I always thought philosophy was just sort of an intellectual waste of time; that is, until I actually started learning about it. Once you know a few basics, it’s completely astonishing how much this stuff actually comes up in the real world. My favorite theme that I’ve been following lately is the on-going conversation between the Platonic “Ideal” and the Aristotelian “Real”. In a nutshell, Plato taught that the only way to truth is through the mind and the soul, because they are capable of imagining perfection, and earthly forms are simply pale shadows of the Ideal archetypal forms. Aristotle took the other route, and decided that examining empirical objects and sense perception is the more authentically real avenue towards the truth.
Understanding this basic debate has opened a lot of doorways for me to better understand Western history. In particular, Christianity seems a lot more important as an attempt at resolving this dichotomy. Rather than trying to settle it in the realm of philosophy though, Christianity tried to settle this debate using the mythological story of Jesus Christ. There were many debates in the early Church upon the nature of Jesus. Was he a man? Was he an angel? Was he Elijah reincarnated? Was he God descended to earth? Many sects arose around different answers to these questions. Ultimately though, the Church decreed by canonical doctrine that Jesus was paradoxically both fully man and fully god at the same time. In other words, he was the bridge between the Platonic Ideal and the Aristotelian Real.
But why did they need a bridge in the first place? This is a little more speculative on my part, but I would guess it has to do with morality and social systems. If you’re a hardcore Platonist, there’s a good chance that you’re going to go down the road of believing this world to be totally artificial, and thus not worthy of your time. Many gnostics took this route, believing the world we know to be an impure evil creation of a spurious demonic god. But many “normal” Christians took this route as well, retiring to the hills or the desert to become ascetic monks, denying and mortifying the flesh, and withdrawing from human society. This might be acceptable if only a few people in your society do it, but what if such practices became routine? You can’t have a coherent society made up of people who withdraw from it. A similar problem arises when you take the Aristotelian path and extrapolate it down the road. Only the body is real, only matter “matters”. This can lead to a society of hedonists, who don’t believe in intellect or the power of morals, ethics or anything else derived from the mind or soul.
Again, I don’t have the historical knowledge to suggest that this was the intention of the original Church fathers, but it makes a certain amount of sense. The idea that Jesus was both fully real and fully ideal seems to be a brilliant mythological yoke to place upon people who might otherwise veer off into the excesses of a pure philosophical system taken to it’s extreme. I’m not going to be so bold as to say that this system “worked” or that it was the right thing to do, but it seems historically certain that it lasted for a really long time. Over a thousand years anyway. It certainly had its glitches though - gnosticism popped up again and again and had to be squashed (Cathars, etc). But the mythical fusion of Platonism & Aristotelianism lasted at least until the Reformation when the whole thing broke open again.
One of Martin Luther’s biggest innovations was the idea of “Sola Fide” which is Latin for “Faith Alone”. The doctrine of Sola Fide said that sinners were saved by God according only to the faith which they dedicated to God. It stood in sharp contrast to the Catholic insistence on the importance of doing good works here on earth, in addition to faith. Of course, this notion had become hopelessly corrupted by certain Catholic practices like the selling of indulgences (forgiveness of sins in exchange for money), and that’s what Luther was railing against. Whether he did it intentionally or not, Luther’s doctrines seemed to have upset the tenuous balance the Church had struck a millenium earlier when it said that Jesus was both fully man and fully god. In other words, Luther’s insistence on faith alone as a path to salvation is essentially Platonism repackaged, because it means that a person can only apprehend truth with their soul/mind. The Catholic insistence on using both the faculties of faith and the practice of good works however ensured a continued balance between the Platonic Ideal and the Aristotelian Real of the here and now.
