Evasions

De Man

and 

Avoiding Responsibility

Paul de Man

The late Paul de Man was one of the most influential Postmodernists.1 Paul de Man was born in and lived his early life in Belgium after World War II he moved to the USA where he taught at Yale University. Paul de Man's writing were rather turgid and difficult but beneath the verbiage we sometimes find stuff that is unintentionally revealing, such has this passage:

Yet without this moment, never allowed to exist as such, no such thing as a text is conceivable. We know this to be the case from empirical experience as well: it is always possible to face up to any experience (to excuse any guilt), because the experience always exists simultaneously as fictional discourse and as empirical event and it is never possible to decide which one of the two possibilities is the right one. The indecision makes it possible to excuse the bleakest of crimes because, as a fiction, it escapes from the constraints of guilt and innocence. On the other hand, it makes it equally possible to accuse fiction-making which, in Holderlin's words, is "the most innocent of all activities," of being the most cruel. The knowledge of radical innocence also performs the harshest mutilations. Excuses not only accuse but they carry out the verdict implicit in their accusation.2

A Note on Nietzsche
and Protestant Christianity



Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has had over the years a up and down reputation. That his philosophy contains many dangerous and questionable elements is obvious.1 However a couple of things are usually forgotten or not noticed in his writings. I will deal with here an aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy.

The “Dog-Marriage”

Crates and Hipparchia

In a previous posting I talked about the Greek thinker Diogenes, the founder of Cynicism.1 Here I will discuss an altogether different person or should I say persons. Has mentioned in the previous posting Diogenes was a dour, sullen, misanthropic unpleasant individual, and on top of that he practiced a very difficult, severe and hard way of life. This would of course make it rather difficult to attract followers, but Diogenes did indeed attract followers. This included the remarkable Crates and his wife Hipparchia.

That Sinking Feeling

Atlantis Part I

Plato’s Purpose

Destruction of Atlantis

One of the most popular of myths has been Plato’s tale of Atlantis found in two of his dialogues. The dialogues are the Timaeus and the Critias. Both dialogues were written late in Plato’s career as a philosopher and writer. They represent a late development in Plato’s ideas.

The Death of Socrates

A Note

The Death of Socrates by David

One of the great tropes of the Western Tradition is the Death of Socrates. Mountains of philosophical literature have been written about and it can be argued that Plato’s entire philosophical system was based on it. In the end it boils down to a jury being convinced that the charges were true and convicting him.

Kuhn’s

Flawed Idea

Prof. Thomas Kuhn

One of the most influential books ever written about science is Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.1 This book launched the modern version of the Philosophy of Science and frankly a lot of the Post-Modernist views of Science.

Kant’s

Cant

Crossed Fingers

A few Years ago I responded to individual in a forum who accepted a great deal of what Kant said about lying.1 The result was a stew of nonsense. When someone brought up the hiding the Jews in the basement / attic situation the person hemmed and hawed outrageously. The following is the main tenor of a discussion I had with the individual over lying. I have chosen to exclude a tangential discussion where the person engaged in an ad hominem attack on me and my family. The individual in question made a totally un-evidenced comment about lying always ending badly and responded with a personal attack when I pointed out the comment was absurd.

Hedonism

And

Melancholy

Omar Khayyam relaxing

In the mid nineteenth century the Englishman Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of selected poems or ruba’i’of the mathematician / poet Omar Khayyam. Subsequently Fitzgerald would go on to publish 4 more editions of selected ruba’i’.1 

Plato’s “Empathy”

Bust of Plato

In Plato’s dialogues there is sometimes the fact that the context, or set up, to his dialogue’s issues tells us more about Plato’s social attitudes than the overt statements of what the dialogue is about.

Ayn Rand

Progress

and

Justifiable Atrocity



Ayn Rand

The late Ayn Rand, (1905—1982)1 said in response to this question.2

When you consider the cultural genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of blacks, and the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War Two, how can you have such a positive view of America?

Ayn Rand replied:

I don’t care to discuss the alleged complaints American Indians have against this country.I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you are a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not.

Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights – they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’ – they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a ‘country’ does not protect rights – if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief – why should you respect the ‘rights’ that they don’t have or respect?

The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too – that is, you can’t claim one should respect the ‘rights’ of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights.

But let’s suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages – which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their ‘right’ to keep a part of the earth untouched – to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen?

Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did.

...

As a principle, one should respect the sanctity of a contract among individuals. But I oppose applying contract law to American Indians. When a group of people or a nation does not respect individual rights, it cannot claim any rights whatsoever. The Indians were savages, with ghastly tribal rules and rituals, including the famous “Indian Torture.” Such tribes have no rights. Anyone had the right to come here and take whatever they could, because they would be dealing with savages as Indians dealt with each other – that is, by force. We owe nothing to Indians, except the memory of monstrous evils done by them.

Notes on Pythagoras

Painting Pythagoras' Hymn to the Sun

The following story is told concerning Pythagoras the ancient Greek thinker.

It is related that while observing the stars one night he encountered a young man befuddled with strong drink and mad with jealousy who was piling faggots about his mistress' door with the intention of burning the house. The frenzy of the youth was accentuated by a flutist a short distance away who was playing a tune in the stirring Phrygian mode. Pythagoras induced the musician to change his air to the slow, and rhythmic Spondaic mode, whereupon the intoxicated youth immediately became composed and, gathering up his bundles of wood, returned quietly to his own home.1

The Greeks and Romans told lots of stories about Pythagoras most of them folkloric and amusing. The great majority were to indicate that Pythagoras was a strange wise man.

This story is a particular example of Greek and Roman beliefs about Pythagoras and how brilliant but strange he was. The point of the story is to indicate that Pythagoras was so brilliant and strange that he doesn't do the obvious thing and physically stop the man but instead adopts a solution based on his brilliance and strangeness.

It is unlikely that the real Pythagoras did anything like this. We know very little about the real Pythagoras. The sum total of anything like reliable information about him and his beliefs could be printed on less than 10 pages. All sorts of discoveries were attributed to him after his death along with a large corpus of folkloric stories that tend to grow around wise men.

It appears that Pythagoras wrote nothing and that he was the founder of religious cult that was obsessed with numerology, in southern Italy.

Pythagoras was later in antiquity credited with visiting Egypt and later still being educated into Egyptian secret knowledge. At least one account has him then going to Mesopotamia and getting educated there. The problem with this is that not only are the sources for this much later than Pythagoras' time but also that what we now about Pythagoras' actual beliefs do not show much influence from Egypt or for that that matter Mesopotamia, certainly nothing that indicates a comprehensive education in either of those places. Since Pythagoras was from Samos and Samos traded with Egypt it is possible he visited Egypt. But it is only a possibility. Herodotus for example discusses Pythagoras and also devotes an entire book to discussing Egypt. Even though Herodotus was big on detecting Egyptian influence on Greece he does not mention Pythagoras visiting Egypt. Herodotus does in fact think that the Pythagoreans got the idea of the transmigration of souls from Egypt. The problem with that is that it appears that the Egyptians did not apparently believe in the transmigration of souls or reincarnation. It appears rather unlikely that Herodotus would have failed to mention Pythagoras visiting, or being educated, in Egypt if Herodotus had known that Pythagoras had done so.

The first mention of Pythagoras being in Egypt is from one of the orations, Busiris, written by the Athenian Isocrates in c. 370 B.C.E. In that oration Isocrates is trying to drum up support for Athenian / Greek support for an Egyptian king against the Persians. Its historical validity is dubious. Isocrates speech the Busiris is like all of his speeches a rhetorical exercise. Isocrates reputation as a source of historically accurate information is not good. In this case he is referring to figures who lived more than a century and a half before his time.

