Intentionality, Conjecture, and what is Holy

[This is one of twenty-one essays in the book Man and the Divine, published in August 2018. The book is available in ePub format from leading retailers of eBooks, such as Barnes & Noble, Blio, Kobo, Itunes, Inktera, Smashwords, etc. Information about Man and the Divine can be found here]

This was originally a suppressed chapter (to use the jargon) from The Sacred History of Being (2015). I removed it, together with some other chapters along the way, in order to focus the argument of the book more tightly. It looks at the role of intentionality in establishing commerce with the Divine, and the essentially phenomenological nature of how the Divine is both made and known by us. It draws parallels between the creation of gods in antiquity, and the setting up of saints in Heaven. Both represent instantiations of what is Holy.

***

It is unclear that the realm of the divine has reality. It is real, and at the same time it is not.  The only argument for the world of existence is that it is a poor copy of the divine world. And the divine world is uncertain. So how ‘real’ is the world of existence? What is the way out of this dilemma?

The answer is intentionality. The objective world is subject to change, as is the understanding of men. We cannot know the full properties of God, because, among other things, God is transcendent of human understanding. How can mortal man then understand the properties and nature of the divine, and how can the gods have a genuine involvement in the world? The answer arrived at, it would seem, is that the human understanding does not need to encompass the actual nature of the divine in order to have commerce with it. 

This is an exceptionally important point, since, beyond legitimizing commerce with the divine despite the definition of God as beyond human understanding, it also provides the intellectual basis for the creation of multiple gods. Essentially therefore the idea of isolating the properties of God, insofar as they can be understood, was understood to be a way of accessing the nature of these properties, and therefore to allow operations to take place, establishing a commerce between the divine and the world of change.

Intentionality explains why the ancients created a multiplicity of gods. If the divine itself cannot by definition be completely defined and understood, at least certain properties and attributes can be understood. These can therefore be defined and named as ways of accessing the divine. This does not at all conflict with the idea that the reality of the divine is in question. Instead this view argues that there is in fact a subjective component in the reality of the divine, at least insofar as it is possible for us to have commerce with it. That is to say, some aspects of the divine are accessible to the human mind. We cannot prove that it is real or that it exists in any sense, but despite this uncertainty, there are certain properties of the divine which are indisputable. Proof of the whole nature of the divine is unimportant, since this cannot, by the definition of the divine, be demonstrated.. We might then say that all connection with the divine therefore is an act of faith rather than certainty. The nature and power of the divine can be understood, defined, invoked and accessed by man.

Viewed in this way, we can see that each of the gods we encounter in ancient accounts represents a slice through the nature of divinity, so that one god has a special interest in one thing as opposed to another, a special set of characteristics or attributes, which more directly can be understood than an abstract and indefinable numinous concept of divinity. However the underlying numinous concept, in fact the objective numinous reality itself, requires to be real and present as the ground of being behind the multiplicity of gods. 

This explains the phenomenon of henotheism, found in ancient polytheism. Pharaoh, for example, as the incarnation of the the divine on earth, could ‘appear’ as himself, or could appear in any appropriate form of the divine. When smiting his enemies for example, he might appear as ‘Montu, in his great form.’ He might be depicted on a temple wall as Montu, rather than in the form of the king. It might also be the case that a divine pronouncement might involve the speaker moving successively from the voice and vocabulary associated with one god, to the mode of speech associated with another god, as appropriate. This has been found in Assyrian records, where someone recorded in a state of divine possession, speaks successively as the voice of different gods.

Considered in this way, the divine world is filled with a variety of gods. Some of these have been defined, and subsequently invoked. Other aspects of the underlying divine reality have not been defined or invoked, and remain as possibilities. In the world of existence, the divinities which have been defined were given representation in the form of images and statuary.

None of this should be taken to imply that polytheism initially arose from such a complex and philosophically subtle theory as this. We have much information about the growth of local pantheons in the near east, and the way in which local gods were absorbed into state pantheons, given increased importance over time, or diminished in importance, according to requirements. They would be given family relationships which they did not possess when they first arrived, and gain attributes and characteristics which they did not have when they were first born in the smaller urban centres. 