It might be interesting to try and make a connection between the increasing trend toward Platonism in the Renaissance, the Reformation & the later Enlightenment as a freeing of the mind to reach and progress divorced from the strictures of the Aristotelian Real as constrained by Catholicism. But that’s a topic for a whole other essay, really. Another path I’d like to follow in this investigation is the ascendency in our culture of Evangelicalism, which relies rather heavily on this Platonic idea of Sola Fide, and following Scriptural authority (the authority of the mind) even where it violates common sense and the evidence of the senses of nature. In this light, it only makes sense that books like the Da Vinci Code would reach such popularity. This book raises seemingly stupid questions like “Was Jesus married?” and “Did Jesus fuck?” But these questions may actually represent a swing back away from the extreme Platonic ideal, back towards a vision of the divine which is more balanced, and incorporates earthly elements again. Sort of a new neo-Catholic synthesis of fully god and fully man, except this god “got his freak on”, which may or may not make all the difference in the world, depending on how you look at it philosophically.
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12 Comments
I`m glad you picked up on the classics, it makes you vision much more refined…
It will please academics to boot too! lol
Very interesting post. But I have a question for you.
Doesn’t it seem that Aristotelian philosophy, the philosophy of science, was actually taking over by the time of the Enlightenment? I can see your argument that “faith only†is Platonic but Aristotle is the Father of Science, after all, and the Enlightenment was about science and facts.
I’ve heard arguments that postmodernism is the resurgence of Platonism at the expense of Aristotelianism. But my unqualified opinion is that we’re seeing something more like the Socratic approach of questioning popular assumptions.
In final analysis, I’m still confused but I like this post and I’ll go ponder it some more.
This may seem like a big leap skipping over countless in-between philosophies, but now that you are immersed in Plato and Aristotle, I’d like to introduce you to David Hume and his view of human consciousness, among other things:
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/35/prz246.shtml
Hume is one of my favorites, because his very postulations seem mad upon the surface. However, it’s hard to argue with his logic and reasoning.
My best friend was indoctrinated into a hardcore Fundamental Baptist American lifestyle and he loved I guess Peter? saying “not of this world” heh there was that CCR band Petra - I saw them… with Steve Taylor, it was … very interesting.
>Only the body is real, only matter “mattersâ€. This can lead to a society of >hedonists, who don’t believe in intellect or the power of morals, ethics or >anything else derived from the mind or soul.
This seems to be a consistant theme or policy there — postured as a ‘backlash’ against the “Howard Stern” mentality — with a pretense to ‘conservatism’ by way of nonclamature.
Those dudes have a whole ‘magick’ school too — as I was told by a kid who got a bit sloppy with his ’secrecy doctrine’ (and reminded thereof by my friend) — “timeline progression” being a component thereof. Don’t forget the snake handlers and strichnine drinkers.
Our friends in the Vatican City are alleged to have the best occult collection in the world in their basement.
It’s all one cult/clan/tribe (earth vs. me) expressing itself in typical darwinian alpha male terms I hate to say…
What’s funny is this dude my best friend became as a monk, wandering across the country, wound up hooked up with some real intense group of baptists that indoctrinated him, made him burn all his stuff, shaved his hair, etc.
I guess he escaped on his own and wound up becoming a Catholic.
His brother (great friend of mine) told me he didn’t know why that happened because I guess for a time we were all into those Chick Corea comics and stuff, the Catholic kids supposedly threw rocks at the plate glass window in the xian book store we used to ride our bikes to.
I opined that they probably some catholic church in LA or something (probably NorCali) just took him in and gave him a meal and some clothes.
On the other hand:
>withdrawing from human society. This might be acceptable if only a few >people in your society do it, but what if such practices became routine? You >can’t have a coherent society made up of people who withdraw from it.
This does sound like my whole generation x — a bunch of people who don’t even know their fuckin’ neighbors, but that’s ok, sitting around alone watching cable TV after work, just waiting for the phone to ring..
I’m more pessimistic on this thread, ie I see aids and other conspiracies as directly causing results for a particular economic flow/thread to be unbroken and keep status quo. Who fuckin’ cares if the sheep live in separate berths in a stable or in one flock outside?
Tim, you wrote a great article here.
I do get a vibe of “old aeon” “age of aquarius/horus/whatever” competition, perhaps compartmentalized and categorized as a didactic between catholic (IT/UK) and protestant but there are so many dualities to itemize there it boggles. It’s original spark of creation (big bang/Logos/what have you) echoing like Coleridges’ ch. XIII of Biographia Literaria. Also this “spaciotemporal construct” is broken IMO by “progressive churches” emulating the American ‘reform’ temples of Judaeism, so that you still get a few bucks in the plate, gotta pander to the masses a bit, I guess, if you want to eat every day.
