Glen Greenwald debunks the notion that censorship and religious offence-taking is now the mainstay of Islam alone. In particular, Greenwald dismantles Ross Douthat’s (of the New York Times) accusations that only Islamic sensibilities are granted special privileges, as the tribalistic and selective tropes of a right-wing Christian fundamentalist hack.
Douthat writes in the New York Times:
In a way, the muzzling of “South Park” is no more disquieting than any other example of Western institutions’ cowering before the threat of Islamist violence. . . . But there’s still a sense in which the “South Park” case is particularly illuminating. . . . [I]t’s a reminder that Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all. . . .Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned.
However, take a look at this report, also from the NYT on March 28 2010:
A Texas university class production of “Corpus Christi,” by Terrence McNally, below, has been canceled by college officials citing “safety and security concerns for the students” as well as the need to maintain an orderly academic environment, The Austin Chronicle reported. “Corpus Christi,” Mr. McNally’s 1998 play depicting a gay Jesus figure, was scheduled to be performed on Saturday as part of a directing class at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Tex. But early on Friday, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst condemned the performance, saying in a press release that “no one should have the right to use government funds or institutions to portray acts that are morally reprehensible to the vast majority of Americans.” Although Tarleton’s president, F. Dominic Dottavio, first defended the students’ right to perform a play he considered “offensive, crude and irreverent,” university officials changed course late Friday night, canceling the performance after receiving threatening calls and e-mail messages, according to The Star-Telegram.
And another story of censorious Christians on April 8, 2010:
A Fort Worth theater that had agreed to show a student-directed play with a gay Jesus character has withdrawn its offer. The board of directors of Artes de la Rosa, which runs The Rose Marine Theater on North Main Street, decided Thursday against offering the venue for the production of Corpus Christi, just one day after saying it would. A March performance set for a directing class at Tarleton State University in Stephenville was abruptly canceled after the school received threatening emails.
Read Greenwald’s authoritative dismantling of religious censorship in USA in full. In particular, the updates (3) and (4) are very interesting.
(3) Sarah Palin recently defended the Rev. Franklin Graham’s statement that Islam is “a very evil and wicked religion.” That barely caused a ripple of controversy. Imagine if a leading political figure had said anything remotely similar about Christianity or Judaism. The claim that Muslims receive some sort of special protection or sensitivity is the opposite of reality.
(4) Ross Douthat previously cited with approval Jonah Goldberg’s explicit advocacy of right-wing censorship (h/t sysprog). When Douthat starts speaking out against censorship of ideas he hates, rather than when it comes from the religions he dislikes, he’ll have credibility as what he pretends today to be: a crusader for free expression. Until then, it’s clear that he’s interested in little else other than wrapping himself in the banner of free expression as a means of advancing his sectarian conflicts.
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The widely televised Reverend Grahams statement, which was supported by Governor Sarah Plain, was:
“We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion.”
Each one of the sentences in this statement contains basic theological errors which even a seven year old child could point out.
One begrudgingly has to agree with Sigmund Freud’s depressing diagnosis: “America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen … but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”
Good article, by the way.
It does not necessarily follow, nor is it necessary for it to follow, that the god of Islam is one and the same god as the god of any other faith. As it happens, it is a tenet of Islamic faith that this deity is identified with the same deity as worshipped by other faiths – but it need not be a tenet of those other faiths just in case Muslims hold it to be the case. Other faiths might quite legitimately argue that the god of Islam is distinct from their worshipped deity. Consequently, it may be a theological error from a Muslim perspective; but this error need not follow from the assertion of another (non-Muslim) faith.
What is actually problematic is the perspective that the religion of Islam is normatively “evil and wicked”. This is a moral judgement (and – again – not necessarily a theological assertion). There is a position in both comparative theology and theological ethics which argues that religion is (to borrow a catchy expression from Nietzsche’s ethics) beyond good and evil. This is motivated by the observation that religion appears to be something that is a property of being human, part of our intension – what Wittgenstein called a “lebensform”. And like art and other “life forms” (things we always seem to be about, regardless of the character of the societies in which we are about such things), one might be hard pressed to allocate moral values (such as “evil” or “wicked”) with any real purchase.
Whatever the case, the condemnation (or praise) of the moral worth of any faith is hardly a “theological error”.
