Posts by Daniel

The gist of the book is this:

Christians must see the world as intelligently designed by the divine Creator, who exercises providential care over human beings and who judges them in the afterlife as deserving heavenly rewards or hellish punishments for eternity. Christians can interpret many of the ancient philosophers - Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics - as teaching that the world is fundamentally mindful and purposive and thus supporting a Christian cosmology. But they can't do this with the atomistic cosmology of Epicurus and Lucretius, which must be seen as the fundamental rival to Christianity.

Moreover, Wiker argues, one must defend Christian cosmology if one wants to defend Christian morality. As a comprehensive account of the universe, every cosmology implies a morality, because every account of nature as a whole implies an account of human nature - the moral and intellectual life of human beings - as part of cosmic nature.

Cassius, please do not get a copy of this book.

It comes from a very Christian conservative perspective, very unsympathetic towards Epicureanism.

It's just that I enjoy following J. S. Mill’s advice ("He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that..."). When I research a topic I like reading the best arguments from the other side. Wiker claims that all contemporary moral debates are simply the result of the clash of the Christian moral universe with the Epicurean moral universe.

Regarding Darwin, Wiker doesn't claim that he was a follower of Epicurus, just that Darwinism is a modern type of Epicureanism, as opposed to Aristotelian Scholasticism, Cartesian Rationalism or German Idealism. The genealogy would be: Lucretius-Gassendi-Anglo Empiricist school of Bacon, Hobbes, Newton, Locke...till Darwin.

I will be posting all the interesting bits.

From the cover:

"Abortion. Euthanasia. Infanticide. Sexual promiscuity. Ideas and actions once unthinkable have become commonplace. We seem to live in a different moral universe than we occupied just a few decades ago. Christian moral tenets are now easily dismissed and have been replaced with what is curiously presented as a superior, more magnanimous, respectful and even humble morality. How did we end up so far away from where we began? Can the decline be stopped? Ben Wiker, in this provocative and insightful book, traces the amazing story that explains our present cultural situation. Wiker finds the roots of our moral slide reaching all the way back to the ethical theory and atheistic cosmology of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus."

Ten years before „The Swerve“, Benjamin Wiker published a book that covers much of the same ground: „Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists“

Wiker and Greenblatt agree in their historical narrative of the modern world as a product of the turn away from The Christian cosmology of intelligent design to the Lucretian cosmology of evolutionary atomism. Greenblatt celebrates this historical turn as moral progress, while Wiker laments it as moral degeneration.

I will be posting some very revealing quotations.

Oscar, I see lots of strawmanning and moralizing in your comments, and you still haven't answered my question:

-In which Islamic society do you think an Epicurean could gladly live?

Today there are two prevalent ways of studying moral values. One posits that these can be rationally verified and established: values will be universally valid, and once errors are cleared away it will be a matter merely of distinguishing between right and wrong, good and evil. The alternative way considers that since all values are relative and therefore equivalent, nothing sensible or interesting may be said about them.

There is, however, a third approach. This is genealogical and shows the human, social, philosophical, and religious breeding ground of a certain doctrine: inquires as to the origin of certain ideas; of which type of man they are expression; what it is they reflect—and to where they lead. Any world view is inescapably linked to a particular outlook on man, the world, and history; and, in its turn, it depends on the mental constitution—itself anchored at a biological level—of the particular people by whom it was created.

This third approach, I claim, is more congruent with Epicurean epistemology, based on the very best evidence one can find, even while admitting that this evidence may be limited and incomplete and subject to revision.

And, of course, it inevitably involves generalizations. Generalization allows humans and animals to recognize the similarities in knowledge acquired in one circumstance, allowing for transfer of knowledge onto new situations. Anecdotal evidence, that is, evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony ( “I have a friend who is X”) has very limited value.

So, coming back to our original point of disputation, pray tell me, Oscar, 1/in which Islamic society you think you would gladly live as an Epicurean; and 2/why you have not moved there yet.

By the way, someone who used to idealize the Islamic world over the Judeo-Christian one was Uncle Adolf and it didn't work out so well for anybody. I can also use the Reductio ad Hitlerum, you see

I’m not partial to any of the Abrahamic cults. “The Darkening Age” by Catherine Nixey is a good place to start if one wants to understand what a clash of civilizations the encounter of Athens and Jerusalem ignited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkening_Age

And I don’t need to remind you what happened to Spinoza when he started reading Epicurean philosophy…

Judeo-Christianity, the West, has spent the last 500 years trying to become Epicurean or ‘modern’ (remember “The Swerve”?). Islam has not, and that is the difference.

Quote from Oscar

As an Epicurean, I'd have gladly lived in the Islamic world over Judeo-Christian world.

I couldn't disagree more with you on this point, Oscar.

All three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) have had to confront the ideas of Ancient Greece. Averroes tried to integrate Aristotle with Islam. Maimonides tried to integrate Aristotle with Judaism. Aquinas tried to integrate Aristotle with Christianity. All necessarily failed. Rationality cannot be integrated with faith; nor reason with anti-reason; nor, in philosophy, fact with fantasy.

In conquering parts of the Byzantine Empire, Arabs encountered Greek thought. Muslim scholars studied and were fascinated by the writings of Aristotle and translated them into Arabic. Avicenna and Averroes were superlative Aristotle scholars. The Arabs learned the method of observation-based rationality and, in a true golden age, made superb contributions to medicine, astronomy, mathematics, literature, and other fields. But it did not last. Due to the influence of Al-Ghazali and other reason-rejecting theologians, as well as a fundamentalism firmly entrenched in Islamic culture from its outset, faith ultimately crushed freedom of thought. Under orthodox Islam, the books of Avicenna, Averroes, and other great thinkers were burned in the 12th century. For eight hundred years since, the Islamic world has wallowed in a dark age.

Renan was the first to establish a connection between religion and ethno-geographical origin. He contrasted a ‘psyche of the desert’ found among Semites—‘the desert is monotheistic’—with a ‘psyche of the forest,’ characteristic of Indo-Europeans whose polytheism appears to be modelled on a changing nature and a diversity of seasons. He observed that the intolerance of Semitic people is an inevitable consequence of their monotheism. Indo-European peoples, before their conversion to Semitic ideas, never regarded their religion as absolute truth. This is why there is found among these peoples ‘a freedom of thought, a spirit of critical inquiry, and individual research.’

Quote from Oscar

Welcome Daniel. Have you read Harvard Professor Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the world became modern ?

I read it when it came out.

Then I was interested in its Renaissance angle.

I must definitely read it again!

Thanks for the tip, Oscar.

“Apollo” (François Sigisbert Adam), Marble Hall of Sanssouci Palace:

The inscription „Te Sociam Studeo Scribundis Versibus Esse, Quos Ego De Rerum Natura Pangere Conor“ is rendered in English as “Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse which I presume on Nature to compose”.

In front of Apollo there is a Venus Urania, by the same author:

Salve, Epicurean friends!

I’m a “good European” with pagan inclinations, interested in keeping alive the Epicurean-Evolutionary-Liberal tradition.

I would love to explore with you the historical narrative of the modern world as a product of the turn away from the Christian cosmology of intelligent design to the Lucretian cosmology of evolutionary atomism and how Epicurean ideas shaped the leading modern thinkers in philosophy and science (Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Hume, Spinoza, Darwin, Nietzsche).