We cannot easily know to what extent there was an intellectual model behind the creation of polytheistic belief and worship from its first appearance in the archaeological and textual record. It is likely that much of what has been written about ancient polytheism from an anthropological perspective is probably correct, and valuable to our understanding. It is just that the account is incomplete from this limited perspective, and anthropologists have hardly ever seriously considered the possibility that some intellectual ideas might underpin the phenomenon as well.  

Those notionally equipped to explore this territory, the specialists in ancient philosophy and perhaps theologians, have had many reasons to stay out of this territory. For them, the possibility of the ancient presence of a sophisticated intellectual model, based on logical argument, is not something which can be easily entertained. This is something which belongs to the Greeks. Though the Greeks were polytheists, their polytheism antedates the beginnings of philosophy in the historical record, and therefore polytheism has no bearing on philosophy, or vice versa. Many writers on both Greek religion and philosophy have found this arrangement to be conveniently tidy and a boon to scholarship. But it is not the case.

Shortly before I began this work, Pope Benedict visited the UK in connection with the Beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. When I read the details of the process of Beatification (essentially of making saints), I was struck by the resemblance between the idea of this in the Catholic Church, and the idea of setting up gods in antiquity (which will be explored in more detail later on).  The idea is that someone has to request (in ancient parlance this would be to ‘invoke’) the assistance of a person, now deceased, who showed especial virtues in life, and has to receive a response to this request which amounts to a miracle.

This is worth unpicking in detail, in order to understand the logic which is involved. It is not clear why someone would invoke someone less than the divine itself, if the divine is on offer, unless the virtues of a lesser being seem more appropriate. In other words, the prospective saint offers what looks like a channel which is more likely to be successful than the supplicant making a direct appeal to a God who is both difficult to define, and to know. 

The Catholic Church itself promotes the idea of sainthood, and unambiguously points at likely candidates. Newman has been one of those for quite sometime. Two miracles are required for the final elevation to sainthood. Why miracles? Because miracles are defined as things which cannot be accounted for in terms of earthly understanding. These may (in the extreme) be things which defy our understanding of physics, but ordinarily are occurrences such as unexpected remission from terminal illness, which ‘defies’ orthodox medical science. This was indeed the case for the supplicant who invoked the assistance of John Henry Newman.

The argument therefore runs as follows: Newman has special status in Heaven because an appeal for his assistance was answered. Because the assistance defied earthly understanding and expectation, the result was a miracle which otherwise could not have occurred. Therefore his status in Heaven is proved*[1]. Thus it is that the Catholic Church sets up saints on earth, and also in Heaven.

The Catholic Church is not based on polytheistic belief.  So it is rather surprising to find that it supports the idea that divine intervention can occur via the saints, rather than directly through the divine father, or his incarnation on earth.

The only significant difference between the Vatican’s idea of saints and the ancients idea of gods is that all of the saints are supposed to have lived human lives before being elevated to a divine status in Heaven. The ancients did not subject themselves to such an unreasonable constraint, and created gods who had never lived, and who could never have endured existence in the world. They could do this because they understood a formal and technical mechanics underpinning connection between the earthly world of existence, and divinity. The mechanics are still available to us in the records.   

It might be in order here to recap a little on the nature of the intellectual model of reality which underpins polytheistic belief, as we find it reflected in Greek texts, particularly those by Plato.

The most perfect entity it is possible for man to conceive is God. God is reality itself. The world of existence as understood by man is imperfect, and consists of imperfect representations of reality. The world of appearance as understood by man is subject to change and corruption, whereas the world of divine reality as conceived by man is eternal.

God is real. Existence is full of representations, more or less false, more or less true. Reality and existence are opposed. Man can apprehend that this is the case.

Since existence is suspended from reality, as a poor image of it, it is subject to change. Since man is an existent creature, man’s perception of reality is also subject to change. Both the nature of things which are existent, and man’s perception of these changeable things, are perpetually in flux.

Man cannot have full understanding of the nature of the divine, since, by definition, the divine transcends the world of sensible reality, and existence. It is in essence transcendental, and to the fullest extent.

