Kevin R.D. Shepherd: Commentaries

Origen

2012-01-26T20:24:00.004Z

Origen (c.186-255) of Alexandria is often classified as a Christian theologian, though also as a Christian philosopher. His father was apparently a Roman citizen, and one of the Christian martyrs during the persecution launched by Septimius Severus (rgd 193-211). He has been described as the child of a mixed marriage; Epiphanius says that he was a native Egyptian. Yet according to Jerome, the mother was either a Jewess or a Christian (McGuckin, Westminster Handbook, p. 3 n.15). The native Egyptians were at the bottom end of the social scale in the Graeco-Roman colonisation; a community of Jews had survived in Alexandria, though regarded as inferior by the Romans. Origen was reared by his father to a Greek education, in addition to study of the Bible. The young Origen apparently continued his father’s role as a teacher of Greek literature, maintaining a private school, though he was also enlisted by Bishop Demetrius as a paid catechist of the church. His father’s wealth was confiscated by the Roman bureaucracy, and his family were in need. He later sold his father’s library for a small pension, and studied philosophy in his leisure hours.

Bishop Eusebius (263-339) is a major source, though his Ecclesiastical History has been criticised for a clerical agenda. Eusebius was a defender of Origen; his account has been considered to incorporate some hagiology.

Origen allegedly had himself castrated by a doctor, in accordance with literal interpretation of a verse (19: 12) in the Gospel of Matthew, which refers to “those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” The verse was often interpreted metaphorically. Eusebius is much in question on this matter. “The story is hardly credible” (McGuckin, p. 6). Eusebius proffered this story as an explanation for the eventual prosecution of Origen by the bishop Demetrius. Origen “himself derides the literalist interpretation of the eunuch, saying it was something only an idiot would consider” (ibid.).

According to Eusebius, Origen attended the circle of Ammonius Saccas, a Neoplatonist teacher in Alexandria. Little is known about the latter, who appears to have been a self-taught philosopher differing from the more conventional Platonist pedagogues. The circle of Ammonius eventually gained an important addition in the shape of Plotinus (entry no. 42), who was some twenty years younger than Origen.

According to Porphyry (who is cited by Eusebius), “Origen lived as a Christian and thought as a Greek; he was always reading Plato and a whole lot of philosophers whom Porphyry lists” (Crouzel, Origen, p. 11). Yet modern scholarship invented the theme of two Origens, some commentators favouring the view that a pagan Origen was involved in the circle of Ammonius, and not the Christian Origen. Other scholars have considered this distinction erroneous. “There is every reason to believe that Origen acquired his superb education in philosophy from him [Ammonius]” (Trigg, Origen,1998, p. 12).

Origen nevertheless moved at a tangent, being a Christian Neoplatonist, giving an ultimate deference to the Bible. “To the more advanced students he taught philosophy together with the subjects preparatory to it like geometry and arithmetic: he expounded the teaching of the different schools of philosophers, explained their writings, to the point where he himself acquired the reputation of being a great philosopher” (Crouzel, p. 10).

According to Eusebius, Origen learned Hebrew, though the assertion has frequently been rejected. He certainly possessed an extensive knowledge of Jewish traditions and rabbinical exegesis, apparently derived from his communications with Jewish rabbis. His Hexapla (Six Columns) is only extant in fragments, and was a synopsis of differing versions of the Old Testament, including the Hebrew and the four main Greek versions. He was concerned to establish an accurate text.

Origen defended Christian doctrines against pagan and Jewish objections. He attacked Jewish literalism with a strong invective, though he “was not by nature a persecutor” and “actually defended the Jews against the abuse of pagans” (De Lange, Origen and the Jews, pp. 133ff.).

He was pitted against the Graeco-Roman colonial mindset that was the agent of persecution, executing his father and killing several of his own students. In his early years, he was frequently threatened by pagan mobs. In his last years, he composed the Contra Celsum, a refutation of the obscure second century Platonist Celsus. In his True Doctrine, Celsus had attacked Christianity from a conservative viewpoint, regarding that religion as a barbarian manifestation deriving from the Jews, who were allegedly inferior to Greeks.

Origen “differs from Clement [of Alexandria] in that he has not the least desire to claim the protection of a great philosophical name [meaning Plato] for some principle that is important to Christians. Yet, quite unconsciously, Origen is inwardly less critical of Platonism than Clement, and proposes a system that incorporates a larger proportion of Platonic assumptions than is apparent in Clement’s writings” (Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 101).

According to Eusebius, Origen was a pupil of Clement, which some scholars have strongly doubted. Origen never quotes Clement by name, though he does refer to teachings associated with the latter. “Origen never applies to the spiritual man the adjective gnostikos which Clement constantly uses” (Crouzel, p. 7). The conclusion is that Origen was more resistant to Gnostic teachings, which were proliferating in his time.

The relation of Origen to Gnosticism has been differently presented. His output is generally viewed as providing a foil to the trend of joining Gnostic sects. Origen was “the supreme theologian of free will, and the constant opponent of the Valentinian determinism” (Crouzel, p. 21). However, this was not a straightforward process of denial. “Of the Gnostics, Valentinus and his followers had the most profound influence on Origenism,” and moreover, “by a process involving both acceptance and rejection, he [Origen], in effect, appropriated and transformed Valentinianism” (Trigg, Origen, pp. 8-9).

A wealthy Valentinian, namely Ambrose, became converted to Origen’s viewpoint, which is often described in terms of orthodoxy, despite some contradictions. Ambrose provided his new mentor with a team of stenographers and calligraphers who acted as a publishing agency for his prolific biblical commentaries. Only fragments of those works have survived. Origen’s “allegorical” exegesis of the Bible has been the subject of dispute and criticism.

At this period, the Roman emperor Caracalla (rgd 212-17) assassinated his royal brother, an act meeting with opposition at Alexandria. The tyrant sacked that city in retaliation, and closed the schools. Origen retreated to Caesarea in Palestine, where he was invited by bishops to teach the scriptures. His status was that of a layman, not a cleric. This event caused the Alexandrian bishop Demetrius to protest, on the grounds that it was contrary to tradition for laymen to preach in the presence of bishops. Origen was recalled to Alexandria.

The situation of Origen illustrates a major problem: the episcopal status complex. His role as catechist was subordinate to Demetrius, whom he is said to have regarded as “a worldly, power-hungry prelate consumed with pride in his own self-importance” (Chadwick, p. 109). On a later visit to Palestine, Origen was ordained to the priesthood by two bishops. “With a good grace, or unwillingly giving way to their pressure? We cannot tell” (Crouzel, p. 20).

We do know that Demetrius reacted strongly, because the ordination had occurred outside his local jurisdiction. When Origen returned to Alexandria, a synod exiled him from the city. Demetrius went further, and declared that Origen was ejected from the priesthood. A synod at Rome is reported to have ratified this decision. Origen moved to Caesarea in Palestine, where he engaged in preaching, regarded as a priestly function. According to Eusebius, Demetrius condemned and made public the act of castration which Origen allegedly performed; this detail has been queried, and is regarded by some as malicious gossip. Demetrius accused Origen of unorthodox doctrine, and this was probably the underlying factor of aversion.

In Palestine, Origen attracted pupils like Gregory Thaumaturgus, initially a pagan, who refers to his mentor as a master of philosophy. The context does not here mean Greek philosophy, but “the moral and ascetic life, of Christian and pagan alike” (Crouzel, p. 26), a usage found among Christians of that period. The study of “philosophers of every school except the atheists” (ibid.) was a preparation for the study of Biblical scripture. However, the school of Origen at Caesarea was not a centre of theology, because “the teaching leaves out almost everything peculiar to Christianity and only reproduces the doctrines that can be enunciated in philosophical terms” (ibid., p. 27). Origen’s curriculum has been described as a Christian version of Middle Platonism, and intended for young pagans.

According to Bertrand Russell, the teachings of Origen, “as set forth in his work De Principiis [Treatise on First Principles], have much affinity to those of Plotinus – more, in fact, than is compatible with [Christian] orthodoxy” (History of Western Philosophy, 1946, p. 327).

The same treatise has been described in terms of Christian Neoplatonism, and as the most systematic of his writings, a work in which Origen “establishes his main doctrines, including that of the Holy Trinity (based upon standard Middle Platonic triadic emanation schemas); the pre-existence and fall of souls; multiple ages and transmigration of souls; and the eventual restoration of all souls to a state of dynamic perfection” (Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

At the end of his life, Origen was a victim of the persecution of Christians launched by Decius, who enjoined that every subject of the Roman empire must sacrifice to the official gods. Origen survived horrific tortures, but was posthumously condemned as a heretic by Christian polemicists and bishops in later centuries, and also by the repressive Christian emperor Justinian in 543.

The ascetic characteristics of Origen were emphasised by Eusebius. Origen was favoured amongst fourth century Coptic Christian renunciates. The Desert Fathers have recently emerged from the shadow cast by orthodox interpretation; figures like Antony the hermit are revealed by scholarship to have fostered ideas and beliefs that were rejected by clericalism. The Christian bishops were eventually victorious in controlling and modifying the monastic movement.

See further G. W. Butterworth, trans., On First Principles (1936, repr. 1973); Henry Chadwick, trans., Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 1953); Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967); Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy (Princeton, 1992); Henri Crouzel, Origen (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1989); Nicholas De Lange, Origen and the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 1976); John Anthony McGuckin, ed., The Westminster Handbook to Origen (Westminster John Knox Press, 2004); Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century Church (Atlanta, 1983); Trigg, Origen (London: Routledge, 1998).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 26th 2012

ENTRY no. 45

Copyright © 2012 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Proclus

2011-11-08T18:21:00.005Z

Proclus (412-485) was head of the Athenian school of Neoplatonism shortly before paganism was suppressed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. His prodigious output reflects the full-blown phase of Neoplatonist exegesis, which had departed from the Plotinian version.

Born in Constantinople, his Greek parents came from the upper class; his father was a law official in the courts. Proclus was educated in Alexandria, still renowned for a classical study curriculum. That syllabus included philosophy, in general part of the career vocation available to the Greek-speaking upper class. Like many others, Proclus was training for a professional role, and upon his return to Constantinople, he became a lawyer, as his father had intended.

He afterwards decided that philosophy was the most important subject, and returned to Alexandria. There he studied the corpus of Aristotle, and under a separate tutor he became proficient in mathematics. Proclus moved to Athens, a city still enjoying a reputation as the hub of philosophical activity. From 431 CE he studied at a (Neo)Platonist school led by his tutors Plutarch and Syrianus. When Syrianus died in 437, Proclus became the head teacher or scholarch, a position he maintained for the rest of his life.

The curriculum of his school did not represent a pristine Platonism, having absorbed the agenda of Iamblichean Neoplatonism, which displaced the Plotinian version. This development meant that theurgy was a primary interest, reflected in various ritualistic activities. Proclus himself is reported to have practised theurgic rituals in his otherwise studious routine. He never married, and was a vegetarian.

The major source is the Life of Proclus, composed by his successor Marinus of Neapolis, and which is in part hagiographical. This account refers to his vigils and fasts. During his temporary exile in Lydia, Proclus gained initiation into diverse mystery cults. Such an activity demonstrated the theurgic outlook, in which the ritual Mysteries were venerated and pagan ceremony glorified in the face of encroaching Christianity.

Recent scholarship has revealed that Proclus acquired a lavish annual income of 1,000 gold solidi, equivalent in contemporary terms to over half a million dollars. The patrons of theurgy did not neglect to support his activities. His surroundings were basically opulent. Proclus is associated with the Athenian cult of Asclepius, which was the focus of a temple near his residence (located in the vicinity of the Acropolis).

His substantial learning is evident from his books, though much of his corpus is lost. His religious beliefs are quite strongly accentuated, though absent from his commentary on Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, in which he demonstrates “a thorough grasp of mathematical method." In quite another direction, only fragments exist of his partisan commentary on the Chaldean Oracles, the theurgic text which became so influential amongst Neoplatonists. Different again is his Elements of Theology, containing propositions and proofs in the geometric mode associated with Euclid. Unique in antiquity, the Elements has often been regarded as his most important work.

Proclus is also noted for his commentaries on Plato, though not all of these have survived. His extensive commentary on the Timaeus has been considered the most important available on that text. Proclus regarded Plato as a divine prophet, an attitude symptomatic of the rivalry with Christianity.

Critics say that Proclus made Platonism into a theology supported by theurgy. His lengthy Platonic Theology has more generously been described as “a magisterial summa of pagan Hellenic theology,” in which Proclus was “eager to demonstrate the harmony of the ancient religious revelations (the mythologies of Homer and Hesiod, the Orphic theogonies and the Chaldean Oracles) and to integrate them in the philosophical tradition of Pythagoras and Plato” (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

The subject of theurgy is controversial. Proclus advocated theurgy in his On Hieratic Art, only partially extant. The Neoplatonist version should be distinguished from magic, despite certain resemblances in ritual practices, including invocations. Critics regard the ritualism as a retrogression from Plotinus. Proclus converged with Iamblichus in the belief that theurgy was a means of salvation compatible with Platonism, which referred to the gods.

Three types of theurgy have been discerned in Proclus. The first category is ritualistic, concerned with the evocation of oracles and divine visions, and involving the “animation of statues,” a distasteful subject to some analysts. The second category is associated with the Hymns of Proclus, a more aspirational use of prayers and invocations. The third category relates to unity with the One, celebrating such matters as silence, “negative theology,” and “faith” (pistis). Complexities are still debated.

Some years after the death of Proclus, Damascius (c.460-c.540) became leader of the Athenian school by 515, and is credited with a producing a revival of philosophy. Damascius took a critical attitude to the adoption of theurgy, and his Philosophical History furnishes relevant information on various events. Revealingly, he criticised the followers of Proclus, including even the revered Marinus. Damascius accused these theurgists of lacking insight.

Damascius was especially critical of Hegias, a wealthy patron who became head of the Athenian school during the 490s. The factor of wealth is significant; affluence had ousted the “moderate asceticism” of Plotinus, and permitted the influx of ritual preoccupations to the extent that intellectual study was in jeopardy.

Damascius clearly wanted to change the situation, and was in favour of restoring the contemplative angle as distinct from ritual distractions. Systematic study of Aristotle and Plato was a primary feature of his “revival.” He composed the treatise known as Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, which provides a critique of the Proclean metaphysical system.

However, Damascius employed an Iamblichean mode of interpretation rather than anything Plotinian. He still tried to integrate the “Chaldean” theurgic doctrines into a Neoplatonist framework, though from a different standpoint to Proclus, and with some critical attention to the arguments of Iamblichus.

Time was running out. In 529 the oppressive Christian emperor Justinian the Great prohibited paganism. Exile was threatened if the pagans did not convert to Christianity. Some victims lost their lives. In this grim situation, Damascius and six other learned Neoplatonists decided to flee from Athens, emigrating to Mesopotamia in an endeavour to gain a hearing at the Sassanian court in Ctesiphon. The details are not clear.

A recent theory posits that a Neoplatonist school was soon established at Harran (Hellenopolis) under Sassanian protection. Harran certainly became a subsequent centre for philosophical and scientific studies in Greek and Syriac during the early Islamic era.

See further E. R. Dodds, ed. and trans., The Elements of Theology (second edn, Oxford University Press, 1963); G. Morrow, trans., Proclus: A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements (Princeton University Press, 1970); L. Siorvanes, Proclus: Neoplatonic Philosophy and Science (Edinburgh University Press, 1996); D. Baltzly and H. Tarrant, ed. and trans., Proclus: Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (multi-volume, Cambridge University Press, 2006----); S. Ahbel-Rappe, trans., Damascius’ Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
November 8th, 2011

ENTRY no. 44

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Porphyry

2011-10-10T20:34:00.006+01:00

The most well known disciple of Plotinus was Porphyry (c.232-c.305 CE), a Phoenician from Tyre, whose parents are often described as Syrians. Before meeting Plotinus, he originally studied at Athens under the Platonist Longinus. He possessed the disposition to study different languages and religions, and developed a polymathic ability.

When Porphyry moved to Rome in 263, he became a pupil of Plotinus, but was at first disconcerted by differences with the “official” Athenian format. The method of Plotinus contrasted with that of Longinus. Plotinus was far more informal and unorthodox. Longinus had composed two works of note, but Plotinus classified him as a scholar or literary man, not as a philosopher.

Plotinus (entry no. 42) did not write commentaries on Plato; his exposition, preserved in the Enneads, was in the Platonist spirit but altogether more free-ranging. Both he and Longinus had been students of the deceased Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, yet they were in disagreement. Porphyry at first expected technical perfectionism from Plotinus, but the latter was not concerned about grammatical niceties in his usage of Greek. Like Ammonius, Plotinus was outside the official Platonist curriculum, whereas Longinus had become part of it.

Porphyry inherited the private manuscripts of Plotinus, which he considered defective in terms of format, though not in respect of ideational and experiential content. Porphyry eventually edited those manuscripts, publishing the result some thirty years after the death of his teacher. The Plotinus texts became known as the Enneads.

The output of Porphyry is rather different to that of Plotinus. He was an industrious writer, and evidently believed in a reconcilement of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle that Plotinus might have deemed too academic. These included the famous Isagoge, a preparation for the study of Aristotelian logic, and well received by the Christian Schoolmen centuries later.

About sixty works are attributed to Porphyry, though most of these are lost or extant in a fragmented form. The subjects covered include history, mathematics, Homeric literary criticism, and metaphysics. There are scholarly uncertainties in confirming a number of the attributions.

The uncertainties have contributed to a mixed assessment of Porphyry’s role. He may have deliberately composed for different readerships, given the diverse nature of attributions. Modern scholars have credited Porphyry with a basically rational orientation, though diverging into what some have deemed an idiosyncratic preoccupation with religious matters (and even astrology).

One view is that he validated the Chaldean Oracles for the common worshipper, though himself remaining aloof from theurgy. Augustine of Hippo presented him in terms of an anomaly, though Pierre Hadot concluded that Porphyry tried to find a universal denominator in varied religious phenomena, including the Indian “gymnosophists.”

His lengthy work Against the Christians survives only in fragments, and was denounced by Christianity, being burned in 448 by Byzantine decree. Porphyry was a defender of paganism, more specifically the philosophical tradition of Plato and Aristotle. During his lifetime, the spread of Christianity was slow by comparison with fourth century developments after the reign of Constantine.

One aspect of his mentation was a “Pythagorean” disposition associated with vegetarianism, which he advocated in the treatise On Abstinence from Killing Animals. Like Plotinus, he believed in a contemplative and ascetic lifestyle, though at about the age of sixty, he married Marcella, whose interest in philosophy was commemorated in his Letter to Marcella.

Perhaps the most evocative writing of Porphyry is the Letter to Anebo, extant in fragments. This has been assessed in terms of critical reference to the ritualist version of Mysteries, and as being devised to turn the attention of distracted readers to philosophy. The anonymous epistle is addressed to an Egyptian priest, and it is evident that the author was averse to divination and theurgy.

The Letter to Anebo complains about Egyptian religion, and the priests who acted as astrologers, teaching an inflexible astrological fatalism. The document has been interpreted as an attack on Iamblichus, apparently a former pupil of Porphyry, and one who became an influential advocate of theurgy.

Iamblichus (c.245-325) is an eccentric subject in the view of some analysts. A Syrian from a wealthy family of aristocratic association, he taught a version of Neoplatonism at the Syrian town of Apamea. He was an enthusiast of Pythagoras, whom he revived in a theurgic context that is controversial. Iamblichus is credited with authorship of On the Mysteries (De Mysteriis), though the attribution has not been universally accepted. That treatise was composed under the pseudonym of Abammon, signifying a putative Egyptian priest, and evidently being intended as a response to Porphyry’s anti-theurgy composition.

There is no doubt that the issue of theurgy was attended by a strong disagreement. Porphyry was furthering the outlook of Plotinus on this point, while Iamblichus and his school were in support of ritual sacrifices, divination, trance, invocations, ritual mysteries, talismans, and other trappings.

This issue remains an important significator of orientation, both in respect of the Neoplatonist exemplars and the contemporary responses.

See further J. Barnes, Porphyry: Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003); G. Clark, trans., Porphyry: On Abstinence from Killing Animals (Cornell University Press, 2000); K. O’Brien Wicker, Porphyry the Philosopher to Marcella (Atlanta 1987); A. Smith, Porphyry’s Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague, 1974).

Kevin R.D. Shepherd
October 10th 2011

ENTRY no. 43

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Plotinus

2011-08-31T22:02:00.007+01:00

Plotinus (c.204-70) is generally described as a Neoplatonist, but his teaching differed from later exponents of “Neoplatonism.” There is no theurgy in his Enneads, and this factor alone comprises a gulf between Plotinus and Proclus, a well endowed exponent of the Athenian school.

A biography was composed by his disciple Porphyry many years after his death. The famous Vita Plotini (Life of Plotinus) is regarded as a basically reliable report, though some hagiology may have infiltrated. Porphyry was also the redactor of the Enneads, representing the formerly secretive writings of Plotinus.

His date of birth is uncertain, and likewise his racial origin. Plotinus would not refer to his early years, nor allow his birthday to be celebrated. As a consequence, the date and place of his birth passed into obscurity. His outlook was world-renouncing, and basically a mystery to commentators like Bertrand Russell. The “moderate ascetic” orientation of Plotinus decodes to a gulf between him and most modern commentators, including even Pierre Hadot.

An early hagiographer, Eunapius of Sardis, informs that the birthplace was Lyco(polis) in Upper Egypt. Plotinus might have been a Hellenised Egyptian, though scholarly opinions have differed. His originating social class may or may not have been elevated.

As a young man, he searched for a teacher amongst the Greek-educated philosophers of Alexandria. These tutors gave formal lectures, and were divided into different schools. Plotinus was disappointed with the example and teaching of these more or less official pedagogues. He eventually became a disciple of Ammonius, an obscure Platonist who was apparently self-taught and relatively distanced from the conventional professorial scene. Later authors applied the nickname of Saccas to Ammonius, though the meaning is uncertain.

When Ammonius died circa 242 CE, Plotinus had been his pupil for a decade. The latter departed from Alexandria in 243, joining an ill-fated expedition (possibly as a court philosopher) of the Roman emperor Gordian III against the Persians. Gordian was murdered in Mesopotamia by rebellious soldiers; this situation was part of the political problem afflicting Rome. Plotinus fled to Antioch, and subsequently moved on to Rome by 245. There he settled, and gained followers in senatorial ranks.

Plotinus “eventually became well known, though adhering to a cautious tactic of guarding his unpublished manuscripts, which were available only to committed students like Amelius and Porphyry.” His circle was cosmopolitan, including Syrians, Alexandrians, and at least one Arab. Three women are fleetingly mentioned, two of them apparently Romans.

Plotinus disliked the rhetoric favoured by orators. He also detoured the set speeches maintained by Platonist convention, preferring an informal procedure involving the discussion of texts. He did not claim originality in his version of Plato, though the Enneads are clearly innovative in a number of respects.

He endorsed study of the sciences, though in a Platonist manner. He was evidently familiar with geometry, mechanics, optics, and music (then regarded as a science). Yet he would not himself practise those pursuits, which he viewed as a secondary support for training the mind. In the Neoplatonist view, much attention given to scientific activity is a distraction from the philosophical quest. There are differences with Aristotle, an authority whom Plotinus frequently contested, though not without some elements of convergence.

He is noted for opposing astrology, regarding horoscopy as deceptive. Plotinus taught freewell as distinct from determinism, and his objective was to live in accordance with the standards of “virtue,” a complex theme associated with his elevation of the “Divine Mind” or Intellect. The strongly mystical element in his teaching emphasised a purification and illumination that was far removed from the convenient routines of orators and pedants. Plotinus contested the persuasions of Diophanes, an orator in Rome who favoured pederasty.

“We must break away towards the High,” was a Plotinian theme. Then as now, such emphases are unwelcome in many quarters. A wealthy Roman pupil of Plotinus was Rogatianus, who declined the office of praetor pressed upon him by the Senate. The pupil renounced all his property and set free all his slaves. Under the influence of Plotinus, Rogatianus chose a simple lifestyle that forsook all social status and elitism.

It is evident that Plotinus was opposed to the excessive wealth and slavery in the Roman environment, trappings which accompanied military prowess. One may conclude that he scored over Aristotle, who had endorsed slavery in a more conciliatory gesture to the ruling class. Science might do little to remove social problems, whereas diligent mysticism may move a lot further.

Plotinus gained a reputation for austerity. Amongst his admirers were the Roman Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina. Gallienus was an intellectual type, with a taste for Greek culture; he was not popular with military commanders, despite his victories in battle. Plotinus advised that Gallienus should rebuild a ruined city in Campania, one that should be renamed Platonopolis, and accordingly governed according to the laws of Plato. This proposal was opposed at court, probably by the military. The details are vestigial.

The treatise entitled Against the Gnostics (Ennead II.9) is a well known feature of the Enneads. The protest was made on grounds of Platonist tradition, reason, and morality. The Gnostics were present in Rome, and there are implications of flawed doctrines and behaviour. Gnostics were claiming a secret knowledge facilitating a short and easy path to the Divine. Plotinus contrasted this with the long, difficult, and necessary route involved in the Platonist practice of virtue and the due exercise of philosophic intelligence. He repudiated the resort to magic and ritual in the popular Gnostic sector, usages amounting to theurgy (theourgia).

Gnosticism, like Platonism, was a variegated phenomenon, and one causing extensive confusions in the modern day. Popular Gnosticism rivalled both Platonism and orthodox Christianity. Gnostic adherents were spread throughout different countries, and with diverse figureheads in the “ascetics and libertines” vista discussed by scholars. Plotinus himself has some similarities to the ascetic wing, especially in that he claimed a “mystical union” in his version of philosophic rationalism. These subtleties are difficult to convey in the current climate of misconception caused by “new age” thinking, which includes the disputed integralism.

At the end of his life, Plotinus suffered a severe illness in the onset of an epidemic created by war and social unrest. The distinctive Emperor Gallienus was assassinated by military schemers, a mood of anarchy was prevalent, and Rome was beset by troubles. Plotinus retired from Rome to the countryside, possibly afflicted with leprosy, and stoically awaited his end. The man who had rejected his birthday could also transcend death.

See further Stephen MacKenna, trans., The Enneads, ed. John Dillon (London: Penguin, 1991); J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality (Cambridge University Press, 1967); A. H. Armstrong, ed. and trans., Plotinus (7 vols, Harvard University Press, 1966-88); Pierre Hadot, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, trans. M. Chase (University of Chicago Press, 1993); L. P. Gerson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
August 31st 2011

ENTRY no. 42

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Hypatia of Alexandria

2011-07-21T22:40:00.006+01:00

Hypatia was a Greek reared in Alexandria. She is often associated with the phenomenon called Neoplatonism, generally credited as commencing in the third century CE. She was born circa 355, and her Greek father Theon was a mathematician. Over a century earlier, Ammonius Saccas had taught in Alexandria, and he is considered the effective founder of Neoplatonism.

Ammonius was an obscure philosopher, apparently self-taught, who functioned outside the conventional Platonist curriculum. His pupil Plotinus (c.204-270 CE) appears to have shared the same independent orientation. Plotinus moved from Alexandria to Rome, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Hypatia also taught a version of the Platonist outlook, using her home in Alexandria as a base. She is reported to have been proficient in mathematics and astronomy.

None of her writings on philosophy survive. Her mathematics has been reconstructed, and was not the modern version. Hypatia viewed geometry as a route to the One, and this outlook was compatible with celibacy. Astronomy was still a sacred science in her time, though often admixed with astrology (which Plotinus rejected).

Modern scholarship has concluded that Hypatia did not teach the theurgy lore which pervaded much of the later Neoplatonism associated with Iamblichus and Proclus. She has instead been viewed by some interpreters as a Neoplatonist in the Plotinian sense; an early annalist refers to her in a context of the tradition of Plato and Plotinus. Like Plotinus, her lifestyle was frugal and disciplined, and she never married, remaining a virgin. Female philosophers were a rarity. There were a few women amongst the pupils of Plotinus, though they reaped obscurity.

The fifth century annalist Socrates Scholasticus (c. 379-450) was a contemporary Greek Christian of Constantinople. In his Ecclesiastical History, he profiles Hypatia as a major philosopher of her day, and refers to her as following the Platonist way of thought via Plotinus. Professor J. M. Rist suggested that it was Hypatia who revived interest in Plotinus at Alexandria. The same scholar also linked her to the outspoken Cynic tradition; she wore the rough cloak strongly associated with Cynic teachers.

The Platonist curricula relied on students from wealthy families. Hypatia was no exception. Her pupils came from various towns in Egypt, and also from further afield in Syria, and even distant Constantinople. There were Christians in her circle, and two of these became bishops, including Synesius of Cyrene, a Greek Platonising Christian who was at first reluctant to become Bishop of Ptolemais, though he did so in 410.

This was a difficult time for the surviving paganism, which was now increasingly the minority in territory ruled by Christianity. Persons from wealthy Christian families still learned Greek philosophy, though theological dominance meant that Platonism and Neoplatonism were on the defensive, and more so in Alexandria than at Athens.

Hypatia was eventually murdered. There are different versions of her death in the early reports. With regard to the Hypatia biography in general, scholarship has to be distinguished from novelism. Eighteenth century writers like Voltaire and Gibbon have been accused of creating a literary legend. Nineteenth century embellishments followed, and the twentieth century added a further round of Hypatia lore influenced by contemporary preferences.

An early sixth century report was supplied by Damascius, a Neoplatonist who studied in Alexandria two generations after the death of Hypatia. This source affirms that she gave public lectures on Plato and Aristotle; further, the Alexandrian Patriarch Cyril (in office 412-44) became envious of her fame and plotted the murder of Hypatia, goading a mob to kill her.

Cyril was a Christian archbishop who later gained a repute as the persecutor of pagans. Hypatia was on cordial terms with the governing secular prefect Orestes, a rival of Cyril in the political power stakes, and who resisted clerical attempts to gain secular control. Orestes was a Christian, and thus the issue was not paganism versus Christianity, but civic versus ecclesiastical interests. Hypatia might have expressed some degree of opposition to the church hierarchy, but she was not anti-Christian and cared for her Christian students, who apparently included Orestes. She provided a convenient political scapegoat for Cyril, who was opposed to pagans, Jews, and heretics.

