Bertrand Russell, in his Wisdom of the West, put forward a simple thesis. Western Civilization is essentially Greek civilization. There is no civilization but the Greek in which a philosophic movement goes hand in hand with a scientific tradition. It is this that gives the Greek enterprise its peculiar scope; it is this dual tradition that has shaped the civilization of the west.In support of his thesis, Russell points to the authoritarian, theocratic natures of earlier civilizations --Egypt and Babylonia. Religion, Russell stated, seems inconsistent with the Greek spirit of free inquiry typified most famously by Socrates and the Platonic tradition that followed. It is because Greek civilization was primarily secular, Russell believed, that the spirit of "free inquiry" took root in the west. This spirit, he believed, was incompatible with both authoritarianism and religion itself.
--Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West
A Renaissance of Western Civilization was associated with the pre-eminence of Lorenzo Di Medici in Florence and specifically his support of a new Plato Academy. Eminent scholars -Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and Demetrios Chalkondyles depicted (above) in Domenico Ghirlandaio's fresco, Zaccaria in the Temple -refocused European attention on the Greek classics and inspired a renewed interest in learning. The plights of Giordano Bruno and Galileo make clear the fact that despite the Greek revival an Eastern religion, Christianity, was, in fact, at odds with the secular nature of inquiry and learning.
But to point that out gets ahead of the story, a story told by Lord Kenneth Clark in his famous Civilization series for the BBC and, most recently, by Thomas Cahill who authored a short but influential book entitled How the Irish Saved Civilization.
Although we associate our Western civilization with "the new learning", it was Scholasticism, kept alive throughout the Dark Ages by clerics, that survived well into the Rennaisance. Russell points out that throughout the 7th through the 9th Centuries, Europe witnessed a Papacy walking the treacherous, narrow line between warring barbarians on the frontiers and Eastern Emperors who had inherited the trappings of the Roman Empire -bureaucracy, a rule of law, various standards of civilization. The barbarians, by contrast, ruled by force. Byzantium was at least civilized and would, in fact, survive the Middle Ages, described by William Manchester as A World Lit Only by Fire.
If civilization is best described as a thin veneer over the otherwise rude necessitudes of sheer survival, it fell to clerics to keep alive the more ephemeral ideals -literacy, the rule of law, the faith itself. That story, of course, began well before the 7th century, well before the fall of Rome itself.
It must surely be one of the great ironies of history that the task of saving civilization may have fallen to the monks of Skellig Michael, a steep rocky crag of an island west of the coast of County Kerry, literally, the cold, dank remote reaches of Ireland.
Never immune from barbarian raids, Ireland's remoteness may have made it the standard bearer of civilization. In one of two surviving documents attributed to Patricius, otherwise known to history as St. Patrick, an interesting tale is told. A young Patricius, having been kidnapped by "wild Irish pirates" at the tender age of 15 years, escaped his captivity in County Mayo. In his "Confession", St. Patrick tells of sailing to Europe with a band of trader/pirates. On the continent, this unlikely band encountered scenes of desolation, abandoned villages, ruined farms, a worrisome lack of food.
And after three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: 'Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being.' In fact, I said to them, confidently: 'Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds.' And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half-dead by the wayside.If ever there was a time for prayer this was it. The faithful will believe that Patricius's prayer worked.
-The "Confessio" of St. Patrick
It is easy to conclude that Patricius and his erstwhile friends had encountered the very twilight of empire, the devastation left in the wake of retreating legions. This is arguably the most concrete picture we have of Europe at that time. It's a picture of European civilization surviving "...by the skin of our teeth", clinging desperately to life like the lichens on the barren rocks of Skellig Michael itself.
This is a notion not easily dismissed and too easily romanticized. After all, we are left the Book of Kells, produced by Celtic monks around AD 800. This work is a testament to the stubborn human impulse to rage at seemingly inexorable forces of chaos, decay, and oblivion. Even atheists must recognize the achievements of quiet, impoverished clerics and scholars over a period of several hundred years. But for their efforts, civilization might simply have faded into a highland mist like so many tales of Avalon.