Later it became a real cottage industry to have all sorts of revered figures from Greco-Roman antiquity visit Egypt. From King Numa of Rome, to Thales and even such figures as Plato who were all said to have visited Egypt and learned ancient wisdom. In one tale Pythagoras was supposed to have met the Persian Prophet Zarathustra. It is all dubious and more interesting as folklore than history.

The ancient Greeks and Romans claimed that Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Democritis, Plato, visited Egypt along with many others to learn wisdom. In all the above cases it is dubious. For example did Democritis get his idea of atoms from Egypt? Almost certainly not.

The fact is both Thales and Pythagoras became shortly after their deaths the center of all sorts of tales concerning their lives, Pythagoras in fact became almost a supernatural figure of whom all sorts of miracle tales were attributed. As for Egyptian influence on their thought many later Greeks attributed the Pythagorean belief in reincarnation to alleged Egyptian influence. (Apparently starting with Herodotus, although he doesn't mention Pythagoras directly.) The problem is the Egyptians apparently didn't believe in reincarnation. Opps!

One story was that Pythagoras was in Egypt in 525 B.C.E., when Heliopolis was sacked, though it appears Pythagoras moved from Samos to southern Italy in c. 540 B.C.E.

During the life time of Pythagoras history writing was nonexistent and in fact writing of any kind was new to the Greeks. Even during the life of Herodotus the writing of "History" was a very new phenomena, written sources were few and far between for someone to use and it appears that neither Pythagoras or Thales wrote anything, certainly nothing as survived. This situation was ready made for people to fill in the gaps with "plausible" events that never happened.

The fact is Herodotus who is the earliest source for many of the Ionian philosophers did not report any such contact with Egypt by either Thales or Pythagoras or them meeting each other, which was another later story. The fact is both of these philosophers became associated with a large body of mythological / legendary material. The facts about either are frankly elusive. The later legends written about both by the Greeks are very poor guides to what they said and did.

Regarding Pythagoras the story of him going to Egypt apparently originated from his doctrine of reincarnation which Herodotus stated that the Egyptians had. Herodotus is apparently wrong and there is apparently not much of a indication of Egyptian influence in Pythagoras thought, in so far has we can make out what he taught from that of his successors.

Later this was elaborated by later writers to get the following fantasy:

In about 535 BC Pythagoras went to Egypt. This happened a few years after the tyrant Polycrates seized control of the city of Samos. There is some evidence to suggest that Pythagoras and Polycrates were friendly at first and it is claimed that Pythagoras went to Egypt with a letter of introduction written by Polycrates. In fact Polycrates had an alliance with Egypt and there were therefore strong links between Samos and Egypt at this time. The accounts of Pythagoras's time in Egypt suggest that he visited many of the temples and took part in many discussions with the priests. According to Porphyry Pythagoras was refused admission to all the temples except the one at Diospolis where he was accepted into the priesthood after completing the rites necessary for admission.

It is not difficult to relate many of Pythagoras's beliefs, ones he would later impose on the society that he set up in Italy, to the customs that he came across in Egypt. For example the secrecy of the Egyptian priests, their refusal to eat beans, their refusal to wear even cloths made from animal skins, and their striving for purity were all customs that Pythagoras would later adopt. Porphyry says that Pythagoras learnt geometry from the Egyptians but it is likely that he was already acquainted with geometry, certainly after teachings from Thales and Anaximander.

In 525 B.C.E. Cambyses II, the king of Persia, invaded Egypt. Polycrates abandoned his alliance with Egypt and sent 40 ships to join the Persian fleet against the Egyptians. After Cambyses had won the Battle of Pelusium in the Nile Delta and had captured Heliopolis and Memphis, Egyptian resistance collapsed. Pythagoras was taken prisoner and taken to Babylon.2

Both Porphyry and Iamblichus for example not only wrote more than 700 years after the life of Pythagoras but neither are considered to be reliable sources of historical information although they tell us a lot about what people of their time believed to be true. The biographer Diogenes Laertius also wrote more than 700 years after Pythagoras and is basically uncritical and unreliable.

The sources for the Egyptian trips of both of Pythagoras are very late and part of a tradition attributing all sorts of feats to him. The fact is written source material from the fifth is meagre concerning Pythagoras. And the first material alleging the Egyptian visit is from the early 4th century more than a century after their deaths. Although it is of interest that Plato does not mention such a visit. Written source material from the 6th century B.C. was quite minuscule and concerning Pythagoras apparently next to nothing survived. Some Greeks simply assumed Pythagoras, and others, went to Egypt filling in the gaps of their lack of knowledge of his life with "plausible" material.

The consensus of experts on the pre-Socratics is in fact that Pythagoras probably did not visit Egypt however much some may dislike their conclusion. There is no reason to accept late derivative sources over early sources which with the exception of Isocrates do not mention such a trip. Isocrates reputation for accuracy is not very good; he is notorious for sacrificing fact to rhetorical effect and proving some sort of connection between Egypt and Greece fit the rhetorical purpose of that oration.

The fact is evidence for going to Egypt by either is late and nothing in the philosophical material attributed to Pythagoras compels a conclusion that he went to Egypt to say nothing of being taught there. And since Pythagoras is not alleged to have been merchant why would he go? Of course there is the tourist thing and the student thing, both of which are of late development in the traditions and myths concerning Pythagoras.

Herodotus who is our earliest source about either says very little about Pythagoras and does not mention him going to Egypt.

The "extensive body of texts" some rely on are overwhelmingly late sources of dubious value. The fact is modern researchers and experts in this area believe Pythagoras never went to Egypt. There is no evidence in the surviving beliefs attributed to Pythagoras of much direct or frankly indirect Egyptian influence. I see nothing in the philosophy attributed to Pythagoras, (Who apparently wrote nothing.), that necessarily requires Egyptian influence and some that indicates non-Egyptian influences.

The Greeks / Romans became rather found of attributing all sorts of "trips" to the pre-Socratic philosophers, all of which are shall we say dubious.

Since Pythagoras apparently said anything indicating a trip to Egypt and in fact the one thing Pythagoras was supposed to have got from Egypt he did not; there is no need to assume a trip to Egypt for him. Herodotus although he mentions Pythagoras on more than one occasion does not mention him going to Egypt neither does he mention it despite his great interest in Egypt. And in fact he is not adverse to saying the Greeks took things from the Egyptians.

Given that Pythagoras apparently wrote nothing and little was known about him and he very soon after his death, began to acquire a "magical" reputation. It is likely that the Egyptian story was a invention like a lot of the stories about Pythagoras.

Regarding Pythagoras the contemporary consensus is has follows:

1, Pythagoras did not write anything. (The ancient authorities are divided about this but not a single scrap of his writing seems to have survived if he wrote anything, and considering how much the Greeks and Romans wrote about him and his school if he had written anything, that is rather strange.)

2, He was born on the Island of Samos c. 570 B.C.E.

3, About thirty years later, c. 540 B.C.E., he emigrated to the city of Croton in south Italy.

4, Pythogoras founded a school of thought at Croton.

5, Pythogoras became involved in politics in Croton and had to leave for the nearby city of Metapontum were he died.

6, He died c. 500 B.C.E.

That is about it.

After he died all sorts of beliefs, stories, miracles were attributed to him all of similar dubiousness.

1. NWO Library Here. 

2. Pythagoras of Samos Here.

For a collection of the fragments of the Pythagorans see The First Philosophers, Oxford World Classics, Robin Waterfield, 2000, p. 87-115, and Early Greek Philosophy, Second Revised Edition, Penguin Books, Jonathan Barnes, 2001, p. 28-35, also Kirk, G.S., & Raven, J.E., Schofield, M., The Presocratic Philosophers, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 214-238.

Herodotus in his Histories, refers to Pythagoras in Book 4, s. 95-96, and indirectly in Book 2, s. 123. Isocrates mentions Pythagoras in his oration Busiris, s. 28-29.

