The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) (30 page)
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Authors: Anthony Esolen
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How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? No medieval writer ever asked such a thing. But the question, which appears to have been the invention of a smug Enlightenment satirist, could be considered no different from “how many infinitesimals can fit between any two numbers, no matter how close they are,” the question that burst open Newton’s imagination as he invented the calculus. Nor would it have been absurd to imagine that a being can exist without the limitation of a body. At least one such Being, Thomas showed, must necessarily exist.
I have said that medieval artists and thinkers were confident that man’s mind could attain certainty, even about the highest things. Some, like Thomas, had a sunny view of this capacity. Others, like Bernard, believed that our principal source of knowledge about God, other than God’s revelation in Scripture, came from a mystic intuition, a gift from without. What they all had in common was that hunger, as Dante calls it, for “the bread of angels” (
Paradiso
2.11). That confidence and that healthy appetite explain why the men of the Middle Ages invented what we still call the “university.” But what we call higher education would have made the schoolmen blush. I’m not talking about the silliness of our curricula, but about how we rob reason of its function. We fear its muscles. Thomas Aquinas and his comrades had no such fear.
Paradiso
2.11). That confidence and that healthy appetite explain why the men of the Middle Ages invented what we still call the “university.” But what we call higher education would have made the schoolmen blush. I’m not talking about the silliness of our curricula, but about how we rob reason of its function. We fear its muscles. Thomas Aquinas and his comrades had no such fear.
Once Again: The Dark Ages?Each commune [that is, a town with a charter of freedoms] had a seal of its own, a belfry whose bell summoned the citizens to the defense of their liberties, and a pillory and gibbet where the decrees of town justice were executed. For the [town] had its own court, made its own laws or followed its own customer, and the fines paid went into the town treasury and not into the lord’s pocket.Lynn Thorndike
,
The History of Medieval EuropeIf only we enjoyed such freedom. Imagine what your schools might be like if you and your townsmen alone were responsible for what went on in them.
That timidity of ours shows up in our “universities,” so called for marketing purposes, and perhaps because you can study
anything
you like there, including porn movies and other twaddle. But you can’t study
everything,
because the presumption is that painting has nothing to do with dissecting a fish, which has nothing to do with reading the poetry of Robert Frost. There is nothing to unite these intellectual endeavors. What’s worse, this intellectual alienation of one discipline from another falls prey to a vicious and all-pervading political orthodoxy the like of which none of the schoolmen would have countenanced. Why? If there is no universal truth accessible to reason and demanding rational argument, then partisans of one position or another fall back upon brute coercion. Feminists, for example, have long decried logic as patriarchal, and that is why they must use the machinery of power to get their way—by derailing the careers of untenured professors who disagree with them. When you can’t win an argument, pull a gun. But medieval professors allowed for refreshingly free debate, even though they were discussing matters which they believed might determine not simply which candidate would teach freshman English but the ultimate bliss or damnation of millions of human souls to come.
anything
you like there, including porn movies and other twaddle. But you can’t study
everything,
because the presumption is that painting has nothing to do with dissecting a fish, which has nothing to do with reading the poetry of Robert Frost. There is nothing to unite these intellectual endeavors. What’s worse, this intellectual alienation of one discipline from another falls prey to a vicious and all-pervading political orthodoxy the like of which none of the schoolmen would have countenanced. Why? If there is no universal truth accessible to reason and demanding rational argument, then partisans of one position or another fall back upon brute coercion. Feminists, for example, have long decried logic as patriarchal, and that is why they must use the machinery of power to get their way—by derailing the careers of untenured professors who disagree with them. When you can’t win an argument, pull a gun. But medieval professors allowed for refreshingly free debate, even though they were discussing matters which they believed might determine not simply which candidate would teach freshman English but the ultimate bliss or damnation of millions of human souls to come.
Take Thomas’s most ambitious metaphysical work, the
Summa Contra Gentiles.
He writes it to wrestle with, among others, the great Muslim philosophers Averroes and Avicenna. His approach is not that of our slovenly professoriate. He is not politically correct for his day. He never imposes dogma upon his students, ignoring evidence or arguments to the contrary. He never insinuates that Averroes believes what he does because of some social or political advantage to be gained, as if that would make any difference to the truth. He never supinely suggests that what might have been all right for Averroes was all right for him, but not for us. He has really learned a great deal from the “Gentiles,” and he finds them often exactly correct. But his faith and his reason
both
lead him to conclude that they have made subtle metaphysical mistakes, and that erroneous conclusions result: for example, Averroes’ argument that the world must be eternal, and that the soul of an individual human being is reabsorbed at death into an impersonal Agent Intellect that governs all things.
Summa Contra Gentiles.