Some commentators have attributed the murder of Hypatia to Christian monks. That is a theory, and not proven fact. Another interpretation has more feasibly urged that Cyril utilised a private cadre known as the parabolans. This grouping comprised 800 young men employed by the Alexandrian Patriarch in the service of the church. In contrast, the Coptic monks were an independent faction.

The parabolans sometimes exercised a benevolent role of caring for the sick and homeless, but they were also deployed as militant agents of the Patriarch in various places. They are described by some scholars as soldiers in the private army of Cyril. The parabolans were the most likely tool of the former Patriarch Theophilus in the destruction of the Serapeum and other pagan temples. This cadre were almost certainly involved in the fanatical attack on the Jewish quarters at Alexandria in 414, a molestation inseparably associated with Cyril.

Professor Maria Dzielska concluded that these young men were incited to spread adverse rumours about Hypatia, and subsequently caused an Alexandrian mob to kill her in 415. She was depicted as a witch, and the unreasoning attitude is evident in the seventh century version of events by Bishop John of Nikiu, who describes Hypatia as a witch deserving to be killed.

The full background to the murder, in the details surviving, is revealing. Cyril is implicated as having caused riots between Jews and Christians in the critical year of 415. He proclaimed that all Jews must leave Alexandria. In contrast, Orestes was committed to preventing the persecution of non-Christians. Not surprisingly, Jews and pagans favoured him against Cyril.

In 415, Cyril’s private army attempted to murder Orestes; the attack failed, and although Orestes was wounded, the victim was rescued by Christian onlookers. The leader of the attack was apparently a monk named Ammonius, who was afterwards killed by the army of Orestes. Cyril then glorified Ammonius as a saint, and the church led the public to believe that urban strife would cease if Hypatia was eliminated. She was murdered by a Christian mob.

Orestes apparently departed from Alexandria, probably in fear of his life. Damascius reports that the perpetrators of the crime went unpunished. The alarmed city council made repeated petitions to the court at distant Constantinople. As a consequence, the following year (416) Cyril was divested of his authority over the parabolans, whose numbers were reduced by an imperial ordinance to 500. Yet only two years later, Cyril regained his leadership of the parabolans, a factor conferring power in his subsequent attacks on pagans.

See further Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria, trans. F. Lyra (Harvard University Press, 1995); Michael A.B. Deakin, Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr (New York, 2007); Sandy Donovan, Hypatia: Mathematician, Inventor, and Philosopher (Bloomington, 2008).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
July 21st 2011

ENTRY no. 41

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Eric Voegelin

2011-06-05T23:58:00.007+01:00

A political philosopher, Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) has the reputation of being a philosopher of history. His magnum opus Order and History is regarded as comprising an early phase (the first three volumes) and a later phase (the last two volumes).

Voegelin was born in Cologne and subsequently educated at Vienna, where he gained a doctorate in political science. His professorial role at the University of Vienna was terminated in 1938, when he resisted association with the Nazi cause of Adolf Hitler. He fled with his wife to America, where he continued an academic role and became an American citizen. He became a professor of political science at Louisiana State University.

During the 1940s his outlook moved at a tangent to the history of political ideas, in which he had written extensively. His new orientation involved a form of existentialism, though in reaction to Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Indeed, Voegelin’s existentialism was very unusual, exhibiting a Platonist complexion, further associated with a Christian background. Hence my description in terms of an existential Christian Platonism. However, he did mute certain Christianising tendencies in his later years, and should be classified as a philosopher.

Voegelin is also unusual for his linguistic affinities. He learned both Greek and Hebrew, acquisitions by no means common amongst philosophers. He was thus able to read Plato in the original, and studied the Old Testament in depth.

By the 1950s, he had developed a theme of rediscovering the philosophical quest via an experiential mode, meaning that philosophy was not just a format of ideas but an existential process of experience. He also railed against the influence of positivism and scientism, and became noted as a critic of modernity. These tendencies are distinctive, though they became controversial. His enduring opposition to Fascism was accompanied by a strong reaction to both G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, not to mention various other modern exponents. Voegelin classified all these figures under the generalising term of Gnosticism, considered by some analysts to be an extreme usage of that word, and perhaps reflecting to some extent his Christian upbringing.

The first volume of Order and History afforded a coverage of ancient Israel. This version of Biblical events drew upon scholarly sources available by the 1950s. Many of those are now outdated. Since that time, archaeology has uncovered numerous details formerly unknown. This development led to a basic rift between differing approaches to the Old Testament. What emerges today is that the Hebrew Bible is basically a late post-exilic composition, though with some earlier components much debated.

Voegelin argued that the ancient Israelites did not progress to the “noetic differentiation” in process amongst the Greeks. The presumedly “compact” nature of the Israelite experience of spiritual life was here viewed as preventing the development of philosophy, which for Voegelin, involved “the explicit experience of divine presence as an ordering force within the individual psyche of the philosopher” (quote from Christian neoexistentialist). Yet intrinsic existence would always remain a mystery, he believed, and in this context he stressed resort to the language of myth.

Some attention was given to the Israelite prophets. The books attributed to prophetic entities like Amos, Isaiah, and Jeremiah have been the focus of detailed scholarship. How far such texts represent the entities named is an elusive matter. They were cast in the form of a post-exilic Jewish understanding, in the early centuries BCE, though earlier themes and content may intervene.

In volume two of Order and History, the author surveyed trends in early Greek literature and philosophy, and analysed features of the polis or city-state. He continued this treatment in volume three, devoted to Plato and Aristotle. Thus, a fairly detailed version of Greek events emerges, quite distinctive in certain respects, though with room for disagreement on some points. See Voegelin and Plato.

From Homer to Aristotle, Voegelin pursued his favoured themes attendant upon order in the soul or psyche. This feature was declaredly evolved by philosophers in opposition to the political activities of the polis. The philosophical process could not be institutionalised like the rival, and was dependent upon individual contributions and achievements. In this way, Voegelin counters conventional conceptions of philosophy as an “intellectual” activity concerned with mere ideas and arguments.

He clearly preferred Plato to Aristotle, though attempting to give the Stagirite a due credit. Voegelin celebrated Plato’s Dialogues and the attention given to philosophical mythic formulation. He focused upon the Timaeus, the Republic, and the Laws, all of these works demanding a more than casual attention from the modern reader. The contrasting, or complementary, bios theoretikos of Aristotle also gains profile.

So far Voegelin had inserted a number of Christianising comments that led some readers to expect a culminating coverage of Christianity in terms of the desired order. Yet in volume four, published in 1974, the author frustrated those assumptions. He admitted to encountering a problem in his conception of history, and now viewed a linear time scheme as an error. Proliferating researches were revealing the complexity of world history, and even New Testament scholarship was adopting new criteria. Voegelin learned with dismay that the Gospel of John was now considered to exhibit Gnostic tendencies.

The rigidity attaching to orthodox Christian ideas of Gnosticism was substantial until the late twentieth century. Discovered in 1945, the Nag Hammadi texts challenged some entrenched notions, giving scholars a far more accurate idea of early Gnostic beliefs, which circulated amongst different groupings. Translations did not become readily accessible until the 1970s, when Voegelin had already formulated his basic outlook. The Nag Hammadi Library in English (Leiden, 1977) made available the “Coptic Gnostic library.”

The tendency of Voegelin to use Gnosticism as a blanket term for modern ideological handicaps seems discrepant to some contemporary readers. Both Hegel and Marx were designated as Gnostics by the existential Christian Platonist. Hegel was a Protestant Christian as distinct from the iconoclastic atheist Karl Marx. Hegel’s “science of logic” affords a contrast to the “neo-Thomist” deliberations of Voegelin, though both of them can be considered philosophers of history. See Voegelin and Gnosticism.

Voegelin’s “non-linear” tangent touched upon Pauline Christianity, though ranging into differing eras of world religion. He found some Eastern religions defective in comparison to (Greek) philosophy, but tended to favour some religious phraseology of Thomas Aquinas, the neo-Aristotelian with a strong Dominican profile. In contrast, Joachim of Fiore and Siger of Brabant were two of the many stigmatised “Gnostics” in the neo-existential panorama.

The relatively brief volume five (curtailed in size by the author’s death) was subtitled In Search of Order. Hegel is again one of the ingredients, apparently regarded by Voegelin as the major modern predecessor and rival.

See further Eric Voegelin, Order and History (5 vols, Louisiana State University, 1956-87); Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1952; repr. 1987); Voegelin, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Vol. 6), ed. David Walsh (University of Missouri Press, 2002); Eugene Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (University of Washington Press, 1981); Lee Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire, eds., Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition (University of Missouri Press, 2011).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
June 5th 2011

ENTRY no. 40

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof

2011-04-27T21:58:00.007+01:00

The philosopher Richard Tarnas (right) is noted for an unorthodox approach. After graduating from Harvard, Tarnas opted to become Director of Programs at the Esalen Institute (California) for a decade. In that capacity he was closely associated with Dr. Stanislav Grof (left), an Esalen resident (from 1973) whose “cartography of the psyche” became fluently accepted in alternativist circles, though dismissed by the academic world in general.

Earlier, the doctoral thesis of Tarnas was on the subject of LSD psychotherapy, the speciality of Grof, whose extensive programme in this subject is elsewhere contested. The thesis was entitled LSD psychotherapy, theoretical implications for the study of psychology (1976)

During the 1970s, Tarnas was already a supporter of Grof. He has since gained repute amongst the defenders of Grof as a vindicator of the controversial LSD psychotherapy. This support was explicated in terms of “archetypal astrology,” a resort of Tarnas which claimed to correlate the perinatal matrices of Grof transpersonal theory with an “archetypal” version of planetary influences. The planets Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, and Uranus were here major players. Esalen transpersonalism, dominated by Grof, favoured such innovations.

Tarnas became a professor of philosophy and psychology at the unorthodox California Institute of Integral Studies. His version of those two subjects became influential in his widely read book The Passion of the Western Mind (1991). This offered a version of Western thought from the classical Greek era to the modern and “postmodern” phases. Grof theory is elevated in the epilogue. For a coverage, see Philosophy, Richard Tarnas, and Postmodernism (2010).

In two subsequent books, Tarnas demonstrated his strong orientation in astrology. His Cosmos and Psyche (2006) is a lengthy and sustained account of astrological complexities. A basic contention of Tarnas is that planetary configurations influence patterns in human events. Astrology does have some adherents, though also many critics.

The Tarnas version of astrology has been a strong influence on the Grof camp, and the reciprocal interplay is a notable feature of the Integral Studies scenario. Well prior to publication of Cosmos and Psyche, Dr. Grof celebrated the convergence in such words as:

“An important factor in the selection process might be the relationship between karmic patterns and the time and place of a particular incarnation with its specific astrological correlates. This notion is in general agreement with the observations from psychedelic sessions, holotropic breathwork, and spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crises. They show that in all these situations the content and timing of holotropic states are closely correlated with planetary transits.” (Grof, Psychology of the Future, State University of New York Press, 2000, p. 242).

A critical citizen stance in relation to “holotropic” matters can be found at Grof Therapy and MAPS (2007). See also Contesting Grof Transpersonal Training.

The transcript of a radio interview with Richard Tarnas has been considered revealing. There is reference to the ecological situation, with the observation that “we cannot continue to live according to the same assumptions with which we have lived blithely for the past several hundred years.” The basic contention here is surely correct, a complication being that so many relatively obscure insights are lost to view in the “new age” jettisoning of pre-1960s events.

There is another largely undiscerned problem. Tarnas refers in his interview to the well known theme that “modern science has essentially voided the cosmos of all intrinsic meaning and purpose.” He adds that “it is only, I think, through going through a profound inner transformation, and also an intellectual transformation, that one can see beyond that crisis.” There are so many people who claim transformations that the issue becomes one of authentic transformation. Indeed, this situation necessitates the urgent remedy of a basic sanity avoiding all claim to transformation of any kind.

There is further talk in the Scott London-Richard Tarnas interview of paradigm shifts, a well worn topic sometimes deemed monotonous. Tarnas also refers to Grof’s theme of “the death-rebirth process,” meaning ego death and spiritual rebirth. That theme, based upon LSD experiences, has been regarded as very misleading by analysts of mystical literature. LSD experiences in “psychotherapy” were given an elevated mystical significance by Grof, though the scope for disagreement is extensive. (See further my Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One, 1995, pp. 70-73.)

The Grof-derived viewpoint of Tarnas extends to pop music, and includes the unconvincing statement: “I feel that Madonna’s combination of these very different [“perinatal”] impulses is reflective of the fact that our whole civilisation is going through the birth process, this initiatory transformation.”

Some of the Tarnas references to philosophy have puzzled other commentators. For instance, he says in the same interview: “I love Plato and I’m as much of a Platonist as anybody I know. But Plato’s Republic would only be truly utopian and livable if it could have the Rolling Stones in it!”

What is utopian and livable varies markedly according to temperament and appetite. A well known account of Rolling Stones anomalies in the 1970s describes a preoccupation with cocaine and heroin. The author, a close attendant of Keith Richards, relates how his girlfriend died after a bad reaction to the heroin substitute methadone. When the attendant tired of this confused lifestyle, he went into rehabilitation. He again encountered Richards in a hotel room at New York. The celebrity did not wish Sanchez to author a book about the past, and pulled a gun on him. There was no shooting, only the book that subsequently materialised. See Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones (1979; repr. 2010). Cf. Keith Richards, Life (2010).

Grofian confusions about death and rebirth have become pervasive, and are associated with the controversial California Institute of Integral Studies. See entry no. 31. Tarnas discloses that he and Grof were teaching the same course in philosophy and religion at San Francisco. “It’s a great program where we offer doctorates and masters degrees.”

Some citizens believe that it is not necessary to obtain “integral studies” doctorates in order to analyse the context of theories and statements.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
April 27th 2011

ENTRY no. 39

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Tulasi Srinivas and Winged Faith

2011-03-07T20:14:00.004Z

In 1998, Professor Tulasi Srinivas commenced a lengthy nine year ethnographic study of the Sathya Sai Baba sect. She emphasises the theme of globalisation, viewed by some analysts in terms of Western capitalist dominance. In 1989 the Indian economy was opened to global market forces, and a new middle class emerged with affluent purchasing power (Srinivas, Winged Faith, 2010, pp. 1-2).

In 1950, Sathya Sai Baba established an ashram at the village of Puttaparthi, in a rural zone of Andhra Pradesh, about a hundred miles from the city of Bangalore. His biography is a problem. “Devotee accounts construct a complete and complex mythic biography that replaces lost incidents in his life” (ibid., p. 52). The hagiology involved is notorious amongst scholars, one of whom observed over twenty years ago that “no objective account of Sathya Sai Baba’s life has been written by anyone close to him” (ibid., p. 53, citing L. Babb, 1987). There are hundreds of devotional biographies, a very few of which are officially favoured by the sect.

It is definite that, at an early stage in his career, Sathyanarayana Raju claimed to be a reincarnation of Sai Baba of Shirdi (d. 1918). The youthful claimant “demanded that people refer to him as Sathya Sai” (ibid., p. 57). Confusions about the supposed predecessor (Shirdi Sai) are rife in many accounts, including those written by academics. Sathya Sai claimed to materialise healing ash (vibhuti), and the “miraculous” association has mistakenly been applied to Shirdi Sai, “who had also materialised vibhuti for his followers” (ibid., p. 9). That statement is incorrect. Cf. Shepherd, Investigating the Sai Baba Movement (2005), pp. 2-58.

Sai Baba of Shirdi was a Muslim Sufi faqir who lived in a simple rural mosque in Maharashtra. He became subject to Hinduising hagiological tendencies, which could not, however, completely eclipse the original profile that is evident to close analysis (see Marianne Warren, Unravelling the Enigma: Shirdi Sai Baba in the Light of Sufism, 1999; rev. edn, 2004). Shirdi Sai always needs to be distinguished from Sathya Sai.

The Puttaparthi ashram became wealthy, a process aided by the many visitors from Western countries. “The [Sathya] Sai religious movement can be construed as a global religious empire” (Srinivas, op. cit., p. 235ff.). One development was the Sathya Sai (Seva) Organisation, commencing in the 1960s and swelling by the 1980s (ibid., pp. 240ff.). In 1974 the closely related devotional magazine Sanathana Sarathi bore “the new ecumenical logo of the [Sathya] Sai movement – a lotus with the symbols of the crescent and the star (Islam), the cross (Christianity), the Om (Hinduism), the fire (Zoroastrianism), and the wheel (Buddhism)” (ibid., p. 70, and p. 15).

There is a substantial omission of origin in Srinivas and numerous other accounts. The same ecumenical symbols were used as publishing insignia since the 1940s by the transnational Meher Baba movement; the reappearance as a logo of the Sathya Sai Organisation (SSO) is a clear example of borrowing without acknowledgment. The Meher Baba sect was regarded as a rival, the founder also claiming avatarhood. See Shepherd, Investigating the Sai Baba Movement, pp. 141, 231 note 403). Srinivas makes no reference to Meher Baba. There are significant gaps in the devotional and academic records (especially in relation to the contested “Sai Baba movement,” not to be confused with the Sathya Sai movement).

The teaching of Sathya Sai is strongly aligned to Hinduism. There is no element of Zoroastrianism, Islam, or Buddhism. In contrast, Meher Baba was born a Zoroastrian, and his teaching strongly reflects the terminologies of both Sufism and Hinduism. His followers cultivate a strong devotional orientation, reminiscent of the Sathya Sai contingent, and with similar tendencies to suppression of alternative and history-oriented materials. Certain books of mine have been suppressed on Wikipedia by supporters of both these religious sects; see Hazrat Babajan and Wikipedia Issues. Those sects are markedly unreliable as an index to sources. Even the university transmission in social science is to date incomplete, though presumably with more ability to remedy the lacunae.

Srinivas refers to the impression created “that the upper orders of the [Sathya] Sai movement do not appreciate democracy, equality, or openness” (ibid., p. 252). She relates that “I found I was waging an uphill battle when I tried to discuss the scandal and the embedded issue of secrecy” (ibid., p. 236). Secrecy emerges as a major complication. Srinivas gives a far less secretive (though still rather restricted) attention to the counter-trend comprised of disillusioned ex-devotees. This was in process by 2000, reporting allegations of sexual abuse and other drawbacks (pp. 233ff., 252-9). The Srinivas version is an improvement upon former academic commentaries.

Srinivas describes the allegations in terms of “sexual healing,” a sanitised verbal gesture that is clearly influenced by the SSO (ibid., pp. 252ff.). Indeed, Srinivas states that the conflict with ex-devotees caused Sathya Sai and the SSO “to develop a sophisticated critique of Western thought that has been aired repeatedly in every confrontation with the press, the West, anti-Sai activists, and secular Indians” (ibid., p. 260). Any criticism of the guru is blamed on the evils of Western thinking by the putatively model format of sectarian morality.

Concession to this acute problem attitude is the current state of globalisation theory in anthropology and sociology. In contrast, analytical citizens are not obliged to render subscription or deference to devotionalism and “secrecy” traits. In sectarian programmes, globalisation and secrecy evidently amount to something evasive of accountability.

Srinivas only briefly refers to Basava Premanand (1930-2009) in a footnote (ibid., p. 372 note 56). Yet he was the major Indian critic of Sathya Sai for many years, with sufficient profile for documentation. Srinivas awards lavish space to the beliefs of devotees, who view all critics with contempt, or as evil.

A form of devotee thinking has been: “Admitting perhaps some of his [Sathya Sai’s] materialisations to be fraudulent, and the charges of sexual misconduct accurate, but the idea of mere mortals sitting in judgment on God [Sathya Sai] is to ‘distort the truth’.” (Ibid., p. 261, citing N. Palmer, 2005). Professor Srinivas seems anxious to placate both the contending parties involved:

“Anti-Sai activists argue that the sexual behaviour (if it did happen) is criminal behaviour, while devotees argue that it is a pathway to spiritual betterment. I suggest that these two versions of truth are both valid to the participants” (ibid., p. 269).

Anthropologist Tulasi Srinivas invokes the philosopher Paul Ricoeur via the phrase “conflict of interpretations,” and in the context of “an indeterminacy of meaning within a discourse” (ibid., p. 270). Ricoeur was not involved in the strongly alleged sexual abuse episodes, which were not discourses, and it is not necessary to adopt a relativist viewpoint in assessing so many complaints and allegations. The devotee argument for a Tantric “kundalini” significance in the guru’s homosexual actions has been strongly repudiated by ex-devotees, despite some lingering tendencies amongst the latter of psychological conditioning to the “miracle” hype favoured by the SSO.

“Devotees rise through the ranks of ordinary devotees into the upper ranks of the ‘Sairarchy’ – hierarchy of Sai officials – by advancing their store of seemingly secret knowledge” (ibid., p. 275). Unquestioning and blind obedience to the sectarian mandate is here involved. Yet we are told by Srinivas how the evidence suggests that the SSO “constructs a viable alternate organisational structure to the accepted worldwide corporate model” (ibid., p. 281). Regardless of corporatism, it is ethically important to determine which version of “truth” is the most valid in relation to “sexual healing.”

The final chapter of Winged Faith relates to economic factors. “The genealogy of materialised objects is obscure, and devotees work hard to ensure the occlusion” (ibid., p. 297). Srinivas compares the esteem for “miracle” objects (supposedly materialised by Sathya Sai) to the “medieval European trade in the relics of Christian saints” (ibid.). One ex-devotee took a “miraculous” diamond ring to a top Copenhagen jeweller who concluded that the stone was a synthetic green sapphire (ibid., p. 296). The miraculous jewels palmed by the guru are alleged to come from the substantial marketplace created for objects associated with him.

Globalisation of the sect has involved “a global distributive network of Sai goods” (ibid., p. 300). Affluent Western devotees have been an easy target for consumption. Both the SSO and independent merchants were busy selling books, cassettes, images, and other objects. “By the late 1970s, the sale of the religious objects reached a new high” (ibid., p. 302), with the commercial zone at Puttaparthi enjoying prosperity. Everything from statues and packs of cards to talismans and jewellery were on offer.

The commercial growth of Bangalore from the late 1980s increased the insatiable market inspired by miracle lore. By 2000, the SSO “was the largest religious foreign exchange earner in India, totalling approximately Indian Rs 75 million” (ibid., p. 304). The total investment of the SSO in Puttaparthi is stated by the same source to be approximately 400 million dollars, which “includes rental on shops selling images, licensing agreements, real estate holdings” (ibid.). However, the SSO does not reveal internal accounting, and in 1990 the Economist assessed the guru’s assets at over two billion US dollars. The current total figure is much higher (ibid. p. 377 note 31), and known only within the ranks of secrecy.

Srinivas ends with the contention, inherently favourable to the SSO, about the generation of a language “toward an engaged cosmopolitanism that is a necessary condition for multicultural societies to live in civility; this is the basis of a new pluralism” (ibid., p. 342). Further, the “grammar of diversity is about inclusion” (ibid.).

The language of new pluralism includes an acute form of internet attack and stigma. At the time of publication, the book under discussion was treated to a very hostile and uncivil dismissal by an aggressive American web supporter of Sathya Sai (alleged to be an internet hit man for the SSO). The extremist commentator even implied that Professor Srinivas would be laughed out of Emerson College as a consequence of his remarks.

Various ex-devotees and critics were lacerated in the same “cosmopolitan” document featuring the stridently censoring and non-inclusive language of Pro-Sai activism. See Tulasi Srinivas and the Politics of Religion. Beware all potential victims of the new pluralism.

Viable globalisation will acknowledge valid sources, and in due context, without resort to stigma or libel, and nor the forms of repression found in religious sects and the expanding American web organ Wikipedia, which is prone to influence by pseudonymous editorship of sectarian affiliation.

See further Tulasi Srinivas, Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism through the Sathya Sai Movement (Columbia University Press, 2010).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 7th 2011

ENTRY no. 38

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Al-Hallaj, Sufi Radical

2011-02-01T14:57:00.006Z

The significance of Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (c. 858-922) is rather substantial. This unorthodox Sufi mystic was executed as a heretic in Abbasid Baghdad. His resurrection in literary terms is largely due to the research of the French scholar Louis Massignon (d. 1962), whose multi-volume commemoration is a major work in Islamic studies.

My recent web article on Hallaj was an exercise in summary. The subject is not an easy one, though relevant to the history of religion. Hallaj aroused proletarian support and official censure, his oppressive trial revealing an effort to remove a source of objection to the agenda and ruses of politicians and financiers. The decadent era of the late Abbasid Caliphate was not in the interests of citizens at large, despite the efforts of the “virtuous vizier” Ali ibn Isa to offset corrupt fiscal policy.

Sufficient detail survives to trace the fate of chief opponents of Hallaj. They did not escape the calamitous cycle of violence which had been initiated by that time in political circles. Even the Caliph al-Muqtadir (rgd 908-932) was a loser, eventually falling victim to his commander-in-chief, the veteran Greek soldier Munis al-Khadim.

The drama represented by the life of Hallaj is unique in Sufi annals, covering not merely religious matters, but also social and political dimensions of strong relevance. Yet strangely enough, the subject has often been reduced to a form of acute abbreviation, and even caricature, in medieval Islamic sources and more recent references. Professor Massignon commenced the process of discerning what really happened behind the veils of legend, poetry, hagiology, and conservative hostility. He opted for a “martyr” portrayal, which is confusing in some respects.

Hallaj was born in the Iranian province of Fars, his paternal forbears being Zoroastrians. His grandfather Mahamma remained a Zoroastrian, though his father Mansur converted to Sunni Islam. Mansur was a cotton-carder, a humble vocation which Hallaj is also thought to have practised at times. There was much Iranian artisan activity in early Sufism, including the Baghdad “school” primarily associated with Junayd.

Hallaj received a Sunni education in Arabic at the Iraqi town of Wasit, being trained in the Quran and related matters by Hanbali traditionists. Yet he was not satisfied with the orthodox digest of reference, and gravitated to Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896), who lived at Tustar in the Iranian province of Khuzistan. Sahl was a Sufi commentator on the Quran, and his views were too esoteric for the canonists. Sahl emphasised the conflict between the nafs (lower self) and the qalb (heart), a mystical teaching of some complexity. Hallaj may have acquired from Sahl the belief in a spiritual hierarchy of saints (awliya), which in origin appears to have been pre-Islamic.

After two years, Hallaj apparently separated from Sahl at the time of a major political unrest, namely the Zanj revolt, centred in southern Iraq. Diverse rebels and slaves were opposing Abbasid rule in a violent conflict that caused many deaths, and which spread into Khuzistan. Hallaj moved to Basra, a major urban centre in Iraq, and likewise in the shadow of the Zanj rebellion. There he married the daughter of Abu Yaqub Aqta al-Basri, a disciple of the famous Sufi Junayd (d. 910), who lived at Baghdad. He also became a Sufi convert, adopting the ascetic woollen robe in what appears to have been an initiation by the Arab Sufi and traditionist Amr ibn Uthman al-Makki (d. 903/4), another disciple of Junayd.

Problems occurred. Hallaj and Makki had a disagreement, which resulted in the ostracism of the former as a heretic by the latter. Hallaj separated from formal Sufism, and moved at an independent tangent. He may have encountered Junayd, but did not remain as one of the Baghdad circle (if he was ever a part of it, which some scholars think unlikely). A legend of friction between Junayd and Hallaj subsequently featured in Sufi hagiology. More reliable is the factor of disagreement with Makki, who eventually accepted the prestigious and conventional position as a judge (qadi) at Jeddah (a move that was not favoured by Junayd). Whereas Hallaj became an unorthodox preacher and gnostic.

Reconstructing the teaching of Hallaj is not easy. His output only survives in fragments, and the evocative Kitab al-Tawasin is not comprehensive. Massignon deduced that the subject cultivated a liaison with Iranian literati who were familiar with Greek philosophy, medicine, and alchemy. From them he derived some Greek concepts, expressed in an Arabic (and Islamic) mode. An element of universalism has been discerned in Hallaj. Professor Herbert Mason writes:

“He [Hallaj] was accused by his enemies of dissimulation and opportunism by associating with neo-Hellenists, philosophers, aesthetes, pseudo-mystics, magicians, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Manichaeans, Hindus, Buddhists, the rich and the poor” (Mason, Al-Hallaj, Richmond: Curzon Press,1995, p. 54).

Hallaj was in friction with influential Mutazili theologians, who resisted Sufi concepts, especially the teaching about a hierarchy of saints. Various opponents accused him of charlatanism and sorcery. Makki and some other orthodox Sufis spread the rumour that he had made a magical pact with the jinn (demons), but that is very unconvincing. More likely, his version of (Sunni) Sufism was too radical for the conservatives.

He undertook lengthy journeys, moving as far afield as India and Central Asia. He apparently gained a following amongst the Khalaj Turks, who had become Islamised. At some point, a colony of adherents formed at Talaqan, in the vicinity of Balkh. He may have journeyed as far as Qocho (Ma Sin, near Turfan), a sector in Chinese Turkestan where the Uighur Turks had become Manichaeans. See Universalist Tendency.

His mode of preaching appears to have been curtailed during his earlier years. He was apparently limited to use of the Arabic language, and needed interpreters to communicate with other linguistic audiences, including those speaking Persian dialects. He emerged far more into open profile during his last years at Baghdad.

Hallaj also undertook three pilgrimages to Mecca, all of them distinctive for varied reasons. The first involved a year of ascetic discipline in a secluded courtyard, exposed to sun and rain. Some ten years later, he returned, this time with many disciples; he was favoured by the Meccan authorities but opposed by a group of orthodox Sufis associated with Amr al-Makki. Several years later, his third hajj occurred in 903, lasting for two years; his “farewell address at [Mount] Arafat” was celebrated by Massignon in terms of “the denouement of his final crisis of conscience” (Mason trans., The Passion of Al-Hallaj, abridged edn, Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 14). This event is here viewed as the preparation for his final phase of life at Baghdad, in which he faced official disapproval.