I am more taken by Gandhi’s withering comment, when asked what he thought of it, that Western civilisation (American or otherwise) would be a “good idea”.
I believe we’ve had this discussion before in a different form
It’s about the difference between an Absolute (that which admits no alternatives) and Infinite (that which cannot be limited) God, and that which are the relative beliefs about God (what you call ‘deities’).
Some may hold that there are only relative beliefs, and nothing beyond. I am not one of them.
I think you said something along the lines that you are uncomfortable with absolutes. I’m not. As far as I can see, God, is Absolute and Infinite. Qul Hu Allahu Ahad.
And my view is that all other religions, in essence, said the same thing. And if someone else differs with this assertion, it certainly becomes a theological discussion.
But we agreed to differ. (For my part, because I don’t find comments pages of blogs a very suitable medium for such discussions).
Far be it for me to dispute Wittgenstein and Nietzsche (I missed that boat), Religion, by definition, is something which binds man to God (from the latin, ‘religere’). Modern abuses of the the word aside, a religion is only a religion if it serves this purpose.
If one has understood the nature of God (a theological issue, by definition), then it becomes clear that to denounce *any* religion as “evil” per se is to have misunderstood the idea of religion altogether.
One can say that “muslims” are evil, and this could indeed be true to the extent that these “muslims” do not conform with Islam. Again, you may disagree, but so be it.
The founders of religions, those who received revelations, never denounced other religions or the founders of other religions. They only denounced the practices which previous religions had degenerated into through abuse.
If there is a transcendental unity of religions, it is that they are all unitedly bogus. Some of them have developed better responses to social and political sciences, art and architecture. And some have better incense burners than others. But in generall, it’s all good. That’s all.
On the contrary, the “transcendent unity of religions” refers precisely to transcending what is bogus in religion (and there’s no denying that religious practices and beliefs become more and more bogus as time goes on).
Religions don’t produce responses to art, architecture, etc. Men produce responses to the transcendent.
I do agree with that, Abu Yusuf. However, it could be argued that men produce religions in response to the transcenent. These reponses, like the men who have produced them, are flawed. But the trancendent, like everything else, is gravy.
Not so. True religion is given to man by means of revelation – as if the transcendent were miraculously dangling a rope into the realm of time and becoming in order to pull mankind back up. (“Religion”: that which binds man to God).
The form that this rope takes is perfect at the time and for the place in which it is dropped. Whether this be the Arabic Quran for the bedouins of najd, the monotheism of African swazis, the white buffalo woman’s message for the Native Americans, the Mosaic commandments for the people of Israel, the bramanic teachings of Manu for the indo-aryans, and so on. Because the people, places and languages are all different, the forms of the religions – in order to be efficacious – are also necessarily different.
What happens as the ripples of this divine intervention spreads out to different times and peoples is that, as conditions change, the form of the revelation becomes less and less appropriate and apparently less perfect (or, yes, more and more bogus, in your parlance). So you may rightly ask: what about all those people who say, for example, that Islam is the perfect religion for all times and places? The answer to this conundrum lies in the realisation that the *efficaciousness* of the meaning of the relevation continues to be perfect – in the hearts of men, even though there may be a mis-match of the original form with contemporary conditions – in their minds.
Human intelligence being what it is, it is necessary to some extent to take on the external form of the revelation in order to penetrate to its meaning. This is why you often find people who have converted to Islam, because of an initial intuitive grasp of the efficaciousness of the message, often start taking on the appearance and manners of Bedouins of 1400 years ago. Sometimes this zealousness relaxes (Yusuf Islam). Sometimes it doesn’t (Yvonne Ridley).
Occasionally, an individual will penetrate to the transcendent meaning within the form of the message to the extent that the form is no longer important. This happens in the heart, not the mind. (Muhyiuddin Ibn Arabi: “My heart has adopted every shape; it has become a pasture for a gazelles, and a convent for Christian monks.A temple for idols, and a pilgrim’s Ka’ba, The tables of a Torah, and the pages of a Koran”). Nevertheless, in order to arrive at this stage, in most cases, one must be completely immersed in the outer trappings and the form of the revelation first (so that the mind does not put up an barriers for the heart). This is why people like Ibn Arabi, who reached this stage, very rarely malign the outer trappings and the form as this would spoil it for others.
