Argh. I've had to spend three days doing the historical research necessary to write the next three or four lines of my thesis. The trouble arises from the fact that the post-Empire, pre-Persian era of Egypt turns out to be much more complicated than had been known before fairly recently. Jan Assmann's book, The Mind of Egypt, has a chapter dedicated to the period, and, to put it in a nutshell, the Egyptian order went a bit cockeyed in the 21st Dynasty. "And it was all downhill from there..." as the cliché goes.

To summarize the mess, with the 21st Dynasty, Egypt entered into a situation which, for all effective intents, saw the High Priest and the cult of Amon set itself up as an independent authority from the Pharaoh. Assmann's reading of this is that Herihor set up a "direct theocracy" in Thebes, in which the priests were conceived as servants of the Hidden God, Whose Name No One Knows. Taken together with the recent cultic emphasis on divination through the consultation of cult statues, and Assmann takes this as an instance of a "theology of will" given political form, ala. Israel. I think that Assmann is wrong on this, but it's an interesting challenge finding the language to correct him, as he has pointed-out something uniquely odd and unexpected.

Only somewhat less odd, but just as unexpected, is the revelation that Egypt apparently went through (or perhaps, was subjected to) a feudal age of sorts from the 22nd through 26th Dynasties, during which it was under the control of Libyan rulers. This is odd for the simple reason that Egypt had never been feudal in its structure... ever. Unlike the case of post-Roman, Western Europe, there had been no "feudal stage", followed by "absolute monarchy", followed by "nationalism/democracy/what-have-you". Feudalism, in the sense of a landed, territorial, hereditary aristocracy, had simply never existed in the Nile Valley below the Third Cataract. Neither had absolute monarchy, for that matter; Pharaoh was not a ruler appointed by God by divine birthright. Pharaoh was a god, and the son of god. But I digress...

Feudalism was apparently imposed upon the existing Egyptian order, and I can only expect to find that Egyptians themselves were less than happy about the situation. I can't imagine that such a structure would have mediated the Egyptian experience of order too well. Though the period doesn't seem to have been as thoroughly chaotic as the 1st Intermediate Period, or as humiliating as the 2nd, I expect that the locals weren't long after wishing for a new Pharaoh to come along, return things to "normal", and maybe slaughter a few foreigners.

In any event, this is turning out to be a lot of work for a few sentences...

"'Must... start... lit-review..."

Two out of three subsections of my thesis introduction are done, which leaves the short (and highly annoying) literature review to be composed. In a few pages, I'll be needing to present an encapsulated overview of the Egyptian experience of time and history, as respectively proposed by John A. Wilson, Henri Frankfort, Jan Assmann, and Eric Voegelin. I'm drawing closer to a clear idea of how to structure said section, but I haven't yet put pen to paper.

In the mean time, I was forced to engage in a bit of a snipe chase over the issue of the contents and origins of the Palermo Stone. Varying sources on the inter-web were claiming varying dates, ranging from the 5th Dynasty to the 25th, and from 2150 to 500B.C. To boot, said sources didn't agree with whether the stone listed various gods and demigods of the Egyptian pantheon as primordial Pharaohs or not. If it had listed them as such, and it had been inscribed in the 5th Dynasty, that would have radically changed the complexion of Egyptian history. In essence, it would have implied that the Egyptian experience of time was explicitly linear (much like the Hebrew experience) and engaged in historiogenesis from an early date... as early as the Old Kingdom. Of course, as it turned out, the snipe was but a snipe; some of the sources seem to have been mixing up the contents of the Palermo Stone with those of the Turin King List, and Manetho's Aegyptica. The Stone is indeed old, but the contents are not as radical as those lists from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.

'Also need to remember to call M.O'C.

Amazing the things which don't get recorded when one isn't updating their journal on a regular basis... For the record, back in December, I posted (most of) my PhD applications to various programs at various Universities, including the Departments of Philosophy at McGill, Oxford, and Trinity College Dublin (which I only completed and mailed yesterday), and the Departments of Political Science at Carleton and the University of Toronto. Thus far, I've had one rejection letter from McGill. Other responses should be forthcoming over the next month or so; I'll likely get a more sympathetic hearing from the poli-sci departments, which don't require a lot of pre-requisite courses in logic under one's belt.

Erg. I had been intending to visit the Shambhala Center this evening at 19h, and spend a much needed hour minding my breath, but a case of Voegelin-induced fatigue rendered that inadvisable. I'd earlier decided to damn the literature review, and finish composing the theoretical section of my thesis introduction by the end of the week, which has meant burning the proverbial candle at both ends. The sticking point, at the moment, has been making sure that I have a clear conception of how E.V. is employing the symbol of "the Beyond" with respect to the rest of the symbolic complex which he uses to circumscribe the experience of transcendence.