Travelling via Jerusalem to Baghdad in 905, he there resided with other émigrés, associates from Tustar. In the Tustari quarter, Hallaj built an enclosure containing a miniature Ka’ba, the cube-like shrine at Mecca. His purpose was evidently to mediate the hajj (pilgrimage) to his own community. Many mawali (non-Arab converts to Islam) were not able to make the dangerous journey to Mecca. Indeed, “access to the holy cities [of Arabia] was not completely guaranteed to the Iraqi pilgrims by the Banu Asad and Banu Shayban patrols” (ibid., p. 53).

The audience for his unusual preaching at Baghdad was substantially Arab, meaning ex-Bedouins who had fled from famine and poverty. His sympathy with distressed elements of the population was accompanied by mystical allusions (which his son Hamd did not fully understand). In addition to the proletarian factor, there were also upper class contacts; Hallaj was regarded as a saint by a number of dignitaries, including state secretaries. He effectively represented reform, though he was not a militant preacher. Yet change and public discontent were resisted by some influential politicians and bankers.

Hallaj was implicated as a sympathiser with Sunni reformist agitation. He left Baghdad and went into hiding at Sus. After three years he was located and brought back to Baghdad. His persecutors wished to have him condemned as a heretic, but their plan was foiled by the new wazir (chief minister) Ali ibn Isa. However, the opposition was such that he was confined in the palace of the Caliph al-Muqtadir, while the struggle between his supporters and opponents continued. This was the situation during 913-22.

A major opponent was the wazir Hamid ibn al-Abbas, a wealthy landowner, tax farmer, and palace banker. He had hundreds of slaves, and gained a reputation for drunkenness. Hamid was in friction with the prudent minister Ali ibn Isa, and hated Hallaj. Hamid was at the centre of the notorious court plot that ruthlessly provoked a famine, private gain being the objective. The cost of bread rose acutely, and a public riot occurred in 921. The rioting tradesmen would have included Arabs, Iraqis, and Iranian mawali.

Hamid gained the upper hand, having Hallaj imprisoned with the approval of the fickle Caliph al-Muqtadir, after an obscure book of Hallaj was indicted on grounds of blasphemy. The Hanbali proletarian supporters of Hallaj demonstrated against Hamid in the streets of Baghdad, but the ruthless wazir had their leader killed. The courageous Ibn Ata (a Sufi) had his skull smashed by the brutal guards of Hamid.

The dubious trial of Hallaj was reopened, and he was condemned to death as a heretic on the basis of flimsy accusations. “One report conveys that the pretext for condemnation was a passage in his writings that advocated the construction of replicas of the Ka’ba for those unable to travel to Mecca” (Shepherd, Trial and Execution). The Caliph was persuaded to endorse the death sentence.

Hallaj was cruelly executed, a symptom of the corrupt Abbasid court run by manic commercial interests. He was mercilessly flogged, and then suffered intercission, meaning that his hands and feet were cut off. Hamid callously delayed the execution, which was decapitation.

Two years later, Hamid was killed by a crowd of resentful citizens whom he had abused. Perhaps his abject slaves rejoiced. Yet behind the Sunni politician Hamid was a group of Shi’ite bankers and intriguers involved in career gains at the public expense. Not all the persecutors escaped unscathed, including the fabulously wealthy Caliph, whose empire collapsed. See Aftermath.

The memory of Hallaj lived on in diverse formats; he was a unique “universalist” (and radical Sufi) of his time, with a courage (like that of Ibn Ata) to stand against the corrupt ruling classes and their regime of oppression and torture. The current Wikipedia article on the subject exhibits hagiology and reductionism, missing the point.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 1st 2011

ENTRY no. 37

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Climate Change Problems

2011-01-07T22:35:00.011Z

Misconceptions about the subject of climate change still abound, frequently assisted by the corporate lobby denialists, confused journalists, and also too many evasive politicians. See further my Climate Change Complexities.

Several years ago, an acquaintance of mine happened to encounter an American executive in the oil industry. When challenged about global warming, this executive conceded that the climate was altering, but said he did not believe that human activity was the cause. Moreover, he could not see any reason for oil companies to change their policy, and instead investigate alternative energy sources, while such profits were to be made from oil production. When confronted about melting polar ice caps, the executive stated that oil companies were pleased about the Arctic ice cap receding; his own company could now drive drilling equipment straight into the rock without having to remove the ice layer. There was no expression of conscience about the repercussions of this exploitation.

Of course, warming in Greenland and adjacent regions can mean a reverse in weather conditions elsewhere, as weather experts have indicated. Then again, a very cold winter can be followed by a very hot summer, as was demonstrated by nature in 2010. The oil companies have inaugurated the climate of weather extremes, and nothing else matters to them but their accumulating wealth and sales drive.

The ever more costly fuel is purchased by compliant consumers who race at breakneck speeds in corroding metal frames poised on wearing rubber tyres. They can often be seen holding mobile phones close to their ear as they drive around in their technological chariots. Too many of them play extremely loud music on car radios that defy normal standards of public nuisance. The British police have given unheeded warnings that the combination of car radios and mobile phones is deadly, being the root cause of many accidents on congested roads where almost everyone drives too fast.

There is now a new industry for the consumer. Many writers on ecology are tending to favour various forms of “green” merchandise which supposedly create utopia. Like the “eco houses” of the Findhorn Foundation, everything has a price in the new age of eco-fantasy. The more affluent the client, the more he or she might have to pay the entrepreneurs. Furthermore, like other houses, the “eco” variety can be resold for a profit. I have critically referred to this scenario as ecobiz, dating back to my book Pointed Observations (2005); see the index p. 415. (The word Ecobiz has been used in a more glorifying sense by industry and business concerns.)

The current situation can be deceptive. George Monbiot has reminded that “a powerful counter-movement, led by corporate-funded thinktanks, has waged war on green policies.” Another impediment is the new wave of green business consultants, who have invented such beliefs as “we will save the biosphere by adopting nuclear energy, GM crops and geoengineering.” See Channel 4's convenient green fictions.

Other problems are comprised by misleading journalism, which has shown an alarming ability to misread and distort environmental issues. A British daily recently hosted a diversion which the more responsible George Monbiot has also duly addressed. The misinformation extends to the subject of water vapour, alleging that cyclical changes in vapour may account for much global warming in the twentieth century.

Scientific analysis has described this construction as a classic denialist argument created in the early 1990s, though one dispelled years ago by a NASA satellite measuring water vapour. The changes caused by accumulation of carbon dioxide are the root cause of water vapour feedback. Water vapour is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but does not increase or change unless carbon dioxide precipitates the damaging atmospheric processes. Warming from CO2 emissions causes more water to evaporate from the oceans and collect in the atmosphere, thus producing an even larger scale of warming.

The same erring media source asserted that the Met Office website showed how global temperatures have been flat for the past fifteen years. Monbiot observes in contradiction that “all the datasets, including the Met Office/CRU figures show that the current decade is the warmest in the instrumental record.”

It is evident that too many media reports about climate change cannot be trusted. The yardsticks employed are too often those of corporate business and complacent high salary politics. Not to mention sheer incompetence. In view of the extensive scale of the climate problems, the current civilisation can easily be regarded as the worst one in history; whatever the glaring flaws in former epochs and societies, none of them could achieve anywhere near the damage provided by contemporary feats of manic corporate capitalism and the “march of progress.”

On the controversial subject of nuclear power, Greenpeace states: “Despite what the nuclear industry tells us, building enough nuclear power stations to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars, create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste, contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, and result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade.”

In America, the current situation is gloomy for scientific findings. According to environmentalist Rick Piltz, “during the past two years the global warming denial machine has launched a nihilistic, take-no-prisoners war on climate science and climate scientists that makes Bush officials seem tactically subtle and rhetorically nuanced in comparison.”

Science journal reported the debacle (R.A. Kerr and E. Kintisch,“Climatologists Feel the Heat as Science Meets Politics,” 17/12/2010). In 2000, George W. Bush pledged to regulate CO2, but when he became President, he refused to sign the crucial Kyoto Protocol which 187 countries had ratified three years before. The Bush Administration became notorious for downplaying and evading the actual and potential effects of climate change, but did not mount overt attacks on climate scientists. The recent Republican revolt against climate science is far more extremist.

Rick Piltz adds, “what we face today also includes members of Congress and other politicians, plus an army of lobbyists and political and propaganda operatives, who are essentially acting as agents for corporate interests and right-wing anti-regulatory radicalism.”

There is the further warning from Piltz that “the [American] blogosphere is awash in science-ignorant attack dogs who appear to take lessons from thugs.”

It should be well known that America and China are not the only vandals in terms of carbon dioxide pollution. The new threat from Canada, formerly a minor factor, has created alarm. Some details are relevant to mention here.

Canada needed to cut CO2 emissions only 6% by 2012. Instead the Canadian emissions rose over 25% by 2010. This setback was caused by big business exploitation in Alberta. Mining the tar sands can politely be called an eco disaster. The tar sands have to be extensively refined to produce crude oil, and the general mess is one more major strike at nature and non-corporate humanity. The many adverse consequences include “mutated fish, poisoned food, and unusual diseases.” That does not mean anything to the relentless purses pocketing the profits. Several of the world’s biggest oil corporations are reported to be involved, including Shell, Exxon, Total, and BP.

British university students have conveyed due information online, as part of their very commendable project People and Planet. The future of their generation stands to suffer from the consequences of denialism and surfeit capitalism.

Ecological sanity is currently severely offset by corporate greed. By the time that due public education is created, it may be too late, if it is not already so even now, as some ecologists do strongly imply. Yet realism is not the stuff of the ailing international consumer society, which instead substitutes distractions at every turn.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 7th 2011

ENTRY no. 36

Copyright © 2011 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Ramana Maharshi

2010-12-24T19:28:00.013Z

A version of Advaita Vedanta was taught by Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), who achieved fame in the West via British commentators. He was subsequently assimilated to some controversial American versions of Nondualism, today a rather casual word which is too seldom convincing. The Western “neo-Advaita” has aroused scepticism.

Ramana was the son of a brahman (a member of the Hindu priestly caste) who worked as a lawyer at Tiruchuzi, a village in the Tamil sector of South India. His real name was Venkataraman Iyer. While still a teenager, in 1896 he underwent an “awakening” experience. The current Wikipedia article on the subject describes this event in terms of “liberation” (meaning moksha).

“Later followers subsequently rationalised this event as a sadhana [spiritual discipline] which lasted half an hour and was completed on the spot. They wanted to believe that he had gained the ultimate realisation known as sahaja samadhi in this brief period of awakening, though he himself did not say that” (Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, p. 153).

Ramana retrospectively referred to his “absorption in the Self [atman].” There is the complexity that he also described his “awakening” in terms of possession, apparently his early reaction to the experience, and relayed to his first biographer B. V. Narasimhaswami (David Godman, Life and Teaching).

The “awakening” occurred at Madurai, where Ramana was in the habit of visiting the Meenakshi temple, associated with Shiva-bhakti and the sixty-three Shaiva Tamil saints of the nayanmar tradition. He had read a book (the Periya Puranam) on those saints which inspired him. In his later life, he acknowledged the significance of bhakti (love, aspiration), which is something quite different to the Advaita doctrines. Indeed, his own report states of his continuing visits to the Meenakshi temple (after his awakening) that he would sometimes pray for the descent of divine grace “so that my devotion [bhakti] might increase and become perpetual like that of the sixty-three saints” (Arthur Osborne, Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self-Knowledge, London: Rider, 1954, p. 23).

In 1896 he left home and school, journeying to the town of Tiruvannamalai, there staying in temple precincts and subject to an indrawn state. He eventually settled at nearby Arunachala Hill, strongly associated with the deity Shiva. His “pre-ashram” sojourn in caves on that hill was lengthy, dating from 1898 to 1922.

The basic feature of that early period is one of acute introspection. He was no longer a brahman, having jettisoned the sacred thread that signified caste status. He was now an ascetic sadhu and wore a loin-cloth, not the ochre robe of Vedantic renunciates. Ramana was not an official Vedantin or sannyasin. Devoted attendants saw to his simple needs and protected him from intrusions, diverting unwanted sightseers who thronged the pilgrim locale of Arunachala. At first, his introspection was so acute that food had to be pressed into his mouth in order to keep him alive. Afterwards, he is reported to have accepted only a single cup of food daily, and he was accordingly emaciated.

Ramana required an attendant for survival purposes, and for years (until circa 1906) would not speak to visitors. He is reported to have lost his ability to speak normally until that juncture. A different kind of problem was jealous sadhus, local holy men who resented his increasing fame.

A visiting group of sadhus expressed the extremist belief that their own distant sacred hill was home to a rishi who had been practising austerities for thousands of years, and who had told them to abduct Ramana for initiation, after dramatically preparing him for the attainment of occult powers or siddhis. “Whether hemp addicts or alcoholics (or both), they evidently entertained some of the more fantastic and predatory ideas associated with Tantric Yoga” (Shepherd, op. cit., p. 155). Ramana is reported to have made no response to these visitors; he never expressed esteem for siddhis, which are an unhealthy preoccupation.

Ramana was reputed to be in samadhi, a word signifying spiritual absorption, and comprising a diffuse blanket term in popular usage. The basic event discernible is that he emerged from this absorption over a lengthy period, gradually normalising in his response to the outside world (though retaining his spiritual awareness according to his own account). “At some obscure date he began to walk about the hill instead of sitting motionless” (ibid., p. 154). He would refer to himself as a jnani (knower, gnostic), not as a yogi, and warned about the pursuit of siddhis. He was averse to yogic exercises, which he evidently viewed as a complication.

In 1922 he moved down to the foot of Arunachala Hill, taking up residence at the site which became known as Ramanashram. By 1926 the increasing crowd of visitors and devotees was sufficiently large to hinder his customary daily walk around the hill, which thereafter ceased, apparently because nobody wanted to stay behind at the ashram without him.

The concession to public spotlight was accompanied by some unusual characteristics. Ramana retained a very simple lifestyle. He did not refuse visitors, though he could seem indifferent in company, and his statements tended to brevity; he seems to have modified his jnani emphases if he considered that the audience was uncomprehending. He did not fit the customary ideas and expectations about holy men. He was notably averse to giving initiations, which were an accepted part of the popular Hindu spirituality.

Furthermore, Ramana was often requested by admirers for permission to adopt the life of renunciation. Yet he generally opposed this desire, a persistent trait which caused puzzlement. According to him, the effort needed was internal, and nothing to do with the formal vow of sannyas (renunciation). He evidently regarded many of the renunciates as rather distracting sources of misinformation, a point not always emphasised by commentators.

“He stressed the discipline of vichara (self-inquiry), which he advocated to many visitors in the spirit of Advaita [Nondualism]. He disliked the stale expositions of Vedanta associated with pundits, and he is interesting because he was completely independent of organisations like the Shankara Order” (ibid., p. 157).

Vichara has been described as an innovative feature of his communications, and relating to the “realisation of the Self,” a Vedantic theme open to abuse and facile interpretation. The protractedly introverted and normalising “realisation” of Ramana affords a contrast to the glib assumptions of achieving “Nondualism” and “Self-realisation” that are frequently encountered in both India and the West, and which can give this subject a low rating in the eyes of critics.

The rather lop-sided view of Ramana as an abstracted contemplative has been corrected by partisan writer David Godman. Ramana industriously prepared food at his ashram for about 15 years, and also closely supervised building work during the 1930s. He was evidently not too keen about having to sit in the audience (darshan) hall where he received all visitors; he often referred to that hall as his prison.

Although an unusual teacher (and one who did not describe himself as a guru), Ramana was not venturesome in the area of social reform. According to a well known partisan commentator, he “did not disapprove of orthodoxy in general” (Osborne, op. cit., p. 77). Ramana certainly did not condemn caste norms, which were reflected to some extent in the emerging ashram management run on conservative lines, and headed by his brother, a renunciate who wore the ochre robe. The increasing number of visitors during the 1940s imposed changes, including the building of a new and more imposing audience hall to which the sage was averse.

“A brahman code prevailed in the kitchens, where only brahmans could prepare the food” (Shepherd, op. cit., p. 156). However, free food was dispensed to sadhus and the poor on a daily basis. The formalism of management officials is reported to have been resented by visiting devotees, and there was even a request that the management be removed (Osborne, op. cit., p. 120).

The ashram dining hall was partitioned, the orthodox brahmans sitting to one side, while on the other side sat the lower castes, non-Hindus, and liberal brahmans. “Sri Bhagavan [Ramana] says nothing to induce Brahmins either to retain or discard their orthodoxy” (ibid., p. 133), though “he often turned a blind eye when devotees violated caste rules”(Godman, Bhagavan the Atiasrami). Nevertheless, his apolitical worldview basically means that “he had no opinions on these scripted events [occurring in the world], and no desire to change their course” (Godman, Bhagavan and Politics).

In some of his statements, Ramana appeared to endorse the political career of his contrasting contemporary Mahatma Gandhi (ibid.), though these two never met. Untouchables (harijans) were not allowed into Hindu temples at that period, including the strongly resistant Shiva temple at Tiruvannamalai.

After his death, the belief developed amongst devotees that Ramana Maharshi “guides whoever approaches him” (Osborne, op.cit., p. 194). Such beliefs in posthumous guidance are also found in relation to other deceased Indian saints like Sai Baba of Shirdi .

See also A. Osborne, ed., The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in his Own Words (1962); Osborne, ed., Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi (1972); David Godman, ed., Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi (1985); Talks with Ramana Maharshi (2000); Gabriele Ebert, Ramana Maharshi: His Life, trans. V. Ward (2006).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
December 24th 2010

ENTRY no. 35

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

American Guru

2010-10-30T14:12:00.006+01:00

A recent disillusioned book concerning the American guru figure Andrew Cohen (left) is difficult to ignore in any assessment of the subject. American author William Yenner (right) states: “No one knowingly joins a cult. I spent more than thirteen years following the American guru Andrew Cohen” (Yenner, American Guru, New York: Epigraph, 2009, p. 1). This vocation ended in a sense of “forced enlistment in the service of an individual bent on total control” (ibid.).

Yenner is not the only witness here. The sub-title of his revealing book includes the phrase “former students of Andrew Cohen speak out.” The diverse contributors are clearly dissidents from former beliefs. Cohen’s website states that he founded EnlightenNext in 1988, “a nonprofit educational and spiritual organisation dedicated to pushing the edge of progressive culture” (ibid., p. 6). To critics, the word “progressive” is one of the most suspicious words in the American (and English) language. That word has been in extensive usage since the early 1970s, but still fails to convince.

The dissident book relates that Cohen consulted a lawyer to impose a five year gag order on Yenner, when the latter demanded repayment of a large donation (ibid., p. 7). So why the desperate measure of a gag? Yenner divulges that the curtailed information was “my own firsthand experience of operating, managing and leading his [Cohen’s] organisation” (ibid.).

The dissidents from EnlightenNext are reported to be the invariable target of Cohen’s verdict that “they’re losers, turning their backs on the holy life” (ibid., p. 8). What was the holy life? In Yenner’s case, he found that, for example, “unbelievable as it is to me now, I put all my energy into fabricating a harshly worded demand letter... from a fictitious creditor – including a complete series of false documents on bank letterhead and stationery and a toll-free phone number for inquiries” (ibid., p. 9). However, this is described as a “relatively minor” incident in the record of Cohen excesses. In particular, Yenner draws attention to “Cohen’s pervasive demonization and abuse of those students who dare to disobey, contradict or leave him” (ibid., p. 10).

Andrew Cohen’s employment of the “guilt-inducing tactic” is implied as an intimidation for dissidents who chose to remain silent. Yet the cordon could not prevent the appearance of well known dissident books, including one by Cohen’s own mother Luna Tarlo and entitled The Mother of God (1997). See also Andre van der Braak, Enlightenment Blues (2003). Further, in 2004 dissident blog posts commenced at whatenlightenment.net, describing instances of serious abuse that were being suppressed by EnlightenNext.

Meanwhile, Cohen had inaugurated a surprisingly influential magazine called What is Enlightenment? Ken Wilber, the exponent of integral spirituality, became a standard feature in the controversial “guru and pundit” dialogues. Cohen was here the guru, and Wilber the pundit. Partisans extolled the dialogues as great wisdom, though critics were strongly resistant. See Wilber and Cohen.

Yenner eventually found that, in 2008, Cohen instigated “a comprehensive denial of well-known events in his community that dozens of his students had witnessed or actually participated in – including the fact that he’d had me sign the abovementioned contractual gag order” (American Guru, p. 14). This measure was undertaken in order to prevent an article by a journalist (ibid., pp. 124ff.).

Twenty years earlier, Yenner had first learned of Cohen; in 1988, he heard a glowing story of how Cohen had gained enlightenment in 1986 at the hands of the rather obscure guru H.W.L. Poonja, who claimed to have been enlightened by the deceased Ramana Maharshi (d. 1950). Cohen’s mother expressed surprise that her son was considered transformed after only two and a half weeks of instruction (Tarlo, The Mother of God, p. 80). Andrew Cohen had thereafter spent two years teaching in England and Israel, returning to America having gained over a hundred students (Yenner, p. 18).

Yenner quickly became a devoted follower, attracted by the Advaita Vedanta teachings that Cohen used in his discourses. Those teachings are open to fluent duplication and distortion. There transpired to be no comparison with the example of Ramana Maharshi. Cohen’s community then numbered “approximately 130 people” (ibid., p. 20), and an increasing authoritarian policy emerged, with a proliferating code of punishments for supposed transgressions. Cohen became notorious for verbal lacerations of his students. Yenner now writes that, “of 130 of Andrew Cohen’s original students, 123 have left him, and Cohen has vilified almost all of them for having done so” (ibid., p. 63).

Yenner became business manager and one of the Board of Directors at the Foxhollow estate in Massachusetts, the h/q of EnlightenNext. He was the only student to gain the privilege of living in Cohen’s house (apart from the latter’s wife). Entrance fees and donations became a hallmark feature of the proceedings, along with the confrontational severity. “Andrew referred to his updated version of ‘crazy wisdom’ - a teaching modality with centuries-old roots in some Eastern spiritual traditions – as ‘Acts of Outrageous Integrity’ ” (ibid., pp. 29-30). Other analysts consider American crazy wisdom to be an improvised attribute of extremists like Chogyam Trungpa and Adi Da Samraj, connoting a fashion in aborted mysticism.

Face-slapping and name-calling became routine at Foxhollow, and with bizarre punlishments for those who disobeyed the purportedly enlightened American guru. One female victim had four buckets of paint poured over her head by ministrants of the guru’s displeasure. “She left the property traumatised and fell ill” (ibid., p. 33), being further harassed by accusing phone calls at the guru’s instigation.

In the mid 1990s, Cohen encouraged donations to atone for mistakes. “Andrew now began attaching price tags to his forgiveness for perceived wrongs” (ibid., p. 43). The ambitions of EnlightenNext required constant funding. The extraction of donations has been described in terms of “financial exploitation” (ibid.).The coerced donations could vary from small amounts to 80,000 dollars. Yenner was a donor at this extortionate rate, which he later regretted. After leaving the Foxhollow community in 2001, he commenced legal proceedings, and did manage to retrieve his donation, which he describes as an unprecedented event (ibid., p. 48). However, the attached gag order meant that he could not openly discuss Cohen community problems for five years, a period ending in 2008. These events came in the wake of his partisan efforts in which Yenner, for example, “began each day at 3 a.m. with a three-hour practice of one thousand prostrations before a photograph of Andrew” (ibid., p. 53).

The book by Yenner includes chapters about female students. Cohen is here revealed as being very harsh towards that contingent, one of whom wrote after leaving Foxhollow in 1998 that: “I was in a state of deep traumatic stress for months afterwards; I would wake up every night in terror, with panic attacks and thoughts of suicide” (ibid., p. 76). The same victim states: “we attempted to pay for our ‘sins’ by contributing money to buy expensive clothes and floral bouquets for Andrew, which had for years been the standard way to buy forgiveness” (ibid., p. 75). An even more discrepant episode is recounted of an elderly woman, who after being bullied on the telephone in 1999 by a shouting male student, “died with a broken heart and in a state of absolute inner terror and anguish” (ibid., p. 84).

Another ex-student, Andre van der Braak, suggested that Cohen was projecting his anger towards his mother in situations adverse to the female students (Enlightenment Blues, p. 162ff.). Certainly, the rift between Cohen and his mother Luna Tarlo has been considered significant. In 2008, a representative of EnlightenNext claimed on Cohen’s behalf that Tarlo had admitted to having “fictionalized aspects of her book for dramatic effect” (Yenner, pp. 109, 133). The following year, Yenner interviewed Tarlo, who denied the claim of the Cohen camp, and said that she was prepared to go to court with her notebooks to defend the accuracy of her book (ibid., p. 110). Tarlo also said here that her son was “responsible for destroying people” and for “damaging people” (ibid., p. 117); she implicated the Indian guru Poonja in the train of errors.

William Yenner concludes that Andrew Cohen’s version of perennial wisdom “rests on a foundation of dishonesty, corruption and pernicious abuse of power” (p. 149). Yenner also queries the position of celebrities who have endorsed Cohen, including Ken Wilber, Rupert Sheldrake, and Deepak Chopra. The sector of “alternative thought” is clearly a deceptive prospect.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
October 30th 2010

ENTRY no. 34

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

The Cult Problem

2010-10-24T23:30:00.006+01:00

In an earlier blog item Pseudomysticism and Cults (entry no. 14), I reflected on some recent events that are causing widespread concern. The subject of “cults” has invited some attention from sociologists. The associated subject of the proclaimed “spiritual teachers” has likewise been pressing. In my view, philosophy should also attend to these matters, and indeed to an extent that would emphasise a gap in the existing academic curricula.

Of course, the phenomenon of cults has been attended by different arguments, for example, some Christian fundamentalists in America have railed against virtually any deviation from their own doctrine, implying the competitors to be “cults.” So we have to be careful in applying the evocative term of “cult” to any grouping or organisation unless there is strong reason to do so. The stigmatised “cult” might merely be an inoffensive or eccentric religious sect or movement with no record of bad behaviour, and no strong allegations to that effect being in evidence.

Suspect organisations are an intermediate category. These groupings may not be in any bracket of religious affiliation or sectarian identity. Yet they may operate in ways that arouse suspicion as to their validity, and as to the nature of their professed abilities. One example of this is the Findhorn Foundation, linked to the UN and advertising their claims of a spiritual education alongside an ecovillage facility and CIFAL status. Unfortunately, their long-term treatment of dissidents does not encourage unqualified acceptance of the promotionalism. Even known membership details of a major stigmatised victim have very recently been denied by the management tactics. See Denial of Membership (2010) and entry no. 32.

Certain Indian gurus, some of them deceased, have become the focus of allegations and controversies. Swami Muktananda, Sathya Sai Baba, and Sri Chinmoy are by no means an exhaustive listing in that respect.

Yet some Western gurus or “spiritual teachers” have been another subject of grievance with disaffected followers who emphasise discrepancies and abuse. Some say that this phenomenon is of more immediate relevance in Western countries. In particular, the names of two Americans are becoming well known: Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008) and Andrew Cohen. The exotic name of Adi Da is just one of the titles assumed by Franklin Jones, alias Da Free John. He claimed a unique spiritual status, though his role has been strongly repudiated by disillusioned followers. See further Adi Da Archives, which is a critical presentation of relevant data. Such information is there given as:

“Adi Da was considered a controversial figure due to persistent accusations that he was having sex with large numbers of devotees, drinking obsessively, abusing drugs, engaging in incidents of violence against women, and financially exploiting his followers. He rationalised all this as his way of teaching people, claiming his behaviour was selfless service designed to quicken the spiritual development of devotees by reflecting their own tendencies back to them....

“The inner circle was perhaps the most critical piece of infrastructure Adi Da developed to enable his decades-long pursuit of every kind of fulfilment for himself at the expense of others....The inner circle’s mission, amongst other things, was to hide what they could of Adi Da’s indulgent personal life, abusive treatment of others, and psychological issues. What they couldn’t hide, they explained away as his method of spiritual teaching, tantric practice, or ‘crazy wisdom.’ ”

The problem of “crazy wisdom” and other extremist attitudes is sufficient to merit close investigation. Incredulous critics often ask how the victims could ever become involved with predatory figures who cause such disillusionment. The fact is that such involvement has been occurring extensively since the 1970s. Obviously, the mechanism of deception requires attention, a drawback being that this can be kaleidoscopic in the range of manifestations achieved.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
October 24th 2010

ENTRY no. 33

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Findhorn Foundation

2010-09-20T20:55:00.007+01:00

The major centre for “alternative thought” in Britain is the Findhorn Foundation, located in Moray, north Scotland. Commencing on a caravan site in 1962, the Foundation is now an NGO, with an extension in CIFAL auspices, this addition denoting a role in the UN ecology programme. See CIFAL Findhorn and Critique of CIFAL Findhorn.

The Foundation has made several basic claims over the years, including that of dispensing a spiritual education. One of the numerous phrases in use after 2000 has been “a centre of spiritual service in co-creation with nature.” Critics have objected to the rather extravagant wordings. The phrase “personal and spiritual transformation” has also been in favour, a theme that is common in the alternative sector. Amongst the commercial promotions is “The Game of Transformation,” a novelty commencing in 1978, and for which the participant charges have been high. An additional detail is that a million decks of “Angel Cards” were sold by 2003.

By the year 2000, the Ecovillage project was underway, with much deference paid to the concept of sustainability (which was also sold in “workshops”).The factor of ecology (in the non-commercial sense) is not in dispute with critics, at least in my own case. See Ecology: Club of Rome theme (2008) and Autobiographical (2010). [See also Climate Change Complexities, 2010.] Rather, it is the general ideological context of the Foundation, onto which the ecology interest was grafted, that remains the focus of disagreement. See Myth and Reality (2007). The influential “Experience Week,” carrying noticeable price tags, has for long comprised the introduction for beginners, encouraging interest in commercial workshops also provided by the annual programme. The affluent international clientele has numbered many Americans and Germans, though other nationalities are also represented.

