![]() |
Lecture 1Modern European Intellectual History: An Introduction |
By doubting we come to inquiry;
These lectures examine the intellectual history of modern Europe. With this brief statement I have already presented two questions which need to be addressed. First, what is meant by the expression intellectual history? And second, how may we define modern Europe as a legitimate category of study? There are numerous historians who assert that what is truly "modern" consists of that period of time encompassing a few generations, or roughly 75-100 years. In other words, for these historians, what is modern is somehow related only to what is also considered the 20th century. Perhaps this is due to the birth of that cultural and artistic movement known as modernism which first made its appearance in the years surrounding the Great War. Other historians, more traditionally I think, posit modern Europe as that period which followed the greatest social and political upheaval of the 18th century: the French Revolution of 1789-1794 and the Industrial Revolution of Great Britain. Only such a combination of events -- at once political, economic, social, intellectual and cultural -- could have produced such a watershed in the history of man. For this reason, 1789 is often seen as a major turning point in the creation of the modern world. Continuing our story even further, still more historians, most of them trained in the historical profession during the inter-war years, suggest that the first initiative toward the modern age developed sometime between the publication of two of the most provocative books in the history of European thought. The years involved were 1543 and 1687. The books were De Revolutionibus Orbium and Philosophie Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Nicholas Copernicus and Isaac Newton. One, a Polish astronomer who delayed publication of his work because he feared it would cause anxiety among his Catholic fellow men. The other, a friendless Cambridge don who spent as much time and energy devoted to alchemy as he did to explicating the laws of gravity. I am of course referring to the Scientific Revolution, an event few would doubt had extraordinary potential for the future of the European mind. Our own century has witnessed generations of scientists, biologists, economists, historians and philosophers who have been blinded by the intoxicating effects of science. It was fitting for them to "image" science as peculiarly modern and then trace its origins to that great event which pushed the word "revolution" into our vocabulary. Science manifested itself in heady optimism in the inter-war years but it was that great flash of light, actually two flashes of light, in August 1945 that really set their optimism aglow. How modern have we become? I suppose pretty modern since we could now destroy quickly and efficiently. On August 6, 1945, 75,000 men, women and children perished within 15 minutes after an atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
For Burckhardt, medieval man lay drugged, "held awake," under a veil of superstition, prejudice and Christian dogma until that moment when the great works of great men began to appear on the great stage of the great civilization of the West: Leonardo, Petrarch, Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, Gutenberg, Magellan, Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. This is proof of man's emergence into the modern world? Here, in Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris and London, the world begins, a specifically modern world, our world. Now, as part of my own intellectual development I can identify that at different points in time I have subscribed to all of these historical opinions. But, from the vantage point of the present, and after having taught European history for the past ten years, I admit that I have refined my appreciation and interpretation of "modern Europe." When the Parisian Scholastic philosopher Peter Abelard (1079-1142?) wrote: "by doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth," he was echoing that Hellenic spirit of Human Reason -- what we call humanism -- as well as foreshadowing the future life of the skeptical mind. Abelard is the transitional figure. Surprisingly, this French theologian, sensualist and monk lived, wrote and taught during a period of European history which, for the intellectual historian at least, has come to be known as the "12th Century Renaissance." Abelard's education was eclectic. If it is true that he studied under "radical" theologians, it is equally true that he also studied under the very orthodox William of Champaux (1070-1121). But Abelard was an odd man and nobody's fool. Instead of becoming either unorthodox or dogmatic, he worked out his own philosophy. Abelard was a restless, vain and contentious man who got into trouble with the medieval Church not so much for his views -- which by today's standards seem rather innocuous -- but for the way in which he stated his views. And if the way he stated his views caused uneasiness with the Church authorities at Paris, a cathedral city, his romance with Heloise, the niece of the canon Fulbert caused downright scandal.
Abelard had the audacity to declare that the distance between ancient paganism and the Scriptures was not that great. For this reason, he did not condemn the ancients -- as would Dante -- simply because they did not know Christ. Abelard was disgusted with those who hastily accepted any doctrine before seriously considering its merits. His most famous work, SIC ET NON, quoted the Church Fathers -- Origen, Augustine, Jerome and Eusebius -- on various issues and showed they were by no means in agreement when it came to interpreting the Scriptures. Abelard supplied 158 problems in the form of general statements. These statements were intended to be disputed by anyone who cared to enter the debate. The ultimate answer -- truth -- was left to the individual reader to surmise. This technique, of course, shocked Abelard's contemporaries. Scripture, for these men, was truth. There was no need to meddle in what was considered theologically absolute. But Abelard had something else in mind. He wanted men to think for themselves. Reason and Logic were the answers for Abelard -- his faith in the power of Reason was perhaps exaggerated but important nonetheless. And as we shall soon see, Reason has taken different shapes at different times. It is worth repeating that Abelard is the transitional figure. I began with a rather simple statement by Peter Abelard, a man perhaps none of you have ever heard of before. Doubt, inquire and perceive truth. This is an attitude of mind -- it is philosophical yet practical and, I suppose, open to numerous interpretations and challenges. But underlying this seemingly simple statement -- "by doubting we come to inquiry; and through inquiry we perceive truth" -- is an optimistic faith. This faith is secular and religious at one and the same time. Reason and faith, for a man like Abelard, are two roads which lead to the same truth. In Abelard's case, that truth is God.