To accomplish that, I spent two or three hours at the GSA (Graduate Student Association) lounge, cross-tracking the language which he uses to describe such things as "luminosity" and "It-reality" in Volume 5 of Order and History, against his usage in the "Structures in Consciousness" presentation given in Toronto in 1978. After putting my time in on that, I then decided to make my life easier by translating Voegelin-speak into the slightly easier vocabulary of Polanyi. Long story short, after having worried myself after talking with Professor Poirier, and re-reading the "SoC" that I hadn't understood what E.V. was getting at (only because the Professor's approach and way of describing the matter was very different from my own), I'm now rather sure that I'd been on the right track. Voegelin does seem to me to be some new sort of post-Kantian, phenomenological thinker, unique unto himself. He's definitely not a Platonic or Peripatetic thinker, though he's obviously deeply indebted to both Plato and Aristotle -- he's very obviously being selective about which insights he borrows and which he sets aside.

In any event, reading week begins on Friday, and I'll be taking a French-comprehension exit-exam before leaving. I'm not sure if I actually need to take it, but neither does anyone in the office, so I'm figuring that I'm better off being safe than sorry. With any luck, I'll get back to Montreal early enough for the Dove and I to go out dancing. I also feel the need to check-up on V.B. and M.G. when I get back into town, as well as my family. 'Might check-up on M.O'C. if I get the chance as well; I haven't heard hide nor hair of her in a while. M.S. and M.A. are also on the list.

It's nearing the witching hour on Monday night, and the day's weather has taken a turn for the queer; in these latitudes, it doesn't usually rain in January. This week marks the last one spent tutoring discussion groups on Hobbes, and the beginning of at least a week on Locke's Second Treatise of Government. The size of the groups has fallen quite a bit, along with the general attendance of the course. Compared with the three-hundred or so who were registered at the beginning of the school year, we've got about one-hundred and ninety registered (in theory). I've about twelve to thirteen students attending each discussion group at this point, which is down from the initial twenty or so.

I spent the Xmas break in Montreal with Dove, and we got to spend quite a bit of that time in the East End, housesitting, catsitting, and dogsitting at my Dad's satellite TV-equipped apartment. That proved to be a pretty good turn, given the migraines which D. was (and has been) coping with; it made sticking around the house a pretty enjoyable experience overall, circumstances notwithstanding. 'Spent Xmas itself with D's sister's family, which also a good time; we ended-up watching "Inglorious Basterds" on Xmas Eve, which is the first Brad Pitt movie which I can recall ending with Hitler being shot in the face with an machine gun, though I could be wrong.

'Didn't get too much work done over the holiday break, though I did finish volume IV of Order & History, and get a third of the way into volume V. I've spent the last two weeks gathering historical materials for my thesis, entering the useful bits into the old, electronic computing device, and attempting to come-up with a satisfactory outline and introduction to my thesis. Finding the mythological texts which trace the developments in Egyptian thought is proving to be a bit easier than straightening-out the theoretical questions, and Voegelin's own language. Over the next few days, I'll be making an attempt to find a full and clear way to explain the symbols of the Beginning and the Beyond, which can be shoehorned into two or three pages.

(An excerpt from a relatively early paper presented by Voegelin in 1952. It's also one of the clearer bits which I've read from him. In particular, you really have to love the section in which he essentially refers to social contract theory as an imaginary pseudo-science dreamt-up by men who haven't grown manhood.)

"When for this occasion we have chosen the relation between political science and the intellectuals as the subject of our discussion, we have returned to the oldest topic of our science. It is the oldest topic because it is the oldest pragmatic issue. The political science that was created by Plato and Aristotle was established in opposition to the opinions held by the intellectuals of their time, by the sophists. And the conflict with the intellectuals, the revolt against the intellectuals, from which emerged our science, is monumentally commemorated to this day in the political dialogues of Plato's early and middle years. From its origins the science of politics is a militant enterprise, a defense of truth both political and practical. It is a defense of true knowledge about human existence in society against the untrue opinions dispensed by intellectuals: and it is a defense of true human being against the corruption of man perpetrated by the intellectuals." -- excerpt from Voegelin, Eric; Political Science and The Intellectuals (eds. Geoffrey Price & Maben W. Poirier); in Voegelin Research News, Volume V, No. 1, February 1999.

Edit: Another note of interest is Voegelin's fairly strong defense of Arnold J. Toynbee towards the last third of the presentation, and his acknowledgment of Toynbee as a genuine theorist, as opposed to the philodoxers who've criticized his work. There is also included a balanced criticism of specialization is the sciences, which is reminiscent of George Grant's.