Over many years, the Foundation promotional literature and online extension has evidenced a strong commercial component in what are known as “workshops.” See the ongoing Foundation programme at www.findhorn.org, and compare my Findhorn Foundation Commercial Mysticism (2008). These workshop activities attested the strong influence of the Esalen model from the 1970s onwards. The concepts involved were largely in the field of alternative therapy, generally imported from America. The major manifestation of that trend occurred with the instance of Holotropic Breathwork (HB), a creation of Stanislav Grof during his Esalen phase (1973-1987). See Grof therapy and MAPS (2007).

HB workshops were conducted at the Foundation during the years 1989-1993, and under the auspices of Grof Transpersonal Training Inc. Despite the glorifying promotionalism, some paying clients experienced mishaps and problems that were suppressed. HB therapy was administered in the belief that spiritual benefits were occurring. HB workshops featured prolonged hyperventilation, to the accompaniment of “bodywork” and music. A common response of participants was screaming; there were also various other extreme manifestations of behaviour, such as vomiting and trauma.

Grof lore was not questioned by the Foundation personnel who sponsored the commercial workshops. Complaints of victims and local critics were viewed as a threat to the proclaimed Foundation mandate of being a “planetary village” and a leader in “raising consciousness.”

The Foundation management were obliged to suspend the HB workshops after five years of this activity. The Scottish Charities Office made a recommendation to that effect, after commissioning a professional report from the Pathology Department of Edinburgh University. The report gave warning in medical terms about the hazardous nature of the controversial HB activity.

No error was acknowledged by the Foundation staff. Instead, they censored and stigmatised a local British dissident who had legitimately complained at the discrepancies in clear evidence. That dissident was my mother, and so I am well acquainted with the relevant details. See my web articles Criticism of New Age (2008) and Kate Thomas and the Findhorn Foundation (2010). See also Letter of Kate Thomas to UNESCO (2007).

In 1996, a book was published locally (in Forres) that documented the fate of several dissidents. The Foundation responded by suppressing the book to a notable degree. Staff members ignored the contents, and in 2002 the prohibited work was declared on the web as being not worthy of a review. The Foundation management instigated this questionable development, and in the face of favourable reviews appearing in more responsible quarters (including ICSA). The book was entitled Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation, and the British author was ex-member Stephen J. Castro. Amongst other matters, Castro documented the problematic phase of Holotropic Breathwork, which was conveniently forgotten by the management. See further Findhorn Foundation: Problems (2009).

The alternative philosophy of the Findhorn Foundation was superficial in the estimation of critics, despite the elaborate partisan attempts to portray all criticism as being a purely subjective matter, a projection of the critic’s own mind. Alternative therapy ignored criticism and dissidents, and instead gave lip service to the meaningless theme of “conflict resolution.”

Observers noticed that for many years the American “channelled” book known as A Course in Miracles was conspicuous in the activities of Cluny Hill College, the Foundation therapy centre in Forres. A major sentiment was forgiveness, which never applied to dissidents. Unconditional love was another of the unconvincing themes in circulation.

The more literate subscribers to this curriculum were known to read books by Ken Wilber, Stanislav Grof, and Fritjof Capra. The general partisan consumption was fed with numerous fads and doubtful menus varying from Aleister Crowley magic to the discourses of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Foundation bookshop was criticised by a female dissident who was not permitted to gain any democratic hearing.

The Findhorn Foundation College arose from the decline of Cluny Hill College, which suffered diverse vicissitudes at the time of severe economic debts incurred by the Foundation in the late 1990s. The experiment known as FCIE (Findhorn College of International Education) was disastrous, quickly terminating after enrolled American students rebelled at the curriculum in 1996.

In recent years, the Findhorn Foundation College has shown a tendency to modify some of the “holistic” emphases in terms of an advertised “academic” ballast. An operative phrase is now “integrating academic and experiential learning.” Critical analysts have concluded that the presumed “spiritual education” still encounters difficulties in professedly holistic demonstrations.

The major female dissident eventually commenced a solicitor confrontation with the Foundation in 2008. This episode has been documented online. The responses of the Foundation management have been widely considered to be deficient, and to an extreme degree. See my Letter to Robert Walter MP (2008). The management even attempted to deny the membership record of the dissident (Jean Shepherd, alias Kate Thomas), a ruse which was unsuccessful. See Denial of Membership (2010). Alternative “spiritual” education remains a suspect factor.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
September 20th 2010

ENTRY no. 32

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Integral Studies

2010-09-09T21:27:00.009+01:00

The subject of integral studies is associated with the Indian mystic Aurobindo Ghose (entry no. 30), though substantially developed and elaborated by American enthusiasts. The conception of integralism originated in Aurobindo’s theme of “Integral Yoga,” which was favoured at Esalen. The concept was subsequently adopted, though with various innovations, by exponents of transpersonal psychology.

Haridas Chaudhuri (1913-1975) was a Bengali disciple of Aurobindo who became active and influential in America. He helped to establish the American Academy of Asian Studies, an alternative enterprise whose students included the two subsequent co-founders of the Esalen Institute (namely Michael Murphy and Richard Price).

In later years, Chaudhuri created the California Institute of Asian Studies, still strongly linked to Aurobindo teaching. After his death, in 1980 the name of that organisation was changed to the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), an alteration stated to signify the emerging globalism of outlook and a more extensive East-West synthesis. CIIS is based in San Francisco, and is a private institution, including what is known as the School of Consciousness and Transformation.

CIIS advertises academic programmes and dispenses degrees that include the PhD and MA. There are also public programmes which feature a wide array of “workshops,” the activities including yoga and “self-discovery and healing.” In addition, an activity in therapy here encompasses what is called Integral Counselling.

Despite the promotionalism, criticisms have been lodged. Sceptics say that the “new age” orientation of CIIS is demonstrated by emphases on transformation, therapy, workshop activity, and other dimensions of the project. Further, an online Open Letter makes the accusation: “It appears that at CIIS, faculty simply put on academic rank and titles similar to kindergartners donning academic regalia, with no need for actual promotion processes or scholarly achievement.”

Probably the two most famous names to date on the CIIS faculty are Stanislav Grof and Richard Tarnas. Dr. Grof (image above) is known for his controversial holotropic theories and “cartography of the human psyche,” based upon his activities in LSD psychotherapy. See Grof, Psychology of the Future (2000). Cf. Grof Therapy and MAPS (2007). Professor Tarnas is known for his book The Passion of the Western Mind (1991), and his more recent emphasis on astrology in Cosmos and Psyche (2006). Cf. my web article Psychology, Richard Tarnas, and Holistic Confusion.

The content of an East-West synthesis is in question. In some respects at least, CIIS has adapted the popular Esalen model of “transformation” in an academic format. That model misses out too much of the Western heritage, and has also bypassed Eastern philosophy to a substantial extent.

I have been asked what my own position is with regard to integral studies, in view of my citizen project of private research at Cambridge University Library (CUL) commencing in 1981. I will accordingly make some observations here.

My concept of intercultural and interdisciplinary study does not extend to “workshops” and therapy, which have been known to create serious confusion in the public mind, and even amongst academics. My citizen version of (interdisciplinary) anthropography, in the preliminary presentation Meaning in Anthropos (1991), adhered to annotation procedures of research and commentary, and did not feature the distractions.

In some respects, I am allergic to words like transformation. Such words were incessant catchphrases at the Findhorn Foundation during the 1990s. As a neighbouring outsider to that organisation (living in Forres), I had the long-term opportunity to observe how the Foundation therapists and “focalisers” maintained the stigma and suppression of my mother. See Kate Thomas and the Findhorn Foundation. They entertained presumptions to numerous abilities, such as holistic expertise, counselling, conflict resolution, love in action, unconditional love, the alchemy of peace, feminism and rights for contemporary women, attunement, empowerment, forgiveness, and the game of transformation. All this merely comprised the facade for commercial roles and delusions of grandeur.

Aurobindo can be absolved of any responsibility for the transmission of American counselling and transformation pretensions to Britain. Even during the 1980s, there was very little of his teaching visible in the entrepreneurial industry catering for a new age clientele. Integral Yoga was of limited usage for any commercial operation, though Aurobindo themes for long remained a preferred jargon in some transpersonal circles. A complication is that “he made an unfortunate prediction in The Life Divine about ‘a race of gnostic spiritual beings.’ ” See Aurobindo and Esalen (2008). The prediction confused Esalen “new spirituality.” See also Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, pp. 159-60.

One of the Esalen founders (Richard Price) discovered that the permissive ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was far more ominous than he had been led to believe. This was in the late 1970s, when Esalen had become the breeding ground for so many fads and crazes. NeoReichian therapies could cause physical injuries, even while the deceptive presiding message was one of liberation and transformation. “Price himself is said to have suffered a broken arm while being locked up for an hour in a room with eight people armed with wooden weapons; even Esalen could become rational under severe stress” (ibid., p. 60).

Yet the shocks and drawbacks could not prevent the integralist (and transpersonalist) Ken Wilber from eulogising the American gurus Adi Da Samraj and Andrew Cohen, entities who were viewed by critics as predatory. See Perennial Philosophy (2008). Wilber’s version of integral studies has come under fire from various discontented former enthusiasts. See http://www.integralworld.net/. I have reviewed some relevant arguments at Ken Wilber and Integralism (2009). Wilber has commenced his own Integral Institute, often viewed as a rival to CIIS. See Wilber, Integral Spirituality (2007).

My own format in Pointed Observations (2005) was substantially critical of the alternative trends represented by Jung, Grof, Wilber, Bache, the Findhorn Foundation, and others. Some readers noticed that I preferred David Hume, Spinoza, and the vintage Club of Rome phase to the contested trends. For many years I had been resistant to the sceptical philosophy of Hume (and still am in many basic respects), though he was rational by comparison with problems of pseudo-transformation.

Having studied at CUL, I have been sensitive to some of the concerns expressed by academics about bogus credentials, which have unfortunately existed in the new age. Because of such factors, I downgraded my career profile in the last chapter of Pointed Observations, which was entitled Citizen Initiative. “People often do look at the author data to be convinced of a scintillating career with due status honours. Do not buy this book, therefore, as you will be disappointed on that account” (page 351).

Some academics approved this gesture. The relevant passage was subsequently abused by an American sectarian blogger (allegedly paid by a Californian cult leader) as presumed proof that I am incapable of study, having left school at the age of fifteen. See Hate Campaign Blogs (2010). Perhaps only in America are there such extremes of cultist hate campaign. See also my Autobiographical Reflections (2010).

In the face of controversial integral studies, new age “transformation,” cultweb, and other problems, I will here quote from the same chapter abovecited:

“The incentive on the part of citizens to dispute or query official and public matters, and to extend educational horizons, might be described as a democratic prerogative. That incentive may involve supplying information frequently neglected” (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, p. 343 lines 3-6).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
September 9th 2010

ENTRY no. 31

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Aurobindo Ghose

2010-08-21T18:55:00.007+01:00

An influential guru figure was Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950). Born at Calcutta, his father was a surgeon. The pater desired his children to have a British education. The young Aurobindo was accordingly sent to Manchester with two brothers, and there he was tutored by an Anglican clergyman. In addition to Englsh literature, he also learned Greek and Latin. He entered King’s College, Cambridge, following paternal wishes for a career in the Indian Civil Service.

Aurobindo lost enthusiasm to serve the British, and instead entertained revolutionary ideas. When he returned to India in 1893, he joined the bureaucracy of the Gaekwad of Baroda. He penned speeches for that maharaja, and became a professor at Baroda College. He made a private study of Bengali literature, Sanskrit, and other subjects. More to the point, he became part of the emerging nationalist campaign against British rule.

In 1901, Aurobindo married the daughter of an Indian government official. In 1906 he moved to Calcutta, and was in close contact with resistance groups in Bengal. He criticised Congress for a moderate policy on national education. Aurobindo became a major contributor to the nationalist newspaper Bande Mataram. In 1907 the British government moved to prosecute that newspaper, which was regarded as a goad to violence and lawlessness. That year Aurobindo was arrested by the police on a charge of sedition, though subsequently acquitted because of failure to establish his editorship of the insurgent newspaper.

The American historian Peter Heehs has revealed how the Indian freedom struggle of this early phase had both violent and non-violent aspects. Passive resistance was only part of the story. There was a tendency to terrorism in the 1900-10 decade of the Bengali resistance. In more general terms, Heehs has also penetrated the hagiography attaching to Aurobindo.

During 1907-8 Aurobindo travelled to Poona (Pune), Bombay, and Baroda as an emissary of the nationalist cause. In May 1908 he was again arrested, this time as a suspect in the Manicktola Conspiracy, also known as Alipore Bomb Case. His younger brother Barindra Kumar Ghose was leader of a group of young Bengali revolutionaries at Calcutta who resorted to a bomb in April 1908. Their plan was to bomb the horse carriage of a British magistrate. This punitive action made a mistake in bombing the wrong carriage, killing two innocent British women. About thirty men were arrested, including Aurobindo. The Manicktola property of the extremists was raided by police, who discovered “inflammatory literature, loads of explosives, arms and ammunition, along with detailed written instructions on the techniques of manufacturing higher explosives.” Quotation from Alipore Bomb Case (2009).

Barindra admitted to responsibility in the lengthy trial that followed. The verdict of the court initially entailed death sentences, though deportation to the Andaman Islands was finally decided for a number of the accused. Aurobindo and over fifteen others were acquitted in 1909.

Meanwhile, Aurobindo was detained in solitary confinement for one year in Alipore jail; there he studied the Bhagavad-Gita. He subsequently reported a number of spiritual experiences during his incarceration. After being freed, he commenced two new weekly journals, and promoted his radical ideas on national education. His anti-British tendency caused the Viceroy (Lord Minto) to regard him as the most dangerous man amongst the revolutionaries.

In 1910 Aurobindo retired from the political arena. He took refuge in the French colony of Pondicherry (in Tamil Nadu), after receiving news that the Indian police were looking for him again. Now he opened a new chapter in his career, devoting himself to Yoga (one of his former subsidiary interests). Some critics have viewed this phase as an escape route from political problems, though Aurobindo was evidently quite sincere in the subsequent and extensive cycle of mystical writings which appeared in his new monthly journal Arya from 1914 onwards. In that mode, his major works first emerged in a serialised format, notably including The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga.

The former political agitator was now the exponent of an avant garde Hinduism, “developing a philosophical system inspired by Vedanta, but integrating elements from Yoga, Tantra and the theory of evolution” (Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 270).

Afterwards, in 1926 was founded the Aurobindo Ashram, with a core of 24 disciples. That same year, Aurobindo withdrew into seclusion, appointing a woman as the ashram leader. This was Mirra Richard, also called Mirra Alfassa (1878-1973), who became known as “the Mother.” She was a Parisian of Turkish and Egyptian parentage. She had settled at Pondicherry in 1920, and Aurobindo acknowledged her as his major disciple.

During the 1930s, his correspondence with disciples formed his main literary output, eventually becoming the Letters on Yoga (3 vols). He also worked on a lengthy poem entitled Savitri. Aurobindo did not revert to political agitation, and during the Second World War, he supported the Allied cause against Hitler, whom he described as an oppressor.

His major work is The Life Divine, first published in 1914-19 in serial form, and later revised and enlarged for publication in book format (2 vols, 1939-40). The lengthy contents expound his version of spiritual evolution. An accompanying work, The Synthesis of Yoga, formulates what is known as Integral Yoga, which Aurobindo regarded as a unique innovation. The declared objective is transformation of the individual, including physical, psychic, and mental dimensions. The acquisition of an “inner Yogic consciousness” has the objective of “supramentalisation.” This version of Yoga is often described as uniting the dispositions of bhakti, jnana, and karma yoga as mentioned in the Bhagavad-Gita, a popular Vedantic text in Hinduism.

Aurobindo opposed aspects of Advaita Vedanta, including mayavada, the doctrine that the world is an illusion. He also diverged from the Vedantic belief that an ascetic life of withdrawal was the means to liberation. He improvised the concept of Supermind, which he also described as gnosis. He has been credited with introducing the concept of evolution into Vedantic thought, though his version of evolution was not that of Darwinism, which Aurobindo regarded as a materialist limitation.

A disputed feature of his doctrine is that of a new supramental or gnostic human species envisaged for the future. This theme became influential in the subsequent American “new age” variation associated with the Esalen Institute of California. See Aurobindo and Esalen (2008). Some think that Aurobindo was more realistic in referring to the “intermediate zone,” meaning a danger area of deceptive spirituality located between mundane consciousness and the genuine spiritual achievement. One surely sees far more of this drawback than anything “gnostic” in the pretentious new age.

Specialist scholarship in Vedic texts has disagreed with Aurobindo’s theme of an esoteric meaning in the ancient RigVeda. Via such works as The Secret of the Veda and Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Aurobindo asserted that the Rig was composed in a symbolic language, the outer meaning relating to religious rituals, and the inner meaning relating to a spiritual knowledge. In contrast, Professor Jan Gonda viewed this as an erroneous interpretation, one in which the Vedic sacrifices are all symbolic, and which treats the Rig ritualism as an “infallible authority for spiritual knowledge”; however, the Indologist did not deny an intuitive dimension to the poetry of the Rig rishis (Gonda, Vedic Literature, Wiesbaden 1975, pp. 53-4).

After Aurobindo’s death, the town of Auroville was founded near Pondicherry in 1968. The ideal was an international habitat transcending creed and politics. Auroville is recently reported to have over 2000 inhabitants, mainly Indians, French, and Germans. See Wikipedia Aurobindo (accessed 09/08/2010) and Wikipedia Auroville (accessed 09/08/2010) See also Aurobindo.

See further the Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (30 vols, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972); Aurobindo, The Life Divine (first edn 1939-40; seventh edn, Pondicherry, 2006); Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga (Pondicherry, 1996)); Aurobindo, Secret of the Veda (Pondicherry, 1995); A.B. Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo (Pondicherry, 1978); P. Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900-1910 (Oxford University Press, 1993; second edn, 2004); P. Heehs, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Kevin R.D. Shepherd
August 21st 2010

ENTRY no. 30

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Meher Baba

2010-08-12T22:26:00.009+01:00

A prominent aspect of the “alternative” vogue in Western countries has been that of enthusiasm for Eastern gurus and other mentors. A number of these entities transpired to exhibit complicating traits, causing disillusionment amongst their followers. Meher Baba was not one of these, his activities dating to an earlier period.

The career of Meher Baba (1894-1969) evidences a clean moral record. He visited the West in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, thereafter remaining mostly in seclusion until his death. The major criticism levelled at him is that of the avataric claims he made in his later years. The word avatar signifies divine incarnation, and is derived from Hinduism.

Meher Baba (Merwan Sheriar Irani) fits a rather unusual category of “guru” in that he was not a Hindu but an Irani Zoroastrian. Both his parents were émigrés from Central Iran. Though born in India (at Pune), he was not a Parsi, as is sometimes mistakenly assumed. This ethnic complexity has made his career more interesting to me, though my attitude is critical and quite independent of the devotional movement forming in his name.

Pune was formerly known as Poona, then a centre of the British Raj. There, while attending the Deccan College in 1913, young Merwan Irani encountered Hazrat Babajan (d. 1931), an aged female saint of Muslim birth who has Sufi associations (see Shepherd, A Sufi Matriarch, 1986). The interaction changed his life completely.

In general, Meher Baba has not been favoured by the “new age,” the adherents of which have been far more enthusiastic about Hindu gurus like Shri Aurobindo, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sathya Sai Baba, and Swami Muktananda. Indeed, the Esalen Institute of California endorsed Aurobindo during the early years of that enterprise, promoting his doctrines to such an extent that these are well known by comparison with teachings of other figures. The Findhorn Foundation favoured Rajneesh and Sathya Sai Baba during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Meher Baba movement has not displayed the belligerence towards outsiders that characterised the Rajneesh sect in the 1980s, a drawback more recently mirrored in the American branch of the Sathya Sai Baba sect. See further Internet Terrorist (2009). Certain developments on Wikipedia have been viewed with suspicion, implying collusion between a pseudonymous Meher Baba supporter and a militant defender of Sathya Sai Baba. See Wikipedia Anomalies: Arguments (2010). However, in general the Meher Baba movement does not appear to favour web aggression and libel. It may therefore still be possible for outsiders to comment on the figurehead without fear of hate campaign.

A partisan of Meher Baba has considerately sent me notification that reference to myself appears in a recent devotee work. As such matters are now of interest to some investigators, I will accordingly cite the reference here: “Though no devotee of Meher Baba and a sharp critic of Meher Baba’s followers, Kevin Shepherd turns a critical eye on [Paul] Brunton’s account, in Meher Baba, an Iranian Liberal, pp. 146-76.” Quotation from Meher Baba’s Early Messages to the West: The 1932-1935 Western Tours, ed. W. Parks (Myrtle Beach, S.C.: Sheriar Foundation, 2009), p. 223 note 31. The editor evidently approved of my scepticism concerning Brunton, though he should perhaps have grasped that I did not criticise all the followers, as specific statements in Iranian Liberal do confirm. (Another reference to the same book of mine, and in relation to Rom Landau, occurs in Early Messages to the West, p. 224 note 32).

With regard to Paul Brunton (1898-1981), there are strong doubts about the reliability of his report on Meher Baba in A Search in Secret India (1934). An obvious discrepancy has struck many readers. Brunton referred to the low and receding forehead of the Irani, which could mean that the British reporter suffered from an optical deficiency. In reality, the cranium of Meher Baba was well proportioned, and also of substantial size in relation to his body. See further my web entry Meher Baba (2009).

The Irani mystic was notably averse to the caste system. He refused to sanction that problem, and instead championed the cause of the untouchables. This was a feature of his activity during the 1920s, when he established his first ashram at Meherabad (Arangaon), near Ahmednagar, a city in Maharashtra. The fact is that, after an initial resistance, he eliminated caste at his ashram, not permitting the ranking or dining protocol generally found in other Indian ashrams.

Another feature that tends to distinguish the outlook of Meher Baba from that of other gurus is his attitude to miracles. Although in some early statements, he seems to have acknowledged the existence of “miracles,” in later years he frequently gave that subject a low rating, disowning the performance of miracles in his own case. “Many miracles have been attributed to me, but I do not perform miracles. I do not attach importance to miracles.” (Quoted in Shepherd, Investigating the Sai Baba Movement, 2005, p. 110).

Meher Baba was also strongly critical of tendencies in other followings to create an instinct for “miracle” phenomena. In relation to both Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918) and Upasni (Upasani) Maharaj (d. 1941), both of whom he had personally encountered, he was disapproving of the hagiographical preference of devotees for miraculous events. He had been the disciple of Upasni for several years, commencing in 1915.

In 1925, Meher Baba commenced silence, a discipline which he maintained until his death. He continued to communicate by means of an English alphabet board, and later a distinctive gesture language. In this manner he dictated numerous messages and discourses, and also two books on spiritual evolution, only one of which was published during his lifetime (in 1955). That contribution is unusual for an eclectic vocabulary employing Sanskrit/Marathi and Persian terms drawn from the Vedantic and Sufi traditions (though the Hindu component was not exclusively Vedantic).

Meher Baba was fluent in Persian and Marathi (also Gujarathi and English). He gained Muslim followers in addition to Zoroastrian and Hindu devotees. He was quite familiar with Sufism, though he did not identify with that tradition, and remained non-denominational. This intercultural complexion of his teaching is another factor of difference with the Hindu gurus.

Meher Baba’s evolutionism remains distinctive. His exposition incorporates reincarnation, though in a rather comprehensive form which rigorously exposits a sequence of progression through the diverse species-forms until the human stage is reached. This rationale is not in any explicit opposition to Darwinian formulae, though the metaphysical dimensions are pronounced.

This evolutionism explains the growth in consciousness attendant upon evolution, a factor of exegesis not always found in mystical accounts. Further, there is the advantage of description in terms of impressions (sanskaras), again quite methodically elaborated. Consciousness is composed of impressions, and in this light, the reincarnation process is made more explicable. The exposition of Meher Baba differs from more well known versions of transmigration that do not clarify such complexities, and which exhibit discrepancies in terms of, e.g., retrograde incarnation from human to animal.

The presentation under discussion differs from traditional Vedanta in the evolutionist criteria supplied. There is also a divergence from canonical Sufism, which does not teach reincarnation. Some Muslims of earlier centuries inclined to versions of transmigration (tanasukh) associated with the Pythagorean heritage.

See further Meher Baba, God Speaks: The Theme of Creation and its Purpose (New York, 1955; second edn, 1973); Meher Baba, Infinite Intelligence (Myrtle Beach, S. C., 2005); Meher Baba, Discourses (7th edn, Myrtle Beach, S.C., 1987); C. B. Purdom, The God-Man: The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba (London, 1964); B. Kalchuri, Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher (20 vols, Ashville, North Carolina, 1986-2001); Shepherd, Meher Baba, an Iranian Liberal (Cambridge, 1988), with bibliography; idem, Investigating the Sai Baba Movement, Part Three, “Meher Baba of Ahmednagar” (Dorchester, 2005).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
August 12th 2010

ENTRY no. 29

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Swami Vivekananda

2010-08-06T14:45:00.011+01:00

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was anti-caste in many of his recorded emphases. He was an unusual mystic of the more daring and radical kind in terms of social extension. Yet he identified with the traditional philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, strongly associated with Shankara (c. 800 CE), a legendary exponent whose extant and attributed treatises are a subject of complex scholarly appraisal.

Vivekananda, alias Narendra Nath Datta, was born in Calcutta, where he attended college. He studied European history and philosophy, and gained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1884. He became influenced by the Brahmo Samaj, a reforming movement which advocated belief in a formless God, and who were in opposition to popular Hinduism. Narendra came from a low class background, being a kayastha by birth. That sub-caste gained an increased status in Bengali society under British rule, often working as clerks and secretaries. His father was a prosperous attorney at the Calcutta high court.

In 1881 Narendra encountered Ramakishna of Dakshineswar (1836-1886), a brahman saint who lived in a Kali temple near Calcutta. The latter was not at all typical of the priestly caste; he would not touch money and spoke in very simple language, as distinct from the formal didactic of the pundits. The tendency of Ramakrishna was eclectic with regard to Hinduism, and included reference to Advaita Vedanta.

Narendra at first rejected Advaita, deeming this an extremist philosophy. Ramakrishna’s esteem for the goddess Kali was also repugnant to reformist tastes. Yet prior to 1886, the year of Ramakrishna’s death, Narendra had changed orientation completely, becoming a full-fledged disciple of the mystic.

The young disciples of Ramakrishna opted for a monastic existence at his death, living in a dilapidated house at Baranagore. A number of them took formal vows, and Narendra assumed the name of Swami Vivekananda. In 1888, he left Baranagore to live as a wandering monk (sannyasin), and for several years he travelled throughout India, frequently travelling on foot, though also resorting to the railway when given tickets by wellwishers. He encountered priestly pundits and maharajas, but also saw at firsthand the widespread poverty and suffering of the masses, which evidently weighed upon him deeply.

At the end of 1892, he arrived at Cape Comorin (the southern tip of India). There he gained the much reported insight that the situation of so many wandering renunciates teaching religion was seriously discrepant. Instead the objective should be one of raising the masses from ignorance and hunger.

In 1893, Vivekananda visited America as an outspoken teacher of Vedanta and Yoga. He first lectured at the Chicago Parliament of Religions, gaining both admirers and critics, the latter including missionaries to India. For over three years he stayed in the West, lecturing in America and England, though suffering poor health as a consequence of the strain. He declined two offers of an academic chair in Eastern philosophy at Harvard and Columbia Universities, explaining that he could not accept such career vocation as a wandering monk.

In early 1897, Vivekananda arrived back in India, being welcomed as a national hero on account of his recent fame. He travelled from Colombo to Calcutta and Almora, frequently giving lectures that included exhortations to an upliftment of the masses and the elimination of caste stigmas. He also favoured the study of Western science in addition to Vedanta. The implications of a national reorientation were taken seriously in some directions, and later political figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Radhakrishnan (entry no. 27) acknowledged Swami Vivekananda as an inspiration. Independence from British rule was one repercussion, though Vivekananda did not mount that sort of campaign. Instead, his immediate opponent was the conservative priestly caste.

He detested what he called the “kitchen religion” of that caste, which entailed a taboo on food being defiled by the shadow of any untouchable. “Kick out the priests who are always against progress,” said Vivekananda. “The modern student of sociology may well be surprised at the depth and objectivity of his observations.” Quotes from F. R. Allchin, “The Social Thought of Swami Vivekananda,” in S. Ghanananda and G. Parrinder, eds., Swami Vivekananda in East and West (London: Ramakrishna Vivekananda Centre, 1968), pp. 89ff., 102. See also my web memo.

At Calcutta in 1897, Vivekananda founded at Belur the Ramakrishna Math (monastery). This was accompanied by the Ramakrishna Mission, an extension in social service. Some Christian critics have implied that the Mission was inspired by Christian models. The new monastic organisation later gained a centre in Madras.

During 1899-1900, he again visited America and Europe, creating Vedanta centres in San Francisco and New York, and also attending the Paris Congress of Religions (1900). His failing health meant that he was unable to meet an invitation to the subsequent Congress of Religions in Japan. Vivekananda died peacefully at the Belur monastery, while lying down after meditating.

An Indian historian observes that Vivekananda “was often strongly anti-Brahmin, if not also anti-Brahmanical, and held saints and sadhus no less responsible for the continuing oppression of the masses. Reformers, in his view, never really touched the pulse of India.... Vivekananda’s panacea for India’s several ills was mass education: training in useful sciences and crafts, manual skills, and manufacture.” Quote from Amiya P. Sen, ed., The Indispensable Vivekananda: An Anthology for our Times (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), pp. 33-4.

A generally obscured matter is that Vivekananda drew from both the Sankhya and Vedanta systems of philosophy. He emphasised features of Sankhya psychology, and admitted the indebtedness of Vedanta to Sankhya; serious doctrinal differences existed between those two traditions (ibid., p. 40).