Or, as one modern historian of the period has put it: Europe after WWI was like a broken watch. One looked at the watch and all was as it ought to be. But, hold the watch to the ear, and one heard nothing. So, what I have established so far are the parameters of this course. We will begin with an examination of the Christian Matrix, a synthesis of ideas provided by thinkers like Abelard, Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas. We will end with the Age of Anxiety, the 20th century, a century pervaded by a sense of meaninglessness, anxiety, anomie and absurdity. For those of you who have kept up with the conversation so far, it should be obvious that I have been discussing ideas and concepts. Ideas -- their origin and genesis -- is the subject of this course. So, we now turn, briefly, to our first question: what is intellectual history? To "trace the history of the human mind," wrote the 18th century gasbag philosopher David Hume, "is the task of the historian." And the French cynic Voltaire added that "it is better to know how men thought in former times than how they acted." Much to the consternation of the purveyors of the new, new social history, a great deal of intellectual history has crept into history. In my own classes in European history, my students are urged to read Homer, Virgil, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Abelard, Dante, Hobbes, Newton, Descartes, Locke, Voltaire, Marx, and Wittgenstein, to name just a few. Heavy reading to say the least -- as most of you will discover on your own. At a rather dull seminar I once attended, a great intellectual historian stood at the lectern and bemoaned the fact that few undergraduates, if any, had the patience or the intelligence to grapple with ideas. Although I heard this remark with disbelief, I hadn't the courage to say anything. But in my mind I heard myself screaming, "then learn how to teach ideas!" In other words, the failure of a professor to teach ideas is not the failure of the students but rather, the failure of the professor. The problem with teaching ideas is that they are often taught out of their historical context, as if these ideas have a life of their own independent of the specific historical context in which they first appeared. Some serious historians have demanded that Plato or Locke or Freud be taught without paying any attention to 5th century Athens, 17th century England or late 19th century Vienna. I disagree. The interaction of ideas and concepts with the social environment from which they emerge and which they influence -- this is the domain of intellectual history. It is the task of the intellectual historian to show how the ideas inherent in science, literature, religion, art, philosophy, political theory or a thousand other things interact with social realities, in other words, with real, living and breathing men. A simple example will suffice.
But, there's more. The intellectual historian, going back to the Nietzsche example, must also know some real history. For instance, our intellectual historian would have to be familiar with:
We could easily include a hundred other things -- the stuff of history -- which would all bear on the intellectual and philosophical development of our man Nietzsche. I like intellectual history. I prefer it to all other branches of the historical discipline. I must stress, however, that I have no intention of urging you to become intellectual historians yourselves. Nor do I think that intellectual history is the best variety of history. I simply prefer it. I believe intellectual history equips me to live a better life. It is almost a truism to admit that to understand the past is to be able to live fully in the present. To be acquainted with the intellectual heritage of western civilization is important -- it prepares one to think constructively. As Samuel Johnson once confided to Boswell:
These lectures focus on one theme as it has become manifest in the history of European civilization. That theme or leitmotiv is the Weltanschauung. I remain convinced that scholars, artists, poets, philosophers and other thinkers of every age, including a few historians, have fashioned a world view for themselves. This world view is what is meant by the German expression Weltanschauung. In place of the word Weltanschauung or world view we may also use the following expressions: "prevailing spirit," "mirror of the age," "climate of opinion," or another German word, borrowed from Hegel, the Zeitgeist or "spirit of the times." These metaphors, although immensely useful for the intellectual historian, have also provoked a sense of constant abuse. The reasoning behind this abuse is this: if there is a "spirit of the times," it is nearly always the creation of a relatively small segment of society. For example, there is little doubt that there was a Scientific Revolution of the 17th century. But for whom? Easy. Men like Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Leibnitz, Locke and Newton. We might also add to the list, the immediate audience which, in the 17th century, was composed of amateur scientists, royal governments, monarchs, priests and societies like the Royal Society of England. However, new ideas or adaptations of older ideas are not constructed in a vacuum. We must understand that these ideas -- whether scientific, moral, religious, economic, artistic or whatever -- spring or are fashioned out of real historical circumstances. In the case of the Scientific Revolution, for instance, we would also have to consider things like: intense religious conflict, papal abuses, economic depression, royal instability, plague and famine, new discoveries and, of course, war. The point is this -- we cannot abstract ideas from the historical epoch in which they appeared. Ideas are not balloons floating in space: one is marked "freedom" another "heliocentricity" and yet another "liberalism" or "fascism." The ideas must be understood as grounded in the historical epoch in which they first or later appear. A world view is the product of an age which thinks -- but this thinking is of a high order. When the inhabitants of ancient Sumer invented the wheel or cuneiform writing around 2500 B.C. -- they had taken an idea and executed it. But, this does not suggest that they also had formulated a world view. We have to move forward nearly two millennia to discover man's thinking raised to a new level. When the Ionian philosophers inhabiting the islands off the coast of the eastern Mediterranean migrated to the west, they brought with them new ideas -- ideas of the mind. They came to Athens, on the Attic peninsula and it was at Athens in the 5th century BC that men discovered Reason. With the Persian Wars at an end and a direct democracy in place, Athens was certainly fertile ground for thought. Protagoras, Parmenides, Democritus and Socrates looked inward to the human mind and there discovered logos, Human Reason. With this discovery, the Athenian philosophers bequeathed to the centuries which followed a series of profound, important and perhaps unanswerable questions:
When the Greeks proposed these questions they at the same time fashioned a world view, that is, a tool with which to understand man and man's place in the cosmos. There is little doubt that subsequent generations of thinkers have elaborated on these same questions. The result of their labors was the world view -- a view which changes over time and reflects or mirrors the ever-changing reality of history itself. The intellectual historian analyzes the world view -- it is necessary to know what forces produce different world views. It is important to know just how the world view changes over time. An examination of the world view will enable us to do two things. The first is historical, the second, personal. The investigation of past world views will show us what forces have been utilized to give the world meaning or purpose. On the other hand, and with some luck, such an investigation will also reveal your own world view. This second, more personal idea, is perhaps even more important than the first. | The History Guide | | copyright © 2016 Steven Kreis |