.

54Ibid., p. 106.

55Williams, p. 248. Two notable exceptions are Alexandre Marc and Helene Iswolsky. Marc went on to found the first Personalist group, l'Ordre Nouveau, in 1931 which worked closely with Mounier's Esprit until a break in 1934 over doctrinal differences. Iswolsky participated in Esprit writing articles about the state of man in the Soviet Union. Her complimentary recollections about the Personalist movement are well-documented in her partial autobiography Light Before Dusk.

56As Stanislas Fumet states in his Histoire de Dieu dans ma vie (Paris, 1987): "Sentant que nous pourrions mal comprendre sa [Berdyaev's] vision mystique des evenements, l'auteur de Verites et erreurs [sic] du communisme sera moins dur pour les communistes russes que dans les annees ou il ecrivit Un nouveau Moyen Age," p. 291.

57Emmanuel Mounier made this invitation on June 27, 1931. Mounier et sa generation, (Paris, 1950), p. 80

58Nikolai Berdyaev, Samopoznanie: opyt filosofskoi avtobiografii, p. 314. (my translation)

59Ibid., p. 313.

60Ibid., p. 314. (my translation)

61Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (New York, 1978), pp. 128-31.

62Iswolsky, p. 112.

63The difficulties which Esprit had in distinguishing itself from either communism or fascism is apparent not only in its reception in the political milieu in 1930s France, but also in the historical interpretation of their movement. John Hellman has tried to link personalism to the growing fascist impulse -- J. Hellman, "Personnalisme et fascisme, Lepersonnalisme d'Emmanuel Mounier (Paris, 1985) -- and Michel Winock has bluntly called personalism "philocommunisme" -- M. Winock, Histoire politique de la revue Esprit, 1931-950 (Paris, 1975).

64Mounier et sa generation, p. 70.

65Ibid., p. 80.

66Ibid., p. 185.

67Ibid., p. 184.

Liturgical Golden Age: Dross Among the Gold

2005-09-19T17:34:00.000+01:00

Robert Taft SJ

The romantic vision of eastern liturgy is based on several presuppositions, the essentials of which are an idealization of "the Golden Age of the Fathers" and the spirit of its liturgy, the suspicion that the west has lost this spirit, and the supposition that the east has (23) preserved it intact. But in fact, the "Golden Age of patristic liturgy" is itself a creation of the same romanticism. When one reads what the fathers have to say about liturgy, one sees that even in those presumably halcyon days that gold was mixed with dross. A few anecdotes from my "Golden Age" file should suffice to dispel this myth.

John Chrysostom in Antioch (before 398), (24) Ambrose in Milan (339-397), (25) Augustine (d. 430) in North Africa, (26) and Caesarius of Arles (503-542) (27) all bemoan the alcoholic vigils of their clergy and flocks. Augustine even had to admonish the newly baptized youngsters not to show up drunk at vespers on Easter evening! (28)

Chrysostom in Constantinople (398-404) accuses his congregation of roaming around during church services; of either ignoring the preacher (30) or pushing and shoving to get nearer to hear him, (31) when not bored or downright exasperated with him;(32) of talking, especially during the scripture lessons ; (33) of leaving before the services are over; (34) and, in general, of causing an uproar and acting as if they were in the forum or barbershop-or worse still, in a tavern or whorehouse (35)-his words, not mine.

The women cause distractions by the way they deck themselves out in finery, makeup, and jewelry. (36) The youth, whom Chrysostom calls "filth rather than youth," spend their time in church laughing, joking, talking, he says. (37) The large crowd at the Easter Vigil is more a mob than a congregation, he tells us. They come to church like they go to the baths or the forum, without devotion or spiritual profit. "It would be better to stay at home," the exasperated Chrysostom concludes. (38)

The way the sexes behave in church just exacerbated the general scandal of church-going in Constantinople, according to Chrysostom. The presider greets those in church with "peace," but the reality he has to face is more, he says, like "all-out warfare" everywhere. "Great is the tumult, great the confusion here in church. Our assemblies differ in nothing from a tavern, so loud is the laughter, so great the disturbance, just as in the baths, in the markets, with everyone shouting and causing an uproar... [In church] we behave more impudently than dogs, and pay as much respect to God as to a whore.... The church ... is no different from the forum... nor probably even from the stage, from the way the women who assemble here adorn themselves more wantonly than the unchaste ones there. Hence we see that many profligates are enticed here by them, and if anyone is trying or intending to corrupt a woman, I suppose no place seems better than the church. (39)

"For indeed," he continues, "if one could see what is said by men and women at each synaxis, you would see that their talk is filthier than excrement." (40) Chrysostom says things were so bad they needed a wall in church to keep the men and women apart! 941) Similarly, Augustine in North Africa complains that in church the men move in and out, chattering and making dates with their lady friends, (42) (as indeed Augustine himself did before his conversion, according to his own Confessions).

