Sadiq: The thing which is really difficult for us to
understand, is that we do not want to understand the past, and the way it was
constructed in the ancient mind. And that our perceptions of what is real are
based on the categories which are in mind.
.
Ralf: Really? You think so? So much effort has been expended
on the understanding of the ancient world! The universities of the world have
departments devoted to the subject! Do you think that those who work in those
departments do not want to know their subject in detail? Do you think that they
do not know their subjects in detail? I am surprised at you, since most of the
classicists and ancient historians I have met are honestly interested in their
subject, and would not be remotely interested in working within a framework
which was essentially a fabrication.
Sadiq: I agree with you about those who work within
university departments focussed on classics and ancient history. There is a great
deal of ambition on display, but they would not be likely to endorse a
fabrication, if they understood that was what they were dealing with. They are
not dishonest.
Ralf: But you say that we do not want to understand the
past, and the way things were constructed in the ancient mind. If they are
honest scholars, they will not endorse fabrication, as you say. So I am at a
loss to understand how you can maintain we are disinterested in the actual
shape of the ancient world.
Sadiq: That’s because you imagine that what is in their
minds is the consequence of an engagement with the evidence.
Ralf: Of course it is. It must be. When they come into the
subject, it is because they love the subject, and the pursuit of further detail
and understanding.
Sadiq: So no-one ever denigrated or destroyed evidence which
didn’t fit what they thought they already understood? Or falsified evidence to
support what they thought they knew to be true? We are watching these processes
going on around us right now. Not all of these processes are visibly happening
within university departments, but we are talking about a spectrum of attitudes
and behaviours, which can become prevalent at certain times. Sometimes these
things happen, usually because there is a contemporary consensus that the
evidence needs to be reconsidered and re-evaluated. All evidence is subject to
reconsideration and re-evaluation. As Nietzsche said, there are no such things
as facts, only interpretations.
Ralf: I’m inclined to disagree with Nietzsche. Some facts
are just plain facts.
Sadiq: If only. But I am afraid it is not true. There are
many ways to look at facts. Sometimes facts tell a different story from the one
they were once believed to tell. Remind me of facts which are just plain facts.
I know about facts such as the inverse square law, and the law of gravity,
which appear to be incontrovertible. But tell me about facts in ancient history
which have no possible alternative interpretation, to the one which is current.
Ralf: Most of what I know is built on the facts which I
understand! They fit within their context, and illuminate our understanding of
the ancient world.
Sadiq: So you cannot imagine them being turned upside down,
and being used to tell a different story?
Ralf: That would be hard to imagine. Though I accept of
course that the process of re-evaluation of our interpretations is an important
part of the study of antiquity.
Sadiq: So we are talking about a question of degree in the
certainty or uncertainty of the meaning of facts.
Ralf: Agreed. But the overall frame in which these facts are
understood limits the degree to which they may be uncertain.
Sadiq: That may be so. But how did the classicists and the
ancient historians come by this frame? Was this frame built exclusively on the
basis of incontrovertible facts, or in some other way? If the frame was not
built on incontrovertible facts, then both the evidence and the overall frame
are open to question.
Ralf: Well it is clear that the overall frame of our
understanding was not based entirely on the archaeological and literary
evidence which has been dug out of the ground over the past hundred and fifty
years or so. We already had a frame of understanding from sources which were
always accessible, such as historical, philosophical and literary writing from
Greece, and from Rome, and the literature of the Old and New Testaments.
Sadiq: Granted. But that frame is one which was built by
looking backwards. We see the ancient world through those conflicting models of
the world. We make what sense we can of the ancient world from these different
accounts and understandings. It is hard to stand aside from these. You are
acknowledging that our understanding is not based on the material and the
literary evidence alone, but the accumulated and agreed understanding which has
been developed since the fall of the ancient world. So it isn’t just about the
evidence, and the physical and the literary remains, but about the state of the
human mind in the centuries following.
Ralf: Alright. So tell me what is missing from our
understanding of the ancient world. I might also ask why it is missing, and why
we are so determined not to see it, as you are suggesting.
Sadiq: It might be fairer to say that we see what we expect
and want to see in antiquity. It is not that we are consciously determined not
to see certain things, but that we simply do not see them, since they are not
what we expect to be there. The matter is complicated by the fact that the
ancient model of reality has no counterpart in the modern world, so, unless the
scholar is aware of this fact, and much of its detail, what was important to
the ancients makes no sense at all.
Ralf: You think so? You think they were essentially
different from us in terms of their response to the world?