"The self appears as activity. It is not a 'thing' or a 'substance' capable of being active; it is activity. And this activity is primordial; there is nothing antecedent to it.", Oakeshott, Michael; The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, in Rationalism in Politics; p. 204

"The not-self, then, is composed of images. But these images are not 'given' or 'presented' to the self; they are not independent existences caught as they swim in the next of an expectant or an indifferent self. And they are not this because they are not anything at all out of relation to a self: and self is activity.", ibid, p.205

"The 'thing' that is called man discovers itself as having consciousness; and as a consequence, it discovers man's consciousness as the area of reality in which the process of reality becomes luminous to itself... A mute process about whose meaning one could be in doubt becomes increasingly articulate about its meaning; and what is discovered as its meaning is the emergence of noetic consciousness in the process... The differentiation of consciousness makes reality both luminous and meaningful against the background of the compact truth; it does not overreach itself into a beyond of the process.", Voegelin, Eric; The Ecumenic Age, p.236

"The philosophers' truth does not become a possession; it remains a truth of the search (zetesis) in erotic tension toward the mysterious ground of existence.", ibid; p.236

From the above-set pairs of quotations, it seems clear that both Oakeshott and Voegelin are in general agreement as to the constitution of the human essence, in that both perceive a form of motion, rather than stillness, to be the principle (or perhaps only) mode in which, and by which, a specifically human existence is both constituted and maintained. In neither formulation does there seem to be much room for the possibility of a a specifically human existence in a mode or state of stillness, in that any such profound state of non-activity would not, by definition, constitute a state of existence, but rather reflect non-existence, or alternatively, reflect the de-constitution of existence -- which is to say, death and dissolution. Thus, broadly speaking, both speaks would seem to be in agreement as to the mode in which the highest forms of human existence would be found (the existence of motion versus the apparent non-existence of stillness), and, broadly speaking, would be in general disagreement with any thesis which would suggest that stillness might either constitute a valid state of existence, or represent a valid goal of such an existence.

The question then becomes one of determining the different manner in which the concern over motion vs. stillness might reflect itself in the works of both men, and, indeed, one need not venture far. For, in Oakeshott's concern regarding 'rationalism' and Voegelin's concern regarding 'gnosticism', one detects a similar apprehensiveness in the face of modern intellectual and political quests for absolute, propositionalizable certainties, which are hoped to put an end to all mysteries, all uncertainties, all doubts, and all need for personal, existential searching. In rationalism and in gnosticism, the two writers seem to perceive nothing so much as the quest to eliminate -- or at least very much suppress -- as much of the activity which constitutes human existence as is possible. In its particular manifestations, this quest might reveal itself in the attempt at the radical reformation or destruction of institutions for the sake of rationalizing and clarifying their work towards the goal of the 'proper' organization of society. It might manifest as the insistence that all practical and scientific knowledge be translated (or be at least translatable) into a body of propositional instructions, which might, at least hypothetically, be absorbed from the medium of a text into the eager, disembodied minds of the literate. It could even reveal itself in the form of apocalyptic, historiogenetic texts, which proclaim the arrival of a new epoch, in which all knowledge, all spiritual yearning, all work, and all Science, has been laid bare in its final, comprehensive solution in the form of a Book -- thus making the solution to human existence readily available at one's local Barnes & Noble. The drive, in whatever case, is singular, in that, wherever some idiom of human activity -- be it primarily physical, primarily noetic, or, more often some balance of the two -- is not brought to an end, it is certainly restricted within ever tighter boundaries by the dogmatism of those who would 'free' humanity from mystery.

Given that such dogmatic restriction, in whatever form, represents a profound restriction on the motion of human existence -- a restriction of movement within the field of imagining for Oakeschott, within the metaxy of noetic consciousness for Voegelin -- the restrictions themselves can only be understood as a form of spiritual assault, a claim by the dogmatists upon the very foundation of the soul itself. Given the self's status as a epiphenomenon of participating in the process of reality, the dogmatic attempt to being either a relative, or absolute, conclusion (stillness) to human existence would seem to amount to an attempt to annihilate human existence as such.

(A sub-section of a much larger paper...)

It is, to this author's knowledge, a unique occurrence within the ancient world for a writer of stature to dedicate any significant volume of ink to the matter of rape, and likely unheard of for any to dedicate their energies to giving comfort to the victims of rape. Yet this, in fact, proves to be the matter of no fewer than six chapters of Book I of The City of God, in which St. Augustine gives himself over to two particular tasks. First, of exculpating from guilt those holy virgins of the Church, those children, and (it is at least suggested) those men, whom have suffered the "violation" of the "sanctity of their bodies" at the hands and members of the Gothic hordes of Alaric during the sack of Rome of 410AD. Second, and following closely, comes the task of theodicy -- of exculpating from guilt the God whom one might blame for not preventing the violation.

In the process of these efforts, the reader may sense the depth of novelty in his task, in that there often appears to be a palpable straining against the very boundaries of the language with which the defense must be composed. For, against or alongside the conventional language of "shame" and "pollution", with which any Latin-speaker of the ancient world must surely have possessed familiarity, the Bishop added both conventional and philosophic categories of "virtue", and the then purely Judeo-Christian conception of "sin". In this, novel, though sometimes awkward reconfiguration and combination of language, one senses what may be expressed in modern English as an attempt at a phenomenological distinction of "guilt" from "shame", which is independent from the familiar, purely legal conception of guilt as guilty-with-respect-to-the-law.