Is it accurate to give so much credit to Ireland? In his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, Cahill concedes that Greek literature and the Hebrew and Greek Bibles survived independently elsewhere. "Latin literature would almost surely have been lost without the Irish," he concludes. But, he speculates, "...the national literatures of Europe might not have emerged had the Irish not forged the first great vernacular literature of Europe."
By the time of the Renaissance, however, it fell to the secular minds of men like Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo to advance the spirit of inquiry. A broader view is taken by Russell who saw a broad departure from ancient priesthoods originating in Greece and taking shape over centuries of European history. He also saw the persistent threat of anti-democratic authoritarianism which would be associated in his time with fascism and Nazism:
"There is over a large part of the earth's surface something not unlike a reversion to the ancient Egyptian system of divine kingship, controlled by a new priestly caste. Although this tendency has not gone so far in the West as it has in the east, it has, nevertheless, gone to lengths which would have astonished the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both in England and in America. Individual initiative is hemmed in either by the state or by powerful corporations, and there is a great danger lest this should produce, as in ancient Rome, a kind of listlessness and fatalism that is disastrous to vigorous life. I am constantly receiving letters saying: 'I see that the world is in a bad state, but what can one humble person do? Life and property are at the mercy of a few individuals who have the decision as to peace or war. Economic activities on any large scale are determined by those who govern either the state or the large corporations. Even where there is nominally democracy, the part which one citizen can obtain in controlling policy is usually infinitesimal. Is it not perhaps better in such circumstances to forget public affairs and get as much enjoyment by the way as the times permit?' I find such letters very difficult to answer, and I am sure that the state of mind which leads to their being written is very inimical to a healthy social life. As a result of mere size, government becomes increasingly remote from the governed and tends, even in a democracy, to have an independent life of its own. I do not profess to know how to cure this evil completely, but I think it is very important to recognize its existence and to search for ways of diminishing its magnitude."
-Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual, p. 18-19:
Have we come all this way only to lose civilization to a new and corporate dark age?
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There have been some developments on the sleeping Iran issue. The Democrats changed the Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill before passing it. They no longer require Bush to get Congressional approval to attack Iran. This is a profound political failure that undoubtedly will be taken up by Bush. A few commentators have noted that this changed policy followed Nancy Pelosi's capitulation at AIPAC. As Justin Raimondo points out: "As long as domestic political support for an attack spans both parties and includes the key element of 'liberal' Democrats like Pelosi and Chairman Dean, all systems are 'go' for war with Iran".
Raimondo also makes a few good points about the capture of 15 UK sailors, citing Brig. Gen. Hakim Jassim, the Iraqi military commander of the country's territorial waters, who has cast doubt on claims that the Britons were in Iraqi territory: '"We were informed by Iraqi fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control. We don't know why they were there."
We should also keep in mind that any attack upon Iran would not likely take place in winter. This spring or summer seems more likely. Add to this the fact that Blair will be out of office within two months and that a replacement UK Labor leader cannot be expected to support attacks upon Iran. Hence earlier rather than later. A lot earlier.
Which brings me to the what-do-we-make-of-this item:
The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.
I can't believe I'm reading this. Russell's belief that “Greek civilization was primarily secular” is just plain ridiculous: The Greek republic have built giant religious temples with the richness plundered from the republic's enemies. The construction of the temple of Athena, which dominates still Athens's Parthenon, was all paid by heavy war “fees” upon the defeated neighbors.
Just like Pascal, centuries later, Plato's philosophy, which was, with no doubt, a superb nest for secular axioms and philosophical tenets, sprang mainly from the very tolerant paganism of these times. Later on, the Roman Republic, and even during the first centuries of the Roman Empire enjoyed the fruits of paganism as well in creating a system of laws that our modern societies have been strongly inspired, and which toleration for other “races”, ethnicities and colorful cultures within the Empire vast geography have yet to be match by our “modern” multiculturalism.
Sure, today's American Christians who lack the understanding of history often point out and accuse the Roman's Empire intolerance towards early Christians. But this intolerance was just a eye for an eye response to these early Christian's very own intolerant tenets of personal civic and civil secession. Furthermore, contrarily to the present beliefs, persecutions of Christians were very sporadic event.
