Competent compilers?

“The Last Byzantine Renaissance” is a short introduction to the so-called Palaeologan Renaissance, the unexpected revival of classical and theological scholarship during the last two centuries of the Byzantine Empire, when the “empire” was gradually declining in all other respects. Strictly speaking, the renaissance also covered the breakaway “empire” of Trebizond, ruled by the Comneni. Steven Runciman's book is really a collection of lectures, all of which presuppose a previous working knowledge of Byzantine history and culture. Only the last lecture attempts a synthesis of the material. I don't think this is suitable for beginners. It feels more like a summary for more advanced students, or even scholars, a kind of scholarly “lite lunch”.

Apparently, the Byzantines made a strict distinction between Inner and Outer Learning. Theology based on divine revelation was the Inner Learning, which was sacrosanct and not to be questioned. Philosophy and science belonged to the Outer Learning, “only” preoccupied with the created world. Paradoxically, this made it possible for Byzantine scholars to pursue philosophical and scientific studies with relative freedom, as long as these didn't infringe on the Inner Learning. Somewhat ironically, it also made Aristotle less controversial than Plato, since it was the latter thinker who made encroachments on Inner Learning. The more “secular” Aristotle was safer to study! In the end, of course, the Byzantines did study both.

Unsurprisingly, the Byzantines made their greatest contributions exactly in the field of theology. Runciman is full of admiration for Gregory Palamas and his defense of the Hesychasts. He also recommends “The Life in Christ” by Nicholas Cabasilas. Otherwise, I get the impression that the Byzantine scholars and “scientists” were competent compilers rather than innovators. Thus, while they did publish scientific works on astronomy, these were based on Ptolemy's classical writings complemented by recent Arab and Persian (i.e. Muslim) discoveries. The conservative attitude of the Byzantine intelligentsia explains why it took them several centuries to accept Arabic numerals when doing mathematical calculations. It seems that the sages of the Palaeologan “Renaissance” only made original contributions in two fields outside theology. One was in medicine, but here, they were eventually overtaken by the Jews. The other was the proposed calendar reform of Nicephorus Gregoras, but it was never accepted and, typically, served a Church function (the calculation of Easter).

The biggest contribution of the Late Byzantine learned men to human civilization was their dissemination of Greek, Arab and Persian science and philosophy to the West. Two important figures in this regard were Gemistos Plethon and Bessarion. The former was a covert pagan, while the latter converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal. While the Italian Renaissance had complex socio-economic causes that can be traced all the way back to the “Middle Ages”, the concrete forms taken by the 15th century Renaissance in the Italian city-states were surely influenced by Byzantine intellectuals who came to Italy either as guests or as refugees fleeing the advancing Ottomans. Plato, Aristotle and other classical Greek writers became widely available in the Latin West for the first time, together with Greeks who could exegete them for spell-bound humanistic audiences in Florence, Venice and elsewhere.

In passing, Runciman mentions that the “occult sciences” were popular in the Late Byzantine Empire, but since the Church and the official intellectuals condemned it, he says nothing further about it. This is a pity, since the Hermetic corpus also reached Italy from Byzantine sources…

Overall, I don't think “The Last Byzantine Renaissance” was as helpful as I imagined, but it's not wholly bad either. In the end, I give it three stars, which is the OK rating.

Byzantine Renaissance

A review of "Constantinople and the West" 

The late Deno John Geanakoplos was a Greek-American scholar of Byzantine and Renaissance studies. This book contains articles on the interaction between Byzantines and Latins during the 15th century in particular. About half of the book deals with Church-related issues, most notably the attempts at union between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I concentrated on the other half in which the author discusses the influence of Byzantine intellectuals on the Italian Renaissance. Geanakoplos is “pro-Byzantine” and therefore reaches the conclusion that the influence was considerable and has been downplayed by other historians.

The Byzantine men of learning who visited or settled in Italy during the 15th century weren't just passive transmitters of valuable Greek manuscripts translated and interpreted by clever Italian humanists. They often translated and interpreted the manuscripts themselves, acting as teachers of the Italians. This was true of both the philosophical texts and the scientific ones. The author believes that the Byzantines directly shaped the Renaissance on a number of points. Thus, the turn from rhetoric to metaphysics in Florence can be attributed to the activities of John Argyropoulos. (The author doesn't deny that other factors also played a role, such as the despotism of the Medici, which made rhetoric – associated with a democratic form of government – redundant.) I found it interesting that Argyropoulos seemed to have both an “exoteric” and an “esoteric” teaching, the former based on Aristotle, the latter on Plato.