So there was no "Golden Age of patristic liturgy" except in our daydreams. Even if there had been, present-day eastern usage certainly has not preserved it--indeed, it has preserved some of the very abuses the fathers of that supposed "Golden Age" railed against with force, such as the decline in frequent communion. Far from being a bastion of immovable tradition, preserving intact the liturgy of apostolic times, the east was the main source of change, responsible for practically every single liturgical innovation from Jesus until the Islamic conquests, which stifled this remarkable creativity.

Credit: Light from the East

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Notes:

23- This is an idealization of which I, too, have been guilty. See, for example, Beyond East and West, 145.

24- Homi!y on the Martyrs, PG 50:663-4 (= CPG 4359); Robert F. Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 199'3; second, rev. ed.), 170.

25 -De Helia et ieiunio 62, CSEL 32.2:448-49 = PL 14:719AB.

26- Confessions VI.2.2, CSEL 33:114-16.

27- Sermo 55, 1-5, CCSL 103:241-44 = SC 243:476-85.

28- Sermo 225, 4, PL 38:1018. See Sermo 252, 4, PL 38:1174; In ep. Joh. tract. 4, 4, PL 35:2007; see Sermo 252, 4, PL 38:1174.

29- In Mt hom. 19, 7-9, PG 57:283-5.

30- In Mt hom. 32133, 6, PG 5 7:3 84-5.

31- Sozomen, Historia ecclesiastica VIII, 5.2, GCS 50:357,1 I15 = PG 67:1528BC; a less circumstantial account of the same in Socrates, Hist. eccles. VI, 5.5, GCS neue Folge 1:317 = PG 67:673B. On the location and posture of the preacher in this period, see Alejandro Olivar, La predicacion cristiana antigua. Biblioteca Herder, Seccio de teologia y filosofia 189 (Barcelona: Herder, 1991), 72636; see Chrysostom, In Ioh hom. 3, 1. PG 59:37.

32- De sacerdotio V, 8, Jean Chrysostome, Sur le sacerdoce (Dialogue etHomilie), ed., Anne-Marie Malingrey. SC272 (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 302-5 = PG 48:677.

33- Origen had made the same complaint over a century earlier. See In Gen hom. 10, 1; In Er hom. IZ 2, GCS 29:93, 263-64. Caesarius of Aries complains of the same abuse repeatedly. See Sermones 55, 1, 4; 72, 1; 73, 1-5; 78, 1; 80 1; CCSL 103:241-44, 303, 306-9, 323, 328-89 = SC 243:476-85; 330:180-81, 190-99,237-44,256-57.

34- This problem was evident also in Antioch. See Chrysostom, De baptismo Christi 4, 1, PG 49:370-71 CPG 4335), and in Egypt, at least according to Ps. Eusebius of Alexandria (5-6th c.), Sermo 16 De die dominica, PG 86:416 (= CPG 5525); see Francois N. Nau, "Notes sur diverses homolies pseudoepigraphiques, sur les oeuvres attributes A Eusuebe d'Alexandrie et sur un nouveau manuscrit de la chaine contra Severianos, " Revue de lorient chritien 13 (1908), 406-434. Caesarius in Arles ran out after them, according to his Vita 1, 27: Passiones vitaque sanctorum aevi Merovingici et antiquorum aliquot, ed. B. Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum III (Hanover: Hahn, 1896),46667.

35- See the Chrysostom citations that follow.

36- In Mt hom. 73174, 3, PG 58:677.

37- In Acts hom. 24, 4, PG 60:190.

38- In Acts hom. 29, 3, PG 60:218; see also In Mt hom. 19, 79, PG 57:283-5.

