Regular readers here will be familiar with my core theme that the current crisis of the West can be traced back to the late Medieval breakdown of Christian philosophy, and the rise of voluntaristic and nominalistic types of thought.
Again, really great and stimulating stuff. (new side to Sachs, also - cool)
I really like that Sach's picks Machiavelli, and you go Martin Luther, have a feeling that if I dig into this line far enough, I'll find a musician or a technician, who most perfectly represents the pivot! (Poor Hurdy-Gurdy repairmen!)
Read the Wikki on Nominalism, and I've got a fair range of politics history and philosophy under my belt, though much, from many years ago. Can you suggest a further read or two, which goes into repercussions of nominalism (and how it out-competed time tested forms, to become our new - debased - standard?) which is suitable for the theology ignorant?
Or - if this is primarily your own (very interesting) thesis, have you ever put together a reading list of source inspirations, for others to delve into?
The simultaneity of new economics and technology also feels meantingful - might the new mindset have been enabling of runaway change, or perhaps, itself been enabled by increassing harnessing of mechanism, and change in ways of work, in a way which old philosophical forms were not prepared to defend against? (sort of like the way factories in later years, famously loved broken families, that used to be entire communities, rooted to land)
Oddly, my own skepticism has, for my whole lifetime, bent back toward the actual and ethical, against all abstractions and dogma. Grew up on the left, but never once stopped asking all the least acceptable questions (especially about all of the victims so carefully ignored, and all of the unkindnesses, justified). Why I used to fight so much with my Trotskyist and "scientific socialism" pals!
Reminds me of something funny I noticed as a young atheist - that Catholics give such a priority to study, that the false can argue themselves out of, and the fallen, argue themselves back into faith, with unusually fine levels of reason!
(Not a jibe, I have dear friends in the genuinely faithful and ex-Cathlic camp)
Not to say GenX socialist kids, later became one pivot point which turned against the worst boomer excesses, having witnessed them personally, in excruciating detail (or that they provide a healthy dose of "independent" now).
But only that there is still something seeking genuine humane principle on what I can't help still thinking of as the actual left - even though it hasn't been represented by any party or popularized dogma in decades (and that, not by accident). None of that is meant to say it isn't still rooted in the fundamental error you characterize in so stimulating a way. Only that there are unsatisfied seekers on all sides (despite hyperbolic and hyperventilating hyper-partisan rhetoric).
We all know there has to be a better way. Now if only we can put together a credible "We" again, that really feels like one team,, we'll really have something.
Cheers for your fine and generous heart. I am invariably most persuaded by those who philosophize with PURPOSE. (so frighteningly rare!)
There's actually a lot out there. The one I always recommend is Gilson's "The Unity of Philosophical Experience." It's his 1936 Harvard lectures and very readable. What Gilson avoids telling the reader is how all of this flows from Augustine's Platonic theory of knowledge, as he certainly knows. Only Aquinas, essentially, in the West stepped outside of Plato's framing of the issue. All the others are variations on or attempted solutions to a problem that is insoluble as long as you accept the Platonic point of reference. The philosophers of the Left are essentially secularized developments in that line.
The reason I choose Luther is because Luther marks the point at which all this goes mainstream in Western society (Eric Voegelin calls the Protestant Revolt the point at which "gnosticism" entered into the mainstream institutions of the West). What was one of the first things Luther did? He burned the books--but, as a good nominalist, the books he burned were not nominalist books. Rather, they were the books of the likes of Aquinas--non-nominalist thinkers. Of course, that didn't stop anyone from thinking.
Here's a passage (p. 42) that illustrates how this all worked. Augustine proposed a theory of "divine illumination" to solve the Platonic problem of how we derive unchangeable concepts from changeable reality: God, says Augustine, "illumines" the mind with general concepts on the occasion of sense experience. Notice what that does--it breaks any connection between man and reality. But it sounds wondrously pious as enhancing the power of God. It also calls into question human free will. If you think that made Augustine (a Doctor and Father of the Church) a Calvinist centuries before Calvin, you would not be alone. And in fact this idea of "divine illumination" has featured throughout much of Western history--Kant's "categories of thought" is nothing but a secularized version. Here's Gilson:
"Since it is pious to lessen the efficacy of free will, it is more pious to lessen it a little more, and to make it utterly powerless should be the highest mark of piety. In fact, there will be medieval theologians who come very close to that conclusion, and even reach it a long time before the age of Luther and Calvin."