However there are a number of ways in which the world of existence can access the divine reality. Several characteristic features of the divine remain in the sensible world, and retain their divine natures.  The connection does depend absolutely on the idea that the divine is complete, is total in its nature, is the ultimate limit of reality, and is the final end.  These things have analogues in the world of existence, and so there is a route of commerce open between the world of the divine and the world of existence.

Man has connection with the world of the divine through things and properties which are present in the world of existence which participate in the nature of the divine. These things include: completion, totality, the limit, the end, the perfection of a thing, a nature, a property, or an act, and so on. It also includes infinitive and superlative action, and also its extreme opposite, inaction. Greatness too, which we found to be an insufficient concept in the medieval version of an ontological argument concerning the divine, is also something which may open the way to the divine. The ancients also included ‘fame’ as one of the properties which connect man with the divine. We can explore the wide range of concepts and properties which can connect us with the divine along the way.  We shall find that justice, beauty, magnanimity, ethical and moral perfection, and honour, are also included in this list.

It is not necessary for us to have a complete understanding of the divine in order to access aspects of that higher reality. In fact a focus on particular characteristics, a ‘bracketing’ of the most relevant aspects of the divine, increases the efficacy of the commerce with the divine. Thus the intentionality of the supplicant is a factor in the opening of contact with the divine. There are other ideas associated with the strengthening of the connection with the divine which we shall explore. These include reduplication, the striking together of images and concepts, the collection or heaping up of things, especially where these result in reduplication of properties; the act of drawing near to the divine, or to the image of the divine, and so on. The deliberate opposition of ideas and images is also relevant to the business of establishing a commerce with the divine. For connection with the divine represents an alteration of state.

And to reiterate a key point, none of this proves the reality of God. It merely establishes a range of correspondences between a concept of God and a hypothetical Being who might or might not have reality. Instead, the entire intellectual system underpinning polytheism, at least in its later stages, was rooted in the paradoxical and transcendent notion of the divine, which necessarily defied human comprehension. So, there was no proof available, but within this world view, ‘proof’ conclusive to the human understanding would have demolished the entire edifice.

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[1] It is proved by the fact that it could not ordinarily have happened. This is a tacit admission that what is real, what is possible, at the level of divine reality, may be entirely contrary to what we understand as possible in the world of existence. 

Leibniz on the Existence of God

Leibniz wrote:

Although I am for innate ideas, and in particular for that of God, I do not think that the demonstration of the Cartesians drawn from the idea of God are perfect. I have shown fully elsewhere (in the ‘Actes de Leipsic,’ and in the ‘Memoires de Trevoux’) that what Descartes has borrowed from Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, is very beautiful and really very ingenious, but that there is still a gap therein to be filled. This celebrated archbishop, who was without doubt one of the most able men of his time, congratulates himself, not without reason, for having discovered a means of proving the existence of God a priori, by means of its own notion, without recurring to its effects. And this is very nearly the force of his argument: God is the greatest or (as Descartes says) the most perfect of beings, or rather a being of supreme grandeur and perfection, including all degrees thereof. That is the notion of God. See now how existence follows from this notion. To exist is something more than not to exist, or rather, existence adds a degree to grandeur and perfection, and as Descartes states it, existence is itself a perfection. Therefore this degree of grandeur and perfection, or rather this perfection which consists in existence, is in this supreme all-great, all-perfect being: for otherwise some degree would be wanting in it, contrary to its definition. Consequently this supreme being exists.

Again here the problem is the idea that ‘existence’ is a perfection. Later Kant would object that existence is necessarily a  property of anything which we might consider, and therefore the idea of ‘existence’ as a property of anything is irrelevant. However, much of what Liebniz has to say from this point on is interesting and relevant to the argument.