In The City of God, one senses the attempt to ground and to acknowledge both shame and guilt as experiential phenomena of the embodied human being, and to thereby separate those phenomena from the purely conventional, and temporal, political order of the earthly city. That is to say that Augustine's defense and exculpation of the victims of rape, and of God, serves to both acknowledge the experience of shame as essentially embodied, immanent, and independent of political order qua order, but to also reveal guilt as a real, ontological phenomenon, which itself exists independently of conventional legal classifications, and which thus transcends both the earthly city, and all of its potential proposals for remedy. Shame, it would seem, is an endemic feature of the earthly city which persists independent of guilt. Augustine's consolation is therefor perhaps best understood as an attempt at the cathartic relief of victims from shame through the revelation of their freedom from guilt with respect to the act of sexual violation. His theodicy, on the other hand, which is inextricably tied-up with his consolation, seeks to exculpate God of not only guilt, but also of shame (though not necessarily of anger or of charity). The task here, then, will be to investigate the language by which the Bishop attempted to distinguish shame from guilt -- the places, origins, natures, and the means by which one becomes aware of them as conditions -- and the limitations which his definitions may place on his theodicy.

( Read more... )

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." [John 1:1-5]

"Where, then, did I find you that I could learn of you? For you were not in my memory before I learned of you. Where else, then, did I find you, to learn of you, unless it was in yourself, above me?" [Confessions of St. Augustine, X.xxvi.37]

Perhaps by this second passage, the reader is meant to understand that the memory of God, who's origin the Bishop was at pains to explain, could be found in no place or time other than the experience of eternity which is given to those who search with the soul for "[that] light which is not bound by space" [Conf. X.vi.8]. This would seem to be borne-out by the passage, "What, then, do I love when I love God? Who is this Being who is so far above my soul? If I am to reach him, it must be through my soul." [Conf. X.vii.11].

This, however, does little to lay bare the nature of the experience to which Augustine wishes to direct us -- the experience by which it became known to him that which Is spaceless in dimension and without dimensions in time. What does it mean for a being both in time and bounded by space to recall from memory the experience of something akin to the fullness of Being which is no-where but in eternity? A suggestion of the formative experience seems to be presented in the passages following the question, "Of these three divisions [of time], then, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?" [Conf. XI.xiv.17].

( Read more... )

In other news, I'm slowly getting used to my new reading glasses, which have been instrumental in my not getting piercing headaches after two or more hours of reading. Now, I only get headaches when I try to look at things more than three feet from my face while wearing my glasses! All-in-all, it's a good thing, since I'm having to do four or five hours of reading every day just to get by. As it is, I haven't left the university campus in nearly a month (except for groceries) and I'm still behind. On the upside, my T.A. class has finally moved past the Bible segment of the course, and moved on to St. Augustine. Since I'm already reading Augustine for my reading course with Prof. Emberley, it's a pretty convenient situation. Having, for the sake of teaching, to take time-off from my own reading in order to review the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul was definitely not an ideal situation.

At the moment, I'm thirteen books into Augustine's City of God, and a little over one-hundred and fifty pages into Volume IV of Voegelin's Order & History. In the meantime, I'm due to submit some sort of reflection paper on Voegelin and Michael Oakeshott, as well as one on the aforementioned Bishop of Hippo. I haven't really got an idea of what to write regarding the first topic -- I've got some vague interest in looking into Oakeshott's equation of poetic imagining with contemplation, and his presentation of contemplation as the activity of "delighting" -- and my thoughts on the second have me trying to parse-out the significance of the different doctrines of the Trinity which were adopted by the Eastern and Western churches...

Yeahhhhh... So I'll be thinking about Trinitarianism all weekend. If anyone wants to pop-in and shoot me at any time, please feel free! ;-)

It's been a while since I've taken to time to write a proper entry, so we'll have to make due with something like an executive summary of the month. The month began with a trip back to Montreal to visit Dove and to take her on a surprise visit to the Dalai Lama's lecture-appearance at Molson Stadium. Roughly half the stadium was open, and nearly every seat was filled -- I'd have to strain to even remember an empty spot anywhere below the most inaccessible bleachers. The evening began with a pair of performances; a traditional Tibetan number, and one solo-performance by a local Québecois artist whom I'm not familiar with. The talk itself was faced by a few technical difficulties involving the wireless mics; the local monk tasked with translating the Dalai Lama's talk into French couldn't get a working microphone to save is life. At one point, he was surrounded by six or seven different microphones, none of them working properly, and was quite literally becoming entangled in the cords. It was around that point that His Holiness joked that the poor fellow was being haunted by evil spirits... about two minutes before his own wireless mic stopped working! This, we may assume, is definite, empirical proof that evil spirits are indeed living in the Molson Stadium.