Another important turnaround initiated by the Byzantine scholars concerned Aristotelian studies. Theodore Gaza and Nicolaus Leonicus Tomaeus preferred the late Hellenistic interpretations of Aristotle to those of Averroës and the Scholastics, who had hitherto been dominant in the Latin West. They also translated the scientific works of John Philoponus, a sixth-century thinker who anticipated the impetus theory of projectile motion with almost a millennium. An often overlooked fact, dealt with only in passing in this book, is that better translations of the Greek Church Fathers and alternative ones of the Bible itself became available during the Renaissance. The author believes that this led to a resurgence of Pauline studies and new departures in the exegesis of Paul's epistles, but says nothing further of this. This looks like an intriguing subject, since Luther would base his reformation thought largely on a new reading of Paul.

Naturally, the book also mentions Bessarion and Pletho, but the main point of the work seems to be to discuss a number of figures who are usually mentioned only in passing, or not at all, in general works on the period. Pletho or Plethon seems to have created considerable mischief by attacking Aristotle in favor of Plato, setting the stage for conflicts between "Platonists" and "Aristotelians". The actual Byzantine position was that the two philosophers could be harmonized! One subject touched upon only in passing is occult knowledge. Astrology was widely accepted in Byzantium, perhaps because of its connection to astronomy, but Geanakoplos says nothing about the Hermetic corpus. 

I find “Constantinople and the West” to be extremely interesting. While I'm not a great admirer of the Byzantine Empire, especially not the Late Empire, it's undisputable that their scholars did play a positive role in diffusing Greek learning to Italy at the right moment. This knowledge seems to have been of a higher quality than the Greek philosophy which reached Western Europe through Muslim channels, but it was also different from the Latin translations of Greek works made by William of Moerbeke during the 13th century (which had inspired the Scholastics). Some of the astronomical knowledge disseminated by the Byzantines must have been Muslim (Arab or Persian). While the Italian Renaissance had internal causes, some of its concrete forms seem to have been molded by the learned men of Constantinople.

When on military expedition in India, don't forget the rhubarb

“Secretum Secretorum”, originally known as “Kitab Sirr Al-Asrar”, is a peculiar work which was apparently widely read in Europe during the Middle Ages. It's purportedly a series of letters from Aristotle to Alexander the Great. Its actual origins are obscure. The earliest manuscripts are apparently Arabic. Later, the work was translated to Latin. The first English edition was published in 1526. This edition is “translated” to modern English to enhance readability.

I never read any scholarly analysis of The Secret of Secrets, but judging from the text, it's probably a Christian work with all overt references to Christianity excised, since it's supposed to have been written long before the birth of Christ. “Secretum” does contain Biblical allusions, and at one point mentions the Book of Maccabees, which was regarded as canon by Christians but not by Rabbinical Jews. Here, the author made a mistake: the Book, or rather Books, of Maccabees deal with events centuries *after* the death of Alexander, making the reference a glaring anachronism.

The book itself sounds rather silly, at least to modern ears, with its moralistic commonplaces, basic medical and gastronomic advice, and phrenology-related speculations. Here is a direct quote: “When you eat, do so by leisure, though you have great appetite to eat. For if you eat greedily, naughty humors do multiply, the stomach is laden, the body is grieved, the heart is hurt, and the meat remains in the stomachs' bottom undigested.” And here is another: “Beware therefore that you drink not wine outrageously, but move and change the nature thereof with rhubarb which causes the liver to live. And wine with rhubarb has many virtues as is found plainly in books of physic. Howbeit rhubarb and wine be both deadly venom if they be outrageously taken. And surely all evils come of wine unmeasurably drunken.”

We can't say we haven't been warned.

The biggest secret

Pseudo-Aristotle must be the most obscure author on Amazon. This is apparently an edition of “Secretum Secretorum” written in 16th century English. If you want a somewhat more readable version “translated” to modern English, I rather recommend Tarl Warwick's Kindle edition from 2016, on sale here under the title “Secretum Secretorum: Kitab Sirr Al-Asrar”. Or you might just go and do something else, because believe me, Pseudo-Aristotle is genuinely boring!