*** [my paragraph division]

The Scholastics, not excepting even their Doctor Angelicus,*[1] have misunderstood this argument, and have taken it as a paralogism;*[2] in which respect they were altogether wrong, and Descartes, who studied quite a long time the scholastic philosophy at the Jesuit College of La Fleche, had great reason for re-establishing it. It is not a paralogism, but it is an imperfect demonstration, which assumes something that must still be proved in order to render it mathematically evident;

*** [my paragraph division]

 That is, it is tacitly assumed that this idea of the all-great or all-perfect being is possible, and implies no contradiction. And it is already something that by this remark it is proved that, assuming that God is possible, he exists, which is the privilege of divinity alone. We have the right to presume the possibility of every being, and especially that of God, until some one proves the contrary. So that this metaphysical argument already gives a morally demonstrative conclusion, which declares that according to the present state of our knowledge we must judge that God exists, and act in conformity thereto. But it is to be desired, nevertheless, that clever men achieve the demonstration with the strictness of a mathematical proof, and I think I have elsewhere said something that may serve this end.

That the most perfect Being exists, according to Leibniz:

I call every simple quality which is positive and absolute, or expresses whatever it expresses without any limits, a perfection. But a quality of this sort, because it is simple, is therefore irresolvable or indefinable, for otherwise, either it will not be a simple quality but an aggregate of many, or, if it is one, it will be circumscribed by limits and so be known through negations of further progress contrary to the hypothesis, for a purely positive quality was assumed.

From these considerations it is not difficult to show that all perfections are compatible with each other or can exist in the same subject.

For let the proposition be of this kind:

A and B are incompatible

(for understanding by A and B two simple forms of this kind or perfections, and it is the same if more are assumed like them), it is evident that it cannot be demonstrated without the resolution of the terms A and B, of each or both; for otherwise their nature would not enter into the ratiocination and the incompatibility could be demonstrated as well from any others as from themselves. But now (by hypothesis) they are irresolvable. Therefore this proposition can not be demonstrated from these forms.

But it might certainly be demonstrated by these if it were true, because it is not true per se, for all propositions necessarily true are either demonstrable or known per se.

Therefore this proposition is not necessarily true.

It is granted, therefore, that either a subject of all perfections or the most perfect being can be known.

Whence it is evident that it also exists, since existence is contained in the number of the perfections. 

 Liebniz concludes by saying that he ‘showed this reasoning to D. Spinoza when I was in the Hague, who thought it solid; for when at first he opposed it, I put it in writing and read this paper before him.'

---

[1] I.e., Thomas Aquinas.

[2] A fallacious argument or illogical conclusion, especially one committed by mistake, or believed by the speaker to be logical.

Eighteen Meditations

Understanding Ancient Thought (published at midnight, Eastern Standard Time, August 20, 2017. Available for pre-order from August 8th). 

Eighteen meditations on our understanding of ancient history, on the importance of philosophical ideas in antiquity, and also on our understanding of the human mind, then and now.

The ancient world is often very mysterious to us, since its inhabitants thought within quite different models of reality. After the passage of two or three millennia, it is hard for us to make sense of the assemblage of information which has survived the enormous passage of time. Sometimes the nature of the evidence is problematic, and sometimes our approach to that evidence is the problem: we carry intellectual baggage which often makes it very difficult to know and understand what we are looking at.

In essence, this collection of essays attempts, as far as possible, to understand the ancient world within its original context, and to highlight where modern thought and the modern mind introduce obstacles to what can be understood.

The chapter list:

Divination in Antiquity was written in the latter stages of The Sacred History of Being. It was uploaded as a post to my website, and I promoted the essay by adding in brackets ‘and the sense it made’. Most people have no idea why divinatory procedures would ever have made sense in antiquity, but there is a sense to it, once the conceptual model in operation is grasped. This essay explores that conceptual model. 

Knowledge and Esoteric Doctrine concerns scholarly disinterest in the role of esoteric ideas and doctrine in ancient models of reality. Partly this disinterest is because the esoteric is, by definition,  kept secret and unknown, and partly because it is assumed that esoteric doctrine would have had no connection with abstract and universal ideas known to us, and therefore must remain unintelligible to us, even if we could disinter the details. The first of these appeals to the evidential invisibility of what is esoteric, and the second, to its irrational nature. Plato’s esoteric doctrine however is in plain view. We need to look for evidence, rather than presuming that it is not to be had.