The problem, of course, is that many who subscribe to a religious form, and even more who claim to be its representatives, have little or no grasp of it’s real, transcedendent, meaning. This, above all, is what gives to religion the appearance of being “bogus”.
this was a common gnostic polemic against judaism, that we worshipped the “demiurge”, not the Creator. the christian version of this had us worshipping by desecrating their symbols like the “host” or the cross or denying the so-called “proofs” of christianity’s supposed fulfilment of the “old testament”, whereas the modern islamist version of it has us worshipping our rabbis and corrupting our own sacred texts, as i wrote in my very first post here. all are equally self-serving and equally without foundation in our beliefs.
as a religion without a systematic theology, we have almost always restricted ourselves to applying moral judgements to *actions* rather than beliefs; the mediaeval fashion for dogmatic statements of the “fundamentals of belief” were always a source of massive controversy, for the usual reason that two jews = three opinions and we didn’t have theological conferences like the church did to engage in handbag fights and redrafting and redrafting creeds and statements of “correct” beliefs.
nor am i, although i would maintain that all human beliefs are by definition relative (with the possible exception of some forms of mystical or prophetic experience) because of privacy of experience. certainly, the minute you try to communicate them, they become so.
and HaShem Ehad WuShemo Ehad, as we would put it. i’m only uncomfortable with absolutes when they are being imposed by humans.
judaism has no word for “religion”; we have din (means more or less the same as it does in islam), we have halakhah (law) and we have torah, which is “teaching”. some also add derekh, “way” (think tariqa) to say nothing of hokhmah (wisdom) and, of course kabbalah – “that which is received / tradition”. that which “binds” is what we call yihud – “unification” and that which we seek is tiqqun, or “rectification / repair”. there are also more technical terms for “cleaving to G!D”, like “debeiquth” and all the other host of mystical terms with sufi cognates.
which is why you’re on far better ground condemning actions – the christians also say “hate the sin, love the sinner”; we wouldn’t put it quite like that but it is particular actions we object to, not motives (except in a very small minority of cases).
up to a point; the Torah condemns the idolatry of the “seven nations” and, though thinkers like rambam (maimonides) links this to a deterioration of an original pristine monotheism, he is intellectualising it to some extent; the only thing we can really know for sure is that if you didn’t “amalekitise”, you couldn’t be considered an “amalekite”, particularly after sennacherib did us the favour of mixing up the “seventy nations” so ethnic origins could no longer be a prima facie case for the prosecution.
to say nothing of music, humour, cooking and natural sciences! nonetheless, i still find jackie mason cringingly awful and some tone-deaf imbeciles consider nusrat fateh ali khan a caterwauling assault on the eardrums; there’s no accounting for taste, i suppose.
oh, i agree – isn’t this why islamic carpet-makers leave intentional flaws in their design? at least, that’s what the marketing says, it must be the best excuse ever invented
there is no reason that too cannot be true, of course; our grabbing of the rope (or otherwise) is a sometimes flawed response.
that’s fine, except that it still sounds like a) you’re allowing for supersession and replacement theology, which i think is uniquely corrosive, corrupting and oppressive and b) you’re also opening the door to the argument that the older the religion is, the more bogus, or less authentic, which is uniquely harmful to we jews. apologies if i misunderstand.
agreed, but paradoxically it can also be true (and certainly is for both us and most varieties of monk) that the strictness of the outer form is what allows the freedom of the inner form to be most untrammelled. in other words, the firmer and stronger the roots that hold you to earth, the taller the tree can grow, the wider it can spread its branches and the more wind, weather and harm it can withstand.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Abu Yusuf
You are correct that I am unhappy with absolutes – although not with the conception of the same – that would be odd. I am unhappy with definitions of the ineffable, as well – for example your definition of the divine as “As far as I can see, God, is Absolute and Infinite.” You know this, or you believe this? That is important.
I think also you smear the line between the divine, per se, and religion. You should notice that I was largely concerning myself with the latter, not the former.
On the point about rejection of others’ gods – I agree, this is mostly misused in order to abuse others, BB – however, the point stands that because group A claim to worship the same deity as group B is no reason why group B should accept this as a given – or even true.
My view, for what it is worth, is that the existence of the divine depends upon our articulation of the same. Of that we do not talk, there is no real existence. If we cannot capture even the smallest outline of something in utterance, ritual or otherwise, it is had to speak of its existence – and of that we must, indeed have no choice, but to remain silent.