A Western scholar has commented: “Although the Ramakrishna movement is not considered an orthodox sampradaya [religious tradition] by the more conservative Hindus, it has nevertheless captured the imagination of a great many modern and progressive Hindus and is held to be a non-sectarian and universal expression of a new, reformed Hinduism.” Quote from K. K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism (State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 45.

The Ramakrishna Order now claims over 170 branch centres worldwide. There is an online partisan biography of Vivekananda by Swami Nikhilananda. See also the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (nine vols, Mayavati, 2001), and web version. Relevant is S.N. Dhar, A Comprehensive Biography of Swami Vivekananda (2 vols, Madras, 1975-6); A. P. Sen, Swami Vivekananda (New Delhi, 2000); idem, Social and Religious Reform: The Hindus of British India (New Delhi, 2003). See also Amiya Prosad Sen.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
August 6th, 2010

ENTRY no. 28

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

2010-07-29T22:52:00.008+01:00

A major exponent of Hinduism was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), whose Indian Philosophy (2 vols, 1923-27) became a textbook on the subject. Born in South India, he early encountered the writings of Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who influenced him strongly in the new mood of Vedantic universalism struggling against rival emphases of Christianity. This was the era of British Raj imperialism, in which Hinduism was the runner-up.

Originating at the town of Tirutani in Andhra Pradesh, Radhakrishnan was born into the brahman caste and reared to Vedantic teaching. In 1904 he entered the Madras Christian College, where he studied Western philosophy, and observed the Christian criticism of Vedanta as having no ethical content. He was subsequently to repudiate the aspersions, and became a professor at Mysore and Calcutta Universities.

His early writings railed at the critics of Hinduism. In 1921, Radhakrishnan gained the prestigious George V chair in philosophy at Calcutta University, where he composed his Indian Philosophy, a mature work not relying on polemic. In 1926 he was invited to Oxford to give the Upton Lectures, and a sequel occurred in the Hibbert Lectures of 1929. These lectures achieved publication as The Hindu View of Life (1927) and An Idealist View of Life (1929). The lastmentioned is regarded as his more developed work.

In 1931 Radhakrishnan was knighted by the British government, whose policies he had not always agreed with. He subsequently became a professor of religion at Oxford University in 1936, the association with Oxford continuing for many years.

Radhakrishnan was closely associated with the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, and favoured a modernised version of this outlook, which elevates the atman-Brahman themes of nondualist identity. He defended and elaborated the factor of intuitive experience which is inherent in that teaching.

A frequent criticism has been that Radhakrishnan tended to claim Advaita as a yardstick of assessment for all religions and philosophies. He also tended to ennoble the caste system in some arguments, though recognising the problems in Hindu society.

“In a sense, Radhakrishnan ‘Hinduizes’ all religions,” and in the context of Vedantic interpretation. The same commentary deduces the view of this Indian philosopher as meaning: “Religious claims.... ought not to be taken as authoritative in and of themselves, for only integral intuitions validated by the light of reason are the final authority on religious matters.” Quotations from M. Hawley, “Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan” (2006), Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

“Radhakrishnan clearly preferred to be called a philosopher rather than a theologian” (Shepherd, Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One: Zoroastrianism and the Indian Religions, 1995, p. 580). To this remark, I felt obliged to add that “almost in the manner of a theologian, he wrote that the scheme of social classes and ashramas is helpful but not indispensable” (ibid.). The priestly adjuncts of Indian religion are now closely debated by diverse Indian scholars and Indian rationalists.

“Never in the history of philosophy has there been quite such a world-figure.” This assessment of Radhakrishnan comes from Life and Writings, citing the philosopher George P. Conger. Radhakrishnan undeniably achieved a widespread influence. While famous at Oxford, his administrative appointments extended to Benares and Delhi Universities; he was the Indian ambassador to Russia, and in 1952 he became the first Vice-President of India. He was subsequently the President of India during the 1960s.

His informed books caused a wide readership in the West to give some serious consideration to the formerly marginalised Indian philosophy. See also indohistory.

See further Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought (Oxford, 1939); idem, The Bhagavadgita (London, 1948); id., The Principal Upanishads (1953); id., The Brahmasutra (London, 1961). See also P. A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan (New York, 1952); R.N. Minor, Radhakrishnan: A Religious Biography (Albany, 1987).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
July 29th 2010

ENTRY no. 27

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Indian Philosophy

2010-07-22T13:21:00.010+01:00

Indian philosophy is a variegated phenomenon. Clarifications are needed in this field. One is faced with several types of Indian philosophy in the historical record. For instance, there is the early Upanishadic phase, and the subsequent growth of Hinduism associated with the “six systems of philosophy.” Those systems are a specialist study in their own right. Moreover, we have the Buddhist and Jainist rivals to the Hindu formats. Again, these are specialist studies in their own field of research.

With regard to religion, there are complex extensions in the medieval period that are not mainline Hinduism at all, but something quite different. I am referring here to the Sant phenomenon and the creation of Sikhism, trends which were strongly opposed to caste practices and concepts.

In addition to these factors, there are latter day manifestations of diverse Hindu and neo-Hindu sects and exegeses. In contrast, there is now the radical development of contemporary Indian Rationalism, to some extent allied with Western concepts in science, and railing against traditional religion and attendant superstitions.

To get a bearing in these diverse channels is not straightforward. Much of this panorama can be brought under the classification of “Indian philosophy,” but the differences in emphasis are substantial. The copious textual studies, plus the sociological documentation, is beyond the reach of most citizen investigators.

My independent research into Indian philosophy eventually gained expression in the book Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One: Zoroastrianism and the Indian Religions (1995), pp. 389-825. I might at least claim some familiarity with the works mentioned in the annotations, though I do not profess to be an expert.

Three diverse figures active in the introduction of Indian philosophy to the West were the university scholars Friedrich Max Muller and Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), and the Vedanta interpreter Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), who established a monastic order.

Professor Max Muller (1823-1900) effectively became the founder of comparative religion, in the sense of a scholarly discipline. His major achievement is sometimes considered to have been his editorship of Sacred Books of the East, a fifty volume series encompassing diverse religions and published during the period 1876-1904. That milestone series was published by Oxford University Press, in the country which became the headquarters for studies in Indian religion and philosophy. Those studies became known as Indology.

Max Muller early studied in his native Germany with the philosopher Friedrich Schelling, at whose request he translated passages from the Upanishads. Max Muller became a pioneer in RigVeda studies, and was a linguistic professor at Oxford University from 1851. One of his best known works is The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (1899). See the online biography.

Some critics have complained that classical Indian philosophy generally converges with Indian religion. The historical context becomes important, wherever this can be reconstructed. The approach of the investigator can be relevant in this respect. Indology avoids sectarian affiliations, which have posed a drawback in the popular Western enthusiasm for Hinduism that commenced in the 1960s. Failure to grasp the necessity for critical evaluation has caused many disillusionments.

Indology became a discipline of repute at several major European universities. Hindu scholars came to study Sanskrit in European universities, assimilating the scholarly exegesis developing in the West, and which was quite different to the pundit method of assessment. In America meanwhile, Sanskrit was introduced at Yale University in 1841, and the American Oriental Society became a signpost to Indological researches. There were initially some Christian biases discernible in Sanskritist studies (from which Max Muller was not exempt).

Professors Surendra Nath Dasgupta (1887-1952) and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan are perhaps the two best known Hindu commentators. The former studied and lectured at Cambridge and composed his five-volume History of Indian Philosophy (Cambridge, 1922-55). Radhakrishnan composed his two-volume Indian Philosophy (London, 1923-27), a well known work that became widely cited, and the author becoming celebrated at Oxford.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
July 22nd 2010

ENTRY no. 26

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

International Angles

2010-07-14T13:19:00.007+01:00

International assessments of Western philosophy differ enormously. That is surely an understatement. Diligent readers know that my own perspective is intercultural, and that I have paid deference to philosophy (linking to anthropography in my case) in a broader context than is often found. For instance, on my websites I have incorporated some detailed reference to Zoroastrianism, Islamic Sufism, and Islamic philosophy. Those subjects are not popular with some Western readers. However, when the focus turns to modern Western philosophy, there are some international reactions to the European dimensions of that subject.

My own endeavour to escape the confines of any Eurocentric landscape was formulated in my early work Meaning in Anthropos (1991), composed in 1984. This presentation of citizen anthropography attempted a more global axis than is customarily found in academic philosophy.

I have noticed, with some fascination, that both the Asiatic and the Western responses to philosophy contain marked variations. I should perhaps state my own instance. During my early years of study, I veered strongly away from British entities in philosophy. For many years I resisted coming to terms with David Hume, whom I associated with a “British Empire” mode of thought and a quasi-nihilistic temperament that anticipated Nietzsche. I much preferred Plato, Plotinus, Farabi, Suhrawardi, Spinoza, and the Eastern affinities (though erratic and circumscribed) of Schopenhauer.

The literati in India, China, and Japan have frequently been generous with regard to Western philosophy, acknowledging empiricism, and also the relevance of rationalism and the implicit affinity with scientific objectives. Islamic countries have sometimes resisted Western influences, perhaps not surprisingly, though the literati in those countries are quite capable of recognising the value of intercultural approaches.

The subject of “Western philosophy” basically extends to ancient Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic dimensions, a phenomenon of cultural linkages and ramifications occurring in distant centuries. However, when one talks of modern philosophy, the orbit is very often European, with Germany and Britain gaining a fairly substantial tally of famous names. Everyone has heard of philosophers like Kant, Hegel, Locke, and Hume, though not everyone has studied those entities in any detail.

The study of philosophy has notably spread to America, Canada, and Australia. Both the academic and popular reception of that subject require some due appraisal. American academics have investigated the subject intensively, though the public climate of American opinion is generally indifferent, and in some quarters tending to categorical dismissal in favour of “new age” alternatives.

At this juncture, it seems appropriate for me, before proceeding any further to describe European figures in the history of modern philosophy, to alight upon some contemporary topics in a spirit of citizen investigation. In view of factors indicated above, I have decided to include on this blog some entries concerning subjects not appearing in conventional philosophy contents.

Kevin R.D. Shepherd
July 14th 2010

ENTRY no. 25

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Meaning of Key Words

2010-07-07T13:51:00.008+01:00

The significance of those key terms philosophy and philosopher has been much discussed, with a variety of interpretations. Today, the key word philosopher very often denotes an analytical stance, and nothing more. Philosophy is now largely viewed in the academic realm as a discipline of analysis, relevant to the auspice of “analytical philosophy” which has become paramount in several countries, including Britain and America.

One of the most vocal exponents of analytical philosophy was Bertrand Russell. In his most oft-cited work, dating to the 1940s, he defined philosophy in such terms as:

“Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science.... All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.... Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite.... The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.” (Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Routledge edn 2000, pp. 13-14).

However, Russell’s approach has not satisfied everyone. Philosophers must negotiate the Scylla and Charybdis of attacks from empiricism and dogmatism. Russell did recognise that wisdom could not be charted in the laboratory, though the primacy of definite knowledge was nevertheless awarded to that sector. Definite knowledge is here envisaged in terms of something readily quantifiable to mathematicians and physicists, to chemists and biologists. Meanwhile, the No Man’s Land studies questions that might be answered.

Moving back three centuries to Descartes, we find a rather different definition of philosophy. In his well known epistle to the translator of his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes made the following statement:

“The word philosophy means the study of wisdom, and that by wisdom is meant not only prudence in the conduct of affairs, but a perfect knowledge of all that man can know, no less for the conduct of his life than for the preservation of his health and the discovery of all the arts” (F. E. Sutcliffe, trans., Discourse on Method and the Meditations, London: Penguin, 1968, p. 173).

Here we converge with many older perspectives on the subject. The version of Descartes reflects, however approximately, much more ancient concepts of philosophy as a gauge for conduct, health, learning, and creativity.

By the twentieth century, the antique ideal was relegated by academic philosophy to the No Man’s Land, avidly studied and historicised, but very often seen as something rather remote and even nebulous.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
July 7th 2010

ENTRY no. 24

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Al-Farabi to Spinoza

2010-07-01T15:16:00.010+01:00

The preceding treatments of six philosophers encompass acutely different cultural backgrounds (entries 17-22). The first three were Muslim falasifa who related to the Aristotelian tradition in different formats. I am referring to Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). The last three decisively separated from the Aristotelian conceptual heritage, represented in their time by the Christian Scholastic tradition. I am here referring to Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza.

There are complexities and significances in these transitions that are not always dwelt upon. The Islamic Aristotelian tradition was not the same as the Christian version, which became rooted in the exegesis of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). This prominent theologian is associated with a perception that the Neoplatonist versions of Aristotle were not authentic, being later interpretations. Yet Ibn Rushd had earlier grasped this complexity to a considerable extent, and his relevant explanations are not cancelled out by the sequel.

A well known Cambridge analytical philosopher has asserted: “The De Anima leads much more naturally to the view of Averroes than to that of Aquinas” (Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Routledge edn 2000, p. 445).

The Christian Schoolmen imparted their own format to Aristotle, and the question of authenticity tends to evaporate in the face of exegetical innovations imposed by religious beliefs. By the time of Bacon and Descartes, the Late Scholastic tradition existing in the European universities was a barrier to scientific discoveries of the type associated with Copernicus and Galileo.

Francis Bacon took a starkly empiricist attitude to the situation, one which anticipated scientific research institutes of a later time. Rene Descartes demonstrated an output that moved between the empirical and deductive modes, engendering a rationalism which was multi-faceted. Spinoza continued that rationalism in a different way, his “artisan and private scholar” vocation being notable for a “substance monism” that has been variously interpreted, and a political (and scriptural) exegesis that was startling for his time.

The diverse influences on Spinoza, varying from Descartes to Hispanic-Jewish Neoplatonism and Kabbalism, have defied constricting attempts at linear interpretation. Spinoza’s “pantheism” is not at all straightforward for any detailed analysis. For instance, “commentators have debated over the question of whether the immortality intended by Spinoza is personal or not” (O. Koistinen and V. Viljanen, Introduction to Olli Koistinen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 22). Spinoza certainly did state in the Ethics that “the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal” (Book V, proposition 23, E. Curley trans.).

Ironically perhaps, the Neoplatonist vein in Spinoza is not so far removed from Farabi as some appearances might suggest. Consider the following remarks by a leading specialist in Spinozan studies:

“On the one hand, he [Spinoza] is making the most radical, daring move that had occurred in many a century and, on the other, he is obviously building on great ideas set forth most recently by Descartes and Hobbes and, to some extent, by ancient and medieval thinkers, especially of the Neoplatonic variety.... He had come to grips with Cartesianism and had moved beyond it. He had found Descartes’s dualistic metaphysics incompatible with the monism of a Neoplatonic view of the universe.” (R. H. Popkin, Spinoza, Oxford: Oneworld, 2004, p. 127.)

The Aristotelian sciences had not been lost. They had achieved a further development. Spinoza escaped the academic syllabus, grinding and polishing lenses for use in scientific instruments. Microscopes and telescopes were insignia of the Scientific Revolution. Spinoza was investigated by Christiaan Huygens, the wealthy astronomer and mathematician who achieved fame with the telescope.

In their own day, Spinoza was eclipsed in stature by the empirical Huygens. The latter gained recognition and fame as a scientist, though Spinoza was treated to stigma and misrepresentation by so much of the polite society influenced by standard religious thinking. Since that time however, the underdog has achieved a rather more pervasive status in the academic repertories. In some directions, Huygens is secondary to the deductivist rationalism. Further, there are now more books on Spinoza than his empiricist contemporary. However, the history of science gives a higher rating to Huygens as one of the major figures in the Scientific Revolution. Also, it has been concluded that the role of Huygens was obscured by the fame of Isaac Newton. We should therefore be grateful that both Spinoza and Huygens survived the interim period of relative oblivion.

Kevin R.D. Shepherd
July 1st 2010

ENTRY no. 23

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Baruch Spinoza

2010-06-23T22:52:00.020+01:00

Born in Amsterdam, Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was a first generation Dutch Jew. His family were Portuguese Jews, his father Michael Espinosa being a refugee merchant, one of those who contributed to the growing prosperity of Amsterdam. There were numerous Portuguese and Spanish Jews in that city at the time of Spinoza’s birth. More specifically, Spinoza’s parents were marranos or crypto-Jews who had fled from Portugal. They were amongst those who adhered to elements of Judaism after forced conversion to Christianity. That problem had occurred in Portugal and Spain, where the Inquisition harassed converts.

Spinoza was educated in the traditional Jewish manner. He studied at a Talmud Torah school, but did not undertake the higher grades which led to Rabbi status. At the age of 17, “whether by desire or by necessity, Spinoza left the school in order to work in his father’s business, which he eventually took over with his half-brother” (B.D. Dutton, “Benedict De Spinoza,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The family business was one of importing and vending foodstuffs. At the age of 24, Spinoza was excommunicated by the synagogue authorities of Amsterdam, being accused of heresies. The context is obscure.

His enthusiasm for the study of Descartes (entry no. 21) has often been considered a possible reason for the stigma, though other explanations have been proffered. His critical views of the Bible, and his acquaintance with radical Christian groups such as the Collegiants and Quakers, are just some of the alternatives. An economic problem is another possibility, his father having died two years before and leaving numerous debts, as a consequence of which Spinoza hired a lawyer.

At this time he changed his first name Baruch (which is Hebrew) to the Latin equivalent of Benedict. The heretic became a Latin-speaking neo-Cartesian, moving freely amongst non-Jews. Spinoza could also speak Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Hebrew.

Like Descartes, Spinoza was a citizen philosopher. Academics later assimilated these two figures into the canon of primary rationalist philosophers. Even more than Descartes, Spinoza remained on the fringe of status activities, and had to struggle with ideological biases of a severe kind. [See further my Baruch Spinoza, long entry].

Spinoza left Amsterdam in 1661, reputedly being in danger from extremists, and moved to Rijnsburg. He had adopted the craft of a lens-grinder, working in his own rented living accomodation. He produced lenses for microscopes and telescopes. This activity converged with his strong interest in optics. Some commentators describe this grinding and polishing skill in terms of a “gentlemanly amateur” vocation, which apparently bypassed an apprenticeship. Yet the wealthy Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-93) respected the knowledge of optics possessed by Spinoza. That science was associated with the Optics of Descartes.

Huygens was a very capable lens-grinder, innovating advanced telescopic lenses. “Huygens had far more money than Spinoza, who was a ‘marrano’ amateur in a Christian world of professionals” (Shepherd, Pointed Observations, 2005, p. 278). It is apparent that Spinoza at first knew more about microscopes than Huygens, who became celebrated for telescopic discoveries in relation to Saturn. These two grinders had scientific discussions, with Huygens evidently regarding Spinoza as a rival.

In some commentaries, Spinoza has been defined as a rationalist version of pantheist. He did not accept the dualism of Descartes, and argued that there could only be one substance, not three (i.e., God, mind, and matter). Thus God can be equated with Nature. This theme became incorporated into his Ethics (1677), which strongly asserts the existence of God in a rationalist context. The attendant irony is that Spinoza was described and derided as an atheist by various reductionists for many years after his death. There is contemporary disagreement about his orientation. Spinozan pantheism has even been interpreted (in one version) as panentheism, though some commentators argue that the subject was an atheist. Spinoza himself said that the charge of atheism was a perverse misinterpretation of his meaning.

An earlier work was Spinoza’s Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Wellbeing, apparently composed during his retiring phase at Rijnsberg, though not achieving publication until long after his death. This metaphysical book is partly associated with the influence of Leone Ebreo, alias Judah Abravanel, a sixteenth century Jewish philosopher of Portugal who has been described in terms of Neoplatonism.

Abravanel authored the Dialoghi d'amore, published in Italian in 1535; those dialogues refer in philosophical terms to an “intellectual” love above any human love. This work (which Spinoza read in Spanish)) has been recently described as “a Neoplatonic presentation” which “contains two of Spinoza’s great goals in intellectual life: that of seeing the world in the aspect of eternity and that of achieving the intellectual love of God” (R. H. Popkin, Spinoza, Oxford: Oneworld, 2004, p. 18).

Perhaps acting upon the advice of his academic friend Lodewijk Meyer, Spinoza changed format from the Short Treatise to the geometrical method of Euclid, exhibited in his Ethics. This device was evidently believed to be suitable for conveying reason to a Christian audience. Hispanic-Jewish mysticism would not have appealed to some of his acquaintances. Spinoza himself is far more complex. The philosophical Kabbalist Abraham Cohen Herrera was another of the influences at work in our subject (Popkin, op. cit., p. 19).

The Ethics of Spinoza states that “this love toward God must engage the mind most” (E. Curley trans., Ethics, London: Penguin 1996, p. 169). Moreover, “blessedness consists in love of God, a love which arises from the third kind of knowledge” (ibid., p. 180), here referring to intuitive knowledge. Such factors were attended by the conclusion that “if salvation were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” (Ibid., p. 181).

The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect commences with Spinoza’s advice to renounce wealth, status, and sensual indulgence in the pursuit of the highest good. An unpopular theme today, this was probably not in favour with some of the author’s associates, who were radicals of a different kind. Spinoza did not own property, and lived in simple rented rooms. He avoided a university career, despite his undoubted learning abilities.

In 1670 appeared his anonymous Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theological-Political Treatise (TPT). This proved a bombshell of controversy, and to such an extent that Spinoza’s Ethics could not be published during his lifetime. The content of the TPT was polemical, pleading the cause of philosophical reason against theological dogmatism. Spinoza was clearly pitting himself against religious sectarianism. He advocated a democratic and pluralist society free of superstitions.

The TPT dismissed miracles, and emphasised textual criticism of the Bible to a notable extent. The author was benign towards Jesus Christ, though rejecting the Resurrection. “Spinoza naturalises (and, consequently, demystifies) some of the fundamental elements of Judaism and other religions and undermines the foundations of their external, superstitious rites.” Quotation from S. Nadler, “Baruch Spinoza” (2008) Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

The prestigious Amsterdam Synod declared the TPT to be blasphemous, and other influential Calvinist Synods were in support. In 1674, the Court of Holland prohibited the printing and selling of the TPT. Freedom of speech did not yet exist. The long-term stigmatisation of Spinoza as an atheist was one of the consequences.

In 1676, the German philosopher Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716) visited Spinoza in the latter’s modest living situation at The Hague. The “atheist” gains a rather mystical complexion in a memo written by Leibniz, which includes such statements as:

“According to him [Spinoza] the mind itself is in a certain sense a part of God....He thinks that we will forget most things when we die and retain only those things that we know with the kind of knowledge he calls intuitive, of which only a few are conscious.... He believes a sort of Pythagorical transmigration, namely that minds go from body to body. He says that Christ is the very best philosopher...” (W. N. A. Klever, “Spinoza’s life and works” in D. Garrett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 46-7).

See further Y. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton, 1989); E. Curley, trans, A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works (Princeton, 1994); S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999); M. Morgan and S. Shirley, ed. and trans., Spinoza: The Complete Works (Indianapolis, 2002); S. Nadler, Spinoza’s Heresy (Oxford, 2002); S. Nadler, Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2006); O. Koistinen, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (Cambridge, 2009).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
June 23rd 2010

ENTRY no. 22

© 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Rene Descartes

2010-05-29T16:49:00.022+01:00

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is often described as the founder of modern philosophy. Born at the French town of La Haye, between Tours and Poitiers, his father was one of the local landed gentry. The boy was sent to boarding school, meaning the Jesuit college of La Fleche, where he stayed for eight years. The Jesuit curriculum encompassed the classical humanities and the prevalent Aristotelian Scholasticism. Following the wishes of his father, in 1616 Descartes took a degree in law at the University of Poitiers, but did not pursue the paternal profession. Instead he reacted to academic studies, rejecting much of what he had been taught.

In 1618 Descartes opted for military enlistment, like many others of his social class at this time of religious wars. Moving to the Netherlands, he became a soldier or engineer in the army of Prince Maurice of Nassau. While stationed at Breda that year, he formed a friendship with the Dutch mathematician Isaac Beeckman (1588-1637). Some extant letters of Descartes reveal that this scientist “roused me from my state of indolence and reawakened the learning which by then had almost disappeared from my memory.” Quotation from J. Cottingham, “Descartes” (93-134) in R. Monk and F. Raphael, eds., The Great Philosophers (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2000), p. 100. Descartes also referred in those epistles to his project of a new science providing “a general solution of all possible equations involving any sort of quantity” (ibid., p. 99).

Moving to Germany for further military service, in 1619 he gained three vivid dreams that were reported by his seventeenth century biographer Adrien Baillet. One passage reads: “Beginning to interpret the dream while still asleep, he considered that the encyclopaedia signified all the sciences collected together, and that the anthology of poetry indicated philosophy and wisdom combined” (ibid., pp. 101-2). The famous “method of doubt” evidently originated in his belief, rooted in a dream experience, that “he was destined to complete the unfinished ‘encyclopaedia’ of the sciences” (ibid., p. 102).

The dreams inspired him to seek a new method of science and philosophy. Afterwards moving to Paris, and making other journeys, Descartes devoted himself to the private study of various sciences, and commenced to write an unfinished treatise on method (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). He sold his ancestral property to secure (via bonds) a workable income for many years after. In 1629 he moved back to the Netherlands, a country then associated with freedom of expression. He resided there for twenty years, though retaining a habit of being frequently on the move, living in Amsterdam. Leiden, and other places.

Descartes remained a Roman Catholic, though of an avant-garde type. He wanted to show that the “new physics” could explain the world without relying upon the terminology of Scholastic Aristotelianism, a problem which indeed "was so entrenched in the intellectual institutions of Descartes' time that commentators argued that evidence for its truth could be found in the Bible." Quotation from J. Skirry, "Rene Descartes: Overview" (2008), Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

He composed a treatise on cosmology and mechanistic physics entitled Le Monde (The World), which was ready to go to press in 1633. A problem was encountered. Descartes had utilised Copernican heliocentric theory in his treatise, and he now discovered how Galileo had been condemned that year in Rome for contesting the conventional belief that the earth was the centre of motion. In a mood of caution, Descartes decided not to publish Le Monde. “Indeed, he first decided never to publish anything at all; but the despair did not last” (D. Garber, “Rene Descartes: Life,” Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

A few years later, he published in French three scientific essays, the Meteorology, Optics, and Geometry (1637). These accompanied his anonymous Discourse on Method, which was intended as an introduction. The collection became well known. The later Latin work Principia Philosophiae (1644) describes metaphysics, an extending physics, and other sciences. This significant work proved influential amongst scientists (including Isaac Newton), though the physics transpired to be limited in application. Descartes viewed metaphysics as the root of his holistic endeavour to combine philosophy and the sciences.

His two most famous works are Discourse on Method (1637) and the Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). These reveal Descartes as a rationalist who strongly believed in the existence of God, but who at the same time innovated concepts foreign to most theologians.

Descartes is most well known for his theories about the distinction between mind and matter. The most common description of this complexity is "Cartesian dualism." The accompanying "method of doubt" signifies the non-acceptance of anything that can be logically doubted, and for the purpose of finding certainty.

The Cartesian axiom cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”) was confirming a factor beyond doubt, and serving to elevate the importance of mind and self-consciousness. The argument of Descartes was pitched against the emerging scepticism associated with Michel de Montaigne. Yet like Francis Bacon (entry no. 20), Descartes was also in strong opposition to the official Aristotelian philosophy of the academics, though having a different angle to that of the British empiricist. Nevertheless, Descartes possessed a strong empirical streak. See further my Rene Descartes, Philosopher and Scientist (2010).

“Descartes claimed that he had taken the doubts of the sceptics further than the sceptics had taken them, and had been able to come out the other side” (B. Williams, introductory essay to J. Cottingham, ed., Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. xv).

Descartes was basically remote from the academic milieu, preferring a quiet life away from both career status and social distraction. His citizen status tends to be emphasised by the situation in which he addressed a letter to academics of the Sorbonne, a letter appended to the Meditations. His motive appears to have been that of gaining textbook status in the university.

One commentary says: "The awkwardness of Descartes's seeking the acceptance and use of his Meditations by teachers is amplified by the fact that he was not a teacher himself. Consequently, his seeking 'textbook' status would have very likely been viewed by those Learned Men as being a bit pretentious. He was, it could be said, a freelancer with no academic or political ties to the university.... Although the Meditations seems to have been endorsed by the Sorbonne, it was never adopted as a text for the university." Quotation from K. Smith, "Descartes' Life and Works" (2007), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

The same book subsequently became more famous and more cited than the majority of texts known to the Sorbonne. The freelance citizen philosopher became one of the most influential thinkers in the modern era.

The Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1588-1676) became a major problem during the 1640s, inspiring another academic to publish a lengthy personal attack upon Descartes, who was dogmatically viewed as a route to atheism. Voetius was a professor and became the rector of Utrecht University. Descartes composed the retaliatory Open Letter to Voetius (1643). Voetius subsequently suffered a setback when his accomplice disowned the attack, admitting that Voetius was the cause of the hostility. A later episode involved theological opponents at Leiden University. See further Problems with Calvinist Theologians (2010).

After some hesitation, in 1649 Descartes accepted the invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden to attend her court in Stockholm. She requested him to teach her philosophy, a role entailing an inconvenient hour at five in the morning. For some reason or other, Descartes tragically died. Some accounts state the cause as pneumonia, though poisoning by a hostile Catholic priest has also been suggested. In a letter dated January 1950, Descartes commented: "I desire only peace and quiet, which are benefits that the most powerful monarchs on earth cannot give" (Cottingham, art. cit., p. 105).

See further J. Cottingham et al, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (3 vols, Cambridge, 1984-91); J. Cottingham, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (Cambridge, 1992); S. Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford, 1995); R. Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999); D. Garber, Descartes Embodied (Cambridge, 2001); J. Broughton, Descartes's Method of Doubt (Princeton, N.J., 2002); S. Gaukroger, Descartes' System of Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 2002); D. M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge, 2006); J. Cottingham, Cartesian Reflections (Oxford, 2008).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd

May 29th 2010

ENTRY no. 21

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Francis Bacon

2010-05-15T14:40:00.009+01:00

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) became celebrated as the founder of modern induction, as the early champion of empiricist methodology. Educated at Cambridge University, he took up a career in law, and entered the House of Commons at an early age. He gained a role at the court of Elizabeth I, though he was far more successful under James I, being knighted in 1603 and eventually entering the House of Lords in 1617, and acquiring the position of Lord Chancellor in 1618.