With the entire cast switching over to good-ole'fashioned wired mics, the rest of the talk went relatively smoothly. On a few occasions, His Holiness forgot himself a bit and spoke for nine or ten minutes before realizing that he hadn't given his fellow monk the chance to translate anything that he'd said. During those lengthy interludes, he took the time to do such things as wiggle the feeling back into his toes (he took off his shoes at the very beginning of the talk, and was sitting in a half-lotus position in his chair), to re-arrange his robe, and to dig through his bag full of earthly possessions for his sun-visor (the spotlights were rather bright). The audience, perhaps understandably, was almost a bit more fixated on the sight of a major religious leader on stage, wiggling his toes and wearing a bright-yellow sun-visor than they were on the translator's voice.

In any event, the talk, though not aiming at any deep esotericism, had a few revealing moments for those who were paying attention. One was the open profession that only two existing practices had, in a satisfactory way, addressed the fundamental necessity of the practice of compassion for existential fulfillment (obliquely referring to religious, social, economic, and political practice) -- the Theistic and Hindu-Buddhist, with the former vision finding its grounds for compassion in devotion to a God of love and reason, and the latter in the realization of the laws of causation (in the sense of karma) and their existential implications. He then put forth that it was the necessary task of human beings -- for the sake of evading the bloodiest deprivations of the 20th century -- to add to these two ways an essentially secular third-way, one which would justify compassionate practice to those of a secular bent. One senses the presence of a certain amount of upaya at play in this sort of speech, a sort of skillful pragmatism being exercised to persuade a skeptical audience, which was unlikely to leave the Stadium and immediately take up either the Faith or the dharma, but which might be convinced to think about things a bit, and maybe to adjust their own practice in day-to-day life...

"It is practically impossible to render the terms ascholia and schole adequately in English. In Greek (as in the Latin otium and negotium) leisure, schole, has the positive connotation, while business (ascholia) negatively denotes the absence of schole. The etymological connection with schein (from echo) suggests a stopping from activity, a rest, resulting in a "having of oneself" or holding of oneself, as the basic meaning, while ascholia would correspondingly suggest a losing of oneself in perpetual activity." -- Eric Voegelin, Order & History, Volume III, Book II, section 9, fn.11.

A couple of weeks ago, a paper of mine (The Concept of Plato: An Exegesis of the Sixth Through Eighth Lectures of Kojve's 1938-39 Series on the "Phenomenology of Spirit") was published in Gnosis, which is the graduate journal of Concordia University's philosophy department. I probably should have noted that in my log a bit earlier, but it just goes to show how distracted I've been lately.

In other news, my father and I are trying to work out an arrangement whereby it wouldn't be necessary to put Alex, Tiffy, and Beauty up for adoption. The jist of those efforts entails searching for friends or friends of friends willing to work as dog- or cat-sitters, and my father searching for another apartment. At the moment, the latter consists in seeing if my great Uncle B.C. happens to be selling-off any of his properties in LaSalle, and whether he would be interested in keeping the property within the family.

Meanwhile, I'm in the midst of another round of grant applications, this time to the SSHRC and FQRSC. I missed the deadline for the OGS applications, unfortunately, due to the fact that I couldn't figure out if I was eligible if I hadn't yet received an offer to study at an Ontario university in 2010. Apparently, I was, but that's a bit of water under the bridge.

PhD applications are also coming-up, but I've yet to put together a complete list of universities which would prove fruitful for studies on Michael Polanyi and Plato. I'll have spent most of an entire year studying Voegelin by the time I've finished my thesis, so I'll likely have gotten that out of my system for a bit. Funnily enough, one of the better Polanyi scholars in North America is my old undergrad prof, Prof. M.W. Poirier of Concordia U. Unfortunately, a PhD in political science from Concordia doesn't carry much gravitas with it...

'Still studying Ancient Greek (I need to memorize the present, past, and future participle declensions in active, middle, and passive voices by Wednesday, as well as the aorist tense), 'still T.Aing (this time on Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and the New Testament), and still trying to exercise regularly.

Somehow, I seem to be fitting it all in... Can you imagine that I wanted to pick-up Latin while doing all this?

Snipped from my friend Alisha's Facebook page: a review of John Paul II's Love and Responsibility. The general tone recalls to mind Plato's Symposium, though with less, errr... homoerotic tension.

I've just noticed (on my sixth reading of the book) that Plato wrote about the difference between inductive and deductive logic, formal and final causation, and the epistemology of the whole lot in Book VI, Stephanus 510b of The Republic. That would contradict Aristotle's claim that his old teacher only contributed the discovery of formal causation to material and efficient causes. In addition, if Voegelin's view of the over-arching meaning of the Republic-Timaeus-Critias trilogy is correct -- if the first is meant as the final nod to the philosophy of Socrates, the second to the Pythagoreans, and the last to the aristocratic tradition of Athens -- and the incidental remarks made by Adeimentus regarding the interests of the literary Socrates [506b] can be taken for generally true of the original model, then the first consideration of both formal and final causation would antedate even Plato, and originate with Socrates.