In other words, Luther and Calvin were ... radically medieval. Go figure, hey?
Thank you sincerely for taking the time and trouble for this, Mark.
I found a PDF of the Gilson work, which looks exciting - top of my tablet now (can't spend every hour of the day on Armageddon studies, after all, can we?)
Also bookmarked and downloaded all of your own articles. I was going to read all four, and respond, but I actually found Augustine and the West so thought provoking, that I don't want to rush my fences, and waste the fun and value of them. I'll work through them all, at a rate where they can do the proper work in my creaky head, and I can savour and contemplate as I go. Delicious, is my real point! (gorging would be oafish)
I do have to ask - did you ever get into Julian Jaynes "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind?" For my own reading, at least, that was especially illuminating on the archaic ontology front (and is one of those big unusual ideas which continues to generate odd new insight, over time).
Or, if you have encountered and refuted (or triangulated against) it - I'd be super curious about that, also. (though I don't mean to distract from any grampa time).
Cheers man - haven't had such salutary and perfectly timed brain food in awhile - a genuine pleasure (and illuminating to so many themes I'm grappling with, in my own crazy unsatisfied heart-seeking atheist humanist street-level way)).
What a great post! This is one of those "scales falling from your eyes" enjoyable moments of learning where theory meets reality. It is the type of examination I particularly enjoy: looking at philosophy and how it has had a real impact on societies over the course of history. I like Sachs' appeal to the Cardinal Virtues and to Aristotle's "Politics" as well, a book the ideas of which I just referenced in a comment 2 or 3 days ago. I also recognize how this fits with what you have stated many times about the enlightenment philosophies, the dissolution of western tradition, and their relationship to the breakdown of modern societies.
Mark, later in this speech, Prof. Sachs extolled the virtues of subsidiarity, with, viz-a-viz ‘net zero’, global governance as being right and necessary and above lesser regional, national, and local authorities. This makes me now suspect him of being a closet globalist, maybe harboring one of these ‘benign dictator’ delusions. And this is apart from him actually giving credence to the climate change fraud. I didn’t know this of him, now see him in a different light, and am disappointed.
Yeah, he's always been that way--and subsidiarity is the exact opposite of globalism, so that shows you that, as I said, he's no philosopher. Nevertheless, the part that excerpted seemed worthwhile. I do that a lot.
Thanks. I wonder if you see any distinction between the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Western Catholic/Protestant one in tracing this late medieval turn as you seem to describe the entire Western philosophical/religious tradition as one.
Philosophy aside, in the bigger picture the history of man appears to be the story of endless warfare, so it seems as if Hobbes may have got it right. Speaking of the great works of philosophy, how many of their contemporaries actually read what they wrote? For that matter, how many of them could even read?
Perhaps a better explanation of cooperation and competition is found not in philosophical writings but in the material conditions of constant warfare? To survive as a group under those conditions cooperation would be essential, both during and between conflicts, as in the Roman adage, if you want peace, prepare for war. This could also explain the rise of technology as being driven by the constant need to develop superior arms.
"philosophy changed starting around 1500 in a rather deep way."
Coincident with Gutenberg's invention of movable type, which introduced the era of mass production of books and a consequent rise in general literacy. That would have no doubt broadened the readership beyond the confines of religious and imperial scholarship into the more general public, causing an effect on philosophy similar to the religious schisms introduced by translation of the Bible from Latin to the vernacular.
Ideas don't arise in a vacuum, there's almost always an underlying material cause.