Sadiq: The human
capacity to denotice what should not be there, or to reinterpret what should
not be there as something else, is something which has not been the subject of
a great deal of study. Physically we are the same, with the same brains, but we
do not all have the same kind of brain. The brains which prosper now, are not
those that prospered in the past. Over the past two thousand years there has
been a selection process, which can be seen in the development of what we
understand to be rational. What is rational to us now would not have seemed
rational in classical Greece, or in Egypt or Babylonia.
Ralf: That is a strange assertion to make. Surely the
rational is always rational. It can’t be at one time itself, and at another
time the opposite of itself!
Sadiq: Do words always mean the same thing?
Ralf: It is true meanings change. But it is hard to imagine
such an enormous change in the meaning of ‘rational’
.
Sadiq: It is easy to explain. We use the word ‘rational’ as
a synonym for what is reasonable. We think of ourselves as creatures of reason,
who use reason to understand the world, and to enable us to act reasonably in
it. What we mean by this understanding is that we respond to experience with
logic, so that our actions can be explained and defended as reasonable.
Ralf: Which is what I understand as ‘rational’ behaviour. To
respond illogically to experience would be to behave unreasonably, which is to
be irrational.
Sadiq: That is how we use these words. There are several
ways in which we can explore this confusion of concepts. One is to look at our
history. We imagine that the European Enlightenment, which occurred in the late
eighteenth century, ushered in the life
of reason. Those who were part of that most significant of cultural
developments imagined that as well as recasting the world as something which
could be shaped and understood in terms of human understanding, also thought
that this was a process which was happening for the first time in human
history, and that all earlier models of reality, all prior human thought and
behaviour, was sunk in unreasonableness and folly, and was for the most part
incompatible with any kind of logical understanding.
Ralf: And they understood that what was happening was a form
of liberation from falsehood for mankind.
Sadiq: Indeed, that is how it was understood. But what were the falsehoods? What was
unreasonable about the past, and about the contemporary cultures beyond the
reach of the enlightenment?
Ralf: That is not hard to answer. The whole range of
religious belief in the world, unsubstantiated by any critical understanding of
the concept of what might constitute a god, or a multitude of gods, or any
understanding that the very idea of divine beings, singular or plural, might be
a fiction, entirely unsupported by argument based on sound logic. Also the vast expanse of human credulity,
invested in ideas of magic and ritual, false associations, unsupported notions,
and general ignorance about the nature of the workings of the world.
Sadiq: Indeed. That is a good answer. And it was the
enlightenment plan to change all of that. The world could be understood in
terms of human reason, and it could also be reshaped by human reason. That is
still where we are, though the agenda does not closely resemble what it was
when the life of reason began sometime before the French Revolution.
Ralf: And you say that this agenda is not rational?
Sadiq: We should distinguish between the meaning of the
term, and the cultural and philosophical agenda with which it is now
associated.
Ralf: I understand.
Sadiq: The enlightenment agenda may be a reasonable one, or
it may not. We will come to that question later. But it is worth noticing that
at its heart, the agenda enshrines an assumption, which is that the world and
reality can be understood in terms of reason. The task of reforming human
thought follows on from this as naturally as night follows day.
Ralf: If the life of reason is based on the power of logical
analysis, then it is hard to imagine how that assumption is false. Logic is
something which was developed in the ancient world in order to enable us to
understand experience. It is based on experience and observation.
Sadiq: Indeed, and codified by Aristotle. But there is no a
priori and unquestionable reason why the world should necessarily make sense to
us, as human beings, even if we are equipped with an ability to understand much
of what we experience with the aid of the tools of logical thought.
Ralf: I would argue that since the use of the tools of logic
has enabled our current understanding of the world, and enabled us to build on
that understanding, it is reasonable to assume that the assumption at the core
of the enlightenment agenda is axiomatically true. The world can be understood
by the human mind.
Sadiq: There are few patterns of ideas for which the natural
world and the human mind cannot find sufficient degree of evidential and
logical support to ensure some level of cultural survival. Which is why the
range of ideas loose in the world is so great. Some of the beliefs which men
entertain exist and prosper only because the degree of critical thought which
is brought to bear on them is wanting. But that is not true for all patterns of
understanding which we might consider not to be intelligible in terms of
Aristotle’s formulation of logical thought. Some of the finest minds have
entertained these ideas in the past. And that requires explanation.
Ralf: Some ideas are irrational, as you suggest. Either the
‘finest minds’ you mentioned were insufficiently critical of these ideas, or
they disrespected logical thought.
Sadiq: Possibly. But it is a leap to suggest that they were
bereft of the power of reason, and irrational. What you are saying is that you
are firmly convinced that the way to understand reality and the physical world
is through the use of logical thought.