Pierre Cloutier

Night Descending

Movie poster for Agora

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Recently I saw the movie Agora (2009) directed by Alejandro Amenabar and staring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, Michael Lonsdale as Hypatia’s father Theon, Oscar Issac as Orestes, Max Minghella as Davus, Rupert Evans as Synesius and Sami Samir as St. Cyril.

The movie takes place in the late 4th century C.E., in the city of Alexandria, then part of the Roman Empire. Hypatia the heroine of this movie is a philosopher and teacher at the University or Mouseion attached to the library attached to the temple of the God Serapis called the Serapeum. Later I will discuss the historical veracity of this movie.

In Hypatia’s class are two students, Synesius and Orestes who are in love with her. Also in love with her is her slave Davus. Tension between Christians and Pagans is rife in Alexandria leading to incidents of violence between the groups. Theon whips Davus when he takes the place of a slave who has a cross in her possession. Hypatia tries to keep peace between the Christians and non-Christian among her students.

Things come to a head when a Christian mob egged on by Cyril, then a priest, start pelting the statutes of pagan gods with filth and rotting vegetables / fruit. The Pagans at the Serapeum egged on by the chief priests and with the approval of Theon arm themselves and attack the mob killing many. The Christians rally and receiving reinforcements drive the Pagans into the Serapeum which they besiege. The pagans take some Christians as hostages. Hypatia pledges to protect her Christian students.

After a short siege the people in the Serapeum are promised amnesty by the emperor, but only if they abandon the Serapeum to the Christians outside. Hypatia and her father with the aid of the various librarians of the library try to save as many books as they can before fleeing. Davus stays behind and joins the Christians. Subsequently Hypatia frees him. The Christians destroy the statue of the god Serapis and then destroy the library.

Shortly before the destruction of the Serapeum Orestes endeavours to court Hypatia and asks her to marry him, she refuses by giving him a cloth soaked with her menstrual blood. Thus establishing that Hypatia as no interest in ever getting married.

During the siege Hypatia becomes interested in the question of does the earth move and starts to reconsider the old abandoned idea that the Earth moves around the sun.

Many years have past and Orestes is now Governor of Alexandria and a Christian, at least nominally. Theon is dead. Davus is a member of a Christian militia group guilty of many outrages against both Pagans and Jews. The remaining non-Christians on the governing city council are being pressured to become Christians. Synesius is now Bishop of Cyrene, and Cyril has become Bishop of Alexandria. Hypatia continues to teach and to research the heavens. In one scene she conducts an experiment and notes that on a moving ship a weight falls as if the ship was not moving.

Cyril and Orestes are involved in a violent power struggle over who actually controls Alexandria and Cyril continues to incite violence in his bid for power. The attacks by Cyril’s militia against Jews incites a violent retaliation that in turn leads to a pogrom against the Jews and many leave the city. Meanwhile Cyril uses Hypatia as a stick to beat Orestes with including stage managing a scene designed to humiliate Orestes after which Orestes gets hit with a rock by a monk in a rioting mob.

Hypatia continues her research on the movement of the planets. Davus is meanwhile getting disillusioned with his overly fanatical friends. Finally Synesius and Orestes plead with Hypatia to become a Christian. She refuses with the line:

You don’t doubt your beliefs. I must!
The night before, Hypatia in a moment of inspiration, concludes that the orbit of the planets is an ellipse and discovers Kepler’s first law of planetary motion.

As Hypatia returns home she is set upon by a mob who take her to the Serapeum, now turned into a Church, to kill her in front of the alter. Davus has tried to warn her but is unable to get to her in time. Helplessly he has followed her to the Serapeum. The mob leaves to gather rocks to stone her with. There is however no escape except the blocked entrance. To save Hypatia the agony of being stoned, Davus suffocates Hypatia to death. Hypatia’s last sight is the ellipse shaped opening in the ceiling of the Serapeum.

Davus leaves never looking back. A brief text records that none of Hypatia’s writings survived and that shortly afterwards Orestes disappeared and that Cyril became St. Cyril.

That is the movie what does history say?

Amazingly the movie is actually quite accurate on many things. For example its depiction of the events that led to the destruction of the Serapeum, which occurred in 391 C.E., is quite accurate. Although in actuallity the desecration that served as a provocation by the Pagans to attack the Christians is not what is depicted in the movie. Also the involvement of Hypatia, Theon, Orestes and Synesius is not historical fact. The picture of Alexandria divided into different religious factions perfectly willing to kill each other, with the Christians in a position of dominance and using that dominance to impose their faith is accurate.1

The order of the Emperor that the Pagans evacuate the Serapeum and it being sacked and then turned into a Christian church is accurate. And yes the Pagans were besieged in the Serapeum after taking some Christians as hostages.2

Hypatia was almost certainly not teaching at this time in Alexandria. It is believed that she was born between 450-470 CE, with the later date more likely. It appears that she started teaching in Alexandria in c. 400 C.E., after the sack of the Serapeum.3

It is unlikely that the Serapeum had much of a library to be destroyed in 391 C.E. It appears to be the case that the library had ceased to exist in the Serapeum due to neglect, deterioration and lack of funds and people removing scrolls by 370 C.E. Although it is possible that some remnants of the former library existed to be destroyed in 391 C.E.4

However it is to the credit of the script writers and director that one of the characters mentions that the main library had been destroyed many years before. The destruction of Library of Alexandria as been alleged to have been caused by the soldiers of Julius Caesar setting fire to it, (48 B.C.E.) by the fighting between the soldiers of the Emperor Aurelian and Queen Zenobia of Palmyra in 274 C.E., the above mentioned attack on the Serapeum in 391 C.E., and by the Arabs in 642 C.E.5

It appears that the fire caused by Julius Caesar’s soldiers may have destroyed some scrolls stored near the harbour only. The main library or Mouseion was apparently completely untouched. It appears that in fact the Mouseion or least the library associated with it was in fact destroyed during the fighting between Aurelian and Zenobia in Alexandria, (274 C.E.). After that the center of learning and research in Alexandria shifted to the Serapeum and its smaller library. As mentioned above it appears that their was little or no library to destroy in 391 C.E., when the Christians took over the Serapeum. The story of the Arabs destroying the library in 642 C.E. is a complete fabrication.6

Hypatia has I indicated above apparently began teaching in Alexandria in c. 400 C.E. Her father Theon, a renowned mathematician was called the “the man from the Mouseion”. Which indicates that part of the Mouseion, from which we get the word museum, still existed at the time. It was probably closed in 391 C.E., at the same time as the Serapeum was turned over to the Christians. For this was also the same time that Theodosius I decreed the closing of all Pagan temples in the Empire and turned over many of them to the Christians.7

Hypatia worked in astronomy and mathematics and was apparently a Platonist, and yes a Pagan. She did teach Orestes and Bishop Synesius of Cyrene. She wrote several commentaries and a text called The Astronomical Canon, which did not survive, along with editing what became the most common version of Ptolemy’s work the Almagast, which was the central text of Western and Middle Eastern astronomy for over a thousand years. So the movie showing her interested in astronomy and math is in fact accurate.8 The whole bit about her discovering Kepler’s first law of planetary motion is sadly almost certainly fiction. It is not however, impossible.8

The story of Hypatia rejecting a suitor by giving him a cloth with menstrual blood on it is true. Although the suitor was almost certainly not Orestes as depicted in the movie.9

Orestes, who was indeed a Christian, did in fact became governor (Prefect) of Alexandria and engaged in a power struggle with St. Cyril who did in fact use Hypatia as a weapon against him. The whole incident in the Church in which Cyril tries to humiliate Orestes, is sadly not an invention. Also the Christian militia that attacked non-Christians along with the violence between Christians and Pagans and Jews is also not an invention. The slave Davus is an invention however.10

Hypatia was in fact set upon a mob c. 415 C.E., and killed. In the movie she is suffocated; in actuality she seems to have been flayed alive and then burned. A rather more gruesome death than the one in the movie. In the movie this is suggested, but they decide to stone her instead.11

The movie telescopes events together and makes Hypatia much younger than she actually was at the time of her death (at least 45). Orestes did indeed disappear soon after and St. Cyril did in fact come to dominate Alexandria.