JUST IN: New York Times now estimates a Trump+1 national popular vote
"For the first time tonight, we consider Trump likely to win the presidency. He has an advantage in each of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. To win, Harris would need to sweep all three. There is still a lot of vote left, but in the voting so far, Trump is narrowly but discernibly ahead."
dang, that was first rate. i’m familiar with the thesis - I came to it via “Ideas Have Consequences,” by Weaver, but this is a great summary by Sachs. i had sort of written him off after the millennium villages nonsense but over the past few years he has really burst out with some great stuff.
Not voting is also a choice. It's saying I don't want to be held responsible for what happens. I'm not American, but if I were I would have sat this one out as well. The reason is fairly simple. Both parties are owned by the Zionists, so a vote for either is a vote in favour of Israel. I wouldn't want that on my conscience, and so I abstain.
Truth is, I do more than just abstain. I send whatever I can afford to this organization.
What I'm saying is that Plato was consumed with Parmenides' Problem of the One and the Many and that the history of Western thought is largely the history of thinkers wrestling with Plato's problem of universals--while accepting Plato's framing of the issue. Etienne Gilson has written books about what happens when you accept your antagonist's framing of issues.
I'm by far not the only person to see this connection. For example, Platonic Nominalism:
Gordon Leff in The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook (p.38) writes:
"Beginning with Scotus, it is not too much to say this his thought--and the main source of opposition to it by Ockham--represents the summation of the deep-seated Platonism--or Neoplatonism--which had from the time of the early fathers, above all, so far as the West was concerned, St. Augustine, taken an almost unshakable hold upon the majority of subsequent Christian thinkers."
Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (p. 55):
"Ockham himself was the very reverse of a Platonist; in point of fact he was the perfect Anti-Plato; **yet like all opposites Plato and Ockham belonged to the same species."**
Again, really great and stimulating stuff. (new side to Sachs, also - cool)
I really like that Sach's picks Machiavelli, and you go Martin Luther, have a feeling that if I dig into this line far enough, I'll find a musician or a technician, who most perfectly represents the pivot! (Poor Hurdy-Gurdy repairmen!)
Read the Wikki on Nominalism, and I've got a fair range of politics history and philosophy under my belt, though much, from many years ago. Can you suggest a further read or two, which goes into repercussions of nominalism (and how it out-competed time tested forms, to become our new - debased - standard?) which is suitable for the theology ignorant?
Or - if this is primarily your own (very interesting) thesis, have you ever put together a reading list of source inspirations, for others to delve into?
The simultaneity of new economics and technology also feels meantingful - might the new mindset have been enabling of runaway change, or perhaps, itself been enabled by increassing harnessing of mechanism, and change in ways of work, in a way which old philosophical forms were not prepared to defend against? (sort of like the way factories in later years, famously loved broken families, that used to be entire communities, rooted to land)
Oddly, my own skepticism has, for my whole lifetime, bent back toward the actual and ethical, against all abstractions and dogma. Grew up on the left, but never once stopped asking all the least acceptable questions (especially about all of the victims so carefully ignored, and all of the unkindnesses, justified). Why I used to fight so much with my Trotskyist and "scientific socialism" pals!
Reminds me of something funny I noticed as a young atheist - that Catholics give such a priority to study, that the false can argue themselves out of, and the fallen, argue themselves back into faith, with unusually fine levels of reason!
(Not a jibe, I have dear friends in the genuinely faithful and ex-Cathlic camp)
Not to say GenX socialist kids, later became one pivot point which turned against the worst boomer excesses, having witnessed them personally, in excruciating detail (or that they provide a healthy dose of "independent" now).
But only that there is still something seeking genuine humane principle on what I can't help still thinking of as the actual left - even though it hasn't been represented by any party or popularized dogma in decades (and that, not by accident). None of that is meant to say it isn't still rooted in the fundamental error you characterize in so stimulating a way. Only that there are unsatisfied seekers on all sides (despite hyperbolic and hyperventilating hyper-partisan rhetoric).
We all know there has to be a better way. Now if only we can put together a credible "We" again, that really feels like one team,, we'll really have something.