I am not a fan of the Eternal Philosophy – possibly because it (1) Is not a philosophy in the proper sense of the word; and (2) I have considerable doubts as to the sense of the term “eternity” being deployed. In the main, however, I fail to understand why one should want to find an underlying unity. Perhaps it does not exist. Should that in any way impeach or damage mutual tolerance? Put another way – simply because it may turn out that everyone worships different or distinct gods, how does that undermine the value of religious tolerance? To my mind, arguments for underlying unity sound dangerously like an argument that our mutual tolerance is contingent on some deep identity. I argue that this need not be in place.
My position is rather agnostic – and I am not even very sure if the arguments for God are a good idea – or, as I stated earlier, whether such moral worths as “good” may even be applied in the first place. For me, then, to reflect on what I said earlier, the existence of God is bound up in a constant trouble I have with the idea, with a constant debate, talking about, struggle with, sometimes anguish with the issue – whether this dialectic is ultimately an aporia – one without conclusion – is another matter. The Old English verb “to love” had a sense in which the “beloved” was he/she/it which was talked about when he/she/it was not present. Perhaps that makes it clearer – or not. Through a glass darkly, indeed.
Can I also say that as a somewhat rigorous anti-essentialist that I do not find any reality to distinctions between “inner” and “outer”, “essence” and “phenomenon” – as Nietzsche rather beautifully put it: the beauty of the way the cloth is woven is in its woven-ness – there is nothing behind the ripple, phenomenon. Wittgenstein wrote: “the essence of things is their point.” That is not something eternally determined.
If that is a little obscure – can I point out that definition relies on essence – and there are many vitally important terms that lack definition (in the sense that they lack a universal)? Words like “love” and “good” spring immediately to mind. Indeed, the very words we have been discussing.
I am also anti-realist in epistemology – that is, I believe that there are items that will ever escape our capacity to know their truth-value (note, this does not mean that they are unassertable).
Now, it strikes me that theology is not damaged by being so challenged. Philosophy requires at least two anciently established bases: a Stoic suspension of judgement and an attitude of constructive and consistent doubt; together with a Cynical assertion that all prior judgements should be subject to question. Indeed, as Wittgenstein argued, the job of philosophy is not to answer questions, but to question the ways in which questions have been and are being asked.
My job is to show you the way out of the fly-bottle, argued Wittgenstein late in life.
On time and being – about which Abu Yusuf alludes – I am less influenced by Heidegger’s metaphysics (although I agree with him that metaphysics is a discipline worth recovering) and more by Bergson (although there are connections). In ethics I would recommend the very neglected French moral philosopher Guyau… but that is another story.
My gravitar perhaps gives away my position – for those of a cuneifom turn of mind.
And stop there!
“True religion”???
You mean there is such an item as false religion?
Are you sure? I think you had better be!
A slight concern might be raised by Christians to your depiction of “true” religion as revelatory, given that Christianity was not revealed to its founder, Jesus of Nazareth. He – if you follow the Gospels and assorted Christian Scripture – was not the subject of some divine revelation as to His mission. Does this mean that Christianity is a “false” religion?
Surely you don’t mean this!
Jesus is not subject, for example, to a life-time of divine revelatory interventions. The Gospels depict an individual gifted from before birth with the full and complete Logos. I have to be careful here, as Christology is a major source of differences and dispute between various Christian sects – but one thing they certainly agree about is that He did not become aware, through revelation, of His mission and role and character.
NB – Certainly the Orthodox claimed that Nestorians and, in the West, Pelagians argued that He became divine through his acts (hence Nestorius’ rejection of the Orthodox description of Mary as Theotokos – God-bearer – however, there is some doubt as to whether he did, in fact, so object!). Again, however, this does not mean that they believe that divine revelation drove Him on the road to the Divine – rather it is a take on Anathasius of Alexandria’s belief, entirely Orthodox, that “we should become gods”.
My objection and query thus stands.
If you believe Jesus was but a prophet and not intrinsically or becoming divine, then one should be able to point to His moments of divine revelation. Where are they in the record? And please save me from the conspiracy theory that the Church suppressed the true Gospels.
I’m sorry to go on about this – but this is an area of especial interest to me, in which I have expended a considerable amount of emotional and intellectual energy.