Interesting.

Edit: Originally wrote Stephanus [506a] when I meant to write [506b].

"Two Theological Languages" by George Grant

Assertion and thesis: "...Philosophy and theology are faith seeking understanding", "Theology... is necessary so that men may not forget the truths of the past... [and] so they may purge the past of its errors."

i) Thoughtful theology is necessary to communicate with a culture of educated specialists.
ii) The Presbyterian and Methodist traditions provide no such thing.
iii) These failures, by various creeds, to provide a message of unifying meaning applicable as equally to doctors as to engineers as businesspersons, leaves open the door to the naturalist church of psychiatry and social science.
iv) Theology must be rethought and relieved with every generation, with every crisis in which the temporal confronts the eternal.
v) Action proceeds from theory or theoretical understandings of purpose.

    Regarding the two theological languages which he is interested in describing, one is the Platonic/Aristotelian, from which Grant predicates the thought that "Reason not only gives us the idea of the highest good, but makes us desire that good", and that "freedom, means the individual's acceptance, conscious and intelligence of what he most truly is."

"Time as History" by George Grant

i) "Is Christianity fundamentally committed to the unicity of the historical process [linear time, with one sacrifice]? If so, one has to give up Platonism. I hope not, but I am not sure." (p.xxx) ed.note

ii) "Like sexuality, or religion, or music, language transcends the inward-outward distinction." (p.8)

iii) "Like food, language not only makes human existence possible, but can also confine it." (p.7)

iv) "The word 'history' [in the English world] does not mean a particular kind of reality, because it is used about all forms of reality [natural studies, religious studies, anthropology]." (p.11)

v) Man as accidental God, as the final God made by history, or as God's co-creator. (p.13)

vi) Those who "concieve time as history are turned towards...the future." (p.16)

vii) The determination to make the future different from the past; 'characteristic' (p.16)

viii) "Will" as also an "auxilary of the future tense" (p.17)

ix) The tension between [reasonable] planning for the future and necessity (p.18)

x) The greater ability of a collectivity to control chance. (p.18)

xi) "The presence of the future in out imagining is one reason why men are so effective in their doing." (p.19)

xii) "But human beings have more history [than birds] because they are capable of a more differentiated doing [due to our imagining of the future and power to plan; thus to introduce 'novelty']" (p.19)

xiii) Men more historical than animals, Western men more historical than others. (p.20)

xiv) 'Will' has seperated from both thinking and feeling. (p.21-22)

xv) Willing as the cessation of deliberation in favour of creating history, one way or another. (p.22)

xvi) "Desiring" as the language of dependence, distinct from the language of control expressed by "willing". (p.23)

xvii) Grant's re-reading of the Greek heroes, tacitly against Nietzsche, as meant to bring "into immediacy the beauty of a trusted order"; not a re-creation of a new one. (p.24)

xviii) "Upon our will to do has been placed the whole burden of meaning" [; meaning must be created in a act of will] (p.24)

xix) "The coming together of willing and reasoning lies essentially in the method [objectification] that has made possible the successes of modern science." (p.25)

xx) When Marx wrote of changing the world, he still belonged that changing was not an end in itself..." (p.26); now, endless negation. (p.27)

*Essay III*
xxi) The equal participation of the Greeks and the Bible in both thought and reverence. (p.29)

xxii) Philosophers study man as eternal, while Nietzsche, following Darwin argued for his historicity. (p.36)

xxiii) "Nietzsche uses the word 'bridge' to describe the human process... between the beasts we were and what we may yet be..." (p.37)

xxiv) Nietzsche and the finality of becoming (Heraclitean overtones). (p.37)

xxv) Nietzsche: natural science has purged other species of purpose, why not Man? (p.38); "Purpose" has been preserved only in the domain of morality, to save the idea of good and evil.

xxvi) Nietzsche laments the loss of the last, great horizon of Christianity, thus admitting chaos and the truth of meaninlessness into the world. (p.38-41)

xxvii) "Only that which has no history can be defined." (p.41)

*Essay IV*
xxviii) The last man and the nihilists at the end of history (p.44-46)
        a) The last men: secularized Christians with a bare, dry, inherited rationality (p.45), base happiness.
        b) The nihilists: cannot give-up their will. (p.45-46), those who have nothing to will v. those who would will nothing. (p.46)

xxix) Neither deserves to be masters of the Earth. (p.47)

xxx) Nietzsche: progression without necessity, "Marx without a safety net or pseudo-Christian faith". (p.48)

xxxi) " I may be allowed to note that the absence of all nets is a truth that those of us who trust in God must affirm." -- Grant, (p.48)

xxxii) Nazis' "hysterical self-pity" disqualified them (along with their vengefulness) from being ubermensch. (p.49)

xxxiii) "Should the last-men or the nihilists control the e-media (an aside on Leni Reisenshtahl)" (p.50)

xxxiv) The will denied and the spirit of revenge (p.51); history as revenge events.

xxxv) Amor fati as teh overcoming of the spirit of vengeance (p.54); outside of the shelter of eternity (as in Plato, Christianity).