Moreover, during the early days of the Empire, Christians were well established among the ruling class, among nobilities and in fluent people. But the Empire had to wait more than three centuries to witness the destruction of their “secular” society when one of their leader decided to elevate Christianism as the official religion. And even then, it was a decision that sprang from pure political purposes, not unlike the today' s Bush administration claim of working for his religious constituency.
A millennium and a half later, the earliest examples of pure secular philosophies can not even be found in Rousseau's philosophy, for even his idealistic secular society carries rituals that mimicked religious ones, such as his village's weekly Parties of the People. And Voltaire even built a church devoted to Deism in the backyard of his Swiss retreat.
Michael Burleigh, in his masterful “Earthly Powers”, tells how the French Revolution elevated Freedom (liberty, most exactly) as the national religion. This concept went further during the Terror, during when Robespierre reinvented a so called “secular” calendar, decreed new national days, and organized semi-religious parades, all with the staunchness and a fervor sprang from his Jesuit youth.
Russell confuses non-monotheistic civilizations and secularism. It's a pity and a disservice to the understanding of history and for our hopes of progressing from it.
Dante, your point is well-taken. However, a few temples do not a theocracy make. Russell draws the contrast with the earlier and more ancient civilizations of Egypt and Babylon. A Theocracy, moreover, is one in which political power and the "Priesthood" are one and the same. In such a society, the religious law is "the" law. Even in its early days, it is doubtful that Greece was ruled by priests or Shamans. Even, now in Europe, the influence of Greece is felt. For example, Europe is not ruled from the vatican, though it might have been. The Church, after all, is the only Roman institution to have survived the fall of Rome.
Here is Russell's take on religion;
'You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized Churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.' Elsewhere he wrote: 'My own view of religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others' ('Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?').
Russell died at the age of 97. Approaching the end, he said: 'I do so hate to leave the world.' But he was fearless and, to the end, he fought the good fight:
Communists, Fascists, and Nazis have successfully challenged all that I thought good, and in defeating them much of what their opponents have sought to preserve is being lost. Freedom has come to be thought weakness, and tolerance has been compelled to wear the garb of treachery.
-Bertrand Russell
His words must be remembered today. Clearly, he understood that the greatest danger in waging war is that of becoming one's enemy. If the US has fought terrorism, only to become terrorists, torturers, aggressors, we lose. We lost.
Dante Lee, Voltaire never built a church in Switzerland - he built a church in Ferney-Voltaire, in France, for the villagers of Ferney. On the lintel is this dedication: "Deo erexit VOLTAIRE". This was probably the only church in Europe dedicated directly to God.
I agree with you Len,
They brought forward consensus, reason and logic. Each philosopher scientist that did so, not only knew these were the workings of man, but that these ideas were his responsibility... and the real big difference is that they shared it with everyone for the most part, and that had never happened up to that point in time.
I believe Russell certainly is correct in labeling the Greeks as the first secularists, that is with out a doubt what they were during several of their civilization morphs. And, it is also true there were many periods of time when regions/city states were incumbent to their gods.
The clips I watched ended before Bolton had a chance to reply to his critics. Why was that? I was interested to hear how he would defend himself, and made me think the exercise was rather one sided.
Welcome back, benmerc
All sweeping generalizations are dangerous and "secular" may be a matter of degree. Given the theocratic nature of earlier regimes, and, indeed, even Medieval European states, the Greeks appear increasingly secular.
I am tempted to say that, over its history, Greek society became secular as it became more "democratic".
anonymous, I have no idea why the clips ended thus. I can say this, Bolton discredits himself in other clips repeatedly and in several ways. The most sophomoric attempt is seen on one of the clips I posted. He tries to imply that Benn doesn't understand the US Constitution. On another clip, Bolton tried to imply that his questioner did not believe in "democracy". The interviewer simply replied to the effect that his questions were not premised either against or for "democracy" itself.
Having seen the entire program on BBC, however, I can tell you that Bolton was NOT edited to look bad. In fact, as bad as he appears, you got his best shots on the clips.
Fact is, Bolton is not all that bright. He is merely arrogant.
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