Incidentally, there is a very good understanding of the difference between the Orthodox and Western notion of Grace over on HP – in a discussion of the fall-out of the alleged mental collapse of Orlando Figes (itself a tragedy – no pun intended).
Abu Faris,
No need to apologize. I will respond to your comments when I have some more time on my hands.
I am drawn, frankly, to greater sympathy with the “Eastern” (actually, more properly, Orthodox) position here. It comes from a distinction, incidentally, from a difference in the understanding and interpretation of the Fall – and has a fundamental influence upon notions of eschatology.
How is this relevant?
Read again:
Apologies for multiple posts.
Thanks, Abu Yusuf. I look forward to reading your comments (as always, actually
)
certainly, the assertions made by christians about the Torah and the function and role of judaism are routinely contradicted by muslims, both of which are routinely contradicted by jews.
from our perspective, because if the Divine *Is* the underling Unity and we, according to the Torah, are made in the Divine Image, as we are Told, then imitation of and cleaving to the Divine is a commandment.
the vast majority of atheists would probably argue that it shouldn’t. to paraphrase the denizens of “south park”, that’s no reason to be a dick to people who don’t agree with you.
the issue is not what goes on in people’s spiritual lives, but what they choose to do to themselves and each other as a result – for example, there are a bunch of people that don’t want me to have access to kosher meat and are appalled that i had mini-banana #1 circumcised. for me, religious tolerance is lived on that particular line, beyond which my ability to observe my religion is compromised. there are a number of people for whom the line is drawn rather closer to the mandate to kill people who are not prepared to draw the line in the same place, as you know.
to me, it is only dangerous if it demands the right to legislate universal theologies, as it were. the noahide laws, for example, are as universal as human behaviour gets, if you ask me.
this is very much the meaning of jacob’s transformation into “yisra-El” – the “struggler with G!D”.
that is precisely the position of jewish mysticism – the inner and outer are inextricably interwoven; this is why the modern trope of “i’m not religious, i’m ‘spiritual’” is so baffling to students and practitioners of traditional kabbalah – it complements and informs halakhah, rather than being separate from it.
in kabbalah, the highest sefirah of keter (the “crown”) is notable for being *above* the body and thus beyond ourselves – and the Infinite Divine Is beyond even this, the ‘Eyn-Sof. assertable, you see, without being within our capacity to “know”.
and a pythagorean abstention from anything that might cause flatulence. ok, i couldn’t resist, but in greek terms you are probably ignoring the dionysiac tendency. nietzsche would not be pleased.
he would have made a superb talmudic scholar.
certainly the evidence we have from the new testament does not appear to allow him to meet the halakhic standard for prophecy, let alone the qualifications for messiahship. and, of course, we find the idea of incarnation baffling.
the eastern view you quote has far more in common with our type of approach as well, except that we have a radically different concept of what the “fall” is – in that we don’t really see it as a “fall” so much as a transition from edenic-angelic animal to real-life human, which i think i’ve discussed here previously.
b’shalom
bananabrain
I am not ignoring the Dionysiac, so much as discounting its relevance here – although “The Birth of Tragedy” – should you be so inclined – is well worth a read (actually, I’m more interested by the middle-period group of Daybreak, Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil and the Gay Science – if we are going to come over all Nietzsche full-throttle – not least for their persistent questioning of the value of truth.
)
As for Pythagorean lunacy – we should also avoid the ashes of the hearth and iron laid across the same. Equally we might like to follow Aristotle in divining the nature of the divine to be spherical and its motion circular… and where would this get us?
Actually, the Orthodox notion of the Fall is closer to your position than most inveterately anti-Semitic Orthodox would care to admit. A shame, but so.
Amongst other things.
Shukran, habibi. Al’an khalas.
The Orthodox notion of the Fall is bound up with the “likeness” and “image” of the divine – the loss, the Fall, is the abandonment of one and its recovery is possible and plausible as a result of Grace.
It is the “likeness”, its loss, which is the nature of the Fall – its recovery, whose plausibility and possibility is granted by Grace (in the Orthodox sense), is the moral problem with which we are faced.