Being, Knowledge and Belief in Israel is an expanded version of a chapter which appeared in The Sacred History of Being (The Idea of Being in Israel) which looked at the body of Mesopotamian ideas about the gods and the divine through the extensive commentary on these ideas present in the books of the Old Testament, and in documents from Assyria. The chapter also explored how Old Testament ideas about images were understood by the Christian writer Tertullian, in the early second century of the common era. Now supplemented by a discussion of the problematic relationship between monotheism and polytheism in the ancient Near East.

The Concept of the Plenum in Babylon argues that the description of Marduk in the Babylonian New Year Festival liturgy (The Enuma Elish) and the fact that the described creation was two-fold (it began before Marduk appeared, and was subsequently destroyed), indicates that their creation was understood to emerge from a plenum, in which all things potentially exist. This is an abstract conception which is not supposed to be present in Mesopotamia in the early 1^st millennium B.C.E.

Pleroma, Cosmos, and Physical Existence explores the kind of discussion that would necessarily underpin the idea of a plenum or pleroma as the root of physical creation.  The discussions closely parallel some of those found in Plato, including the question of whether reality retains its nature after the production of a physical reality.

The Divine and the Limit explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things.  The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

Logical Modality in Classical Athens finds that though we have recognised only one logical modality for more than two millennia, there were in fact two. One of them was appropriate to earthbound existence; the other supplied a rational basis for contact with the divine.

Sameness and Difference in Plato is a further discussion of the idea of the Plenum.  Philosophical writing about the divine in the west departed from the consideration of reality as something intricately bound up with a plenum during the Middle Ages, and as a result, philosophical argument about the divine, all the way up to the present day, deals poorly with certain issues, and no longer resembles the kind of argument about the divine found in ancient literature.

Shar Kishati, and the Cult of Eternity is a discussion of the hypothetical core of the ancient understanding of Reality as something which might be separated from everything else (in a Husserlian sense), though it does not mean that such a hypothetical core was separable from the rest of the religious and theological implex of ideas which constituted Greek and Mesopotamian religion. The point of the exercise was to explore what was actually essential to that implex of ideas, and to get a better understanding of why it was important to the functioning of the ritual universe, in both Greece and Mesopotamia.

The Harmony of the Soul explores the idea of Justice discussed in Plato’s Republic, which argues that the pursuit of special excellences by individuals, in terms of skills, and moral and intellectual virtue, without reference to the activities of other individuals, was understood to result in a harmonious arrangement of society.  They are joined together as a consequence of the fact that each of the virtues is complete and perfected. A parallel notion of the virtue of special excellences in ancient Assyria is discussed in the chapter ‘Standing in the Place of Ea’.

Synoikismos and the Origins of the Polis discusses what we know of the idea of the polis, which appears to have been modelled according to a conception of the divine. Thucydides tells us that, from the time of the first kings down to Theseus (the legendary founder of Athens, whose name is probably related to the verb tithemi, "to set in place") the people of Attica always lived in (their own) poleis; unless there was some common danger they would not come together in council with the king, but each individual polis would govern itself. Theseus did away with the multiplicity of poleis and their separate councils and governments.

Teotihuacan and the river of Mercury explores the symbolic function of this highly reflective metal, recently found inside a tomb in Mexico and known, on the basis of historical records, to be present also inside the Qin tomb in China, and finds parallels with such ideas (mirroring the heavens to provide connection between transcendent reality and the earthly world) in both Greece and in Mesopotamia.

Beyond the Religious Impulse Sometimes the important bit of evidence which will enable us to make sense of something is present, but not recognised, because the scholar is asking the wrong questions, and possibly asking questions within the wrong analytical paradigm. In fact there is a very large quantity of material available to scholars which can tell us much about the intellectual life of the ancient world, but because of the contemporary intellectual and cultural landscape, with its relatively inflexible interpretative structures, developed over many years, it simply cannot be seen for what it is. Worse, if the evidence is present but indicates counter-intuitive conclusions, it is unlikely ever to become part of the discussion. Better to grasp at straws.