The depiction of St. Cyril in the movie will probably attract criticism. St. Cyril is considered a Father of the Church and of course a Saint. His involvement in the violence that tore apart Alexandria and led to the death of Hypatia, mob violence etc., is contested. Unfortunately there can be little doubt that St. Cyril was an intolerant, bigoted and power hungry individual despite his sincere faith. It is also sadly true that the scene in movie whereby St. Cyril praises as a martyr to the faith and puts in a church the body of the monk Ammonius, who had in fact been part of a mob that tried to kill Orestes and had in fact thrown a rock that had injured Orestes, really happened. The penalty for an attempt on the life of the Prefect of Alexandria was death. So Ammonius was put to a rather grisly death under torture. This was right after St. Cyril’s attempt to humiliate Orestes. The movie gets that right also.12.

If St. Cyril comes across as an unpleasant individual that is because from our point of view he probably was.

It appears likely that while Hypatia taught some remnant of the library and Alexandria’s position has a center of classical learning existed. With her death it probably vanished along with the any other Pagan philosophers working there.

A more germane criticism of the movie is that the movie ignores largely the positive features of Christianity showing a picture of no-nothing fanaticism. The fact that many of the Christians are depicted as dressed in black while Pagans get lighter colours is too much of a cliché. The scene in the movie of Cyril and Davus giving bread to the hungry is undercut by the bread they are giving being Theon’s. That said the Pagans and Jews are also shown to be capable of intolerant murderous violence. For example during the Pagan attack on the Christians a Pagan Priest is urging a slave to stab and kill a injured man on the ground, in a screaming rage.

The movie relies less on CGI than you might expect and the sets, especially the Serapeum are impressive and convincing. Also convincing is the amazing accuracy and authenticity of the costumes worn, which are not only of the right cut of the time, but unlike most costume epics seem to be made not of modern fabrics but fabrics used at the time.

  Scene from the movie Agora  

The acting is generally just serviceable. Max Minghella as Davus especially seems to be just going through the motions.

Rachel Weisz performance is wonderful. She gives it the gravitas and seriousness that it requires. Given that Rachel Weisz is a very good looking woman, (as apparently Hypatia was also in real life); she acts her role with enough conviction and in a convincing enough fashion to take this Hypatia seriously as an intellectual. With Rachel Weisz’s performance you can believe that you are meeting a genius. The fact is given the still sexist ways women are regarded it takes some effort to overcome the deeply ingrained notion that a women is her looks. Rachel Weisz overcomes it brilliantly.

Michael Lonsdale as Hypatia’s father Theon is the other good to great performance. He is shown as a man exceptionally proud of his brilliant daughter and anxious for her happiness. He is also an old man ill at ease. The world as changed in ways he doesn’t like and so there is in him a great anger. He feels impotent to alter the way the world is going and he lacks his daughter's cultivated sense of intellectual ease and basic serenity. The result is he is subject to dangerous impulsive decisions. Michael Lonsdale gives an excellent performance of a man who hates the way the world is changing and wishes it had not.

The other performances are as said above are merely serviceable. St. Cyril for example is far too much a cardboard villain.

In the end the movie has it right night is descending and the long period of decay that characterized the early Middle Ages in Europe is coming. Learning and the search for knowledge would not reawaken in Europe until the Renaissance. Until then it would take tremendous intellectual effort just to preserve the remnants of Classical knowledge.

1. Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, Vintage, London, 1987, pp. 87, 190-193, Wikipedia, Serapeum, Here, Library of Alexandria, Here, Hypatia, Here, St. Cyril Here.

2. IBID, Serapeum, Canfora, pp. 111-114.

3. Hypatia.

4. Serapeum, Canfora, pp. 137-144.

5. Library of Alexandria, Serapeum, For details regarding those alleged burnings see Canfora.

6. IBID, Canfora, pp. 66-70, 81-99, 109-118, 123-125, 137-144, 183-197.

7. Canfora, p. 87, Serapeum, St. Cyril, Wikipedia, Theon Here.
.
8. Hypatia.

9. IBID.

10. IBID, St. Cyril, Serapeum, Canfora, pp. 87-88.

11. Hypatia, St. Cyril.

12. St Cyril, Serapeum, Hypatia.

Pierre Cloutier

Moral Cretinism Part III
Longing for Big Brother


Maurice Merleau-Ponty

In two previous postings I looked at two other examples of morally cretinistic points of view. Both of them were intellectually lightweight as well as being morally bankrupt. In this example we have something that is intellectually heavyweight but just as much morally bankrupt and yes cretinistic.

The piece I will look at today is one of the works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, (1908-1961).1 The work is Humanism and Terror.2 The book is in many respects a typical work of the French twentieth century philosophical school(s). It is in many places highly obtuse and rather difficult. Further it must be remembered that Merleau-Ponty was in many respects an Existential thinker, much concerned with the issue of responsibility and how people relate to each other. Also Merleau-Ponty’s writings are extremely important for twentieth pcentury philosophical notions of reality, epistemology, and phenomenology.3

Humanism and Terror is quite simply an apologia for the Stalinist terror. The fact that it is relatively complex in argument and that then Communists also denounced the book, mainly because it was not sufficiently subservient to Communist / Stalinist shibboleths,4 should not detract from the fact that the book is basically an apologia for terror.

Now in many respects Humanism and Terror, is an aberration in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s career. Shortly after writing it he abandoned much of its argument and reverted back to a position of being highly critical of the Soviet Union and Stalinism in general.5

It is important to set the book into its context in order to understand why Merleau-Ponty went off the rails so to speak. In this case it is important to remember that France had just emerged from the Second World having been occupied for most of it (1940-1944), and that the French Communists had been heavily involved in the resistance to the Nazi occupation. Also important was the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany. All of this gave Communism and the Soviet Union enormous prestige in the minds of many intellectuals in Europe.

To this was allied the desire to avoid entanglement in another war after the recent appearance of the last devastating one. For a while it appeared that after the war it might be possible for France and much of Western Europe to become a “third way” between the Soviet Union and America. Any strong alliance with America would foreclose this possibility. So there was intellectual resistance to a firm alliance with the rising wave of anti-Soviet antagonism. Finally in many respects many intellectuals saw in rising anti-Soviet agitation something very similar to the rise of Nazism. Of course the belief, not unfounded, among many intellectuals that there was a movement towards a preventive war against the Soviet Union was also a factor in generating pro-Soviet intellectual beliefs. This is combined with a fear that the emerging western alliance against the USSR would preclude any sort of independent policy for Europe.6

Now Merleau-Ponty, wrote his book in large part in response to Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon,7 which is Arthur Koestler’s great novel about the Great Purges in Russia. It important to remember that Arthur Koestler, a former Hungarian Communist who became quite disillusioned about Communism because of the Great Purge, was the object of sustained hysterical attack from Communists and fellow travellers because of his book. Nowadays it is rather hard to see, or more accurately read, what the fuss was about. Anyone reading the novel would note right away that compared to what we do know about the Great Terror the horrors in the novel, albeit real, are pretty tame.8

What seems to have truly infuriated Merleau-Ponty about Koestler’s novel is that Koestler’s “hero” Rubashov seems to have had a very crude and limited understanding of Marxism. Merleau-Ponty also commits the error of assuming that the alleged Marxist crudities of Rubashov are in fact Koestler’s own ideas about Marxism. In fact Merleau-Ponty seems to assume that Soviet Marxists, those in power at least, have ideas about Marxism similar to his own.

Of course Koestler’s novel has stood the test of time rather well. Merleau-Ponty’s work, not so well. So let us get started with looking at Merleau-Ponty’s work.