I am not sure where I am with religion, or its G!d – does this make me irreligious?
you see, i don’t think it can be ignored, because otherwise you’re attempting to marginalise a systemic actor; the thing i’ve always liked about greek philosophers is that they were spendidly unapologetic about that sort of thing. i read “the birth of tragedy” during a brief nietzschean episode about a decade ago and i’m not terribly sure i remember it, although i do remember thinking that if nietzsche had lived somewhat later, he would have detested what the nazis tried to do to his work. but i digress. i question the value of truth in theological terms mostly because i don’t believe we can ever truly approach it, the best we can do (rather like scientific theory) is an approximation based on the best data available and in theological terms, that sort of thing falls off rather quickly, making further discussion ultimately fruitless, if that makes sense.
yes, i never quite got what that was about, but the sefer yetzirah, the most ancient kabbalistic text we possess, inverts the concept, having the Divine Create a “spherical” (actually a 5D hypercube) space within G!DSelf in order for the universe to be able to exist; picture us as a bubble of space-time within the Infinite Divine space, from which G!D Withdraws (apart from a thread to the centre) in order to Allow causality, movement, free-will and change to occur, within G!DSpace, these Are meaningless concepts. in the same way, one might say that “Ultimate Truth” is meaningless within G!DSpace, as All Is One, in the same way that “Up” is meaningless even within Created space-time. i hope that isn’t gibberish – i’ve never come across a mathematician or physicist that disagreed.
with us, the recovery of the Divine Image and an “edenic” state is possible because of the spiral shape of time, via the recurring weekly mechanism of Shabbat observance. for those 25 hours, we exist on a higher, more angelic, less causal level that is intended to approach pre-fall human nature.
some of my least favourite people are those who are 100% sure where they are. the essence of humanity includes a healthy dollop of doubt, even in Revelatory situations and, in my opinion, i believe that striving to be a human being is a big enough challenge without bringing the further obligations of religion into it.
b’shalom
bananabrain
Hi bananabrain,
haven’t had time to respond to comment on other thread – overtaken by events at work. But I may well be in over my head with that one, judging by the debate here!
best,
Rachel
On Aristotle and spheres:
As you know, BB, the Platonic view – following the Timaeus – is that all that exists in the mundane plane may be decomposed to triangles… including, of course the faces of the cube.
The meaning of the identification of the sphere with the divine is that the sphere is a solid that escapes this otherwise seemingly universal decomposition into triangles (where the triangle is assumed to be on a flat plane).
So the Pantheon in Rome consists of a cube, upon which rests a dome, which – if extended into sphere – would fit perfectly within the cube. Here an intersection between the mundane (the triangle decomposable faced cube) and the divine (the sphere). What one might expect from a space of religion – where the divine and mundane meet, mingle and interact. And through the mighty ocular hole in the roof, the sun processes through the day in a perfect circle… the motion of the divine.
Clever stuff, this music of the spheres!
Bergson’s notion of “duration” might be worth exploring in your explorations of space-time and the image of the divine space.
I agree with you about poor old Nietzsche and his post-mortem hijacking by the fascists: he would have – and did – loathe all political authoritarians.
The Orthodox notion of the import of ritual observance (amongst rigorous Copts, for example, the observance of effectively the monastic Hours) is part of the map that leads to Salvation, that is to a re-acquirement of the divine likeness: I once lay face down for hours in a Coptic Church, in full prostration, reciting the Psalms, or spinning in blessing the four quarters of the universe – or even stepping, right foot first, barefoot, though the curtain of the Iconostasis into the Holy Place to raise incense with the priests… oddly, some peace in such apparently irrational detail.
BB – I would argue that Pythagoras’ avoidance of beans (and other weird views) was a teaching point: Pythagoras is emphasising the role and importance of the seemingly non-rational and ritual in human existence: something we do – a lebensform, life-form, for which notions of truth and falsity are uncomfortable if not outright inappropriate.