Frazer and the Association of Ideas Like other scholars, then and now, Frazer did not recognise the other logical modality in classical Athens, though he read the relevant texts. Instead, he devised an explanatory mechanism of his own. This was based on the phenomenon of the association of ideas, argued by John Locke in the seventeenth century as a description of how we think. Applying this to human behaviour across history and cultures, he concluded that much human activity could be understood in terms of intellectual error. The phenomenon of the association of ideas is real enough. But it isn’t the basis of religious life in antiquity.

Aristotle’s Four Causes We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

Cultural Parallels and False Narratives discusses our understanding of what religion is, the etymology of the word (including Cicero’s definition), and compares the Hindu concept of religion with those of Greece and Rome. The evidence makes more sense if we talk instead in terms of divine cult.

Plato’s Point of View  - Plato’s main concern was what was truly real, which remained necessarily unchanging and itself, and therefore could not be present, at least as itself, in the world of the here and now. This is not however, how Plato is understood or represented by modern philosophers. There are two main schools of thought: the first is that his position is consistent throughout his work, but his work is shaped by an unknown agrapha (unwritten esoteric doctrine). The second is that his work represents a discursive exploration of philosophical questions, which comes to no firm conclusion.

Standing in the Place of Ea explores the role of the King in ancient Assyria, as the vizier of the god Assur. He was trained in the Adapa discipline, which is related to the myth of Adapa. He was required to be skilled in crafts, spear-throwing, scholarship, mathematics, divination, etc., and to excel other men, as chosen for the role by Assur. Thus he would emulate the knowledge and power of Ea, the divine sage whose home was the Abzu, the abyss at the root of creation.

Buying a copy of Understanding Ancient Thought

The book will be available in eBook format from a number of large retailers, including Itunes, Barnes & Noble, Blio,  (search) Kobo, Inktera, and other retailers around the world. So, if you are already signed up to an account with one of those, you can buy the book in exactly the same way as any other book. 

The eBook is in ePub format, which can be read on Macs, iPads, iPhones, etc, and most other tablets, irrespective of the operating operating system they use. If you have an Amazon Kindle, the ePub formatting of the book can be converted easily to the MOBI format, which the Kindle uses, with the excellent eBook management software Calibre, which can be downloaded free. 

The book can be read on a PC, laptop or notebook computer, in ePub or any other eBook format, using the Adobe Digital Editions software, which is also available free, in both Mac and PC formats. Supports conversion to many formats, including PDF. 

The principal distributor of Understanding Ancient Thought is Smashwords. The book (from mid-August 2017) can be downloaded from Smashwords directly, after a signup which takes just a minute or so. The book can be paid for using a credit or debit card, or with Paypal, if you have an account with them. After purchase, the book goes into a library space associated with your signup, and it can be downloaded on to your device from there. Just follow the link.

Thomas Yaeger, May 4, 2017, May 29 2017, June 17-18, July 30,  August 8th, and August 12,  2017.

A Mesopotamian Perspective on the Origins of Philosophy

(An extract from correspondence with the philosopher Adrian W. Moore, concerning The History of the Infinite).

From: Thomas Yaeger

Sent: 16 April 2017 18:46

To: Adrian W. Moore

Cc: Thomas Yaeger 

Subject: A History of the Infinite, and The Sacred History of Being

Dear Adrian,

I still haven't got round to writing a compact review of your radio series on 'The History of the Infinite', but I will get around to it eventually. In the meantime the ten episode summaries have been accessed 1266 times as of this afternoon, which is not bad for a blog page on such a specialised subject.

When we were corresponding last autumn about the series, I didn't say much about myself. I have a background in philosophy, classics, and also ancient Near Eastern History. I studied mainly at UCL and SOAS. I was particularly interested in your series in order to understand how the question of the infinite in history is currently being handled by academia. The series gave me an excellent overview of that, for which thanks.

However, there are real problems with the current and conventional view of how the infinite was understood by ancient civilizations, the cultural function it served, its geographic spread, and who adopted it first. It doesn't look problematic from the point of view of those academics who specialise in ancient Greece and classical civilization, because they have grown up with the idea that the business of dealing with abstractions in a philosophical way is firmly established as a Greek phenomenon, and an incontrovertible fact.