Let us start with the following from the Author’s Preface:

Any serious discussion of Communism must therefore pose the problem in Communist terms, that is to say, not on the grounds of principles but on the ground of human relations. It will not brandish liberal principles in order to topple communism; it will examine whether it is doing anything to resolve the problem rightly raised by communism, namely to establish among men relations that are human.9

Right away Merleau-Ponty is tipping the scale. There is no reason to automatically assume that the problem must be posed in Communist terms for to do so is to predetermine the outcome right away. This is called loading the dice and fixing the race. What is also of interest is Merleau-Ponty’s relative lack of interest in determining whether or not more “human relations”, (which he does not clearly or more than cursory defines) exist in the Soviet Union. This effort to fix the outcome before hand is intellectually indefensible.

This is the spirit in which we have reopened the question of Communist violence which Koestler brought to light in Darkness at Noon. We have not examined whether in fact Bukharin led an organized opposition nor whether the execution of the old Bolsheviks was really indispensable to the order and the national defense of the U.S.S.R. We did not undertake to re-enact the 1937 trials. Our purpose was to understand Bukharin as Koestler sought to understand Rubashov. For the trial of Bukharin brings to light the theory and practice of violence under communism since Bukharin exercises violence upon himself and brings about his own condemnation. So we tried to discover what he really thought beneath the conventions of language.10

We learn from this passage that bluntly Merleau-Ponty is not interested in the innocence or lack of innocence of the accused; nor is Merleau-Ponty interested in mere fact as it pertains to the trials. Merleau-Ponty is simply interested in what the trial tells us about high abstract theories of justified and unjustified violence. Of course this rejection of mere fact has to be done otherwise Merleau-Ponty would have to consider the fact that the statements made by Bukharin made at his show trial are complete gobblygook he was forced to utter and are no more revealing of his “real” ideas than a confession extracted under torture.

It is of interest that it is utterly clear that Bukharin’s answers, statements etc at his trial have been revealed to be concoctions stage managed to justify the trial and death sentence.11 In order to use Bukharin’s statements Merleau-Ponty must with great intellectual discipline avoid all questions of the validity Bukharin’s testimony. As it is it is valueless. At the time that Merleau-Ponty could easily have been aware that Bukharin’s testimony was likely worthless, as is testimony in all such farcical show trials, but in pursuit of his “higher” truths Merleau-Ponty choose to ignore that.

Later Merleau-Ponty says:

Thus we find ourselves in an inextricable situation. The Marxist critique of capitalism is still valid and it is clear that anti-Sovietism today resembles the brutality, hybris, vertigo, and anguish that already found expression in fascism. On the other side, the Revolution has come to a halt: it maintains and aggravates the dictatorial apparatus renouncing the revolutionary liberty of the proletariat in the Soviets and its Party and abandoning the humane control of the state. It is impossible to be an anti-Communist and it is not possible to be a Communist.12

The above quote is one of the reasons why Communists at the time disliked intensely Merleau-Ponty’s essay despite its apologetic nature. As will become clear it is also clear that at the time of writing this Merleau-Ponty longed to become a Communist and love Big Brother.

Thus later when discussing violence in Revolutions Merleau-Ponty says:

In reality the most serious threat to civilization is not to kill a man because of his ideas (this has often been done in wartime), but to do so without recognizing it or saying so, and to hide revolutionary justice behind the mask of the penal code. For, by hiding violence one grows accustomed to it and makes an institution of it. On the other hand, if one gives violence its name and if one uses it, as the revolutionaries always did, without pleasure, there remains a chance of driving it out of history.13

Aside from the absurd reference to the revolutionaries committing acts of violence without pleasure which is pure propaganda about so-called pure minded, selfless revolutionary leaders, which is nothing but suck up nonsense, it is simply not true that lawless violence is not inherently corrupting. What Merleau-Ponty is talking about is in fact lawless violence. He is right that once that, violence, becomes institutionalized it becomes dangerous, but the bottom lined is that Revolutionary violence is institutional violence also and as such rather dangerous. Especially if the practitioners of said violence are glorified as selfless, disinterested saints.

In a chapter of the book Bukharin and the Ambiguity of History,14 Merleau-Ponty examines Bukharin’s trial and testimony. Amazingly Merleau-Ponty takes it seriously! This of course involves a wilful and deliberate ignorance off the facts of the trial then ascertainable. The idea that Bukharin’s testimony can tell us much about Bukharin’s “real” ideas is absurd. It is even more absurd now that we know that Bukharin was tortured and was told that his wife and young son would be arrested and murdered if he didn’t cooperate.15

Thus on page 59 Merleau-Ponty quotes Bukharin’s “testimony” as if it is unproblematic and untainted. It is obvious that Merleau-Ponty wants very much to believe that Bukharin’s testimony is in fact unproblematic, clear and untainted by such things as torture and threats of arrest and murder of his loved ones. Neither does Merleau-Ponty want to believe that it is corrupted by being rehearsed and faked to serve a specific political purpose, i.e., justifying the “guilt” of the accused and the death sentence and thus cementing Stalin’s power. Merleau-Ponty wants to believe the all powerful, all wise, all knowing and all beneficent Big Brother.

Thus although Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that Bukharin and his fellow accused were:

…up against a persistent police force and an implacable dictatorship.16

Merleau-Ponty still quotes Bukarin as saying:

“World history is a world court of judgement.”17

Merleau-Ponty assumes that this somehow represents the “real” views of Bukharin, which again illustrates nothing except Merleau-Ponty’s desire to believe Big Brother.

The airy-fairy nonsense that Merleau-Ponty assumes that Bukharin accepts his guilt for a large constellation of highly abstract theoretical reasoning based on the assumption that “History” is the ultimate justification and excuse for human actions and that if one opposes “History” one is guilty. Merleau-Ponty wants very much to believe that “History” is the ultimate judge of what is right and wrong and that those things that help “History” towards its goal are justified and thus those historical forces and personages that work towards those ends are morally justified. To but it bluntly the ends justify the means. Thus since Communists are working towards freeing humans they are justified in doing that which furthers that goal. That this would justify all sorts of human abominations and atrocities doesn’t seem to worry Merleau-Ponty very much.

That Merleau-Ponty very much wants to believe this, and surrender his intellect to Big Brother is obvious. What is also obvious despite Merleau-Ponty’s desire is that he can’t do it. Merleau-Ponty just can’t submit to Big Brother.

Of course History as not been kind to Merleau-Ponty’s fantasies regarding Bukharin’s motivations for his testimony. Instead of Merleau-Ponty’s intellectual abstractions it boiled down to torture and threats.

Thus we have Merleau-Ponty say:

The confessions in the Moscow Trials are only the extreme instance of those letters of submission to the central Committee which in 1938 were a feature of daily life in the U.S.S.R. They are only mystifying to those who overlook the dialectic between the subjective and objective factors in Marxist politics.18

The only real mystery is Merleau-Ponty’s inability to discover the dialectic between a prisoner and his jailer, mediated by endless interrogation, starvation, sleep deprivation, beatings and sundry other variations of violent coercion.

Merleau-Ponty then closes this particular chapter by quoting Vyshinsky and Stalin.19 Now Vyshinsky was the head prosecutor of the Moscow show trial and one of the chief orchestraters of that fraud. Why should Vyshinsky’s comments about the accused be taken seriously? As for Stalin anything he as to say about this Judicial Murder is not to be taken seriously. Its of interest that Merleau-Ponty resists the idea that Moscow trials were stage managed and hence valueless as telling us much about the accused. Further it is interesting that Merleau-Ponty leaves the last word about Bukharin’s guilt to his murderers. It is obvious that Merleau-Ponty really wants to believe that Bukharin was working towards effecting a “Capitalist” restoration, and thus Stalin, i.e., Big Brother was justified but once again Merleau-Ponty can’t quite go all the way and submit.