Cheers for your fine and generous heart. I am invariably most persuaded by those who philosophize with PURPOSE. (so frighteningly rare!)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There's actually a lot out there. The one I always recommend is Gilson's "The Unity of Philosophical Experience." It's his 1936 Harvard lectures and very readable. What Gilson avoids telling the reader is how all of this flows from Augustine's Platonic theory of knowledge, as he certainly knows. Only Aquinas, essentially, in the West stepped outside of Plato's framing of the issue. All the others are variations on or attempted solutions to a problem that is insoluble as long as you accept the Platonic point of reference. The philosophers of the Left are essentially secularized developments in that line.
The reason I choose Luther is because Luther marks the point at which all this goes mainstream in Western society (Eric Voegelin calls the Protestant Revolt the point at which "gnosticism" entered into the mainstream institutions of the West). What was one of the first things Luther did? He burned the books--but, as a good nominalist, the books he burned were not nominalist books. Rather, they were the books of the likes of Aquinas--non-nominalist thinkers. Of course, that didn't stop anyone from thinking.
Here's a passage (p. 42) that illustrates how this all worked. Augustine proposed a theory of "divine illumination" to solve the Platonic problem of how we derive unchangeable concepts from changeable reality: God, says Augustine, "illumines" the mind with general concepts on the occasion of sense experience. Notice what that does--it breaks any connection between man and reality. But it sounds wondrously pious as enhancing the power of God. It also calls into question human free will. If you think that made Augustine (a Doctor and Father of the Church) a Calvinist centuries before Calvin, you would not be alone. And in fact this idea of "divine illumination" has featured throughout much of Western history--Kant's "categories of thought" is nothing but a secularized version. Here's Gilson:
"Since it is pious to lessen the efficacy of free will, it is more pious to lessen it a little more, and to make it utterly powerless should be the highest mark of piety. In fact, there will be medieval theologians who come very close to that conclusion, and even reach it a long time before the age of Luther and Calvin."
In other words, Luther and Calvin were ... radically medieval. Go figure, hey?
Here's me:
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2011/05/augustine-and-west.html
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2011/07/reason-and-revelation-islamic-case-and.html
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2011/09/chestertons-thomist-view-of-myth.html
https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/theologism-of-bonaventure.html
Thank you sincerely for taking the time and trouble for this, Mark.
I found a PDF of the Gilson work, which looks exciting - top of my tablet now (can't spend every hour of the day on Armageddon studies, after all, can we?)
Also bookmarked and downloaded all of your own articles. I was going to read all four, and respond, but I actually found Augustine and the West so thought provoking, that I don't want to rush my fences, and waste the fun and value of them. I'll work through them all, at a rate where they can do the proper work in my creaky head, and I can savour and contemplate as I go. Delicious, is my real point! (gorging would be oafish)
I do have to ask - did you ever get into Julian Jaynes "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind?" For my own reading, at least, that was especially illuminating on the archaic ontology front (and is one of those big unusual ideas which continues to generate odd new insight, over time).
Or, if you have encountered and refuted (or triangulated against) it - I'd be super curious about that, also. (though I don't mean to distract from any grampa time).
Cheers man - haven't had such salutary and perfectly timed brain food in awhile - a genuine pleasure (and illuminating to so many themes I'm grappling with, in my own crazy unsatisfied heart-seeking atheist humanist street-level way)).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You're right. This stuff deserves careful thoughtful reading.
What a great post! This is one of those "scales falling from your eyes" enjoyable moments of learning where theory meets reality. It is the type of examination I particularly enjoy: looking at philosophy and how it has had a real impact on societies over the course of history. I like Sachs' appeal to the Cardinal Virtues and to Aristotle's "Politics" as well, a book the ideas of which I just referenced in a comment 2 or 3 days ago. I also recognize how this fits with what you have stated many times about the enlightenment philosophies, the dissolution of western tradition, and their relationship to the breakdown of modern societies.
Thanks very, very much, Mark!