A worthy opponent

I'm giving this book four stars, not because I agree with it, but because it was so hard to understand that I gave up reading it after a few chapters (and I gave it two tries, with the very same chapters)! Being a nut too hard to crack for The Ashtar is, in my opinion, worth four stars by itself. Besides, I do think Lloyd P Gerson is trying to tell us something important…

Philosophically speaking, Aristotle is usually seen as an opponent of Plato. Curiously, however, Platonists in antiquity didn't always see him that way. Thus, the Neo-Platonists (often depicted as muddle-headed mystics with their pies firmly anchored in the skies) included Aristotle in their curriculum and expected students to grasp his writings before moving on to the Platonic corpus proper! The Neo-Platonists believed that Aristotle was, in some non-trivial sense of that term, a “Platonist”. His philosophy could therefore be harmonized with that of Plato. The issue of harmonization is connected to the perennial debate on Plato's “unwritten doctrines”. Modern minds, who always know better, have decided that harmonization, esoteric doctrines and indeed Neo-Platonism is so much hocus pocus, preferring to mine Aristotelian wisdom uncontaminated by any Platonist dross. But what if the ancients were right, after all?

Gerson sets himself two distinct tasks in “Aristotle and Other Platonists”. First, Gerson wants to understand what the Neo-Platonists could possibly have meant with “harmonization”. Second, he wants to argue that they were right, and that Aristotle really was another “Platonist”. Gerson constantly conflates the two tasks, in effect writing an extended apologia for the Neo-Platonist position (as he understands it). This doesn't make the book less intriguing, though. Quite the contrary – if you are an advanced philosophy student (think “metaphysics”) you may find this to your liking!

It should be noted that the Neo-Platonist sages (who, per Gerson, would much rather have preferred the designation Paleo-Platonists or simply Platonists) didn't claim that Aristotle's philosophy was “identical” with that of Plato. Harmonization was necessary precisely because it wasn't. At the same time, the Neo-Platonists didn't bother harmonizing Stoicism, Skepticism or Epicureanism with their system. They must have seen *something* congenial in Aristotle. As the Neo-Platonists saw it, Aristotle believed in an “intelligible” (spiritual) world, the immortality of at least part of the soul, and some kind of real metaphysical substances. He believed in some kind of god. Plato and Aristotle also saw eye to eye, or so Plotinus and his successors held, that the contemplative life is the highest and that the goal of man is to lift himself up to the divine.

Often, Neo-Platonists insisted that the exoteric dialogues of Aristotle (which are widely seen as more “Platonist”) conveyed the same message as his “esoteric” philosophical writings. They were baffled by Aristotle's constant attacks on Forms, since the Neo-Platonists didn't believe Plato had held the particular version of the theory of Forms which the Stagirite was attacking. In general, the Neos seems to have regarded Aristotle as a philosopher who interpreted Spirit “according to nature”, perhaps in order to reach instinctive Aristotelians, while Plato interpreted nature according to Spirit. In so doing, Aristotle had given a correct interpretation of the sensible world, but he erred (or expressed himself unclearly) on the ultimate principles, something remedied by the Neo-Platonist perspective.

Gerson points out that Platonists (both Paleo, Meso and Neo) frequently disagreed with each other, so the fact that Aristotle didn't always sound “Platonist” wasn't necessarily bothersome – certainly not to a school which attempted to harmonize everything from the Chaldean Oracles to the Isis cult with The Divine Plato. Gerson even claims that no coherent anti-Platonist Aristotelianism seems to have existed in ancient times, and remarks that when Thomas Aquinas attempted to use a de-Platonized Aristotle to bolster the Church's teachings, he was really harmonizing the founder of the Peripatetic school with a Platonizing Christianity!

As for the details, she's all yours, lieutenant…

As I said, “Aristotle and Other Platonists” is above my head.

The decline of the West

This review is from: Homo For The Holidays: A Collection of Mostly Gay Christmas Tales (Paperback)

What *actually* happened when Alcibiades returned from the campaign in Syracuse, only to find Socrates laying in his bed? How did Diotima react when she realized that the Symposion wasn't really about philosophy? And what did Aristotle mean when he said that although Plato was dear to him, Alexander the Great was even dearer?

No idea, but something makes me suspect that you probably won't found the answers in Mark Roeder's collection of X-rated X-mas stories...

 

A mad genius?

This is the kind of infuriating book that makes you wonder whether the author is on to something big, or whether he is simply a highly erudite purveyor of bunk. I suspect the former, but I can't rule out the latter either!

"After Virtue" is a sophisticated work of moral philosophy, historical criticism, and much else besides, and I readily admit that I haven't assimilated all its arguments.