Bacon early reacted to the Scholastic curriculum at Trinity College, where he developed a strong aversion to the Aristotelianism of his day. He dismissed syllogistic reasoning, and much preferred the atomist theory of Democritus. “Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena” (Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, London: Routledge edn, 2000, p. 528). Aristotle, like Plato, incorporated a version of transcendent purpose in the universe, though Bacon opted for the empiricist approach to natural philosophy.

The major criticism aimed at his career relates to the year 1621, when he became Viscount of St. Albans. Soon after, his enemies in Parliament charged him with accepting bribes in his office as a judge. He admitted to the offence, and was fined and sentenced to prison in the Tower of London. Yet he spent only a few days in the Tower, and the fine was waived. Although he gained a royal pardon, he was banished from court. He lost his political offices but retained his titles and personal property. He retired to his home in Hertfordshire and devoted himself to writing, an activity formerly confined to his spare time.

Defenders of Bacon emphasise that the acceptance of bribes in a lawsuit was common practice in his era. They also stress that he admitted to his laxity; he stated that he had given a verdict against some persons who had paid him.

His most popular work was the Essayes (1597), though philosophers have dwelt far more on The Advancement of Learning (1605), which reflects his struggle with the academic tradition and humanism. Bacon here opposed the curriculum he had known at Cambridge University, advocating an extensive reform by the use of an empiricist model.

Subsequently, he composed unpublished tracts which furthered the same theme. Favouring the natural philosophy of Democritus, he opposed the scholastic version of Aristotle as relayed by the Christian Schoolmen, though he admired the radicalism of Friar Roger Bacon. Belief in authorities was considered an obstacle to Baconian induction. Sir Francis also opposed Renaissance occultism, associated with Paracelsus and others who had assimilated magic, astrology, and alchemy.

The Novum Organum (1620) was intended as a sequel to Aristotle’s version of logic. The Baconian method was here presented in aphoristic format, intended to avoid dogmatism and to reveal the correct demonstration of natural philosophy. This work was declared as part of the ambitious project he called Instauratio Magna (Great Instauration), which he was not able to complete.

“Bacon came to the fundamental insight that facts cannot be collected from nature, but must be constituted by methodical procedures, which have to be put into practice by scientists in order to ascertain the empirical basis for inductive generalisations.” Quotation from J. Klein, “Francis Bacon” (2003), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

The utopian Nova Atlantis was composed in 1623. This distinctive novel conveyed the vision of a necessary transformation of society. Bacon here depicted the New Atlantis in terms of the inhabitants of Bensalem, an imaginary island in the Pacific. Such ideals are represented as the abolition of slavery, freedom of religious expression, and improved rights for women. His ideal of an educational college has been viewed as the harbinger of subsequent university models and scientific curricula.

Bacon attempted to persuade James 1 to establish a royal institution for the advancement of science. He was unsuccessful, but when Charles II “founded the Royal Society in 1662 its members were largely Baconian in their scientific approach, and regarded Francis Bacon as the intellectual godfather of the society” (B. Magee, The Story of Philosophy, London: Dorling Kindersley, 1998, p. 74). The well known influence of this organisation, based at Gresham College in London, was pivotal in scientific developments.

There have, nevertheless, been strong criticisms lodged against the Baconian advancement of science. These range from complex academic discussions of inductive methodology to relatively popular protests at the problems created by technology. The utopia did not arrive. Spinoza was an early critic of Bacon, not being a total believer in induction. Whereas Leibniz credited that Bacon was superior to Descartes. British scientists like Isaac Newton praised Bacon and considered him an important forerunner, and so too did the French encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century.

Bacon emphasised observation and experiment in the discovery of causal connections; there was also a recognition that science additionally requires deduction to move from generalisation to particular instances. However, “the part played by deduction in science is greater than Bacon supposed” (B. Russell, Hist. of Western Philos., p. 529).

A recent commentator has reflected: “For one thing, it is not clear that the Baconian procedure, taken by itself, leads conclusively to any general propositions, much less to scientific principles or theoretical statements that we can accept as universally true.... it can be said that Bacon underestimated the role of imagination and hypothesis (and overestimated the value of minute observation and bee-like data collection) in the production of new scientific knowledge. And in this respect it is true that he wrote of science like a Lord Chancellor, regally proclaiming the benefits of his own new and supposedly foolproof technique instead of recognising and adapting procedures that had already been tested and approved.” The quotation here is from D. Simpson, “Francis Bacon” (2005), at the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

See further P. Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science (London, 1968); N, Mathews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (New Haven, 1996); P. Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton, N.J., 1999); L. Jardine and M. Silverthorne, eds., Francis Bacon: The New Organon (Cambridge, 2000); S. Gaukroger, Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2001); B. Vickers, ed., Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford, 2008); G. Rees et al, eds., The Oxford Francis Bacon (15 volume project, 1996 -----).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
May 15th 2010

ENTRY no. 20

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

2010-05-01T21:47:00.007+01:00

The setting for Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) was Islamic Spain, where he was born in Cordova. In this city of Andalusia, his grandfather had been a prominent judge (qadi). Ibn Rushd was trained as a Maliki jurist, and in that capacity (like his father also), he gained a distinguished career as a qadi of Cordova. He was skilled in medicine and became physician to the Almohad Sultan of Morocco. He became famous to the Christian world as an Aristotelian philosopher, in which field he achieved an unusual degree of conceptual purism. The “Eurocentric” interpretation has viewed him merely as a bridge between the Greeks and the moderns, though an alternative angle has been urged.

Ibn Rushd devoted much of his time to learning and composition. His talents in medicine are attested by his Kulliyyat fi al-Tibb (General Points on Medicine), an influential encyclopaedia which included some original observations and gained a well known Latin translation (Colliget). This early book related to his concern with philosophy as the medium for a digest of scientific data.

The output of Ibn Rushd encompassed many subjects. His Bidayat is a legal treatise representing the Maliki law school. He compiled the medical works of Galen, and also wrote on physics and astronomy (a subject in which he conducted observations at Marrakesh). Ibn Rushd's Mukhtasar al-Majisti is a summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest. Ibn Rushd here “challenged Ptolemy’s astronomical system on philosophical grounds and made interesting theoretical contributions to the Andalusian criticisms of the Greek astronomer” (M. Forcada, Ibn Rushd al-Hafid).

For many years, Ibn Rushd was composing diligent commentaries on nearly all the works of Aristotle. He produced short, medium, and long commentaries on the same text, apparently for the purpose of encouraging different audiences. The Politics of Aristotle was not available to him, and so he employed Plato’s Republic as a substitute. He notably attempted to retrieve the original arguments of Aristotle, resisting the accretions of Neoplatonism which had infiltrated the Arabic tradition. His short paraphrase commentaries have been considered “a very loose summary of the originals,” and he did add his own interpretations, though “the long commentaries are very impressive analyses of the text, especially given the nature of the translations with which Ibn Rushd was working” (O. Leaman, Ibn Rushd Abu’l Walid Muhammad).

Ibn Rushd is strongly associated with the Almohad dynasty, whose patronage he gained via periods of residence in Marrakesh. However, some conservative tendencies in the political climate led to the official rejection of his writings at the end of his life. The presiding Almohad Sultan was Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur (rgd 1184-1199). This ruler defeated a Christian army at Alarcos in 1195, and returning to Seville, he appeased doctrinaire jurists who had accused Ibn Rushd of heresy, the issue here being the latter’s reconciliation of Greek philosophy with Islam. The militant spirit of the time also aggravated about other heretics. “Ibn Rushd was thus the victim of a political gesture, and was sacrificed by the Sultan in order to win over the masses” ( D. Urvoy, Ibn Rushd, London: Routledge, 1991, p. 35).

Some of his books are reported to have been burned, and he was exiled from Cordova to Lucena, a small Spanish town largely inhabited by Jews. The Almohad regime now imposed forced conversion to Islam in that town, and the inhabitants wrongly associated Ibn Rushd with the aggression. When eminent men in Seville learned what had happened, they petitioned in his favour. The banishment was revoked two or three years later, when the Sultan summoned Ibn Rushd to the court at Marrakesh, where both of them died shortly after.

“The Almohad regime was based on a combination of a royal household, a hierarchical religious organisation, a tribal military elite with Berber and Arab tribal allies, and a Spanish-type administration” (I. M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 375).

In his notable Fasl al-Maqal (Decisive Treatise), Ibn Rushd “contended that the claim of many Muslim theologians that philosophers were outside the fold of Islam had no base in scripture,” and he “strived to demonstrate that without engaging religion critically and philosophically, deeper meanings of the tradition can be lost, ultimately leading to deviant and incorrect understandings of the divine” (H. Chad Hillier, Ibn Rushd, Internet Enyclopaedia of Philosophy).

Ibn Rushd was here arguing for the obligatory status of studying philosophy, amongst those who had the capacity for scientific reasoning (qiyas burhani). His opponents were evidently “the conservative Malikite lawyers and their popular supporters, and the rising class of Asharite theologians” (G. F. Hourani, Averroes: On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, London: Luzac, 1961, pp. 1, 16).

The major controversy related to the Asharite exponent Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), an Iranian theologian who gained repute as a Sufi, and who had repudiated the relevance of philosophy in his treatise Tahafut al-Falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers). In response to Ghazzali, Ibn Rushd composed the Tahafut al-Tahafut (Incoherence of the Incoherence), which is a systematic refutation. Ghazzali argued that philosophers became infidels (kafirs) on issues such as their support for the Aristotelian doctrine of eternity of the world and their denial of bodily resurrection. The major target for Ghazzali was Ibn Sina (entry no. 18), with whom Ibn Rushd also disagreed, though from a rather different angle as an Aristotelian purist. The full details of these disputes cannot be treated in the scope of a blog.

As events transpired, Ghazzali was the victor in the Islamic world, though the eclipsed Ibn Rushd gained a significant new incarnation in the Christian and Jewish spheres of commentary.

“It was only in the thirteenth/nineteenth century that the Arabs became interested again in Ibn Rushd, and in a polemical climate which for a long time distorted the meaning of this rediscovery. His fortune is only due to his reception outside the Muslim world, notably among Jewish writers, who contributed to transmitting him to the Latin West, which eventually was to betray him.” Quotation from D. Urvoy, “Ibn Rushd” (330-45) in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, eds., History of Islamic philosophy Pt 1 (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 343.

See further S. Van Den Bergh, trans., Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (London, 1954); O. Leaman, Averroes and his Philosophy (Oxford, 1988); D. Urvoy, Averroes: Les ambitions d’un intellectual musulman (Paris, 1998); M. Fakhry, Averroes: His Life, Works and Influence (Oxford, 2001); C. E. Butterworth, trans., Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory (Provo, 2002); C. Baffioni, ed., Averroes and the Aristotelian Heritage (Naples, 2004).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
May 1st 2010

ENTRY no. 19

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

2010-04-21T16:03:00.008+01:00

Ibn Sina (ca. 980-1037), known in Europe as Avicenna, was an Iranian polymathic philosopher of considerable scope. He was born at a village near Bukhara, the capital of the liberal Samanid dynasty in Central Asia. His father was a local estate governor, hailing from Balkh, and may have been an Ismaili. Ibn Sina was educated in Bukhara. By the age of eighteen, he had learned jurisprudence, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, physics, and also philosophy (falsafa) in the Peripatetic (Aristotelian) mould.

Ibn Sina was gifted in medicine, and became a physician at an early age. He also gained familiarity with the Metaphysics of Aristotle, at first with difficulty, though he assimilated the contents via the commentary of Al-Farabi (entry no. 17). Ibn Sina early arrived at an independent standpoint in religion, though he remained a Muslim.

His brief autobiography relates that his teacher, the mathematician Abu Abdulla al-Natili, had merely a superficial knowledge of philosophy, and so he studied on his own, in logic, mathematics, and astronomy. His self-taught curriculum (apart from medicine) did not impair his abilities, and he ranks as one of the most brilliant intellects of his era.

The autobiography has been described in terms of: “centers on the ability of some individuals with powerful souls to acquire intelligible knowledge all by themselves and without the help of a teacher.... is written from the perspective of a philosopher who does not belong by training to any school of thought and is therefore not beholden to defending it blindly, who established truth through his independent verification (hads).” (Dimitri Gutas, “Avicenna ii. Biography,” Encyclopaedia Iranica online.) The Arabic term hads has also been translated as intuition, and was used by Ibn Sina in relation to his version of the Aristotelian syllogism.

In 997, Ibn Sina gained entry to the palace library when he cured the Samanid ruler (Nuh ibn Mansur al-Samani) of an illness. That library apparently possessed an extensive collection of works, which he researched. A few years later, he started to write his own books, mostly in Arabic, and his corpus is extensive.

The life of Ibn Sina was colourful, and at times hazardous. The political conditions in Central Asia and Iran were very unstable, and military strife was commonplace. He gained an administrative post, and moved from Bukhara to Khwarezm, eventually arriving at Hamadan in West Iran, maintaining a career as court physician and political minister (wazir). He was dependent on royal patrons, and evidently lived in some degree of opulence.

At Hamadan he suffered a brief period of imprisonment in the political flux, and later moved to Isfahan, where the Buwayhid prince Ala’ al-Dawla became his patron. Ibn Sina acted as a physician and scientific adviser to this prince for over a decade, accompanying the ruler on military campaigns, and writing books in his leisure hours. He began the construction of an observatory, but that project was not completed. He died at Hamadan during a military campaign, suffering from colic. His pupil Juzjani reported that Ibn Sina indulged in sexual activity with women; he later gained a reputation amongst detractors as being disposed to slave girls and wine. He is said to have experienced remorse on his deathbed, and to have given away his possessions.

His works include al-Qanun fi’l-tibb (The Canon of Medicine), which epitomised the medical knowledge of his time, and supplemented by his own original observations. This book was translated into Latin, and became influential, being used as a textbook in European universities until the seventeenth century, and having since been called “the most famous single book in the history of medicine.” (J.J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, Avicenna.)

His lengthy and encyclopaedic Kitab al-Shifa (Book of Healing) incorporates logic, the natural sciences, mathematics, and metaphysics. Mathematics is here divided into geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. This neo-Aristotelian digest of philosophy and science became famous in a Latin translation two centuries later, creating controversies, censure, and also diverse influences upon the Christian schoolmen, including Aquinas, who frequently cited Ibn Sina (alias Avicenna).

To quote: “We see in his system traces of Platonism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, Galenism, Farabianism and other Greek and Islamic ideas. His system is unique, however, and cannot be said to follow any of the above schools. Even al-Shifa, which reflects a strong Aristotelian tendency, is not purely Aristotelian.” (S. Inati, “Ibn Sina,” chapter 16 in S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman, eds., History of Islamic Philosophy Pt 1, London: Routledge, 1996, p. 232). Others have described Ibn Sina as being rooted in the Aristotelian tradition.

His Danishnama-yi ‘Ala’i (Book of Science) has been described as the first treatise of Islamic Peripatetic philosophy to be written in the Persian language, being an introductory text for laymen, and dedicated to his patron Ala’ al-Dawla. Exhibiting a less formal style, the author again contradicts the scholastic theologians (mutakallimun), whom he seems to have regarded as primary opponents. See M. Achena, “Avicenna xi. Persian Works,” Encyclopaedia Iranica online.

Ibn Sina’s version of Aristotle was undertaken in an independent spirit of revision. He also incorporated Farabi and Plotinus. A drawback here is that Ibn Sina and other Muslim commentators believed that the rather confusing text Theology of Aristotle was the culmination of Aristotle’s metaphysics, though it is actually a version of Enneads IV-VI. Ibn Sina’s Peripatetic exposition has been regarded as a fusion of Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Islamic theology (kalam), though bearing in mind his conflict with theologians.

“Avicenna’s epistemology is predicated upon a theory of soul that is independent of the body and capable of abstraction; this proof for the self in many ways prefigures by 600 years the Cartesian cogito.” Quotation from S. H. Rizvi, “Avicenna (Ibn Sina),” 2006, Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

The metaphysical system of Ibn Sina has been described as “one of the most comprehensive and detailed in the history of philosophy,” and further, as exhibiting “an underlying Farabian motif, namely, that the quest after philosophical knowledge is for the sake of perfecting one’s soul and hence for the attainment of happiness in this world and the next.” (M. E. Marmura, “Avicenna iv. Metaphysics,” Encyclopaedia Iranica online.)

The question of mysticism in Ibn Sina has been subject to much argument. In his al-Isharat wa’l Tanbihat (Pointers and Reminders), Ibn Sina finishes with a sympathetic review of Sufi mysticism. Here a feasible interpretation is that he validated Sufism without being a participant, and in terms of his own philosophical system. His lost work called Oriental Philosophy (al-Hikma al-Mashriqiya) or Book of the Easterners (Kitab al-Mashriqiyin) is known via a surviving passage that has been differently interpreted. See S. H. Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (revised edn, London 1978), pp. 186ff., associated with the view that Ibn Sina was a precursor of later Iranian gnosticism. Cf. D. Gutas, “Avicenna v. Mysticism,” Encyclopaedia Iranica online, and here denying any mysticism in Ibn Sina, interpreting him in terms of being rooted in Aristotelian rationalism.

See further W. E. Gohlman, ed. and trans., The Life of Ibn Sina (Albany 1974); D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (Leiden 1988); L. E. Goodman, Avicenna (London, 1992; new edn, 2005); S.H. Nasr, “Ibn Sina’s ‘Oriental Philosophy’,” chapter 17 in Nasr and Leaman, eds., History of Islamic Philosophy Part 1 (London 1996); T. Street, Avicenna: Intuitions of the Truth (Cambridge 2006); S. Rahman, T. Street, H. Tahiri, eds., The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition (New York, 2008). See also muslimphilosophy.com.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
April 21st 2010

ENTRY no. 18

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Al-Farabi

2010-03-29T16:06:00.014+01:00

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (ca.870-950 CE) was born in Central Asia, apparently at Farab, though two separate locations are mentioned in the contradictory (and frequently legendary) sources. Some scholars have opined that he was probably of Turkish origin, though a critical contention is that his parents were of Persian descent. As a young man, he migrated west to Baghdad, then a primary centre of learning which attracted numerous bibliophiles and scholars. Europe was at that time a primitive backwater by comparison.

In Baghdad, Farabi acquired a wide knowledge of Greek philosophical texts, though he apparently did not know Greek. His teachers included the Christian logicians Yuhanna ibn Haylan (d. 910) and (reputedly) Abu Bishr Matta (d. 940), the latter being one of the celebrated translators of Greek philosophical texts (and more specifically Aristotelian) into Arabic. Farabi became an editor of Arabic translations from Greek; his expertise in logic and the sciences strongly reflects Aristotelian themes, though he also acknowledges Plato as a forerunner. He spent his last years at the Hamdanid court of Aleppo, prior to his death at Damascus. He eventually became known in Islam as the “second teacher” (al-muallim al-thani) after Aristotle.

Farabi is reported (by Ibn al-Qifti) to have adopted the ascetic robe of Sufis. This detail has provoked some disagreements; the reason for wearing such robes discernibly varied. The preference of Farabi might be explained by a celibate lifestyle (he is reported to have died a bachelor), though it is clear enough that Farabi was not a typical renunciate; his conceptual approach differed radically from pietist attitudes generally expressed by Sufis. Farabi basically exhibited an independence, his role denoting that “philosophy represented free thinking, or, better, the freedom to think” (Ian R. Netton, Al-Farabi and his School, London: Routledge, 1992, p. 7).

In this capacity, some say that he attempted a philosophical reconciliation of Aristotle with Islam, something of considerable relevance at that era. However, there are strong indications that Farabi considered philosophy to be superior to religion. The crux of the matter is that he contributed his own "neo-Aristotelian" philosophical system.

His corpus extends to over a hundred attributed works, though only a proportion of these have survived. Many of his extant works are devoted to logic and the philosophy of language. The confrontation between Greek and Arabic raised problems for philosophical solution in language. Many centuries before J. L. Austin (entry no. 5) and Wittgenstein (entry no. 8), Farabi made his own analysis of language, though in very different circumstances.

His logical works include both independent treatises and commentaries on Aristotle. Farabi was also much concerned with political philosophy, for which he is best known. His writings on metaphysics are a complex area, with some earlier interpretations being outdated, and attended by the issue of misattributed works.

Despite his Aristotelian abilities, Farabi adopted the Neoplatonist theme of emanation. Unlike others of that period, however, he is thought to have recognised that the Neoplatonist teaching, found in the influential Theology of Aristotle (a version of the Enneads of Plotinus), was not in fact Aristotelian. His standpoint has been considered ambiguous in this respect.

While his logical works are basically Aristotelian, his political philosophy has been described as Platonist in orientation. Farabi’s major work in this area is Mabade ara ahl al-Madinah al-Fadilah (Principles of the Opinions of the People of The Virtuous City). He was here concerned with the ideal political state and aberrations from the ideal, and to some extent is reminiscent of discussions in Plato’s Republic. Farabi’s version of the afterlife differed from the orthodox religious conception, instead relating to the stage of “acquired intellect” achievable by citizens of the “virtuous city.” See further M. Galston, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (Princeton University Press, 1990).

“Alfarabi is notorious for the caution with which he writes” (J. Parens, An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions: Introducing Alfarabi, State University of New York Press, 2006, p. 5). That caution has been viewed in terms of a defensive measure against dogmatic attitudes which opposed rationalism. See also my web article On Islamic Philosophy (2008), section 1, about the falasifa.

Again, "Farabi's achievement is that he was the first philosopher who succeeded to internationalise Greek philosophy by creating in a language other than Greek a complex and sophisticated system far surpassing the elementary efforts of both the early medieval Latins and his Syriac predecessors." (D. Gutas, "Farabi iv. Farabi and Greek Philosophy," Encyclopaedia Iranica online.)

Farabi also notably composed the influential Ihsa al-Ulum (Enumeration of the Sciences). In this Arabic work, “Farabi outlined the bases for study in scientific disciplines as then known: the science of language, logic, mathematics, optics, astronomy (and astrology), statics (the science of weights), mechanics, physics, metaphysics, jurisprudence, rhetoric, and music" (Shepherd, Meaning in Anthropos, pp. 171-2).

The Ihsa was translated into Latin during the twelfth century, under the new title of De Scientis. This proved a key text in the early transmission of Aristotelian thought to Christendom, even though Farabi (alias Alpharabius) was translated to a lesser extent than his successors Avicenna and Averroes.

The designation “School of Al-Farabi” has been applied to certain other diverse tenth century thinkers. Yahya ibn Adi (d. 974) was a Christian logician and a pupil of Farabi. There was also Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani (d. 987/8), a distinctive pupil of Yahya who became influential in Baghdad. A more diverging figure was Abu Hayyan al-Tauhidi (d.c. 1023), a commentator who has been described as an eclectic “philosophico-mystic” with a disposition to both Neoplatonist and Sufi thinking. An independent entity was Abu’l Hasan al-Amiri (d. 992), a philosopher with some Sufi tendencies. (See further Netton, Al-Farabi and his School, pp. 8ff.).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 29th 2010

ENTRY no. 17

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Muslims and Europeans

2010-03-20T15:35:00.011Z

In defiance of various ethnocentric attitudes, in "doing philosophy" I will invoke cross-cultural vistas in the treatment on this blog, as I have already done in my books. This gesture does not merely imply a diachronic assessment of thought via historical circumstances, but a recognition of recurring trends in different linguistic formats and at different angles of mentation.

In the next several entries, I propose to mention some basic features in the careers of six philosophers, three of them medieval Muslims, and three of them modern Europeans. More specifically, I am referring to Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Sir Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and Baruch Spinoza.

The first three are primary representatives of falsafa (Islamic philosophy as derived from the Greeks), the fourth was a committed inductionist and empiric, while the last two entities were innovative rationalists in the European “gentlemanly amateur” tradition.

The selection is thus fairly wide-ranging. The ethnic features are varied. Farabi was a Turk or Iranian, Averroes a Spanish Arab, Ibn Sina an Iranian, Bacon a British politician, Descartes a French Catholic radical, and Spinoza a freethinking Jew. Taken together, they exhibit a spectrum of philosophical attitudes. Some study is called for, especially in the case of the first three figures. A blog format of description can only indicate a few of the complexities.

Most Western readers are only familiar with the last three entities. It is worth repeating here that Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza pioneered two dispositions that were basically foreign to most of their academic contemporaries. Many of those contemporaries were Aristotelians of a formal category deriving from the days of the Christian Schoolmen. They had not got effective answers in their worldview, as scientists like Galileo and Kepler discovered.

Modern Western philosophy was born in the “citizen” sectors. The academics were then very substantially uncomprehending, though retrospectively they have been far more generous.

The Islamic phase dimensions of philosophy have customarily been relegated in the Western tradition. Even Bryan Magee, the “populariser of philosophy” and advocate of the progressive Yale syllabus (entry no. 6 above) failed to incorporate reference to the falasifa (Muslim philosophers) in his The Story of Philosophy (London: Dorling Kindersley, 1998), a compact coverage favouring 2,500 years of Western philosophy, and basically moving from the Greeks to the moderns. The gaps are rather substantial.

Magee did state (in brackets) that “cultural contact with the Arab world in the 12th and 13th centuries was to have altogether a transforming effect on European intellectual development, and not only with regard to Aristotle” (ibid., p. 55).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 20th 2010

ENTRY no. 16

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Summation So Far

2010-03-13T15:41:00.006Z

This blog series has been commenting on diverse angles of analytical academic philosophy and the unofficial conceptualism of citizen philosophy. The Cambridge and Oxford traditions were profiled (entries 2-8), with some Continental extensions in logical positivism (entry no. 9).

My own angle has been broached, in the form known as interdisciplinary anthropography, or philosophy of culture (entry no. 10). The distinction between different forms of independent philosophy has been stressed, and in relation to the frequent preferences for Nietzsche (entry no. 11).

Factors involved in controversy about the integral theory of Ken Wilber have been mentioned (entry no. 12). Reservations have been expressed about the contemporary mindset in the commercial guise of Mind, Body, Spirit (entry no. 13), which has been part of the decline in literature. The phenomena of contemporary pseudomysticism are repudiated (entry no. 14), and including the manifestations of "cult" thinking that have become notorious.

The citizen way forward must be far more disciplined than the panaceas offered in the commercial mindset of pop-mysticism. For instance, in referring to the history of religion, due critical ballast should be provided in recourse to specialist sources.

The history of philosophy is not popular today. No apology need be offered for approaching that subject in a more flexible sense than is found in some academic versions, and in a more rigorous sense than is found in the popular dismissals preferring so-called “holistic” conveniences which omit analysis in favour of fantasy.

With regard to the history of religion, I have recently proffered the web article Early Sufism in Iran and Central Asia (2010). The subject involved is distanced from the field of conventional philosophy, but is not an insurmountable problem for an independent thinker. I would maintain here the relevance of investigating an international phenomenon extending from the Near East to Central Asia (and India in later centuries). Analysis of the topographical and conceptual features of the early Islamic cultural landscape are inseparable from the varied explanations for mystical religion (now known as Sufism) in evidence amongst Islamicist scholars. The majoritarian thinking process in the Islamic milieux eventually eschewed the heritage of Greek philosophy, but that is no barrier to intercultural analysis.

With regard to the history of philosophy, one should continue to be broad-ranging rather than unduly selective. From Bertrand Russell and Richard Rorty to Descartes and Kant, there is ample room in retrospect for flexible thought and potential insights. In addition, Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd, and many others of more distant centuries can still be honoured, and doubtless with some surprises in store around committed corners of the mentation effort.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 13th 2010

ENTRY no. 15

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Pseudomysticism and Cults

2010-03-05T22:24:00.008Z

The stance of an analytical citizen philosopher does not mean any form of convergence with popular beliefs. Quite to the contrary, at least in my case. Philosophy denotes a discipline of mind and exposition, and compromises are potentially disastrous.

I believe that the viable form of philosophical exercise extends to psychology, sociology, logic, language, history, biography, metaphysics, and yet other channels of analysis. For instance, the difficult subject of metaphysics is no barrier to philosophical commitment, and can be argued for and against with many permutations. To be convincing, the subject has to be closely argued with due reference points. This is just not the same procedure as one tends to find in the widespread “alternative thought” clichés so closely associated with the confusing post-1950s American “new spirituality” trend.

The 1960s “Me” decade of pseudo-enlightenment left ongoing symptoms of debility in contemporary thinking processes. Simplistic refrains are still taken for granted, and the word “therapy” looms large in too many versions of supposed spirituality. Countercultural Americans of the neo-hippy ambience elevated therapy to the status of a mystical achievement. The Esalen commerce in alternative thought disliked philosophical rigour, which was and is unfashionable in sectors of “Inner Science” and related claims.

The general confusion is staggering when duly analysed. The field under discussion is ripe for linguistic and other forms of appraisal, which could perhaps never be exacting enough at the present time. The idioms employed to capture commercial therapy clients and nominally “holistic” subscribers have been nauseating for many years. The pseudo-holistic commercial adventure so frequently subsists upon banal language and suggestion.

The “workshop” vogue was imported from America to Britain and Europe, providing a career income for numerous entrepreneurs in the spurious esoteric. Some of this is on detailed record. The surfeits of pop-mysticism are not merely erratic, but totally misleading in too many instances. For some indications, see my web article Findhorn Foundation Commercial Mysticism (2008); Stephen J. Castro, Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation (Forres: New Media, 1996), chapter six.