Ralf: I suppose that I am. Other patterns of thought are
bereft of any credible logic. Someone who believes that a lock of hair
establishes contact with the original owner, and believes in the possibility of
having some degree of influence of that person, is not thinking logically, as
we would understand it. Likewise, a collector of nail parings for the same
purpose is similarly deluded.
Sadiq: I would not disagree with you for a moment about
that. Such people are not thinking logically. Though they are thinking.
Ralf: They are, but both their assumptions about how things
relate to other things, and how those connections can be manipulated, are
without reason.
Sadiq: Are they without reason? What they think are logical
connections are clearly illogical to the critical mind, but the idea of such
connections have been reasoned in some way.
Ralf: I see you are now trying to divorce the idea of reason
from logic.
Sadiq: I am. The point is, that reason pertains to thinking,
and not all thinking is reasonable. Logical thought is reasonable, but that is
just one kind of thought.
Ralf: So you say that even the idea of reasoning itself
isn’t naturally and necessarily about logical thought.
Sadiq: That is what I’m saying. I’m not differentiating them
just because it is possible to do this, but because the difference may be of
some importance in establishing how we understand the world.
Ralf: Let me see if I can summarise where we are. You have
differentiated Rationality and Reason, saying that what is rational is not what
we habitually think of as rationality, but is something which differs from it.
And you have said that the meaning of the term ‘rational’ in the phrase ‘rational
thought’ has changed over the centuries - particularly since the rise of the
enlightenment. So, though we describe ourselves as being rational beings, we
are not necessarily rational beings in the sense which was understood before
the enlightenment. By which I think you mean from the renaissance onwards.
Sadiq: I do.
Ralf: So we need to discuss that later. What we mean by
describing ourselves as rational beings is that we use the faculty and power of
reason, which is something quite different from what used to be understood as
‘rational thought’.
Sadiq: In essence, yes.
Ralf: You made this distinction on the basis that reasoning
is a species of thinking, but not all thinking involves proper reasoning, as in
the cases you mentioned - collecting locks of hair and nail parings. So you
regard proper reasoning as the species of thinking which is based on logical
thought.
Sadiq: Yes.
Ralf: So is rational thought the same as the species of
thought which is based on sound logical principles?
Sadiq: Yes it is. But not necessarily on the same logical
principles.
Ralf: That is too much! How can there be more than one
pattern of logic? It is either logical or it isn’t!
Sadiq: The two are connected. Meaning that the full array of
how things may be logically related to one another is bigger than what we find
outlined in descriptions of formal logic. Not everything in reality is subject
to the same rules. Though everything everywhere is subject to rules. The
science of logic should embrace how things relate to one another in any part of
reality which may be the subject of discussion.
Ralf: So you are saying that rational thought is reasoning
based on logical principles, but not necessarily the same logical principles
which were defined by Aristotle?
Sadiq: Or on a different branch of logical principles, which
have not been properly explored, either in the study of antiquity, or in modern
times.
Ralf: We need to be very clear here what you mean. It must
be the case, if your argument is to make sense, that there was an understanding
of this different branch of logical principles in antiquity. But we know
nothing about them. How can we know nothing about them if they are present, and
as important as you seem to think them to be? Where are they mentioned and
discussed?
Sadiq: There are several ways in which we can know that
these ideas must have been present. As I have said, we do not want to
understand the past, and actively denotice what is present which we would
rather was absent. So that is what we do
about the whole of ancient civilisation – we denotice what cannot be explained
by the model of reality in which we frame it. Ancient civilisation screams its
difference across the centuries.
What is the logic of sacrifice? The presence of the gods in
divine images, and the worship of these images? What is the basis of divinatory
practice? How could they imagine that they could have contact and conversation
with the divine, or even know the mind of the divine? Yet these practices were
common across the whole of the ancient world and beyond. We see these things,
and acknowledge that they were genuine phenomena at the time. But they do not
make any sense to us. Not at all. Until they are reframed in terms of things
which we understand, such as social dynamics, economics, propaganda, the ostentatious
display of power, and so on. Which is not to say that these interpretations
tell us nothing. But we do not sacrifice to the gods now, or worship their
images, or converse with the gods. And someone who claims to have conversation
with a god or gods is likely to to be locked up for his trouble. So why then,
and not now?
Ralf: The answer is surely that the strange behaviour of the
ancients was the type of derangement of sense which was the derangement of the
time.