39- In I Cor Hom. 36, 5-6, PG 61:313-14.

40- In Mt hom. 88189, 4, PG 58:780-8 1, see also 676-77.

41- In Mt hom. 73174, 3, PG 5 8:67 7.

42- Enarr. in ps. 39, 8, CCSL 3 8:430-3 1. 43 III, iii.5, CCSL 27:29.

Omar Khayyam and the Skeptical Tradition Against Islam

2005-09-19T03:11:00.000+01:00

Ibn Warraq

In 1859, the year that saw the first edition of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, there appeared The Ruba’iyat of ‘Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer Poet of Persia, an anonymous translation of the quatrains of an obscure medieval Persian poet, who was better known as a mathematician. Unlike Darwin’s classic which was an immediate success(1), the first edition of Edward Fitzgerald’s inspired paraphrase went almost unnoticed and was remaindered. But it came to the attention of another skeptic, the poet Swinburne, and later the Pre-Raphaelite Rossetti, who between them launched The Ruba’iyat on its career of extraordinary popularity that remains unabated (2nd edn., revised and enlarged, 1868; 3rd edn., revised, 1872, 4th edn., revised, 1879, and with felicitous consequences for the history of English poetry.(2)

The first that the West heard of Omar Khayyam’s poetry, rather than his name, was probably in 1700 when Th. Hyde in his Veterum Persarum....religionis historia (Oxford) gave a Latin translation of one of Khayyam’s quatrains. In 1771, Sir William Jones in his A Grammar of The Persian Language quoted without attribution a complete quatrain (in Persian ruba’i, plural ruba’iyat)(3) and part of another, generally ascribed to Khayyam:

Hear how the crowing cock at early dawn
Loudly laments the rising of the sun
Has he perceived that of your precious life
Another night has passed, and you care not?
*
As spring arrived and winter passed away,
The pages of our life were folded back.(4)

Several Persian quatrains were published in a Persian grammar compiled by F. Dombay in Vienna in 1804.

Khayyam’s quatrains are independent epigrammatic stanzas -- in other words, short, spontaneous, self-contained poems. Each ruba’i stands on its own. Fitzgerald, however, makes them a continuous sequence: the stanzas "here selected are strung into something of an Eclogue."(5) Thus, far from being a close translation, Fitzgerald’s version is a paraphrase of "exceptional poetical merits."(6) One English scholar, E. Heron Allen, compared Fitzgerald’s version with the Persian text and established that 49 quatrains are faithful paraphrases of single ruba’i; 44 are traceable to more than one ruba’i; 2 are inspired by the ruba’i found only in one particular edition of the Persian text; 2 reflect the "whole spirit" of the original; 2 are traceable exclusively to Attar, the Persian mystic poet ( died c. 1220 ); 2 are inspired by Khayyam but influenced by Hafiz, the greatest Persian Iyric poet ( died 1390 ), and 3 Heron Allen was unable to identify.(7)

One scholar admirably sums up the qualities that caught the late Victorian imagination, and that have endeared Fitzgerald’s Omar to so many: "The Fitzgerald stanza, with its unrhymed, poised third line, is an admirable invention to carry the sceptical irony of the work and to accommodate the opposing impulses of enjoyment and regret. Fitzgerald’s poem has a kind of dramatic unity, starting with dawn and the desire to seize the enjoyment of the passing moment, moving through the day until, with the fall of evening, he laments the fading of youth and the approach of death. Several interests of the time, divine justice versus hedonism, science versus religion and the prevailing taste for eastern art and bric-a-brac, were united in the poem...."(8)

Edward Fitzgerald himself sums up the delightful nature of Omar and his philosophy very accurately:

"...Omar’s Epicurean Audacity of thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own time and country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed, and whose faith amounts to little more than his own, when strips of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar’s material, but turning it to a mystical use more convenient to themselves and the people they addressed; a people quite as quick of doubt as of belief; as keen of bodily sense as of intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between heaven and earth, and this world and the next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of heart as well of head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any providence but destiny, and any world but this, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the soul through the senses into acquiescence with things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that this worldly ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of sense above that of the intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested."(9)