Most of the evidence to the contrary never passes before the eyes of classicists and specialists in ancient philosophy, precisely because they are specialists in their subject. The evidence is elsewhere. In addition, we select the evidence which is available, in order to provide support for the current model of how the practice of philosophy started, how ideas of infinity and Being came to be discussed, and not to undermine that view. This process has been going on since the Enlightenment.

Since I studied Mesopotamian history, culture and thought, I have a different perspective. I spent quite a few years in careful study, and came to the conclusion that the origin of philosophy is not down to some autocthonous burst of intellectual genius in ancient Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries, B.C.E, but is the result of the development of patterns of though associated with divine cult around the Mediterranean during the 1st and 2nd millennia B.C.E.

So you have looked at the history of the infinite from the point of view of the established history of philosophy. I have looked at the history of the infinite from the point of view of other cultures around the Mediterranean, principally the Assyrian and Babylonian oikumene, and Israel. As a consequence, our pictures of the cultural history of the idea of infinity are radically different.

It is true that we have no formal discussion of philosophy from Mesopotamia as we find in the pages of Plato and Aristotle, but we know that the ideas of infinity and Being were present because so much information survives about Mesopotamian culture in the form of historical records, ritual texts, liturgies for their festivals, their art, iconography, sculpture, etc. And their extensive literature. These things give us many clues as to the meaning and purpose of divine cult in Mesopotamia. The questions and conjectures that underpin divine cult are philosophical ones about the nature of the infinite, the nature of reality itself, and of Being. 

In fact, it is philosophy in Greece which seems oddly isolated, as not being closely associated with Greek religious practice, and with the other phenomena which form part of their extensive cultural life – divination, augury, magic, sacrifice, the worship of divine images and statues, and the rituals of everyday life.

This isolation of philosophy in Greece from Greek cultic life is more apparent than real however. For 150 years in the 1st Millennium B.C.E. (7th and 8th centuries), Assyria is the best documented civilization in antiquity. Many things survive from there which do not survive elsewhere, such as rituals for the inauguration of divine images. We have none from Greece. Close comparison of these ritual texts with Plato’s discussion of the Forms, spread across several of his dialogues, shows that he is talking about a widely-spread philosophical rationale for divine cult, and in fact the theory and practice of idolatry. The parallels are very striking. 

I’ve written a book on the subject – The Sacred History of Being (2015). This looks at why we frame our intellectual history the way we do, and sketches out an alternative construction of that history.  I would be happy to send this to you, if you would be interested in an alternative view of the history of the infinite, which explores the idea in its original cultural context.

Currently it is available as an eBook, and can be read using Adobe Digital Editions (freely downloadable from Adobe’s website) which is available for a wide range of hardware platforms. It is around 3.5 mb in size, and travels well as an email attachment.

Best regards,

Thomas Yaeger

At 10:52 17/04/2017, you wrote:

Dear Thomas,

Many thanks for your message.  Yes, I would be very interested in receiving a copy of your book, and I thank you in anticipation.

Best wishes,

Adrian Moore

Episodes of my BBC Radio 4 series A History of the Infinite can be heard at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wr1lz

Dear Adrian,

Ok then. The ePub format file is attached.

I would recommend reading the chapters in sequence on the first reading, since many of the chapters supply information which is useful for understanding subsequent chapters. As you will see from the chapter list, much of the Mesopotamian discussion is in part three.

The main purpose of the book is to bring to the attention of specialists in western philosophy, classics, and ancient history, the presence of  ideas in Assyria and Babylon which show strong parallels with those present in Greece. So the reader is at no point hit with a wall of cuneiform script. Or indeed, any at all. The quality of the writing has already been commended - I worked hard to make the text readable.

Take your time - you have other things to do, and I can wait until you are ready to respond. Thanks for your interest.

Best regards,

Thomas Yaeger.

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[Evading the Infinite, the chapter published in 'Man and the Divine',  a critical review of both Moore's BBC series on Radio 4, and his argument,  is available at: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2017/10/obscured-by-clouds-critical-review-of.html]

Page updated October 5, 2018.