Sadiq: You don’t really think that. To us it may look like
that, and it is convenient for us to treat the ancient world as a place of near
universal derangement, or even stupidity. But there is clearly so much in the
ancient world which is not deranged – philosophy, art, poetry, literature,
architecture, mathematics, etc. The idea of a general derangement of the
faculty of reason will not do.
There is also the fact that many of these things which are
not in any sense derangements of sense are connected with those which,
according to such a point of view, are born of unreason. We treat the sculptures created by Greek
sculptors as works of art, which indeed they are. But we isolate them from any
function they may have had, except in sociological or ideological terms. An art
historian does not write about them in terms of their cultural and cultic
function, which is of no interest. The
art of the Greeks, in so far as it survives, is also treated partly in terms of
aesthetics, and, as their art mostly appears on widely distributed black and
red figure vases, which is why those images have survived, partly as material
which illustrates mythological themes, and incidents which appear in the
Odyssey and the Iliad. Poetry, liturgies associated with the gods, and their
literature is surveyed in terms of social and ideological function (in other
words shorn of the connection with the world of the divine, which was of great
importance); we do not attempt to understand their architecture in terms of
divine function, but instead in terms of aesthetics, and the contrast in the
uses of space.
Philosophy too has been entirely removed from its original
cultic context, to the point where this is not understood or even recognised,
though a number of authors have drawn attention to this, sometimes obscurely,
sometimes with a more or less explicit reference. Arithmetic and mathematics
has suffered the same fate, though it is clear that it represented another
discipline which served the purpose of understanding the nature of reality, and
the mind of God.
We don’t need to know any of that, even if that was what
they really believed. Why do we not need to know that? Because the divine and
the world of the divine was not the main driver of the nature and development
of ancient civilisation, whether in Greece or Rome, or in Mesopotamia.
Ralf: That may be the correct response to what you are
saying. The Greeks and the others may not have understood the true forces
underpinning their civilisation.
Sadiq: It is certainly what the academy thinks now. But the
academic institutions were not set up to enable the understanding of ancient
civilisation. They were set up to enable ancient civilisation, and in
particular the Greek instance of it, to serve a useful function.
Ralf: You are referring to the development of critical
scholarship at Gottingen. At least in part.
Sadiq: The University of Gottingen has a lot to answer
for. I think it is clear that there was
a logic underpinning the variety of the patterns of understanding in the
ancient world, and that this understanding was built on a coherent picture of
the nature of reality. But in effect, we avoid the nature of that
understanding, and instead impose one of our own devising. So the ancient world
is a place in which, whatever logical and cultural consistency it may have had,
is a place full of deluded souls, dreaming of something which was false and
unreal at the heart of their civilisation.
Ralf: I am not out of sympathy with the idea that the
ancient civilisations lived in a world of dreams and chimaerical realities.
Even if it seemed to make coherent sense to them, it makes very little sense to
us. And I am still at a loss to understand why you think that there was a
coherence, a logical basis to the ancient world. Mainly because you have
suggested that their logical model, their logical apparatus, was in some
significant way different from ours. In which case it is hardly surprising that
we not only find it hard to understand, but also find it hard to believe that
such a coherent thing existed.
Sadiq: The scholars at Gottingen were not ever concerned
about the coherence of ideas which might have existed in the ancient world.
They were concerned with an understanding of the ancient world which was
possible and credible in the middle and late years of the eighteenth century.
The main focus at the time was not the study of Greek philosophy and Greek cult
and religion, but on history. The development of source criticism was the
result of noticing that a number of historical accounts written by Greek
historians and authors differed, in both detail, assumptions, and approach.
That is not surprising. Writers in any age are as prone to partisan views as in
any other. They also have available to them one or more differing information
sources, some of which may be less reliable than others. Sometimes they may
have both, and either have to make a choice between them as sources, or somehow
reconcile the accounts. They also have their own intellectual and societal
baggage, which inevitably has a bearing on what they write.
An example of this is the biographies of Plutarch, most of
which are regarded as hagiographical, in that he was concerned to show each
subject in terms of an anabasis of their character and soul – in other words,
in terms of their moral and intellectual improvement. We might speak of his
writing now as a species of edifying literature. He was writing to appeal to
audiences in both Greece and in Rome, and paired his biographies, to compare
and contrast character in the civilisations of Greece and Rome. That is the
structure of his work. And that tells us a lot about how he understood the
world, and the way he chose to write about it.
But having such a model is to invite distortion. At least as
a modern historian would understand it. Human lives are messy, and do not
easily fit the literary model of moral and intellectual improvement. That is
not good historical writing by modern standards – though there was plenty of
this hagiographical literature around in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, often aimed at the young and the credulous.
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