*Essay V*
xxxvi) The revolt of the youth in N.A. strikes deeper notes of Nietzsche than Marx. (p.58)

xxxvii) "The thought of Nietzsche is a fate for modern men..." (p.58), "In partaking in it, we can come to judgements about the modern project..."

xxxviii) "[Time as history] It is not a conception we are fitted for." (p.58)

xxxix) Intimations of perfection goes against amor fati. (p.60)

xxxx) Nietzsche's contemplation of endless time (not timelessness) would not free us from the spirit of revenge, but "drive men mad". (p.60)

xxxxi) Amor fati would require us to love the technological necessity which created our circumstances. (p.63)

"Technology and Justice" by George Grant

One quote which summarizes the theme of Grant's book: "Take what you want;" said God, "take it, and pay for it." -- Spanish proverb (from preface

0) Three threads of thought or argument: (which play into his final argument on justice)

• i) "technology" as the very essence of modern civilization, which has come to shape the very way we think and perceive, thus altering our "civilizational destiny";
• ii) a comparison of our "technological civilization" to that of the Ancients (Greek and Christian chiefly).
• iii) an analysis of the theoretical sources (cf. Nietzsche, Kant, Bacon) of this novel Age.

I) Grant's "technology": (characteristics)

• i) Co-penetration of knowing and making.
• ii) The belief that technology and technical knowledge are the means to universal liberty and equality.
• iii) The impersonal objectification of nature, the natural world... and now human beings.
• iv) A disinterest or disdain for forms of knowledge which aren't positivistic and don't contribute to making.
• v) An exaltation of what is possible over what is given.

II) Grant's Ancient civilization: (mainly Platonic and Christian)

• i) Knowledge/scientific knowledge separate from techne.
• ii) An emphasis on embracing Otherness rather than seeking to control it.
• iii) A de-emphasizatio of personal willfulness in one's relationship to the Other/the Given.

III) The sources of modernity: (cf. Kant, Nietzsche)

• i) Kant's exaltation of the intellect/reason as the basis of morality and society.
• ii) Nietzsche's dismissal of the noumenal order and embrace of the irrational will standing before the Abyss.
• iii) Contractualism.
• iv) Skepticism without trust.

Timeline:
Lack of trust (Descartes) --> technical science used to control and unravel nature (Bacon) --> technical results --> triumphalism --> Kant realizes the inability to "know" the noumenal order --> noumenal order dismissed --> contractualism begins to lose belief in "owing" to a "given" --> Nietzsche overturns rationalism and re-emphasizes the Will-to-Power through the technical fruits.

IV) What then does Grant think technology mean for justice?

• i) The disbelief in out "owing" anything to a given (or even the very existence of a given order).
• ii) The call for the dispassionate objectification of research subjects.
• iii) The drive to radically alter the world and ourselves in search of "quality of life" (Nietzsche).
• iv) The subjectivization of beauty, the ridicule of love of the Other, and the anthropocentrizing of "Good"...

V) ...Leads to:

• i) A belief that justice is only the fulfillment of contracts between rational beings.
• ii) That justice could only be something created by "Man" rather that something intrinsic to the cosmos.
• iii) That "justice" becomes little more than the exercising of the ubermench's will, through technology, upon a pliable world for the sake of "quality of life".

*Preface*
i) Grant's concern with technology as fate.
ii) Concern with the quest for conquest of "human and non-human nature".
iii) His organizing thought: "Take what you want, said God, take it and pay for it", Spanish proverb (p.9).
iv) Thus, he explored the consequences (or price) of our discovery of this paradigm of knowledge.

*Chapter 1*
I) The word "technology", as opposed to "technique", captures the novelty of the age.

• i) The co-penetration of knowing and making for the purposes of mastery (p.12).
• ii) Versus the lack of such a desire in Greek, Chinese, and Sanskrit civilizations (p.13).
• iii) The expectation that this mastery will bring about a world of free and equal people, without poverty or hunger (p.15)
• iv) Plato's warning is now a forseeable reality, yet our response is to call upon to technology to fix things (p.15-16).

II) To meet the goals of modern society, and to curb its problems...

• i) Technology is now called upon to master human nature in both developed and undeveloped countries (p.16).
• ii) Yet the inclination is always to master others, rather than ourselves (p.16).
• iii) Psychology and psychiatry are wedded to administration a law-enforcement (p.16-17).
• iv) Biochemistry, in turn, justified by physics, is recruited by the social sciences.
• v) ...all the while human betterment is the agreed-upon goal.