-tc
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Great points Bill. Let me sit on this for a while longer.
It occurs to me that when Luther switched religion into the ideal, Descartes and Newton invented what we call “science” to pick up the thread of sense experience. But their science, to serve the coming centralized industrial system, only accepted sense experience that was available to everyone and could be duplicated in the laboratory. So that left a huge chunk of reality — subjective and non-repeatable sense experience — that no belief system was covering anymore. Maybe that thread was picked up in secret by sinister occultists!
That’s a great point about Descartes. Part of his work after all was a proof using reason to verify god’s existence. I gotta go back and read about that more to pick up that thread and run with it. Seems that you’re right though, that occult “sciences” like alchemy and astrology were very much interested in handling the subjective experiences of people in a systematic way.
Also, Bill, I’m planning on coming back with a piece about postmodernism and the Emergent Church movement, cause something about hitching that wagon to postmodernism seems like a huge mistake. I’ve seen people talk about how MacLaren and others are backing off using postmodernism as a crutch, but can’t remember where. Do you have any leads on that?
Going back to what Ran said… it would also seem that if Newton helped further the Aristotelian side of things, then quantum physics cut loose a lot of those moorings and unleashed a really heavy dose of Platonism again. Quantum physics, after all, deals with realms and questions which are outside the domain of ordinary sensory perception. Not surprising here then that there was such an explosion of New Age thinking in the 70s, 80s, and still today that bases itself “scientifically” in quantum principles.
Sorry for the quote, but it appears to me to be somewhat in line with your thought train, the ideal over what is material. Also, bringing that up allows me to continue onto a few other things which may be the smallest bit relevant (or of interest).
Feuerbach was an influence on Max Stirner, the man behind what most would label Individualist Anarchism (Robert Anton Wilson is considered one in wikipedia’s entry). Stirner was critical of Christianity (and in general, subservience) a number of decades before Nietzsche was, and with a similar ferocity in his writings. One must wonder what those two would have thought of Christian Anarchism, something I believe to be pretty neat. The concept, somewhat like Luther’s, that nobody should be your intermediary to God.
“Did Jesus fuck?†- your phrasing of this is excellent. But, for real now, if God needs a female to give birth to a son, what makes one think that His Son (er, He) too will not have similar relations with a lady?
Anyhow, if there’s one thing to be learned from Christianity, it’s that no matter how old one gets, deflowering virgins is a Godly act.
Although I can imagine what using postmodernism as a crutch for Emergent Church would be, I’m not sure what you intend “crutch†to mean here.
The only reference I can find is in A Generous Orthodoxy, where McLaren corrects those who simplistically read his use of historical epochs (prehistoric, ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern) as requiring a clean break between them, saying: “However, in my understanding, each epoch embraces, enfolds, integrates, and consolidates the gains of the previous ones and then extends those gains into new territories, like a ring on a tree.â€
Although I’m no expert on the Emergent movement nor do I know a lot about the people involved, I have read some of McLaren’s books and regularly read some Emergent type blogs. My take is that Brian McLaren is in another class. He’s not a hero of mine, but he’s obviously done his homework and he understands the big picture as much as anybody. However, there are way too many people in the church industry who’ve jumped on the Emergent bandwagon ’cause it’s the newest game in town. They seem to think that a laptop with WiFi, an iPod, some body art and candles will Emergence make.
In other words, those who’ve missed the point on Emergent will also, perhaps more so, misunderstand what postmodern is.
I’ll admit that sometimes I don’t even know what people mean by postmodern. I’m not sure what I mean by “crutch” either, but I’ll get back to you. I think I like the terminology of the “narrative theology” movement a bit better than the postmodernist slant of the Emergent. What emergent blogs do you frequent? I’d like to get more involved there. I’ve never read any McLaren books. Isn’t/wasn’t he an English teacher? No wonder he’s into using the term postmodernism. Who are your heros if not him?
I’d also love to see some good examples of people who are just old-fashioned stealing the thunder of emergent church stylings because its popular. I’m sure there are tons!
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