Mark, later in this speech, Prof. Sachs extolled the virtues of subsidiarity, with, viz-a-viz ‘net zero’, global governance as being right and necessary and above lesser regional, national, and local authorities. This makes me now suspect him of being a closet globalist, maybe harboring one of these ‘benign dictator’ delusions. And this is apart from him actually giving credence to the climate change fraud. I didn’t know this of him, now see him in a different light, and am disappointed.
Yeah, he's always been that way--and subsidiarity is the exact opposite of globalism, so that shows you that, as I said, he's no philosopher. Nevertheless, the part that excerpted seemed worthwhile. I do that a lot.
Thanks. I wonder if you see any distinction between the Eastern Orthodox tradition and Western Catholic/Protestant one in tracing this late medieval turn as you seem to describe the entire Western philosophical/religious tradition as one.
Here's a list of conflicts in Europe from Neolithic times down to the present, an almost uninterrupted chain of violence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe
Philosophy aside, in the bigger picture the history of man appears to be the story of endless warfare, so it seems as if Hobbes may have got it right. Speaking of the great works of philosophy, how many of their contemporaries actually read what they wrote? For that matter, how many of them could even read?
Perhaps a better explanation of cooperation and competition is found not in philosophical writings but in the material conditions of constant warfare? To survive as a group under those conditions cooperation would be essential, both during and between conflicts, as in the Roman adage, if you want peace, prepare for war. This could also explain the rise of technology as being driven by the constant need to develop superior arms.
"philosophy changed starting around 1500 in a rather deep way."
Coincident with Gutenberg's invention of movable type, which introduced the era of mass production of books and a consequent rise in general literacy. That would have no doubt broadened the readership beyond the confines of religious and imperial scholarship into the more general public, causing an effect on philosophy similar to the religious schisms introduced by translation of the Bible from Latin to the vernacular.
Ideas don't arise in a vacuum, there's almost always an underlying material cause.
Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh
JUST IN: New York Times now estimates a Trump+1 national popular vote
"For the first time tonight, we consider Trump likely to win the presidency. He has an advantage in each of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. To win, Harris would need to sweep all three. There is still a lot of vote left, but in the voting so far, Trump is narrowly but discernibly ahead."
dang, that was first rate. i’m familiar with the thesis - I came to it via “Ideas Have Consequences,” by Weaver, but this is a great summary by Sachs. i had sort of written him off after the millennium villages nonsense but over the past few years he has really burst out with some great stuff.
Not voting is also a choice. It's saying I don't want to be held responsible for what happens. I'm not American, but if I were I would have sat this one out as well. The reason is fairly simple. Both parties are owned by the Zionists, so a vote for either is a vote in favour of Israel. I wouldn't want that on my conscience, and so I abstain.
Truth is, I do more than just abstain. I send whatever I can afford to this organization.
https://islamic-relief.org It's not much, but it's the best I can do in the circumstances.
I can only go by what I see, not by what I hope will be.
It's also possible to support the people of Palestine, who need our help much more than Israel. Here's the link to their USA chapter:
https://irusa.org/usa
What I'm saying is that Plato was consumed with Parmenides' Problem of the One and the Many and that the history of Western thought is largely the history of thinkers wrestling with Plato's problem of universals--while accepting Plato's framing of the issue. Etienne Gilson has written books about what happens when you accept your antagonist's framing of issues.
I'm by far not the only person to see this connection. For example, Platonic Nominalism:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154915
Gordon Leff in The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook (p.38) writes:
"Beginning with Scotus, it is not too much to say this his thought--and the main source of opposition to it by Ockham--represents the summation of the deep-seated Platonism--or Neoplatonism--which had from the time of the early fathers, above all, so far as the West was concerned, St. Augustine, taken an almost unshakable hold upon the majority of subsequent Christian thinkers."
Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (p. 55):
"Ockham himself was the very reverse of a Platonist; in point of fact he was the perfect Anti-Plato; **yet like all opposites Plato and Ockham belonged to the same species."**