III) What is so novel?

• i) In the eyes of moderns, it is the systematic application of reason for the creation of instruments for our use (p.17-19).
• ii) A computer scientist: "The computer doesn't impose upon us the ways it should be used." (p.19)
• iii) ... clearly a statement meant to alleviate public anxiety (p.20).
• iv) ... but the manufacture of computers requires a certain type of society, inhabited by massive corporations, whose operation itself demands both the devices, and society, to be deployed in a fashion that enables the manufacture of *more* computers (p.21-23).
• v) ... furthermore, computers are developed from within the new paradigm of knowledge which assumes a particular end in all makings (p.22-23).
• vi) ... the existence of computers is a byproduct of our 'civilizational destiny' (p.22); those set of presuppositions about the world that are taken for granted.
• vii) Why is it novel? Because the ease with which classification (pigeonholing) can be done in a sophisticated technological state increases the tempo of the homogenizing process (p.23). The car as an example of a "neutral" yet homogenizing technology.
• viii) Because the modern argument concerning *justice* merely argues about which ideology will make the best use of technology for the emancipation of human kind (p.26).
• ix) Because in our love of freedom, we think ourselves "free" from technology, yet are blind to the slavery required to bring it into being (p.27-29).
• x) Because we have a difficult time condemning as "wrong" or "unjust" any action or technology which has no immediate problems or consequences (p.33). All objections cite "problems", but if we can't think of any...
• xi) **Because the possible is exalted above what is** (p.34).

*Chapter II, Faith and the Multiversity*

I) The multiversity desires "objective" knowledge of "objects of study", as opposed to (p.35-57):

• i) Erotic science; the love of the other in its otherness (p.38-40) (Darwin as example, p.63). The former disposition lends itself to self-centeredness, to the belief that our survival depends on our efforts alone, and a solipsistic disposition towards others, even in sexuality.
• ii) ... this is Plato's mad, self-centered tyrant, who abhors true otherness. "Hell is other people" vs. "Hell is to be one's own" (p.39, 43).
• iii) "Faith is the experience in which intelligence is enlightened by love" -- Weil (p.38) vs. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

II) Platonic v. Objectivist thought

• i) While the "objective" reasoner attempts to maintain an emotional distance from the object of study, Plato stressed the need to love the other in order to hope to know it in its otherness, to accept its otherness and not destroy it.
• ii) The beauty of the other/the given v. detachment from it.
• iii) Love as a necessity for understanding v. Love as an obstruction to knowledge.

III) The Good and the Beautiful (p.40-41)

• i) Whereas the Platonic understanding identified the Beautiful with the Good, and vice versa, the word Good has first been stripped (to ethical-good), and then replaced with Value.
• ii) Beauty, of course, has been subjectivized into a quality bestowed upon an object by the beholder, rather than something intrinsic to the thing itself.

"Technology and Empire" by George Grant

    It would seem that Grant's history of the technological disposition of North America might be summed-up thusly:

i) Calvinists  (radical inscrutability of God, rejection of natural theology and the Greeks, will needed for the creation of God's kingdom on Earth).
    *adopt*
ii) Contractualism (rejects natural theology, will needed for the creation of a social contract).
    *and adopt*
iii) Technological science (useful for the the creation of the "city on the hill" in the confrontation with the primal wilderness).

    Ultimately, though, these beliefs are not compatible. One must go.

*Essay II*

    The most important thought in this essay is on the place of religion in a progressivist liberal society within the specific cnotext of the Ontario School Question of the 1960s. In summary: should religion be taught in school, and, if yes, which religion? Grant's (abbreviated) answer: a constitutional state must have some involvement in religious matters, if only to prevent the spread of creeds which might undermine it. However, neither pragmatism nor natural theology can say what, if any, religion may be considered most 'true', and cannot put-forth a candidate for the 'true' religion, but only possible 'public' religions or civil theologies.

    Conservatives, for Grant, solve this dilemma by simply sticking with tradition when they themselves have no true religion (or in spite of tehir own beliefs). The problem in Ontario is the lack of any such clear, unmuddled, and shared tradition among the ruling classes; particularly given the (then newfound) sacralization of 'efficiency' and the implied positivistic goals to which efficient action strains. The danger in such a situation is that the Church will truly be 'used' in the sense of put-to-work, for the purposes of such dreary, positivistic individuals.

*Essay III*

i) Technological progress is the religion of modernity.
ii) England (the UK) was the first modern culture.
iii) The US and Canada were founded by that most modern empire.
iv) No relevant ties bind Canadians, now, to traditions preceeding modernity.
    a) Even Quebecers are buying-in (Quiet Revolution).
    b) Out "Locke with a dash of Anglicanism" has given way to simply Locke.
v) Those who feel alienated from their societies/Empires have only other progressive cultures to run to (Sartre), drugs, or nothing.
vi) Man is zoon politikon, and does not have the option of simply opting-out.