Although Merleau-Ponty denies that he is excusing Stalin by accepting Stalin’s justifications for the terror Merleau-Ponty says thing like:

But then one can say that Stalin overruled the opposition in order to prevent German militarism from thwarting the only country in the world in which socialist forms of production had been established.20

One can say all sorts of things, but about this one can say that it is self serving propaganda, much weakened by the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939-1941.

Another passage that indicate Merleau-Ponty’s deep longing to service Big Brother is:

Although the actions of the Bolsheviks cannot at every moment reflect the immediate sentiments of the proletariat, they must on balance and in the world as a whole hasten the advancement of the proletariat and continuously raise the consciousness of the proletariat’s condition because it is the initiation of truly human coexistence.21

A clear indication that Merleau-Ponty wants to join a cult; in other words an omnipotent organization that can do no wrong and that by definition all it does is “right” even if the people it supposedly represents reject it. In the end the party is the embodiment of “history” and the fulfilling of the “true” needs of human beings. Besides only “history” can really judge if the “right” thing as been done. Once again the longing to submit to Big Brother.

Merleau-Ponty then goes into a long and rather convoluted mystification on the Proletariat and how this gives the party and Marxism its driving force.22 That the Proletariat as the embodiment of the future inevitable course of human history and development, through its mouth piece the party excuses and justifies actions taken on its behalf and only the future can justify, or damn the means used. Thus we read stomach turning bromides like this:

It is no accident, nor, I suppose, out of any romantic disposition that the first newspaper of the U.S.S.R. was given the name Pravda. [Truth] The cause of the Proletariat is so universal that it can tolerate the truth better than any other.23

I suppose one can throw up now. Pravda got by the late twenties at the earliest and especially under Stalin a deserved reputation for outrageous official lying. Once again Merleau-Ponty just cannot help himself he wants Big Brother’s bullet in his brain. The fact is lying in the name of the Proletariat by Communists was almost derigure. So much for love of truth.

It is pointless to quote Merleau-Ponty further on his desire to submit it would only be tedious and annoying however one beautiful quote that illustrates once again Merleau-Ponty’s singularly obtuse refusal to pay attention to mere empirical fact is this:

Within the U.S.S.R. violence and deception have official status while humanity is to be found in daily life. On the contrary, in democracies the principles are humane but deception and violence rule daily life.24

Thus speaks the fellow traveller and obtuse fool who doesn’t wish to learn anything about real life in the Soviet Union at the time. Obviously Merleau-Ponty read all sorts of lying and deceptive accounts by Communists and others about life in the Soviet Union and took it seriously or wanted very much to take it seriously. The dream of the omnipotent state in which people were happy, especially to those on conducted tours is what Merleau-Ponty is indulging in here. Sorry but there was plenty of violence in everyday Soviet life. The violence of intrusive unaccountable officialdom and the violence of continual surveillance.25

In this essay the terrors and mass murders of the regime from Collectivization to the Purges and the labour camps and so forth that took over ten million lives are whisked away in a fog of philosophical abstraction. To call this morally cretinist is to merely call a spade a spade. Fortunately Merleau-Ponty regained his moral footing.26

As I mentioned near the beginning Merleau-Ponty’s flirtation remained just that a flirtation with Communism. Very soon he reverted back to a vastly more critical attitude, which included very rigorous and through denunciations of Soviet foreign policies and the Gulag.27

For a brief time Merleau-Ponty wanted Big Brother’s bullet in his brain, because accepting the omnipotence of the all wise party and Big Brother would have enabled him to avoid the very difficult task of thinking for himself.

Of course “History” as not been kind to Merleau-Ponty’s essay. The view that only “History” can really judge, held by the Communists at the time, and that the ends of “history” justify the means has produced the result that Communism has been swept away into the trash heap of history. History as cast it aside as a murderous aberration in the development of the human race. It was not the embodiment of “history” and its ends but a dead end.

1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Wikipedia Here.

2. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Humanism and Terror, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969. (Originally published in 1947 in French).

3. See Footnote 1.

4. See Merleau-Ponty, pp. xiii-xlvii.

5. Judt, Tony, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944-1956, University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 1994, pp. 113-115, 123-127, Caute, David, The Fellow Travellers, Rev. Edition, Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1988, p. 331-332.

6. Caute, pp. 329-346, Merleau-Ponty, pp. xiii-xlvii, 178-189.

7. Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon, Bantam Books, New York, 1941.

8. For details about the terror see Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror, Revised Edition, Pimlico, London, 1990, pp. 117-119. Much is not talked about very much in the novel, for example torture is almost entirely absent, and the horrors of the slave labour camps and of collectivization are also largely absent.

9. Merleau-Ponty, p. xv.

10. IBID, p. xv.

11. Conquest, pp. 341-398. We know that Bukharin was tortured and his wife and son threatened with death in order to get Bukharin to “voluntarily” confess see Conquest, pp. 364-365..

12. Merleau-Ponty, p. xxi.

13. IBID, p. 34.

14. IBID, pp. 25-70.

15.See Footnote 11.

16. Merleau-Ponty, p. 62.

17. IBID.

18. IBID, p. 68.

19, IBID, pp. 69-70.

20. IBID, p. 87.

21. IBID, p. 112.

22. IBID, pp. 115-130.

23. IBID, p. 123.

24. IBID, p. 180.

25. Caute, pp. 64-139.

26. See Conquest and Applebaum, Anne, Gulag: A History, Anchor Books, New York, 2003, Khlevniuk, Oleg V., The History of the Gulag, Yale University Press, New Have CT, 2004.

27, See Footnote 5.

Pierre Cloutier

Montesquieu’s Myth of Depopulation

Montesquieu

In Montesquieu’s work Persian Letters, there is a discussion of the depopulation of the Modern world as compared to the Ancient world. This was at the time a common historical myth, but it is of interest in terms of what it tells us about how historical myths arise and become fashionable, even when their basis is paper thin or in fact non-existent.

Montesquieu was one of the first great writers and thinkers of that movement and period of European history called the Enlightenment. Montesquieu was born in France in a small town near the city of Bordeaux in 1689. He was a member of the nobility and published on writings on many subjects. He was also a traveller, who visited other countries including England. Montesquieu is best known for his great work The Spirit of Laws, (published 1748 C.E.) which set forth his vision of secular, law abiding and balanced government. To say that this book had an enormous impact is to understate its impact. It is virtually impossible to understand Enlightenment political and moral thought without reference to this book to say nothing of its impact on both American and French Revolutionaries. Montesquieu died after a short illness in 1755.

A book that serves has a sort of prelude to The Spirit of Laws, is the above mentioned Persian Letters that were originally published in 1721 C.E. This work is written in the form of an expository novel, (i.e., a novel written in the form of letters by various characters to each other), by two fictional Persian noblemen, Usbek and Rica, touring Europe to each other and various other characters. Despite its form it is not really a novel but an examination of European life, letters, society, mores and politics from the point of view of two fictional outsiders. The work is also a reflection of European attitudes towards the orient in the letters that describe the customs and practices of the “orient” as the fictional letter writers reflect on their own culture through reflecting on European culture.

Unfortunately while the insight on European culture etc is incisive and clever and brilliant at times, the insight into the “orient” is most of the time a collection of stereotypes and clichés of oriental despotism and harem sensuality and depravity that reflected both little real knowledge and virtually no capacity to see the point of view of the “other”.

The bottom line is that our two Persian Noblemen, Usbek and Rica are nothing more than thinly disguised Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers and not Persian, Muslim, Shia noblemen. Montesquieu is simply using “aliens” as a way of expressing his own ideas and giving himself a shield by which to deny that the ideas are really his own. After all Montesquieu could simply say if the ideas bother anyone, “What do you expect from two Saracen heathens?”

