[lit-ideas] Re: The 'Near-Eastern' influences on the Greek philosophy, sc...

  • From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:38:58 +0900

On 2004/04/10, at 11:34, Scribe1865@xxxxxxx wrote:

> In a message dated 4/9/2004 3:28:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
>> To paraphrase Emerson in Self-Reliance (cut)
> *Why do you need Emerson - aren't you supposed to
> express a purely individual opinion ?
> That's your opinion, not mine.
>

As Eric and Omar lurch toward the usual sort of unsatisfactory 
conclusion to the discussions we have here--if not an agreement to 
disagree, a leaving the field to go off and sulk in our own tents--I 
will say re this thread that I lean toward Eric's position but feel 
that he does not go far enough in developing what should be a 
thoroughly historical argument.

Were the Greeks influenced by Middle Eastern ideas concerning 
mathematics, architecture, astronomy, etc.? Yes.

Were the Greeks original in the ways in which they developed these 
ideas and added their own? Yes.

Does either of these propositions justify grand, ahistorical leaps from 
Middle Eastern monotheisms to, for example, Jefferson writing in the 
Declaration of Independence that "All Men are endowed by their 
Creator...." No.

What is omitted is several hundreds of years of philosophical labor to 
synthesize  Greek and Middle Eastern views that produced the works to 
which Jefferson's writing alludes and the particular state of play in 
this long conversation at the moment in which Jefferson was writing.

If Omar wishes to complain that conventional presentations of the 
History of Philosophy in which "philosophy" is limited to philosophy in 
"the West" ignore the contributions of thinkers in other parts of the 
world, that can hardly be denied. The way I was taught the subject 
(WARNING: forty years ago), in which a firm line was drawn from the 
Pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and Epicureans, 
St. Thomas and St. Augstine....to the Renaissance, etc., with only a 
cursory bow to the Muslim thinkers who preserved the writings of the 
Greeks and passed them them back to the West when the Renaissance came 
around is, perhaps, a particularly egregious example. In effect it 
reduces the role of those Muslim thinkers to one similar to that of the 
Monks who, it was said, played a similar role in preserving important 
documents until sharper thinkers came along.

What I offer here is a speculation that what we are pleased to call 
Western thought and the emergence from it of what we call Science 
reflects the peculiar historical confluence of Greek rationalism with 
Middle Eastern monotheism, combined with a leap to insisting on 
empirical verification instead of cogitation alone. The three central 
contributions were

(1) the Greeks insistence on framing explanations in terms of abstract 
law-like principles, instead of arbitrary decisions by deities presumed 
to be tossed around by the same sorts of emotions that affect mortal 
decisions.

(2) the Middle Eastern Monotheists' insistence that the Creator is 
somewhere else than inside His Creation and of a radically different 
nature from His Creation. Assimilating this notion in Western 
philosophy made it possible to envision causes that are fundamentally 
different from their effects and not mere abstractions from the 
"natural" categories perceived by our naive senses.

(3) The combination of (1) and (2) created the perennial mystery at the 
heart of modern Science: How do you demonstrate the law-like effects of 
principles that are not immediately visible to our senses? This 
question has driven the development of scientific methods of hypothesis 
formulation and testing that have, in brute fact, utterly reshaped what 
we call the modern world.

One implication of this argument is that without (2) Greek thought and 
its Roman successors would have been left at the same pre-scientific 
level as Hindu, Buddhist or Confucian philosophy, all wonderful mental 
architectures built by unaided rational thought on the basis of what 
one culture or another takes to be natural categories.

I now pause here in hopes of useful feedback. The meat is on the spit, 
all ready for proper roasting and seasoning. Bring on the flames and 
the cooks.


John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama, Japan 220-0006

Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx

"Making Symbols is Our Business"

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