At the same time, MacIntyre strikes the reader as a highly eclectic thinker, and this is what makes you wonder whether he has a point (everyone who rejects the current political scene en toto will bee seen as quaint or indeed eclectic - no matter whether he's right or wrong), or whether he is simply a confused intellectual stitching together what really can't be united. Indeed, one of the chapters of the book is titled "Nietzsche *or* Aristotle? Trotsky *and* St. Benedict". Benedict and...who? I also noticed that some of MacIntyre's followers call themselves revolutionary Aristotelians!

I don't think any review can give this book its due, so here I will only attempt the barest outline. MacIntyre is usually considered left-wing, and he does indeed criticize slavery, the subordination of women, and racism. He also has a soft spot for some Marxists, including Trotsky, whom he seems to regard as a closet critic of dogmatic Marxism. MacIntyre also rejects liberal capitalism, individualism and postmodernism. But in the name of what? After converting to Roman Catholicism, MacIntyre began to see the philosophy of Aristotle as a positive alternative, and some years after writing "After Virtue" he also embraced Thomism. He doesn't simply criticize postmodernity, but believes that the roots of our present-day intellectual confusion go back to the Enlightenment, and perhaps even further, to Protestantism, Jansenism and the thoughts of Machiavelli.

In MacIntyre's interpretation, Aristotelianism sees the moral virtues as connected to the social role of the individual as part of a broader community, a community which collectively strives towards the highest good for man. Man is seen as a creature with a telos, a purpose, and striving to fulfill this purpose is the very definition of being a "good man". This further means that one can derive an "ought" from an "is" through a rational analysis of man's telos. Thus, man is not an ostensibly free individual disconnected from his social roles and functions. There is no real identity for man apart from such roles and functions (the author attacks existentialism on this point, which claims the opposite). Nor is man a creature that can freely choose any goal whatever - or rather, he can so choose, but the consequences are the confusion, anomie and meaninglessness characteristic of our times. MacIntyre's communitarian or collectivist angle rules out liberal capitalism, and the idea that one can indeed derive an "ought" from an "is" collides head-long with most modern moral philosophers from Hume onwards.

During the Enlightenment, according to MacIntyre, the Aristotelian notion of a telos was dispensed with, creating a contradictory moral philosophy where the private strivings of each individual were dualistically opposed to a non-teleological morality no longer based in human nature, but coming from outside in the form of abstract, general rules. Even later, philosophers like G.E. Moore claimed that "the good" cannot be defined at all and is graspable only by a nebulous intuition, and this eventually opened the door to dispensing with any moral language or knowledge whatsoever. Modern philosophers who hark back to Hume or Kant can't solve the problem either, since their systems still lack the teleological link between the individual as he is and the moral rules as they ought to be. The only alternatives to our present sorry state are Nietzsche or Aristotle. Either boldly embrace the void and the Übermensch, or restore the classical and medieval understanding of the virtues and teleology.

Are you with me so far? ;-)

The book also contains a criticism of bureaucratic managers, social planners, and social scientists. Here and there, the author also takes on Marxism (despite a nostalgic residue of Marxism in his own worldview). MacIntyre believes that the social sciences cannot predict human behaviour, that humans are by nature unpredictable, and that all bureaucratic planning will therefore inevitably fail. He also emphasizes the role of intentions and ideas in history, thus criticizing the Marxist notion that purely material factors are decisive in history. Of course, this idea exists even outside Marxist circles. Still, there is something uncannily "Marxist" about his book. When MacIntyre describes the Aristotelian position, he says that man should expand his creative and productive powers, this being part of the human telos. But isn't this simply a Marxist notion projected onto Aristotle, who rather saw the contemplative life of the philosopher as the highest goal of man?

Since I haven't read MacIntyre's later works, which are elaborations of "After Virtue", I cannot really offer a meaningful criticism of his book. Still, what needs to be elaborated includes the exact meaning of the virtues (what exactly is "justice" anyway?), their rational or empirical derivation (how do we know that MacIntyre's definitions of "justice" are true?), and a more elaborate political line (what on earth could "Trotsky and St. Benedict" possibly mean?). Also, it will be interesting to see how MacIntyre squares Neo-Darwinism with the notion of human teleology. Finally, if human behavior is unpredictable, how can we know what the objective human purpose actually is?

Naturally, I have ordered several of the author's later works...

In the meantime, I will give this book five stars, not necessarily because I agree with all of it, but because of it's level of interest and erudition. A mad genius? Or just mad? The jury is still out.