[This is an extract from the chapter 'The Sweet Song of Swans' in The Sacred History of Being, published November 2, 2015].
....Bernal writes about one of the founders of the University of Gottingen,
Kristophe August Heumann. He says that:
“As a pioneer of the new professionalism Heumann established a scholarly
journal, Acta Philosophorum, in the first issue of which, in 1715, he argued
that although the Egyptians were cultivated in many studies they were not
‘philosophical’. This claim – which his contemporaries Montesquieu and
Bruckner… did not dare to make – was both striking and daring in the light of
the strong ancient association between philosophia and Egypt." Bernal
mentions that 'three of the earliest four references to philosophia are
associated with Egypt'. Isokrates
specifically associated philosophy with Egypt (Bousiris, 28).
Bernal points out that modern scholars have difficulty in accepting this
ancient association, and mentions one author, who, writing in 1961,
consistently translated 'philosophia' as the civilisation of Egypt' (Black Athena p 216) . The word
'sophia' can be derived from the Egyptian sb3, which means 'teaching',
'learning'. In volume 1 he promised a fuller discussion of the derivation, but
his project expanded, and proper discussion of sb3 and sp3 is now in volume 3,
published in 2006.
The concept of wisdom (sbt) is clearly connected with stars and gates (sb3)
indicated by the use of determinatives. These extra notions are connected in
both Aristotle and Plato. The soul is the source of divine knowledge and wisdom
in Plato; and in Aristotle souls abide in stars and stars are gateways to the
sublunary world.
Bernal writes that: “Heumann’s categorical distinction between Egyptian
‘arts and studies’ and the Greek ‘philosophy’ is rather difficult to
comprehend, as his definition of the latter was ‘the research and study of
useful truths based on reason.’ Nevertheless its very imprecision made, and
makes, the claim that the Greeks were the first ‘philosophers’ almost
impossible to refute."
It is in fact not so difficult to understand, when Heumann's view is
considered in its cultural context. At the time this distinction was made,
Newton's mechanical philosophy and mathematics were in the ascendant. A
reaction had long since set in across Europe against magic, alchemy, astrology,
and other pseudo-sciences of the time. Leibniz, Newton's rival in mathematics,
had, toward the end of the seventeenth century begun to distance himself from
both people he knew in these fields, and from the kind of language they used to
describe and understand ideas and phenomena. He became modern. [i] Egypt, being
undoubtedly a place of magic and other unreasonable practices, experienced
collateral damage. It could no longer be seen by proponents of reason as a
place of philosophy, since philosophy was to be understood as the exercise of
human reason, and not something which could co-exist with magic, prophecy,
divination, etc. Irrespective of the fact that magic and the other unreasonable
practices co-existed with philosophy in Greece.
Bernal however is awestruck by Heumann's 'daring in impugning the massive
ancient and modern tradition which saw Egypt and the Orient as the seat of
wisdom and philosophy'. In Black Athena p216, he writes that:
there is little doubt that Heumann’s views on this were
linked to his German nationalism and his Europocentrism. He advocated, and
tried to practise, writing philosophy in German when this was almost unheard
of; he was also a climatic determinist even before Montesquieu. According to
Heumann, philosophy arose in Greece because it could not flourish in climates
that were too hot or too cold; only the inhabitants of temperate countries….
"could create true philosophy." [ii]
Actually, this climatic determinism is Greek, and it appears in the pages
of Herodotus. It is in fact an important part of the frame of Herodotus’ world
view. Heumann’s is therefore borrowing a Greek argument to support the view
that only the Greeks could practise philosophy. The essence of the argument is
that extremes of geography are associated with cultural and physical advantages
and disadvantages for peoples and cultures. Geographical determinism of this
sort can be used to explain almost anything, including that philosophy was
invented by the Greeks because of where they were in the world.
Bernal argues that: "Heumann’s views on the Greek origin of
philosophy…. Were more than fifty years ahead of his time… and that his work on the history of philosophy was
eclipsed by Bruckner’s massive works in which…. the author took a compromise
position but did not deny the Egyptians the title of ‘philosophers’."
Nevertheless, Heumann’s influence persisted at Gottingen
and it is not surprising that Dietrich Tiedemann, the first of a new wave of
historians of philosophy of the 1780s had studied at that university. [iii] For this ethnic
and ‘scientific’ school, as for all subsequent writers on the subject, it became
axiomatic that ‘true’ philosophy had begun in Greece. [iv]
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