Another pitfall was supplied by the “guru cults” and related phenomena. These have varied from relatively harmless religious sects to predatory activities, and also suppressive strategies conducted against dissidents. An early danger signal was afforded by the Rajneesh sect which transplanted to Oregon from India in the 1980s. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho) became noted for the sponsorship of reckless alternative therapy of the neo-Reichian type. This was strongly implicated as one factor causing belligerent attitudes within the sect at Oregon, where a group of Rajneeshi women resorted to terrorist acts of food-poisoning in the local area. The American authorities had to intervene, and Rajneesh was deported. See further L.F. Carter, Charisma and Control in Rajneeshpuram (Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also my web article Cults and suspect parties (2008).

A recent source has gained widespread interest for an account of discrepancies in the activity of “neo-Advaita” and “crazy wisdom” guru Andrew Cohen. See William Yenner, American Guru (2009). Yenner was a leading participant in Cohen’s community EnlightenNext for thirteen years. A related website describes the book as “documenting a history of abuses that Cohen and many of his current devotees have gone to great lengths to conceal.” See also the review by Professor David Christopher Lane.

My first three websites profiled some anomalies in the popular field of presumed “spirituality.” Psychologists, psychiatrists, medics, the victim support organisations, and yet other agencies, have been more than a little concerned at the drawbacks in evidence, which amount to rather more than the well known controversies about Scientology. The factor of solicitor correspondence in a case of dissident complaints has aroused interest in my web article Kate Thomas and the Findhorn Foundation (2009), especially in view of UN sanctions obtained by the alternative organisation concerned.

In future, it is not the claims to prowess that must be taken seriously, but the visible repression of dissidents by any suspect organisation. There is the further demerit of extremist verbal aggression displayed towards outsiders by some sectarian movements. See Internet Terrorist Gerald Joe Moreno (2009) and Hate Campaign Blogs (2010).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 5th 2010

ENTRY no. 14

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

An Endangered Species

2010-02-16T15:05:00.011Z

A recent contention that philosophy is in dire danger of eclipse from “alternative” or “new age” activities has been probed in some respectable British bookshops. The following data presents findings at an urban branch of the Waterstone’s retail chain, and located in the south-west of Britain.

In February 2010, the present writer searched for philosophy books at this outlet. I found that there was no philosophy section at all, not even the diminished single shelf showing that has become the norm in some of the more generous provincial retail outlets, who give the excuse that the subject is not commercial enough. Philosophy was extinct at this particular venue.

After an intensive search, six books on the deleted subject were located on the Mind Body and Spirit shelves, which were abundantly stocked. Those incidental books were Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Friedrich W. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and Why I am not a Christian, plus a very selective edited volume entitled The Great Philosophers. The reductionism was arguably much too pronounced here. Rather a lot has happened since Plato, and even Russell’s industrious History is nevertheless outdated in certain respects.

Mind Body and Spirit (MBS) here comprised twelve shelves. A small proportion of the books visible here were on religion, there being no separate section on religion in that shop. The meaning is clear. At such outlets, philosophy and religion have become identified with the “new age” trend of Mind, Body, Spirit, originating in America circa 1970. I can remember the equivalent situation in British bookshops during the early 70s when this sales sector was demarcated as “New Age” or “Alternative.” Yet some of the books then visible were profound by comparison with the recent wave.

I carefully noted the contents of the current Mind Body and Spirit (MBS) shelves. There were the customary commercial topics such as tarot, psychism, magic, horoscopes, neoshamanism, crystal healing, and oracle cards. In addition, on offer was a wide selection of popular “alternative” writers such as Deepak Chopra and Neale Donald Walsch, the latter’s Conversations with God being doublestocked.

Eckhart Tolle was also strongly in evidence with such books as The Power of Now, in which he is described on the paperback cover as “a counsellor and spiritual teacher.” Hodder & Stoughton also provided the alluring packaging promotion: “In the Now, we discover that we are already complete and perfect.” The glib scenario of “esoteric” promotions is more than a little misleading, and has been considered to encourage psychological peculiarities.

Another distraction was noticeable. Closely adjacent were several shelves on Self Help, a contemporary feature which some have found very disconcerting. The most prominent books here were several by a well known entrepreneur and exhibiting titles like I Can Make You Rich.

What else was being sold to the most literate society ever known (according to some claims which are under query) ? There was an ominous row of many shelves packed with Science Fiction. A much smaller section on Popular Science could only muster a few shelves. The majority of the books here were general paperbacks, the most distinguished contributor being Professor Richard Dawkins. A further search for Dawkins revealed that he had one book in the MBS shelves, and so he too is in the shadow of magic and pop-mysticism.

There was no psychology section, and no anthropology section. Some books on sociology were found in an amorphous Education section, comprising ten shelves mainly stocked with general paperbacks. The history and philosophy of science was missing, though found elsewhere in university bookshops. The restricted category of Popular Science is not a sufficient safeguard against unrestricted fiction and fantasy.

There were very numerous shelves devoted to Fiction and Crime, with a relatively small section on real crime, meaning the historical as distinct from novelistic varieties. There were also substantial shelves on Teenage Fiction. Where are the Facts ? In very close proximity to Teenage Fiction were shelves on Dark Fantasy and Horror. The lurid covers of so many paperbacks in these sections gave at least some idea of the content, which is not educational.

Commercial trends are tending to make philosophers an endangered species. The popular Mind-Body-Spirit (MBS) category represents an aberration for more analytical dispositions. That engulfing category freely extends to crass superstition and very dubious entrepreneurialism. There is also the factor of “cult” activity that is sometimes represented. To maintain separate identity from the imposed MBS conflation, philosophers may need to adopt special measures conducive to survival.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 16th 2010

ENTRY no. 13

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Ken Wilber and Integral Theory

2010-02-06T18:51:00.013Z

The American thinker Ken Wilber is well known for an integral approach, generally described in terms of psychology and spirituality (and formerly classified in terms of transpersonalism). He has reacted to the format of analytical philosophy (and also “continental” philosophy) associated with the universities. His outlook might be described as one form of citizen philosophy, though I have attempted to point out the substantial differences from my own version.

Wilber became famous as a writer of numerous books on psychology, therapy, and the “perennial philosophy” themes. Commencing with his The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) and The Atman Project (1980), his output climaxed in the 1990s with such works as Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995) and Integral Psychology (2000). This led to an accolade from the Dutch partisan Frank Visser, who produced a detailed study of Wilber’s books after having personally interviewed him. See Visser, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (State University of New York Press, 2003).

Many readers were surprised when Visser soon afterwards became a critic of his subject. This led to an investigation of the reasons. Other converging web critics such as Jeff Meyerhoff (author of an online book) also became noted for a resistance to Ken Wilber’s worldview, which was described as being too ambitious and lacking due supporting proofs. Wilber’s Quadrant Theory aroused opposition as claiming an “Everything” scope based on metaphysical doctrines and questionable deductions. Such counters are much in evidence at the Visser mega-site http://www.integralworld.net/, which commenced as a very small site in support of the integral psychologist. Wilber in turn has strongly denounced his critics as having failed to reach the spiritual “altitude” required for the perspectives under discussion.

Wilber has the rare distinction of having his Collected Works available in a multi-volume edition. He has launched in America the Integral Institute, which has expressed elaborate objectives and an interdisciplinary scope. I am certainly not against the interdisciplinary ideal, having myself pursued a form of that ideal for thirty years. One of my objections relates to the issue of what can usefully be integrated. I am not an integralist, but an analytical commentator, though similarly independent from an academic role. That is to say, I am not actually against being “integral” in some respects, though I do not believe in reckless “holistic” approaches.

My disagreement with the approach evolved by Ken Wilber has spotlighted, e.g., the “new age workshop” issue. See section 4.15 of my web article Ken Wilber and Integralism (2009). Cf. Wilber, Integral Spirituality (Boston: Integral Books, 2007), pp. 201ff., and referring to “Integral Life Practice workshops offered by Integral Institute.”

There is a basic disagreement about the viability of “integral” concepts in a “new age” format, however modified the latter might become (and Ken Wilber is not typical of the “new age” by any means). A presentation in terms of spirituality invites strong analytical responses. The claim to spirituality is a contemporary problem in some sectors. This does not mean that spirituality cannot exist, but the claim is no proof of competence.

Ken Wilber aroused query when he supported the controversial American guru Adi Da Samraj (Da Free John) many years ago. That deceased entity became notorious as an antinomian opportunist. See my web entry "Ken Wilber and Adi Da Samraj" (2008), which is 14.5 at Perennial Philosophy. See also Adi Da Archives. Wilber modified his enthusiasm in that direction, but continued to esteem the teaching of Adi Da. He also substantially assisted the profile of the “neo-Advaita” guru Andrew Cohen, and regularly appeared via a dialogue feature in the latter’s popular magazine What is Enlightenment ? The dialogue duo were rolecast as the guru (Cohen) and the pundit (Wilber). Cohen has since been the subject of strong criticism, with an American Professor of Philosophy describing him in terms of being “in deep need of long term therapy.” See David C. Lane, Andrew Cohen Exposed (2009).

Many contemporary confusions relate to the subject known as “perennial philosophy.” This became popular in the 1960s and later, though seldom attended by a due sense of perspective. Adi Da Samraj made some strong overtures in this direction, which critics have found unconvincing, despite the trappings of “crazy wisdom” that supposedly proved legitimacy.

Wilber was for long a promoter of perenniality, though he has since provided a more sober assessment in terms of a “post-metaphysical” exegesis. A number of his observations in that respect are quite feasible. There is still the overall question of why this fantasised subject has subsisted rather too awkwardly in contemporary alternativism when so much academic literature on the history of religion is ignored. This has been one of my own complaints, and complemented by the fact that my citizen presentation has quite frequently resorted to scholastic literature, which I do not regard as being misleading.

Ken Wilber is unusual for having defined his intellectual career in terms of successive phases. He has enumerated Wilber-1, Wilber-2, and so on. The latest is Wilber-5, concurrent with “integral post-metaphysics.” This recent phase has expanded his Quadrant Theory, declaredly comprehensive, and is expressed in such terms as “the Integral Approach involves the cultivation of body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature” (Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 2007, p. 26).

The writings of Wilber have provided a focus for discussion and extensive disagreement. This is probably what was needed in the contemporary “alternative” conceptual mix that is still associated with the “new age.” Themes commonly found, such as “raising the level of consciousness on this planet,” are subject to much confusion, and frequently defy suitably rational criteria.

Ken Wilber stresses a spiritual altitude relating to “levels of consciousness” signified by spectrum colours. Via Integral Life Practice, Wilber partisans are supposedly participants in the favoured zone of turquoise to Clear Light. Critics require a more convincing exposition that does not lead to “workshops” and bizarre gurus whose followers have so often defected.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 6th 2010

ENTRY no. 12

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Independent Philosophy

2010-02-01T18:46:00.009Z

I am sometimes known as an independent philosopher, meaning one outside the academic sector. My citizen curriculum has permitted me a degree of freedom in study pursuits and writings.

My early studies included Zoroastrianism, an ancient Iranian religion frequently debated by specialist scholars. I have recently updated one of my manuscript articles as the first item on a new website. See Zarathushtra and Zoroastrianism (2009).

The legendary ancient prophet Zarathushtra was known to the Greeks as Zoroastres, a name later becoming Zoroaster in more familiar European parlance. There are two basic versions of Zarathushtra: the conventional Zoroastrian portrayal, and the Greek extensions and fantasies facilitated by the Macedonian conquest. Scholars generally favour the former, the latter being considered unreliable.

Classical writers of the Greek and Roman worlds confused Zarathushtra with astrology and magic. These very misleading preoccupations accompanied Greek enthusiasms about the still basically obscure magi of the Zoroastrian priesthood. However, the ancient prophet of Iran was also tagged by Greek sources as the “first philosopher.” The accuracy of this theme is open to question, though it is difficult to decisively negate the proposal in view of a lack of historical detail. “Classicists have tended to treat the philosophical attribution flippantly” (Shepherd, Minds and Sociocultures Vol. One, Cambridge 1995, p. 234).

The history of philosophy conventionally begins with the era of Thales and Pythagoras, and the Iranian prophet may have substantially antedated such figures. Pythagoras also became legendary at what appears to have been an early stage in the Pythagorean cycle of reference. Philosophy in those times was nothing like the contemporary format now visible. Empedocles has been described in terms of combining “the temperament of a prophet” with a scientific disposition (F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, London 1912, repr. Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 150).

There have been different modern reconstructions of Zarathushtra, which tend to be closely oriented to the verse compositions in ancient Avestan known as the Gathas. These display an intricacy that has evoked arguments as to meaning and context. There is also an elaborate legend in the Zoroastrian sources, and this too has received differing assessments.

Such reconstructions are quite different to the idiosyncratic presentation of Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844-1900) in his Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Being familiar with philology, Nietzsche correctly employed the antique Iranian name in preference to the far more widely used designation of Zoroaster. Yet his “prophet” projection amounted to a philosophical novel about supposed self-mastery relating to his disputed concept of “superman.”

Nietzsche was antagonistic to the Judaeo-Christian worldview, a preoccupation which strongly coloured his writings. Nietzsche declared the death of God, and made clear that he was concerned to negate the moralism of the archaic Zarathushtra, who was to him a mouthpiece for atheistic philosophy. Another contradiction is that Nietzsche was not a superman, but instead suffered insanity in his final years.

Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) appeared during the decade when Nietzsche was an independent philosopher after the termination of his academic career. Independence can result in very different orientations and forms of expression.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 1st 2010

ENTRY no. 11

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Philosophy of Culture

2010-01-26T14:41:00.005Z

The citizen version of analytical philosophy does not necessarily converge in all respects with the academic equivalent (itself variegated), and may occasionally sound a note of innovation.

Contemporary academic philosophy was not sufficient to contain my interest during the 1970s and 1980s. In my own citizen instance, an investigation of interdisciplinary matters soon developed, while retaining a close interest in “philosophical problems” and innovative analytical formats. The social sciences and the history of religions now furnish so much data that it may be regarded as a mistake to ignore these, just as it was an error of some exponents to ignore the natural sciences at an early period in analytical philosophy.

Further, the history of religions to some extent converges with the history of philosophy, as certain minority repertories (e.g., the Islamic falasifa) are closely related to (though not by any means identical with) religious sociocultures. The same considerations apply to Jewish philosophers of the medieval era, a category who frequently lived in Islam-dominated environments.

In my own case, the field of philosophy is not limited to modern Western philosophy (and the preceding Schoolmen), but extends to the more inclusive panorama of classical Greek and Islamic phases of the phenomenon. There is a basic three tier cross-cultural investigation involved, though becoming rather more complex when various extensions are admitted. In this inclusive approach, there is ample room for the “problems” and “language” factors, though not always arising in the format anticipated by contemporaries.

Three tier presentation is conventionally credited, a well known instance being Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy (1946). Russell covered the Greeks, Christian exponents and Schoolmen, and the moderns. There was only a brief chapter on the Muslim counterparts and a fleeting reference to the medieval Jewish contribution. Scholarship in such neglected fields has grown substantially since the 1940s, and the history of philosophy has to some extent changed contour.

The inclusive approach does require some basic study. When I commenced this form of “doing philosophy,” I did not grasp the extent of the study materials involved. That emerging problem caused me to undertake library research. Subsequently, my preliminary work Meaning in Anthropos (1991) was composed in 1984, and did indicate something of the coverage involved in the project. Conventional philosophy was there juxtaposed alongside data from social science, the history of science, and the history of religions.

I do not claim to have charted anything definitive, only to have pursued a strong interest anchored in library studies undertaken at my own expense in Cambridge over a twelve year period. There was no official grant available for such an unorthodox interdisciplinary project.

I have described my early Cambridge endeavour as interdisciplinary anthropography, a cumbersome phrase which I prefer to abbreviate. The endeavour is distinct from ethnography, a monodisciplinary subject which is acknowledged in my general theoretical constructs. I have also referred to the ongoing approach under discussion in terms of a philosophy of culture, and I think this is a more readily assimilable concept, even though it may comprise a simplification of the project denoted. See also my web article Aspects of Citizen Philosophy (2009).

Standards of culture are diversely reflected in religious, political, and educational formats, for better or for worse. Definitions of culture have varied in social science. Philosophical definition is still in the offing. I believe that culture is a more pressing yardstick than society or language, despite the relevance of the latter terms.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 26th 2010

ENTRY no. 10

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Logical Positivism

2010-01-16T13:44:00.011Z

The phenomenon known as logical positivism (or logical empiricism) originated in the Vienna Circle, a 1920s group of thinkers led by the German philosopher (and physicist) Moritz Schlick (1882-1936), whose image is to the left on this blog entry. Other prominent members were Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Otto Neurath, Philipp Frank, Kurt Godel, and Friedrich Waismann.

Yet the ultimate origins were a little earlier, from about 1908 onwards, when the philosophy of science was debated by mathematician Hans Hahn, political economist Otto Neurath, and physicist Philipp Frank. These men favoured the positivism of the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach (d. 1916).

In addition to the Vienna Circle, there was a similar gathering in Germany known as the Berlin Circle, inspired by Hans Reichenbach. However, the Vienna Circle is the more famous, and was assisted by the publication in 1929 of the pamphlet in German often known as the Vienna Circle manifesto. The English translation of the pamphlet title is The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.

This document amounted to a summary of the formulations favoured, including a reliance upon empiricism or “knowledge gained by experience.” There was strong opposition to metaphysics and the doctrine of synthetic a priori truths associated with Immanuel Kant. The contention was made that a uniform scientific language should be the medium for all knowledge. There was also a deference to the Tractatus of Wittgenstein, a book originally published in German as Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921).

The contribution of Wittgenstein was here problematic. The logical positivists favoured his critique of language, but ironically, some of them are said to have disliked the Tractatus, deeming that work to be metaphysical. On his own part, Wittgenstein transpired to be in reaction to logical positivism in his later career.

In 1924, Schlick contacted Wittgenstein, who eventually agreed to meet him (and Waismann) to discuss the Tractatus. Yet Wittgenstein subsequently concluded that the Vienna Circle were not representing his ideas correctly. He refused to attend further meetings, although he maintained a correspondence with Schlick.

The logical analysis in favour with Schlick and his colleagues deemed metaphysical statements to be meaningless. Such statements were said to be irreducible to statements about experience, i.e., not empirically verifiable. This meant that many traditional philosophical problems were rejected as fallacies resulting from mistakes in logical and verbal applications. However, other “problems” were awarded a reinterpretation as empirical statements, and thus deemed worthy of scientific investigation. The Vienna Circle validated statements in accord with their logical and mathematical code of “materialist” rationalism. They insisted upon a criterion of “verifiability” to determine the relevance of meaning.

A tragedy occurred when the Nazis gained power in Germany and Austria. Science could not compete with Fascism at this juncture. The Vienna Circle dispersed in the early 1930s, a fair number of them emigrating to America, where they became influential in universities. Schlick chose to stay in Austria, but he was assassinated in 1936 by a fanatical student at the University of Vienna. The killer later became a member of the Austrian Nazi party.

The German philosopher Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was especially influential amongst the logical positivists. His early book Pseudoproblems in Philosophy (1928) maintained that many traditional problems were meaningless, being the result of faulty language; Carnap advocated the elimination of metaphysics from philosophical discourse, an emphasis which became a characteristic.

Carnap had met Wittgenstein, and in The Logical Syntax of Language (1934), he reformulated the concept of logical syntax proposed in the Tractatus. Carnap stressed philosophy as “the logic of the sciences,” which some critics say is too narrow a definition. His subsequent book Philosophy and Logical Syntax (1935) again rejected metaphysics, favouring the concept of verifiability in strict positivist idiom. See further P.A. Schillp, ed., The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963).

Carnap emigrated to America, and was a Professor of Philosophy for many years at the University of Chicago. “Since ordinary language is ambiguous, Carnap asserted the necessity of studying philosophical issues in artificial languages, which are governed by the rules of logic and mathematics.” See Mauro Murzi, “Rudolf Carnap” (2001), Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

After Wittgenstein, the second complication for logical positivism was the contribution of Karl Popper, who became famous as a critic of the positivists. His early work Logik der Forschung (1934) disputed the verifiability criterion, urging that this should be replaced by a criterion of falsifiability to compensate for excesses. This conflict has been much discussed, although there have been strong arguments against Popper’s tendency to diminish the importance of induction. However, Popper was nevertheless concerned to separate scientific from pseudoscientific statements, although he did not insist that metaphysical statements are necessarily meaningless.

In his autobiography, Popper says that he heard about the Vienna Circle in 1926 or 1927. He read the books of Carnap as these were published. “They [the Circle] were trying to find a criterion which made metaphysics meaningless nonsense, sheer gibberish, and any such criterion was bound to lead to trouble, since metaphysical ideas are often the forerunners of scientific ones” (Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, revised edn Fontana 1982, p. 80).

Popper preferred the guideline that “scientific theories always remain hypotheses or conjectures” (ibid., 81). He furnished the illustration that the Einsteinian revolution in physics “ had shown that not even the most successfully tested theory, such as Newton’s, should be regarded as more than a hypothesis, an approximation to the truth” (ibid.).

In contrast, Carnap became noted for asserting that metaphysicists are like musicians with no musical ability. Metaphysics was here relegated to the status of an art, not a science, and one amounting to poetry. Of course, this viewpoint has been disputed by those with a tendency to metaphysical thought.

Is the art in all cases the same poetry ? Are dogmatic theologians really demonstrating the same artistry as metaphysical philosophers like Plotinus and Spinoza or a linguistic “contemplative” such as the aphoristic Wittgenstein ? Certainly, the Tractatus was at the root of logical positivism, and yet can be interpreted as an opposing factor to the format upon which it was grafted.

At the opposite extreme are those who deny all relevance to logical positivism. Yet this was a significant minority movement of scientific intellectuals, attempting to negotiate Kantian and Hegelian arguments (though positivists did not reject all the Kantian repertory by any means). Logical positivism was the ideological counter to Fascism, and lost to “ordinary language ” media of indoctrination, though surviving in the intellectual language of analytical philosophy.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 16th 2010

ENTRY no. 9

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Wittgenstein Revisited

2010-01-11T21:02:00.008Z

There are some very different interpretations of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), and I mentioned certain of these in entry no 2 . I also stated that the Tractatus (1921) did not inspire me, but only interested me. This famous treatise was certainly an influential and significant work.

A key sentence of the Tractatus is well known. “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Much depends upon what we really can speak about.

A basic problem is that there is still no definitive or standard view of what the Tractatus means. There have been contrasting interpretations of this salient text. The ambiguity discernible here perhaps underlines Wittgenstein’s own statement to his publishers that what the Tractatus did not contain was more important than what it did contain. This paradox is sometimes interpreted in the context of the “metaphysical” dimension which Wittgenstein regarded as being beyond speech.

One trend of interpretation says that Wittgenstein recognised the deficiencies of the Tractatus in his later years. “It was above all [Piero] Sraffa’s acute and forceful criticism that compelled Wittgenstein to abandon his earlier views and set out upon new roads” (G.H. Von Wright, “Biographical Sketch,” in Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, Oxford University Press, 1958; repr. 1980, p. 15).

Another form of exegesis indicates that he was less discontented with the Tractatus in his mature years than is often believed. The crux here is that Wittgenstein was more dissatisfied with the assumptions that he probed, not with his actual conclusions. The basic confrontation transpired to be with logical positivism. He examined the belief that an entirely empirical language is possible. Adherents of this explanation say the Tractatus proved this proposition about language to be untenable. In this view, Wittgenstein had no reason to correct anything in the Tractatus at a later date.

Rather, his main point of disagreement was with what other philosophers made of the Tractatus, especially the Vienna Circle, who were enthusiastic about that work. Wittgenstein is said to have perceived that Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Rudolf Carnap, and others did not fully understand the arguments involved. In this light, the flawed interpretation of the Tractatus by the Vienna Circle was the main reason for Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge in 1929 and subsequent application to the Philosophical Investigations (1953).

Some investigators have found a problem in Wittgenstein’s “contemplative philosophy.” His form of verbalism avoided “metaphysical” identifications. However, he did at least once express a positive view about the conception of God. There have been different statements made about whether he actually believed in God. In theory, he should have remained silent about such beliefs, in accord with his austere discussion of language philosophy as represented in the Tractatus.

The significant memoir by Professor Norman Malcolm states: “Wittgenstein frequently said to me disparaging things about the Tractatus. I am sure, however, that he still regarded it as an important work.” (Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, repr. 1980, p. 69.)

Malcolm also penetrated the difficult subject of religion in this instance. Wittgenstein told Malcolm that he had been contemptuous of religion in his youth, but that at about the age of 21 a change occurred in him, when “for the first time he saw the possibility of religion” (ibid., p. 70). Then during his service in the First World War, he was strongly influenced by Tolstoy’s writings on the Gospels (ibid.). Yet he produced such an ostensibly “positivist” work as the Tractatus, from which Malcolm cites 6.44: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.” Like other aphorisms of that philosopher, special interpretation is needed.

Wittgenstein was impatient with declared proofs of the existence of God. He disliked the writings of Cardinal Newman, “but revered the writings of St. Augustine” (Malcolm, op.cit., p. 71). Yet he cannot be called a Christian. The verdict of Malcolm was:

“I believe that he looked on religion as a ‘form of life’ (to use an expression from the Investigations) in which he did not participate, but with which he was sympathetic and which greatly interested him. Those who did participate he respected – although here as elsewhere he had contempt for insincerity. I suspect that he regarded religious belief as based on qualities of character and will that he himself did not possess.” (Ibid., p. 72.)

Wittgenstein has been described as a tortured genius, and subject to bouts of depression and suicidal tendency as a consequence of his homosexual disposition. One interpretation is that he was ashamed of the disposition and wanted to escape from it. He contrasts with the more suave and socialising heterosexual figure of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), his former tutor who became a figurehead of the radical liberalism which became popular at the end of Russell’s long life. It is possible to criticise both of these entities for lifestyle problems without denying their intellectual merits.

See further Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990); Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970 (2001).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 11th 2010

ENTRY no. 8

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Analytical Philosophy

2010-01-07T21:22:00.007Z

The subject of analytical (or analytic) philosophy is far more complex than often appears at first sight. This subject is sometimes divided into two strongly defined phases, meaning the circa 1900-1960 trend of developments, and the post-1960 contemporary version. Thus entries 2-6 on this blog refer to the preliminary period.

The contemporary analytical trend is widespread in Britain, America, Canada, and Australia. It is not a uniform model, and exponents differ markedly in their views. Contemporary analytic is frequently viewed as a rival of what is known as “continental philosophy,” one exemplar of which is Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), whose “deconstruction” of texts has been strongly queried. See my web entry Jacques Derrida and deconstruction (2008).

Many contemporary analytical philosophers emphasise clarity of argument via logic and language analysis. However, they have exhibited varying tendencies and methods of exegesis. Not infrequently, they have actually rejected basic ideas found in the pre-1960 phase of the analytic phenomenon. It is no longer easy to keep track of all the formulations and dispositions involved. Language philosophy is sometimes said to have been relegated as a primary pursuit, having become a secondary support, though nonetheless visible.

A fair number of contemporary analytical philosophers have integrated the natural sciences into their worldview. This has sometimes tended to converge with earlier attitudes of the Vienna Circle and logical positivism, though again, there are variations.

The logical positivists are noted for rejecting many traditional problems of philosophy, especially anything relating to metaphysics. Their emphasis upon empiricism opted for the conclusion that philosophy must decode to the strictly scientific and logical clarification of thoughts and concepts. The truths of science were regarded as verifiable, with logic and mathematics the runners-up for accuracy. These interests comprised the only meaningful statements. Everything else amounted to an irrelevant statement, not actually being true or false, but meaningless. Ethics, metaphysics, and aesthetics were placed in the category of meaningless statements.

Logical positivism met a challenge in the 1950s, and notably in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953), a work strongly associated with language philosophy. Some British philosophers emphasise the influence of Wittgenstein in the 1960s and 1970s, and lament the fact that developments in American analytical philosophy during the 1970s offset that British trend by the new fascination with computers, neurophysiology, and other matters.

In Britain, the “contemplative philosophy” associated with Wittgenstein was argued as part of a new approach to the philosophy of religion, said to have revived when logical positivism fell from favour. Some have reflected that “contemplative philosophy” is very sparse in Wittgenstein’s published output, a factor contributing to my own interpretation in entry no. 2, which does not deny any significance of the innovated phrase, but instead meaning that the new language philosophy failed to express complexities inherent.

The trend to philosophy of religion illustrates the diversity of contemporary analytical approaches. Indeed, metaphysics was reinstated in the form known as “analytic metaphysics.” This is quite detailed, and has involved a deference to scientific realism via such data as is afforded by quantum physics. The friction with logical positivism has entailed strong debates.

Karl Popper devised the theme of falsification in his philosophy of science. He is viewed as being in reaction on this point to the logical positivists. The falsifiability criterion met with varied denials. The philosophy of science continued into the paradigm theory of Thomas Kuhn and the relativism of Paul Feyerabend, who is often viewed as overturning the formerly assumed priority of the natural sciences. Feyerabend’s “cognitive relativism” gained a strong degree of popular acceptance, though objections have been lodged. See, for example, my web article About Science and Paul K. Feyerabend (2008).

Logical positivism effectively restricted ethical philosophy in the pre-1960 phase. The prevalence of sceptical vogues was stifling for this neglected subject. Value was demoted. A revival occurred at the end of the 1950s, restoring the Aristotelian emphasis on virtue. Kantian ethical philosophy was evoked in the 1970s, and was thus a partner to virtue ethics. Utilitarianism has also survived. Ethical philosophy became noted for a concern with environmental issues and animal rights.

The “logical atomism” of Wittgenstein’s early Tractatus (1921) was obscurantist about values, affirming that (philosophical) language can say nothing about them. Such a tenet was welcome to logical positivism, which deliberated that ethical and aesthetic judgments cannot be true or false, but merely constitute a subjective attitude. The confusion of ethics with art is a serious shortcoming, and can mean a science without scruple and a science lacking objectivity. However, Wittgenstein himself was resistant to logical positivism, furthering a somewhat different orientation.

What is known as the philosophy of mind struggled to emerge from the grip of behaviourism that is associated with Gilbert Ryle (see entry no. 5). Basic forms of mind-brain cognitivism developed, known by different names. Eventually, dualism emerged as a minority element in contemporary analytical philosophy, though such matters are contested.