An indication of just how superficial was Montesquieu’s actual real knowledge of Persian culture and his efforts to get into the actual point of view of outsiders to European culture was superficial is the calendar that his Persians use. It is not the actual lunar calendar used by Muslims but simply the Gregorian calendar with Muslim names.1

Thus we can take it for granted that the opinions given by the two Persians are European opinions, put in the mouths of Persian characters and have little to do with the then opinions of actual Persians.

Thus we can take it for granted that letters 112-122,2 that lament the alleged depopulation of the world as compared to ancient times reflects a European intellectual fashion and historical myth at the time and does not reflect the interests of Persian or other Muslim thinkers of the time. This being the case both the idea and the arguments that follow in the letters are both purely European and purely reflections of Montesquieu’s own interests.

One of the characters, Rhedi, writes to Usbek and states that he is thinking about the following problem:

Why is it that the world is so thinly populated in comparison to former times? How is that nature has managed to lose the prodigious fertility that she had originally? Could she be already in old age, and failing from lack of strength?3

Of this is a straw question argument it was not demonstrated that the population of former times was in fact massively greater; it is here simply assumed. After raising this straw question to a mystery that probably never existed we get into some details.

Rhedi states that he as been in Italy for over a year and that the towns were empty and unpopulated and that ancient Rome had the population of a large kingdom. He claims that ancient Roman citizens had 10,000-20,000 slaves excluding their country estates and that the population of Rome was huge. Further Sicily once had a large population. He states that Greece had not one hundredth of the population it used to have and Spain is largely desolate and empty. Also France is depopulated in comparison to Gaul when Caesar conquered it. Further Turkey in Europe and Poland are under populated and America contains not 1/50th of the population it used to have. Asia Minor as only one or two great cities left when formally there were many and Persia it’s self as only a fraction of the population it had under Xerxes and Darius.4 As our writer says:

In a word, as I scan the earth, all I find is ruins; I seem to see it recovering from the ravages of plague and famine.5

About Africa our author says little because at the time little was known.6 But our author concludes:

After making as exact a calculation as is possible with this sort of subject, I have come to the conclusion that there is scarcely a tenth of the number of men on earth that there were in former times.7

The above description is a tissue of absurd assumptions and fantasies on Montesquieu’s part. That he was engaged pulling “facts" out of thin air is revealed when in various drafts of his Persian letters he replaced 1/50th with 1/10th and 1/100th with /50th and so forth.8

Not all of it is entirely fantasy by Montesquieu but the residue of fact underlying it all is just that a residue. For example the statement that Italian towns were empty is false in that we know that in 1700 C.E., there were more people in Italy than in 1600 C.E. Also on both dates the population of Italy was greater than under the Roman Empire. The residue of fact is that it is undoubtedly true that in 1700 C.E., the population of Rome was less than it was under the Roman Empire, although the absurd figures given at the time like 14 million for the city of Rome is nonsense and so is the figure of 1 million.9

After this we come to the reason why Montesquieu accepts these absurd figures. His reference to Roman citizens having huge numbers of slaves. Montesquieu accepts the absurd and frequently quite ridiculous figures given by ancient authorities, from Herodotus down who give figures, some times in the millions, for armies and other frequently absurd figures they simply pull out of thin air. Montesquieu accepts those figures and so of course concludes that ancient populations must have been much larger than modern ones.10

The statement for Sicily being depopulated. It does seem that Sicily at this time was economically stagnant but its population had not spectacularly declined.

Greece probably at this time had a population less than at its height in the 5th / 4th century B.C.E., however the idea it was just 2% that that figure is stuff and nonsense. Spain had experienced a significant decline in population during the 17th century but it was still much greater than in Roman times and further the decline was on the order of 10-20% not anything like 90-98%. Spain was also at the time Montesquieu wrote this in the process of recovery in terms of economy and population.11

As for France; the population was more than double what it was under Rome and further France had in the 17th and continuing throughout the 18th century significant indeed massive population growth.12

Poland was not experiencing a population decline or depopulation at the time and neither was Turkey in Europe.13

The Americas is the one area were significant, indeed spectacular population decline had in fact happened recently. Modern estimates are on the order of 80-95%, which is indeed truly spectacular. However it seems to have been mainly the result of disease, although, conquest, cultural shock and exploitation helped it along.14

As regards Persia, there can be little doubt that Persia c. 1700 C.E. had significantly more people than it did in 480 B.C.E.15

Since it appears that Europe in 1700 C.E., had significantly more people than when Rome was at its height;16 Montesquieu when in latter letters proposes answers to the question of why there is depopulation at least in Europe / Asia he answering a question that as not been posed by the facts.

Still the answers Montesquieu suggests are of interest.

In letter 113,17 Usbek, who in this letter is Montesquieu’s mouthpiece speculates that the human race was nearly whipped out by the Black death a few centuries earlier. This of course reflects the then common idea that the Black Death killed well over half the population of Europe, then it appears that the actual figure is more like 1/3rd. Montesquieu then speculates that the ravaging effects of syphilis may have had an effect in reducing the population. Interestingly Montesquieu speculates that the earth is more than 6000 years old here.

In letter 114,18 Montesquieu speculates that the Romans had a greater population than either modern day Christian and Muslim lands (this is false), because Christian lands limit or forbid divorce and Muslim lands practice polygamy. Montesquieu writes:

It seems to me that a Muslim is like an athlete doomed to compete without respite, who is weakened and overcome by is initial efforts, and languishes on the very field of victory, lying buried, so to speak, beneath his own triumphs.19

To Montesquieu the Muslim male with many wives, exhausted trying to satisfy them sexually, produces few and weak children. This says more about the sexual fantasies of Montesquieu and his milieu than anything else and can be dismissed as fantasy. Of course Montesquieu seemed to be unaware that the great majority Muslim men only had one wife and that the harems were women “always grow old there in a miserable state of virginity”20 were small in number and had only a few women over all in them.

In letter 115,21 Montesquieu suggests that the Romans by allowing their slaves to “marry” and in other ways encouraging the enterprise of their slaves encouraged them to breed. This of course presents far too rosy a picture of the actual situation of slaves in ancient Rome and again it is fallacious.22

In letter 116,23 Montesquieu states that among Christians the lack of divorce is stated to cause a lack of children due to people being unable to leave childless marriages so that the population suffered a decline. Montesquieu critiques the notion that marriage is something other than a contract. This is of course an obvious attack on the idea that marriage is a Sacrament. This is of course fallacious given that in Montesquieu’s day Europe was experiencing significant population growth.

In letter 117,24 Montesquieu claims that Christian countries because of the great number of Priests, Nuns and Monks, have taken people out of the marriage market and this diminished the population.

This career of chastity has annihilated more men than plagues or the most savage wars.25

Montesquieu is of course giving voice to the opinion, common among Enlightenment thinkers, that the various Church orders etc., were social and economic detriments and ought to be suppressed. Of course their actual effect on population was minimal.

Montesquieu then goes on to say that given that Protestant countries do not have this large number of chaste individuals that they are inevitably more populous and prosperous than Catholic countries. This is of course pure polemics with little to support it in reality.

Letter 118,26 talks about the slave trade and its disastrous effects on Africa. Montesquieu’s argument is that the effects of the slave trade have depopulated Africa. Montesquieu seems to think that Africans were transported to the New world mainly to work in the mines. This is not true. In Montesquieu’s time as later they were sent to the Americas to work on plantations. Further it is a debatable proposition that the slave trade had much effect on the population of Africa however much it was a human atrocity / tragedy.27

In letter 119,28 Montesquieu considers that ideas of ancestor worship, as in China, and hope for the future, as in Judaism, may be helpful in increasing reproduction. However the attitude that we are just travellers here, that life is unimportant, decreases effort and leads to population decrease.