Fitzgerald will have no truck with those squeamish or puritanical scholars, like the Frenchman Nicolas, who pretend to see something spiritual in Omar’s verses, and who interpret every appearance of the word "wine" mystically.(10) Fitzgerald approvingly quotes Von Hammer who wrote of Omar as a "freethinker, and a great opponent of Sufism." For Fitzgerald the burden of Omar’s Song, if not "let us eat," is assuredly "Let us drink, for tomorrow we die!" Some may see Omar as a Sufi, but "on the other hand, as there is far more historical certainty of his being a philosopher, of scientific insight and ability far beyond that of the age and country he lived in, of such moderate worldly ambition as becomes a philosopher, and such moderate wants as rarely satisfy a debauchee; other readers may be content to believe with me that while the wine Omar celebrates is simply the juice of the grape, he bragg’d more than he drank of it, in very defiance perhaps of that spiritual wine which left its votaries sunk in hypocrisy or disgust."(11)

Here are some examples of Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of Omar [From the 1st Edn.]:

Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry:
‘Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.’

III

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted: ‘Open then the Door!
You know how little we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.’

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little hour or two is gone.

Ah, Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future Fears --
Tomorrow? Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n Thousand Years.

XXI

Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.

XXII

And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new Bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend, ourselves to make a Couch -- for whom?

XXIII

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend:
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and sans End!

XXIV

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare,
And those that after a TOMORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries:
‘Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!’

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

XVI

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk: one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies:
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

LII

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help -- for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

From the 4th Edn:

XIII

Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

__

Notes:

The first edition of The Origin of Species appeared in November 1859, and the second only two months later in January 1860.
According to T.S. Eliot's biographer Peter Ackroyd, when Eliot read Fitzgerald's Omar, "he wished to become a poet" [Peter Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot, London, 1984, p. 26]. Here is how Eliot himself recounts his epiphanic moment, after a period of no interest in poetry at all: "I can recall clearly the moment when at the age of fourteen or so, I happened to pick up a copy of Fitzgerald's Omar which was lying about, and the almost overwhelming introduction to a new world of feeling which this poem was the occasion of giving me. It was like a sudden conversion; the world appeared anew, painted with bright, delicious and painful colours." In later life Eliot still enjoyed Fitzgerald's Omar but did not hold its "rather smart and shallow view of life." T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry & The Use of Criticism, London, 1975, p. 33, p. 91.
"The ruba'i, plural ruba'iyat, is a two lined stanza…, each line of which is divided into two hemistichs making up four altogether, hence the name ruba'i, an Arabic word meaning 'foursome'… The first, second, and last of the four hemistichs must rhyme. The third need not rhyme with the other three, a point Fitzgerald noticed, so that he made the first, second and fourth lines of his quatrains rhyme:
Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry
'Awake my little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.'"

The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam

Elwell Sutton, Introduction to Ali Dashti's In Search of Omar Khayyam, p. 13.
E. Fitzgerald, Preface to the 1^st Edn., 1859.
V. Minorsky, 'Omar Khaiyam, Encyc. Of Islam, 1^st Edn., 1913-1938, Leiden.
Ibid., p. 998, Vol VI.
A. Ross, Fitzgerald, Edward, in the Penguin Companion to Literature, Vol 1, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 183-184.
E. Fitzgerald, Introduction to the 1^st Edn., 1859.
Rather like those Catholic apologists who would have us believe that the Song of Songs of Solomon is a spiritual poem rather than a gently erotic one, which it obviously is.
E. Fitzgerald, Introduction to 3^rd Edn.

Images of Evagrius (Parisinus Graecus & Armenian Patriarchate)

2005-09-18T19:27:00.000+01:00

1. fol. 49v

2. fol. 238v

3. Evagrius of Pontus and Philo Judaeus
fol. 78r

4. fol. 129r

5. fol. 85v

6. fol. 290r

7. fol. 373r

8. Depicted here is an image of Evagrius from ms. 285 of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The ms. was created in 1430 at Kaffa, the Armenian monastery of St. Anthony the Great. The original picture is color, accentuating the way Evagrius appears less austere than other ascetics depicted in the same work. The ms. contains the text for the Lives of the Egyptian Desert Fathers. The illustration was published in plate 18 of Stone, Nira. The Kaffa Lives of the Desert Fathers: A Study in Armenian Manuscript Illumination. Leuven: Peeters; 1997. (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalis; 566).