Now I, like the young Marx, am rather fond of Epicurus and his Garden… if only Marx had chosen to continue to dwell there amidst the riotous blooms and not attempt a whole-scale, geometric “improvement” upon the same.
rachel:
not at all, please go ahead and respond and we will resuscitate the discussion. i was looking forward to it.
abu faris:
i merely lived with a philosopher for a couple of years and hav read a number of books on the subjekt. unfortunately, this is not the same as having acktual filosofickal traning poo ur gosh chiz ect like wot you hav or having a wizzo super-colossal electronick brane cheers cheers cheers. in other words, i didn’t know that, but you flatter me by so assuming. i have no doubt what christians would assume from such an insight, however!
is there something you could direct me to on the web go on go on tel me o you mite.
my only acquaintance with copts has been at interfaith conferences, where they grinned hugely, lectured us about reacquiring the Divine Likeness through controlling the bodily appetites with fasting, then proceeded to eat far more than the rest of us could manage, as there was no fast due. a very jolly bunch indeed.
that is certainly the way we see it as well.
and schopenhauer’s dog? i also hear jeremy bentham felt he didn’t have any real friends, hur hur hur. no, but seriously, folks, some of our more rationalist authorities such as maimonides said the same sort of thing about the “because I Said so” category of commandments known as huqqim, such as the prohibition on wearing shaatnez (linsey-woolsey). not being a mequbal, he did not have (in my opinion) a healthy enough appreciation for the use of paradox as a mystical technique, which is (i think) our version of zen koans.
marx had the most unprintable and wholly ignorant views on judaism, only excusable by his almost total ignorance of judaism itself. you do know, i assume, that “apikoros” (i.e. “epicurean”) is the standard talmudic term for “heretic”, right?
b’shalom
bananabrain
BB
Well I never.
Which is, of course, just another way of saying that you have no idea whatsoever.
Odd that, given that Coptic clergy and the Observant fast for over 200 days a year (and “fast” generally means abstention from meat and milk products). Good of the ecumenical group concerned to arrange their conference timetable around the demands of the Coptic clergy. Equally, I doubt whether they would argue that fasting was a way to the “likeness” of anything. That is not its purpose.
Yes, I know. What has that to do with Epicurus? Marx wrote his student thesis on Epicurus – unfortunately, he chose in later life not to continue down the same tack. Therein was my point.
No I did not. I assume the antipathy came from the Epicurean delight in winding up the religiously inclined (something inherited from Diogenes, I suspect). Incidentally, you did know that the word “heretic” comes from the Greek verb “to choose”, right?
As for Bergson’s philsophy – I think you are quite capable of finding out for yourself. As for Schopenhauer’s dog – you know he played the flute (the man, not the dog) – perhaps that’s why he was so miserable (the dog, not the man). Bentham had many friends, of course; and those who mocked him, of them he could not give a rat’s pizzle.
Dear Nigel Molesworth
Hello clouds, hello sky!
See you at St Custards in the new term!
Yours
Basil Fotherington-Thomas.
PS Watch out for Grabber. He says he’s going to get you and your “grate friend”, Peason.
not in this case – in my experience, anything like that which involves triangles inevitably foreshadows trinitarian theology; i myself have another view, of course.
well, it was over ten years ago, i was just being flippant, but i do remember them going on about how important fasting was and then eating huge amounts of cheese and grinning. a jolly nice bunch they seemed, too. there were some lay people there too, they all seemed to be doctors.
aha – well, i didn’t know that about marx, but, to my way of thinking, it is highly ironic that he should study epicurus of all people when he himself is one of the biggest “apikorsim” of recent centuries!
i’ve never found out why they picked that particular word, i always thought it was to do with being uninclined to adhere to religious stringencies and try any thing new, but that is epicurean in the modern sense i expect – your suggestion makes sense here, but the rabbis also delighted in winding each other up; perhaps they mean “someone who insists on being oppositional for the sake of it”? this wiki’s quite well researched:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apikoros
i think i did – we also have the term “min”, or “sectarian” (often applied to early christians), or “kofer be-iqqar”, “denier of fundamental principles” (having a similar sense as “kafir”, but not the same penalty as it does in the more benighted islamic schools of thought). another rather amusing point is that the word for “nazareth”, which is the root of the hebrew word for christian – “notzri” (“nazarene”) denotes a shoot that branches off from the main stalk. for the pythonically inclined, this is substantially the same as referring to them as “splitters”!
ok, now i’m chortling.
i dare say you’re right – anyone who has a pub named after him (near ucl) can’t have been that unpopular.
as for fotherington-tomas, he is a wet and a weed altho at least not a sneke like molesworth 2, winner of the mrs joyful prize for rafia work like grabber chiz chiz chiz or like sigismund the mad maths master who is uterly bats and more crooked than the angle A.
b’shalom
bananabrain