He writes it to wrestle with, among others, the great Muslim philosophers Averroes and Avicenna. His approach is not that of our slovenly professoriate. He is not politically correct for his day. He never imposes dogma upon his students, ignoring evidence or arguments to the contrary. He never insinuates that Averroes believes what he does because of some social or political advantage to be gained, as if that would make any difference to the truth. He never supinely suggests that what might have been all right for Averroes was all right for him, but not for us. He has really learned a great deal from the “Gentiles,” and he finds them often exactly correct. But his faith and his reason
both
lead him to conclude that they have made subtle metaphysical mistakes, and that erroneous conclusions result: for example, Averroes’ argument that the world must be eternal, and that the soul of an individual human being is reabsorbed at death into an impersonal Agent Intellect that governs all things.
So Thomas pursues them with all the vigor of a passionate heart—and with all the modesty and the confidence in reason that cause you to prefer to lose an argument and learn the truth, rather than win and remain in ignorance. He will present
eighteen arguments
(2.32–34) culled from his opponents, giving them their best shot, and never tossing against them a single snide remark. He will methodically show, by reason—not by appealing to authority, or to Scripture, though he will do so to help illustrate his position—that the results do not follow from the premises, or that the premises are mistaken. Then he proceeds to give his own position, that the world was created, and to address standard objections.
eighteen arguments
(2.32–34) culled from his opponents, giving them their best shot, and never tossing against them a single snide remark. He will methodically show, by reason—not by appealing to authority, or to Scripture, though he will do so to help illustrate his position—that the results do not follow from the premises, or that the premises are mistaken. Then he proceeds to give his own position, that the world was created, and to address standard objections.
In one sense it is blissfully calm, carried on at the height of intellectual abstraction: “It is therefore clear,” he says, after many paragraphs of reasoning about what it means to be “before time” and the difference between asserting that “X
always
exists” and “X exists
necessarily
,” “that the arguments adduced from the point of view of creatures do not oblige us to maintain that the world is eternal” (2.36). But in another sense it is the result of sweat and toil and blood-rushing competition in the arena of ideas, with Truth—not celebrity, not tenure!—as the prize. Only a lover will fight so boldly. One of my favorite anecdotes about Thomas shows this love.
26
He was sitting at table (and taking up a goodly space, as he had a healthy appetite for other foods besides the theological) along with the lords and ladies at the palace of Louis IX of France. Picture the white-clad friar lost in thought among the clatter of plates, the dogs snuffling about, the crimson gowns, the flash of ornamental swords, young people flirting and old people telling stories. Suddenly Thomas rises and bangs his fist on the table.
always
exists” and “X exists
necessarily
,” “that the arguments adduced from the point of view of creatures do not oblige us to maintain that the world is eternal” (2.36). But in another sense it is the result of sweat and toil and blood-rushing competition in the arena of ideas, with Truth—not celebrity, not tenure!—as the prize. Only a lover will fight so boldly. One of my favorite anecdotes about Thomas shows this love.
26
He was sitting at table (and taking up a goodly space, as he had a healthy appetite for other foods besides the theological) along with the lords and ladies at the palace of Louis IX of France. Picture the white-clad friar lost in thought among the clatter of plates, the dogs snuffling about, the crimson gowns, the flash of ornamental swords, young people flirting and old people telling stories. Suddenly Thomas rises and bangs his fist on the table.
The Truth about the CrusadesThe First Crusade, our students are taught, was a war of imperialist aggression. Fairness requires we read Pope Urban II’s call to war:From the confines of Jerusalem and from the city of Constantinople a grievous report has gone forth... a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race... has violently invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by pillage and fire. They have led away a part of the captives into their own country, and a part they have killed by cruel tortures. They have either destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of their own religion . . . The kingdom of the Greeks is now dismembered by them and has been deprived of territory so vast in extent that it could not be traversed in two months’ time.
“
Thus
are the Manicheans refuted!” he bellows.
Thus
are the Manicheans refuted!” he bellows.
“Quick,” says King Louis, turning to a servant, “get him a pen and paper.”
Certainly, not everybody was a Brother Thomas. There’s a delightful medieval picture of a scholar lecturing his students, while one lad in the back is looking out the window, and another is snoozing.
27
And a university town saw a lot of spending on groceries, clothes, and drink. Then as now, thanks be to God for the masculine invention of graffiti, students amused themselves with scurrilous verses on life at school or in the monastery. In one such poem, the abbot of the Land of Cockaygne calls his monks home from the nearby nunnery by beating the signal on the bare buttocks of one of the sisters.
28
But these same students
invented
the university. Note that well: the students invented it, because they wanted to learn. Otherwise they might show up at town at great expense, to be given a full course in law or medicine or theology, only to find that the masters were unprepared, or that they would duck out on their obligations. Just as students then drank, as now, so were professors lazy then, as now. So the students formed their own guild or union—hence, “university”—to hold the masters to their word, and to standardize the curricula, so that what they learned in Paris or Cologne would hold good when they returned to London or Florence.