All things considered, analytical philosophy has a very different face to the one presented half a century ago. There are many unresolved issues, and strong debates. Despite Brian Magee’s reflection about a “bankrupt tradition” (see entry no. 5), one can be more optimistic here. Bankruptcy might indeed have occurred if the more limited vistas had prevailed after 1960, but the new mood of expansion and daring acted as a compensator to poverty.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
January 7th 2010

ENTRY no. 7

Copyright © 2010 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Bryan Magee's Critique of Oxford

2009-12-20T18:48:00.009Z

Bryan Magee (born 1930) is a British philosopher associated with the Oxford tradition, though not at all typical. In his earlier years he did not become a professional philosopher due to his discontent with the prevailing ideology. Instead he took the varied roles of a broadcaster, independent writer, and politician. Yet he did subsequently hold university appointments at both Oxford and London, and became a Professor. Himself favouring Kant and Schopenhauer, his strong critique of the Oxford tradition of philosophy is controversial, though perhaps obligatory to mention.

After graduating at Oxford, in the mid-1950s Magee gained a fellowship in philosophy at Yale University. He discovered how different the prevailing philosophical outlook was at Yale to the counterpart at Oxford. He clearly preferred the former, and the reasons are worth investigating here.

The outspoken autobiography of Magee asserts that the twentieth century Oxford philosophy was so fundamentally different to philosophy as undertaken by figures like Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Leibniz, Locke and Kant, and even Hume. The two contrasting dispositions are “not only not the same activity but are not, at bottom, importantly related” (Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, London: Phoenix, 1998, p. 87).

Professor Magee urges that “those who remained for ever within the confines of Oxford philosophy never set foot in the kingdom of real philosophy” (ibid.). That is a strong statement, and there are many others in the same book. E.g., “the general atmosphere among Yale philosophers contained something that was almost wholly lacking in the Oxford of that time, a living sense of philosophy’s continuity with its own past” (ibid., pp. 87-8). Yale philosophers even studied Einstein, who was an alien factor to the Oxford tradition in dispute.

The observation is made by the same writer that the Oxford philosophers placed a low value on past philosophy. “People whose job it was to teach philosophy would announce with obvious complacency, even pride, that they had never read some of the greatest philosophers” (ibid., p. 88).

Magee stresses that the year he spent at Yale enabled him to see Oxford philosophers more objectively, as being “provincial, superficial, self-admiring, and above all intellectually unserious” (ibid.). According to the same commentator, Karl Popper was the only instance at that time in Britain (amongst well known philosophers) of a more comprehensive approach, resembling the Yale outlook, and “as a direct consequence he suffered not only isolation but active discrimination” (ibid., p. 89).

The Oxford emphasis was on British philosophers, with foreigners almost completely excluded. “Most of the questions in the examination paper on the history of philosophy related to four philosophers only: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume” (ibid., p. 88). In fact, it was usual for those who obtained a first class degree in philosophy “not to have read a word of Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (which was a special option), Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, or any other philosopher who had practised outside the British Isles” (ibid.). This ethnocentric horizon stressed recent British exponents like Moore and Wittgenstein.

The Greeks had receded. As for the Muslim falasifa, they were effectively unknown, and certainly off the map. In this unventuresome climate of British conceptualism, the linguistic vogue “was little more than an intellectual exercise, like the invention of difficult crossword puzzles” (ibid., p. 85). Magee further writes of his earlier years that “my contemporaries were having fun, in which indeed I often joined and found pleasure, but what they were doing was seldom if ever of the slightest consequence” (ibid.).

The Oxford dissident was able to cite as a support the verdict of Bertrand Russell in the latter’s book entitled My Philosophical Development (1959). The Cambridge exponent there states that “the new philosophy seems to me to have abandoned, without necessity, that grave and important task which philosophy throughout the ages has hitherto pursued” (Magee, Confessions, pp. 85-6, citing Russell, p. 230).

One may conclude (without necessarily agreeing with all the Magee contentions) that British analytical philosophy has needed to become more universal in historical reference points, and ever more comprehensive in ideology, proposition, and theory. The methodology of “doing philosophy” appears to need a basic reappraisal, and this has been in process. The “crossword puzzles” are now seen by many as being in a different league to solving “philosophical problems,” a phrase that has varied in significance amongst interpreters.

Fortunately, since the 1950s, British analytical philosophy has become rather more complex and diverse, admitting new perspectives and forms of argument.

See also Magee, Popper (1974); idem, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983); id., The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy (1987); id., The Story of Philosophy (1998).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
December 20th 2009

ENTRY no. 6

Copyright © 2009 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

J. L. Austin and the Oxford Tradition

2009-12-13T18:49:00.012Z

Apart from Wittgenstein, the major proponent of linguistic philosophy was John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960). Shortly after the death of Wittgenstein, Austin became the leading philosopher at Oxford University during the 1950s. Professor Austin believed that analysis of the use of language was the basic concern of philosophy. One of his innovative concepts was “speech act,” denoting the factor of speech as behaviour. The title of his book How to Do Things with Words (1962) is a graphic indicator of his format. His Philosophical Papers (1961) is also relevant.

Austin gained a classical scholarship at Balliol College. His linguistic training as a classicist apparently influenced his later career, in which his aim was to investigate and index commonly employed grammatical constructions.

One of his better known emphases was the speech act that he called “performative utterances,” such as promising, congratulating, or apologising. These he viewed as serving a purpose that does not imply any direct representation of reality. Those utterances can therefore never be true or false, only relatively successful or unsuccessful. Indeed, most other utterances were also not regarded by Austin as being truth-evaluable.

How words are used, in ordinary speech, is surely a relevant subject of enquiry. Yet if that endeavour becomes totally dominant in philosophy, losses can offset the gains. There have been counter-views to the linguistic paradigm.

The truth or falsity of utterances becomes pressing in the contemporary world. Ordinary speech of the 1950s was superior to the demise of diction fifty years later, facilitated by decadent media. Four letter words and one letter words are now the extent of literacy in some sectors. Even the BBC can now do with reminding, e.g., that the vogues for slang and abuse in common language are eroding the best descriptive English. For instance, the word you now too frequently becomes u, and conceptual density has proportionately attenuated. The contemporary mindface is too often one of falsity and superficiality.

Austin acknowledged the influence of G. E. Moore’s commonsense philosophy rather than Wittgenstein. Yet the Oxford philosopher Alfred J. Ayer (1910-1989) described Austin’s blanket linguistic approach as arid. Ayer had early formed an enthusiasm for logical positivism, associated with the Vienna Circle, which he visited as a guest. His book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) was influential in the spread of logical positivism, which was succeeded by linguistic philosophy. Ayer was also a follower of Bertrand Russell, who expressed aversion to linguistic analysis after himself initiating that trend. Ayer’s respect for the Cambridge tradition was commemorated in his Russell and Moore: The Analytical Heritage (1971).

Sir Alfred Ayer was Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford from 1959 to 1978. He is sometimes identified as a partisan of David Hume. See Ayer, Hume (Oxford University Press, 1980). Here Ayer closely follows basic arguments of Hume, and in such a manner as to indicate his sense of empathy. Despite his popularity with a public readership, Ayer lost to Wittgenstein and Austin in the influence upon his academic colleagues at Oxford and Cambridge. The reason for this has been stated in terms of: “Ayer had remained faithful to Russell, if anything excessively so, but never had any original ideas” (Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, London: Phoenix, 1998, p. 380). Cf. Graham Macdonald, “Alfred Jules Ayer” (2005), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Another Oxford luminary was Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), author of the provocative work The Concept of Mind (1949). That thesis of the “ghost in the machine” argued strongly against Cartesian and related concepts of the independent nature of mind from the body; mental processes are here not at all distinct from bodily actions.

“It is not surprising that Gilbert Ryle’s ‘deliberate abusiveness’ towards ‘the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine’ should have been forecast by Ryle himself as being in line for the accusation of a behaviourist approach” (K.R.D. Shepherd, Meaning in Anthropos, Cambridge 1991, p. 129). One must here abbreviate the disputes for the sake of clarity in a blog format.

Transiting from Husserl and Heidegger, Professor Ryle became “the John the Baptist of linguistic analysis” (Magee, Confessions, p. 381). Professor Magee had the advantage of personal encounters with Ryle, and so his comments cannot easily be dismissed. Ryle came under the influence of Wittgenstein, a factor “which continued even after Ryle came actively to dislike Wittgenstein” (ibid., p. 382).

Furthermore, Ryle’s controversial book is described by the critical Oxonian in terms of “not only the central thesis but also what came to be the best known of the subsidiary theses come straight out of Schopenhauer, while all the time Ryle himself genuinely believed he was putting forward his own ideas” (ibid.). Ryle is here said to have understood this factor of derivation after publication, and after being informed accordingly. Cf. Julia Tanney, “Gilbert Ryle” (2009), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, seeking “to raise the possibility that his [Ryle’s] work has been widely misunderstood.”

Ryle was eclipsed by the prominence of Austin, whose works were published posthumously. Ryle is said to have resented Austin as a consequence (Magee, Confessions, p. 383). Events at Oxford were marked by another event of ideological friction; Ryle is reported to have blocked the appearance of Karl Popper in an Oxford role of professorship (ibid., p. 89). Sir Karl (who taught at London University) was apparently feared by some prestigious rival contemporaries for his critical talents, which did manifest in various books now famous. Popper had a much closer association with the sciences than some of his rivals. For a few comments, see my web entry On Karl Popper (2008).

Professor Bryan Magee is a dissenter from the Oxford tradition. He has expressed the controversial conclusion, in relation to the period under discussion, that “except for Popper’s their work [that of British analytical philosophers after Russell and Moore] constituted a bankrupt tradition” (Magee, Confessions, p. 380). This is considered too strong a statement by some other academics.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
December 13th 2009

ENTRY no. 5

Copyright © 2009 Kevin R.D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

G. E. Moore and Commonsense

2009-12-08T22:08:00.019Z

The noted Cambridge academic philosopher George Edward Moore (1873-1958) is strongly associated with the advocacy of "realist" commonsense. Together with his acquaintance Bertrand Russell, he became recognised as an originator of the analytical philosophy that took strong root in Britain. There was a difference in the outreach of those two entities, in that Russell became an international figure, whereas the influence of Moore was largely confined to Britain.

Both Moore and Russell started their academic career at Cambridge as neo-Hegelians. These inhabitants of Trinity College were inheritors of the nineteenth century overspill from German idealism, in the format found in British philosophy by the end of that century. Moore went to study at Trinity in 1892, adding philosophy to classics. There he met Russell and J.M.E. McTaggart (1866-1925), the latter a critical Hegelian and a lecturer at Trinity. Moore subsequently broke away from the influence of McTaggart (who eventually reaped a strong degree of oblivion for many years). This development prompted Russell’s similar revolt against the idealism of McTaggart. Yet unlike Russell, Moore nurtured a continuing aversion for empiricism, a trait which he acquired from the neo-Hegelians.

In his dissertation of 1898, Moore turned against Kantian idealism, confirming his new angle in realism. He became a Fellow of Trinity, and eventually a lecturer. His intellectual development is not straightforward, and has been subject to some generalisations. It was really only his friend Russell who identified fully with the empiricist tradition stemming from Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. However, Moore did share in the “realist” reliance on sense data, which now became the operative mode of analysis, disdaining metaphysical elements, and even the rationalist version of analysis which stressed the use of reason above unreliable sensory experiences.

While Russell moved into the rather cerebral world of mathematical logic, Moore established an analytical approach to ethical problems in Principia Ethica (1903), which transpired to be his most famous work. He has been credited with a “Platonistic” view of good as an objective but indefinable property. In this work he argued that ethical disputes cannot be resolved by criteria of the natural or social sciences, and that ethical values should be acknowledged in their own right.

From 1925 to 1939, Moore was Professor of Philosophy and Logic at Cambridge. By that time he had developed his “commonsense” realist position, first explicitly expressed in lectures of 1910-11, where he remarked that “what is most amazing and most interesting about the views of many philosophers, is the way in which they go beyond or positively contradict the views of Common Sense.” (Moore, Some Main Problems of Philosophy, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953, p. 2.)

This attitude of preference for commonsense was consolidated in his subsequent paper A Defence of Commonsense (1925). He was not a systematic philosopher, and “Moore’s legacy is primarily a collection of arguments, puzzles and challenges.” That quote comes from Tom Baldwin, “George Edward Moore” (2004), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Moore was a friend of Wittgenstein, though possessing a different temperament. They were not always in agreement. In other directions, Moore rejected the logical positivism that gained strong ground at Oxford in such entities as Alfred Ayer.

“Although Moore always denied that philosophy is just analysis, there is no denying that it [analysis] plays a central role in his philosophy” (Baldwin, art.cit.). See further P.A. Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of G. E. Moore (1942); T. Baldwin, G. E. Moore (London, 1990); Baldwin, ed., G.E. Moore: Selected Writings (London, 1993).

Moore felt that the commonsense boundaries of experience were sufficient to explain existence. He exercised a strong influence on the Oxford academic philosophers, firstly the logical positivist wave, and afterwards the linguistic analysts like J. L. Austin.

Accusations have been made that philosophy became “talk about talk,” a phrase associated with the analysis of concepts and speech. That disposition has frequently been critical of anything idealist or rationalist, or even scientific. Moore was content to analyse statements in ordinary language, without relying on science or any form of technical logic. This commonsense outlook was favoured by the Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin, who furthered the resistant attitude to logical positivism (and criteria of scientific standards dominating speech). The new trend viewed “philosophical problems” as confusions caused by the inappropriate use of language; the unravelling of the confusion via linguistic analysis was now believed by Austin and others to dissolve the problems.

The mergence of commonsense and linguistic analysis has been criticised in other directions as not being any path to deliverance from problems. The nature of commonsense analysis has come under attack for being a simplistic mode, not the ultimate recourse. For instance, “modern science has shown that behind our moment-to-moment experience of the everyday world teem truths and realities that commonsense is totally unaware of, that are frequently astounding and often counter-intuitive, and sometimes deeply difficult to grasp even when we know them to be true” (Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, London: Phoenix, 1998, p. 52).

The attack on commonsense advocacy in British philosophy alighted upon Bertrand Russell’s denial of commonsense in his well known book The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Russell here emphatically stated that “commonsense leaves us completely in the dark as to the true intrinsic nature of physical objects.”

Professor Bryan Magee adds in supplement: “The greatest tragedy of academic philosophy in the twentieth century in the English-speaking world is that it was developed as a profession largely by people to whom these things were not obvious, people who did not themselves have philosophical problems and who – perhaps for that reason – operated with a commonsense view of the world, and equated philosophical activity with conceptual analysis” (Magee, op. cit., p. 53).

A further observation is that the alternatives in philosophy seemed to be contradicted by religious elements, the absolute idealism of Hegel, and the oracular writings of Nietzsche (ibid.). Therefore everything else was eschewed as inferior or confusing.

The analysis of conceptual analysis thus leaves rather large areas of questioning in matters that should not be taken for granted. For instance, the Magee formulation prompts a query as to the identity of the people who do experience “philosophical problems.” Perhaps Magee is one of them, though that contingent may include more obscure persons possessing a valid angle on the resolution of problems.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
December 8th 2009

ENTRY no. 4

Copyright © 2009 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Bertrand Russell

2009-12-04T14:30:00.013Z

Easily one of the most influential modern (and academic) philosophers was Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Some of the commentators say that he was the dominant figure in twentieth century philosophy. This being so, one is obliged to probe closely varied aspects of his career, insofar as the blog format permits.

Bertrand Russell was the grandson of Lord John Russell, being reared in a British aristocratic milieu, and eventually inheriting the status of an Earl. Yet he allied himself with the Labour Party, and was radical in his views. He studied mathematics at Cambridge, a subject which he adapted to philosophy. In 1898, he abandoned his neo-Hegelian idealism in favour of realism as the “new philosophy of logic.” He acknowledged the importance of science in this transition.

His early work Principles of Mathematics (1903) became famous for contending his subject in terms of a close relationship to logic. This has been described as logicism, meaning the view that mathematics is significantly reducible to formal logic. He arrived at his basic view of “mathematical logic” quite independently of the obscure Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), the German mathematician of Jena University who converged in this form of conceptualism (or logicism).

In collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead, Russell subsequently produced Principia Mathematica (1910-13), which became celebrated in terms of a “new logic.” He was viewed by his admirers as a British version of Aristotle. Russell has been described as deducing mathematics from logic. “One of the effects has been not so much to subordinate mathematics to logic, which is what Frege and Russell wanted, but to subordinate logic to mathematics” (Alfred Ayer, “Frege, Russell and Modern Logic” in Bryan Magee, The Great Philosophers, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 308).

Bertrand Russell became a Professor of Philosophy. From 1910 to 1915 he was a lecturer at Cambridge University, during which period he was tutor to Wittgenstein, whom he regarded as a genius. He departed from mathematical logic and composed some books on general philosophy, including The Problems of Philosophy (1912). His Oxford follower Alfred Ayer referred to this work as “the best introduction to philosophy that there is” (ibid., p. 309). Russell here describes “various traditional philosophical problems from an empiricist standpoint” (ibid.). He was continuing the British empiricist tradition associated with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Russell is celebrated as having inspired the analytic philosophy favoured by universities, though he shares this honour with G. E. Moore.

Later, Russell veered away from philosophy, becoming engaged in political and educational activities having a flavour of radical socialism. He gained fervent admirers and strong critics. “The permissive society was implemented by Bertrand Russell, whose advocacy of free love is memorable for the misery created in his family” (Shepherd, Some Philosophical Critiques and Appraisals, 2004, p. 251). He married four times and became notorious as a womaniser. His book Marriage and Morals (1929) gained brickbats, though later on his literary output acquired the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

Russell was eventually hero-worshipped by the younger generation of the 1960s, who uncritically assimilated his political and social views, including the unwise disposition for free love that created so many problems. Russell was not only a symbol of pacifism and the campaign for nuclear disarmament, but also more questionable deportment.

He wrote some further works on philosophy, including his famous History of Western Philosophy (1946). This book has received very differing assessments. It has been described by the publisher Routledge as “the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century and one of the most important philosophical works of all time” (Routledge edition, 2000). A conflicting commentary came from Professor Bryan Magee, who says that Russell’s History is “overrated,” and that “the treatment throughout is superficial, not to say flip” (Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, London: Phoenix, 1998, p. 220).

Furthermore, “for all his [Russell’s] genius he radically fails to understand Kant, and consequently the whole tradition of philosophy that has grown out of Kant’s work; his entire chapter on Schopenhauer is consistent with his never having read that philosopher’s main work” (ibid., p. 221).

These are weighty criticisms indeed, and one is obliged to look closely at Magee’s personal description of Russell, whom he met towards the end of the latter’s long life, in 1960 to be precise.

Magee found that Russell was an elegantly courteous host, mentally alert at the age of 87, a fluent and humorous talker, and possessing a social record of impressive contacts the world over. For instance, Russell described how he had taught philosophy to the poet T.S. Eliot at Harvard. “He did not tell me what I subsequently discovered, that he [Russell] had had an affair with Eliot’s wife while the Eliots were living under his roof” (ibid., p. 264).

The subject gains due praise from Magee for his career achievements. However, significant contradictions for contemporary philosophy are emphasised. Magee mentions the anomaly that although Russell is regarded as the founder of modern analytic philosophy, “he never regarded analysis as an end in itself” (ibid., p. 216). It was Bertrand Russell who started language philosophy, but he did not regard this as the objective, unlike his successors. More pointedly, “to the end of his days, he believed that the purpose of philosophy was what it had always been thought to be, namely the understanding of the true nature of reality, including ourselves” (ibid., p. 217). In that respect, Russell was a polymath, not a specialist, and certainly not a linguist.

Even more pointedly, Bertrand Russell was one of the few who “understood clearly – what many people to this day fail to understand - that science of itself does not, and never can, establish a particular view of the ultimate nature of reality.” What science actually does is to “reduce everything it can deal with to a certain ground-floor level of explanation” (ibid., p. 218).

The Magee version of this perspective is memorable: “To many working scientists, science seems very obviously to suggest an ultimate explanation, namely a materialist one; but a materialist view of total reality is a metaphysics, not a scientific theory; there is no possibility whatsoever of scientifically proving, or disproving, it” (ibid.).

Magee finds the last philosophical book of Russell to be significant for reasons not always proclaimed. My Philosophical Development (1959) is described as a “substantial work aimed at the serious student of philosophy” (Magee, Confessions, p. 220). The deduction is made that Russell was here acknowledging how his empiricist quest had failed. In the last paragraph, Russell states that “empiricism as a theory of knowledge has proved inadequate” (ibid., p. 222). Magee concludes that Russell had finally arrived at a view which Kant had made a starting point in his own critical philosophy generations before. Moreover, Magee urges that Russell had failed in pursuing logic and the philosophy of science, neither of these avenues having afforded a due explanation of known reality (ibid., p. 219).

Ultimately, Magee views Russell as being impractical, despite his genius in some directions. His “genius was for solving theoretical problems” (ibid., p. 268). “He treated practical problems as if they were theoretical problems; in fact I do not think he could tell the difference” (ibid.). This made Russell a “blunderer” in private and public life. “He had so little practical intelligence” (ibid.).

The mathematical genius was thus at a disadvantage with the real life problems of philosophy, which is not merely an academic or theoretical pursuit. Russell knew the limitations of language analysis, and he apparently grasped in the end that his empiricist profile was a limitation. His flawed psyche (meaning his instinctual excesses) has been lamented by some commentators.

Cf. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, London 1967-69). See also A. D. Irvine, ed., Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999).

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
December 4th 2009

ENTRY no. 3

Ludwig Wittgenstein

2009-11-17T15:11:00.023Z

One of the most celebrated modern philosophers is Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). He early wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), and believed that he had solved all the outstanding problems of philosophy in this compact work. The Tractatus was much favoured by the Vienna Circle, a group of scientists and philosophers who pioneered logical positivism, and who interpreted Wittgenstein in that light. The Vienna Circle emphasised language, and in terms of the presiding insistence that the only meaningful statements are those which are empirically verifiable. In other words, what you cannot prove, never state, because such a statement is worthless. Metaphysics, for instance, is out of bounds.

The Vienna Circle survived their diaspora in the face of the Nazi regime. Logical positivism lived on in America and Britain, and became influential. This contingent made a relevant critique of Fascist propaganda; that form of political rhetoric saturated Germany and other countries in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Wittgenstein was born in Austria, but became a British citizen, and one strongly linked to Cambridge University. When I was a young man (and a resident of Cambridge), the dons would discuss “what Wittgenstein really meant.” There were permutations of this during my temporary employment under Professor J. P. Stern, who enthused about Kant, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche in our conversations, which occurred in his book-lined study overlooking a panoramic garden in a select area of Cambridge.

Professor Stern (who taught German at London University) was an expert on Nietzsche. I found great difficulty in conceding the importance of Nietszche. I also found the Tractatus a rather disconcerting work, though in a different way to Thus Spake Zarathustra. Professor Stern pressed upon me the Tractatus when he grasped that I had an interest in philosophy. He expected me to enthuse over the treatise, like many undergraduates at that time. I was an exception to the fashion. This was in 1973. I never did find the Tractatus inspiring, only interesting; it is generally considered significant in the history of philosophy.

[Wittgenstein had early read Schopenhauer, and believed that the latter was basically correct in his worldview. Wittgenstein persisted in the attitude that ultimate reality was beyond conceptual grasp, and therefore a factor of which nothing can be said. Only the phenomenal world could be described. Various objections have been lodged against this rather inflexible view, though in the 1970s, the exegesis of Wittgenstein was still in the ascendant at places like Cambridge].

Wittgenstein himself demonstrated a dissatisfaction with the Tractatus at a later phase of his career. By then he knew that he had not solved all the problems of philosophy. The Tractatus had been influenced by theories of the mathematician Gottlob Frege and his own tutor Bertrand Russell. Critics say that the Tractatus is ambiguous and contradictory, and even that Wittgenstein’s version of logic made nonsense of his own propositions. He urged that philosophical problems arose from a failure to understand the logic of language.

Amongst the academic philosophers, Wittgenstein is the one who came closest to being a citizen philosopher. In 1912 he became an undergraduate at Cambridge, but he reacted to the example of his tutor Bertrand Russell, who at this time authored The Problems of Philosophy (1912).

“ ‘How few there are who do not lose their own soul,’ remarked Wittgenstein one day. Russell felt obliged to tell Wittgenstein that he would not get his degree unless he learnt to write ‘imperfect things,’ a constraint which incurred the junior’s displeasure.” (Shepherd, Meaning in Anthropos, Cambridge 1991, p. 149).

Neglecting the degree, Wittgenstein moved back to the Continent. At this time he became a rich man, gaining the fortune of his deceased father, an industrialist tycoon. Yet he retired to Norway, building himself an isolated hut near Skjolden, his intention being to live in complete seclusion. The First World War changed his plans, and he volunteered to join the Austrian army. After the war, he became a schoolmaster, teaching in various remote villages in Austria. He subsequently became a gardener and an architect.

Two of his friends criticised the Tractatus, and Wittgenstein is said to have abandoned his earlier views. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge, quickly acquiring a Ph.D. (on the basis of the Tractatus) after his lengthy absence of sixteen years in obscurity. He thereafter did much writing, but without publishing it, apparently because he did not wish to be misunderstood. Dr. Wittgenstein was noted for giving unconventional lectures in a mood of deep concentration.

The advantages of his transition to academic status are not totally convincing. He remained a virtual alien within academic life, and his aversion to appearing in the college dining room is a well known detail. He regarded all the talking as superficial. He frequently visited the local cinema in an effort to suspend his prolonged concentration on philosophy; he could appear quite desperate not to be distracted while watching the film. During the 1930s he escaped for nearly a year to his distant hut in Norway. In 1947 he ceased to lecture at Cambridge, and moved to Ireland, where for a time he lived alone in a hut beside the sea in Galway. (For a partisan account, see Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, Oxford University Press, 1958.)

Though he exhibited certain unusual characteristics, some critics have said that Wittgenstein was idiosyncratic, suicidal, and homosexual. He certainly possessed a strong personality, and he was apparently an exacting schoolteacher in the 1920s. “His sexuality was ambiguous but he was probably gay; how actively so is still a matter of controversy.” See D. J. Richter, “Ludwig Wittgenstein,” Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

After his death, many of his writings surfaced in print. The most famous of these later works became his Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein was here committed to what is known as linguistic philosophy. He emphasised language as a tool, and introduced the concept of “language game.” His treatment of philosophy as language can be considered more of a philosophical problem than a solution.

The meaning of life remains a mystery to much contemporary philosophical language. Wittgenstein failed to describe his own notable striving for experiential equipoise. The new language philosophy did not describe, e.g., the hut in Norway or his recurring thought of entering a monastery. The intrinsic struggle to penetrate “philosophical problems” and the artificiality of surface discourse eluded his mode of language tool.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
November 17th 2009

ENTRY no. 2

Citizen Philosophy

2009-11-12T13:12:00.014Z

I have described myself as a citizen philosopher, and some people wish to know more about that theme. Perhaps this theme could be successfully adapted in a blog format, and I am now willing to try this resort, which I formerly resisted, despite the advice of some acquaintances. The criterion is that of an intellectual blog, as distinct from the more popular versions.

Some people understood what I meant by citizen philosophy. Yet others did not, and queried in the vein of: “I have never heard of that; so what on earth is it ?” Their response made me smile, and I will here attempt to explain why. Please note that humour is one ingredient of contemporary citizen philosophy in the intellectual mode.

Readers noticed that David Hume and Spinoza were represented in my “citizen philosopher” book Pointed Observations (2005). In their own respective ways, both of these thinkers were citizen philosophers, neither of them possessing an academic role. Spinoza actually refused an academic appointment. I do not agree with all the views of those two thinkers, and indeed am very critical of Hume on many points. I do not share his tendency to extreme scepticism. However, I am prepared to admire his efforts in writing a multi-volume History of England that remained the standard work on the subject for a century or so.

Other citizen philosophers were Descartes, Leibniz, John Locke, Denis Diderot (the encyclopaedist), Rousseau, and Schopenhauer. That list is not exhaustive. These entities varied enormously in their output and outlook. I do not agree with all their views. Many other Western philosophers were academics such as Kant and Hegel, Russell and Wittgenstein, Foucault and Derrida. These academic celebrities generally had the upper hand in gaining attention, having the benefit of prestigious identity and formal recommendations. The majority of canonical philosophers in the last two centuries have been thinkers situated in an academic role.

The trend in academic philosophy has generally been one tending strongly towards isolation from the citizen sector. Yet anomalously, it is academics who have elevated antique citizen philosophers to celebrity. University students can now write prestigious doctoral theses on citizen thinkers who could not understand why their works were ignored during their own lifetime. Early works of Hume and Schopenhauer were a total failure when first published, and the struggle that Spinoza had in gaining recognition is surely memorable. Spinoza was defamed as an atheist for many years after his death. He was definitely not an atheist, though he was a freethinker.

Karl Marx really was an atheist, and he is generally ascribed to the annals of sociology. Yet some academics have insisted that he should be regarded as a philosopher. He was definitely one of the most influential thinkers in recent times, despite the fact that he early lost an academic career and chose to live in virtual poverty while furthering his studies at the British Library. One of his well known assertions is: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the real task is to change it.” It would seem that Marx did not regard himself as a philosopher, but as a communist revolutionary. Like many other influential thinkers, he was little known during his lifetime.

For those who desire a testimony of intellectual orientation, I can here state that I am not, e.g., a Spinozan, a Marxist, a Humean sceptic, or a Cartesian. I do fundamentally regard myself as a philosopher, though my output has extended into other fields also, a feature denoted by the adventurous word anthropography, which in my case refers to a philosophy of culture and not to ethnography. I fear that it will never be possible to compress that extending subject into a blog without risk of misunderstandings.

Kevin R. D. Shepherd
November 12th, 2009

ENTRY no. 1

Copyright © 2009 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All rights Reserved.