We consider that we are travellers who should always be thinking of our other homeland; to us there seems to be something unjustifiable about doing useful, durable work, or making efforts to ensure security for our children, or planning for when our short and ephemeral life is over. We are calm about the present, unworried by the future, and do not take the trouble to keep our public buildings in good repair, or to clear waste ground, or to work tat land which is capable of being cultivated: we live in a state of general apathy. Leaving everything to be done by Providence.29

Although this comment is supposed to apply to the Muslim world only, and it also carries the old stereotype of the unchanging, fatalistic east, it is clear that it is meant to apply also to such attitudes in Christian Europe. Again it is not clear that this has much if any impact on population growth.

Montesquieu then critiques the common European practice of primogeniture, i.e., the practice of reserving the bulk I, if not the entire amount of a family’s inheritance to the eldest male child, and failing that eldest female child. Montesquieu contends that this discourages people from having children. Montesquieu seems to have it backwards. It seems to be the case that equal inheritance discourages people from having large families because in a situation of growing population this leads to property especially land becoming divided into smaller and smaller portions so families limit family size to prevent this. France in the 19th century was a classic example of this.30

In letter 120,31 Montesquieu contends that primitive hunter-gatherers have an aversion to work, and through the practice of abortions have low populations. Although Montesquieu admits that hunting etc., will support far fewer people he contends such people are frequently ravaged by famine. That is simply not true. As for Montesquieu’s statements about women having abortions to retain their looks that is a conceit of his own society like “savages” alleged aversion to work. Abortion before very recent times was highly dangerous and was generally a population control measure not to preserve looks.32

Letter 121,33 claims that colonization almost always never works and in many cases helps to depopulate a country. In the main Montesquieu as the example of the Spanish empire where because of plague and the effects of conquest the population was drastically reduced and even by 1700 had not recovered.

The Spaniards, giving up any hope of ensuring the loyalty of the conquered nations, chose to exterminate them, and to send out a loyal population from Spain; never has a wicked plan been more punctiliously carried out. A people as numerous as the whole population of Europe was seen to disappear from the earth at the arrival of these barbarians, whose4 only thought, in conquering the Indies, seems to have been to reveal to mankind the ultimate limits of cruelty.34

What Montesquieu is describing is the so-called Black Legend of the Spanish conquest of the New World. Rooted in the denunciations of the Conquest by Spanish writers like de Las Casas it was a propaganda tool used to attack Spanish imperial power in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. What is generally ignored in the legend was that the main cause of the depopulation was not Spanish cruelty or oppression but the unintended effects of epidemic diseases on the population. None of this means that Spanish conquest / rule was not accompanied by massive amounts of cruelty and oppression it just means that contrary to Montesquieu’s statement there was no deliberate intention to wipe out the natives an replace them with Spaniards. Montesquieu is simply engaging in agit-prop here.35

Over all Montesquieu’s point seems to be that colonies drain off population and are of no advantage to increasing the population. In fairness to Montesquieu, colonies especially when they were starting did tend to have high death rates, but subsequent history especially of the English colonies would reveal that Montesquieu was after all way wrong here. So Montesquieu’s advice that people stay home so the population can increase seems wrong, and it appears that in fact colonies have an over all impact of increasing commerce and development and increasing the populations of both the colony and mother country. The effects on the natives is often very negative however.36

Letter 122,37 describes that gentle methods of government combined with some degree of affluence encourage people to have children and that poverty creates a class of weak children who cannot survive. Basically Montesquieu argues that poor people do not have children because they cannot take care of them, whereas people with some affluence do have children.

Men are like plants, which never grow well unless they are properly cultivated; in nations stricken by poverty the species suffers, and sometimes even degenerates.38

Although Montesquieu makes some good points the fact of the matter is that why people have children is for a variety of reasons. In Europe until recently and still in much of the world people had little security in their old age except from relatives and especially their children. A poor old person with no children was in a very precarious position in 18th century Europe. Children were old age security. So not surprisingly even the poor would have children for economic reasons. People practiced family limitation at the time by a variety of methods because of economic constraints and tended to limit the number of children to those they needed for economic viability and their potential needs in old age. In the modern world having large families tends to be limited by economic security and by women being able to have input into decisions regarding their fertility. Montesquieu’s assumption that if people have affluence they will have more children seems to be at best a half truth.39

Montesquieu’s letters in regard to this problem provide a fascinating insight into the thoughts and ideas of the European Enlightenment, however it is still insight regarding a problem that never existed.

1. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, Penguin Books, London, 1973, pp. 301-302.

2. IBID, pp. 202-220.

3. IBID, Letter 112, p. 202.

4. IBID, pp. 202-203.

5. IBID, p. 203.

6. IBID.

7. IBID, pp. 203-204.

8. IBID, p. 326.

9. Finley, M. I., Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, Penguin Books, London, 1980, pp. 29-31, Ferdinand, Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages, Harper Torch Books, New York, 1961, pp. 69-70.

10. IBID, Finley, and pp. 34, 45, 64-65, 79-80, Lot, and pp.63-75.

11. Elliott, J. H., Imperial Spain 1469-1716, Penguin Books, London, 1963, pp. 292-293, 364-370, McEvedy, Colin, and Jones, Richard, Atlas of World Population History, Penguin Books, London, 1978, pp. 99-101, 110-114. McEvedy and Jones give Greece a population of 2.5 million in 200 B.C.E., 2 million in 200 C.E., and 1.5 million in 1700 C.E.

12. IBID, McEvedy, pp. 55-60. McEvedy give France a population of 6.5 million in 200 C.E., and 22 million in 1700 C.E., with a total population of 29 million in 1800 C.E.

13. IBID, pp. 92-97, 110-114. The total population of Turkey in Europe was c. 10 million in 1700 C.E., as against a total of c. 6 million in 200 C.E.

14. See for example Stannard, David E., American Holocaust, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, pp. 57-95, Cook, Noble David, and Lovell, W. George, Unravelling the Web of Disease, in Ed. Cook, Noble David, and Lovell, W. George, “Secret Judgements of God”, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1992, pp. 213-214, Denevan, William M., Native American Populations in 1492: Recent Research and a Revised Hemispheric Estimate, in Editor, Denevan, William, The Native Population of the Americas, Second Edition, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1992, pp. xvii-xxix.

15. McEvedy, pp. 152-155. The figures give Iran (Persia) a population of c. 4 million in 200 C.E., and a population of 5 million in 1700 C.E.

16. IBID, pp. 18-39. The figures give Europe a population of 36 million in 200 C.E., and 120 million in 1700 C.E.

17. Montesquieu, pp. 204-206.

18. IBID, pp. 206-208.

19. IBID, p. 207.

20. IBID, p. 207.

21, IBID, pp. 208-209.

22. Finley, pp. 93-122. See also Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MASS, 1982.

23. Montesquieu, pp. 209-211.

24, IBID, pp. 211-213.

25, IBID, pp. 211-212.

26. IBID, pp. 213-214

27. McEvedy, pp. 213-217. See also Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade, Papermac, London, 1997.

28. Montesquieu, pp. 214-215.

29. IBID, p. 215.

30. McEvedy, p. 56.

31. Montesquieu, pp. 215-216.

32. Harris, Marvin, Cannibals and Kings, Vintage Books, New York, 1997, pp. 11-25.

33. Montesquieu, pp. 216-219.

34. IBID, p. 218.

35. See de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Penguin Books, London, 1992, and the items listed in Footnote 14. I should point out that Spanish rule, sometimes, as in the island of Hispaniola was so brutal and destroyed the natives so effectively and completely that calling it deliberate or at least criminal negligence amounting to homicide is not far off. See Stannard, pp. 67-75, 200-206.

36. See Braudel, Fernand, The Perspective of the World, Harper and Row Pub., New York, 1984, pp. 392-401.

37, Montesquieu, pp. 219-220.

38. IBID, p. 220.

39. McEvedy, pp. 343-351.

Pierre Cloutier