27
And a university town saw a lot of spending on groceries, clothes, and drink. Then as now, thanks be to God for the masculine invention of graffiti, students amused themselves with scurrilous verses on life at school or in the monastery. In one such poem, the abbot of the Land of Cockaygne calls his monks home from the nearby nunnery by beating the signal on the bare buttocks of one of the sisters.
28
But these same students
invented
the university. Note that well: the students invented it, because they wanted to learn. Otherwise they might show up at town at great expense, to be given a full course in law or medicine or theology, only to find that the masters were unprepared, or that they would duck out on their obligations. Just as students then drank, as now, so were professors lazy then, as now. So the students formed their own guild or union—hence, “university”—to hold the masters to their word, and to standardize the curricula, so that what they learned in Paris or Cologne would hold good when they returned to London or Florence.
I’m not saying that all the students were passionately interested in their theology. Not everybody was Chaucer’s Clerk, whose prize possessions were twenty books—a prodigious collection for a young man—and who prayed assiduously for the souls of the friends who financed his tuition. “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach,” says Chaucer (General Prologue, 308). Many no doubt were like Alayn and John in the Reeve’s Tale, who take vengeance on a cheating miller by “swiving” his daughter and his wife, all while the miller snores away in the same room. Call it the perks of Higher Education.
Still, when we survey those three centuries our impression is of stupendous cultural achievements. Magnificent churches, whose ingenuity challenges the most daring of modern architecture, and whose liveliness and beauty leave us far behind, stipple the continent. And who builds these, but teams of ordinary men? Modern music is born in the modes of Gregorian chant; one Guido of Arezzo invents Western musical notation.
29
Capitalism is born, and international banking, and credit, and modern accounting. Artisans unite in guilds to secure business for their towns, to train the young, to ensure quality work, to provide for one another in sickness, and to support their widows and orphans. The love song, which has lasted almost eight hundred years, bloomed in the racy and refined imaginations of the lute players of Provence. The university comes into being, along with its stagy oral examinations, colorful, combative, and public. No fear of competition here. Friars, not all of them looking for a pretty leg and a pleasing eye, comb the new towns and cities, preaching the Word to a gallimaufry of people, because Christ came to save everyone, not only the rich, and not only monks within their monastery walls.
29
Capitalism is born, and international banking, and credit, and modern accounting. Artisans unite in guilds to secure business for their towns, to train the young, to ensure quality work, to provide for one another in sickness, and to support their widows and orphans. The love song, which has lasted almost eight hundred years, bloomed in the racy and refined imaginations of the lute players of Provence. The university comes into being, along with its stagy oral examinations, colorful, combative, and public. No fear of competition here. Friars, not all of them looking for a pretty leg and a pleasing eye, comb the new towns and cities, preaching the Word to a gallimaufry of people, because Christ came to save everyone, not only the rich, and not only monks within their monastery walls.
Greek learning returns to the West, and at the West’s insistence, as controversial as it was. Painting rediscovers the beauty of the natural world, and the human face. Christmas is exalted. Drama returns with all the sweat and humor of the common people, who are its principal performers and audience. It is the age of the mystic Bernard, and the rationalist Abelard, of barefoot Francis rebuking a wolf, and barefoot Dominic rebuking a heretic. It is the age of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
and Chaucer’s human comedy; an age when a Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, could suddenly, after a mystical experience, cease writing, claiming that in comparison with that flash of a vision all he had written was straw. Thomas did not care what name he made for himself; and so little did the great English poet who wrote
Pearl
and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
care, that we still do not know who he was.
Divine Comedy
and Chaucer’s human comedy; an age when a Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, could suddenly, after a mystical experience, cease writing, claiming that in comparison with that flash of a vision all he had written was straw. Thomas did not care what name he made for himself; and so little did the great English poet who wrote
Pearl
and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
care, that we still do not know who he was.
Contradictions there were—because the age was alive. At the end of
The Quest of the Holy Grail,
Sir Galahad is permitted to peer into the chalice of the Holy Eucharist, where he sees “what tongue could not relate nor heart conceive,” the mysteries of the Real Presence of the incarnate Christ. “I pray Thee now,” says he, “that in this state Thou suffer me to pass from earthly life to life eternal.” Galahad then dies, and that is how the so-called Archpoet would go, too—almost:
The Quest of the Holy Grail,
Sir Galahad is permitted to peer into the chalice of the Holy Eucharist, where he sees “what tongue could not relate nor heart conceive,” the mysteries of the Real Presence of the incarnate Christ. “I pray Thee now,” says he, “that in this state Thou suffer me to pass from earthly life to life eternal.” Galahad then dies, and that is how the so-called Archpoet would go, too—almost:
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