How did it go before versus how is it going now.
Before approaching the Western History of Political Thought I studied the Bible in the context of listening to it in church services and going to Bible study at Kanakomo.
Later when I went further and found a group of Christians doing a workbook in my hometown, it was all about knowing and doing the will of God and I was all about it. The main idea was the subjugation of one’s own will to God’s, and so the question was how to know God’s will.
Then I went to college and read William James’s Variety of Religious Experience, which shines a light on the experiential dimension of God. When we read Exploring the Philosophy of Religion we looked at Mircea Eliade’s concept of the ineffable. So if the experience I’m really interested in is ineffable, I don’t need to circle around it with a million words if they won’t even point to the pith.
Then I heard the idealism versus materialism debate was arising in the Middle Ages. If you take a philosophical lens to the concept of angels for example, you have to ask what is the materiality of an angel. and that is hard to answer so the angel fits better into the idealist framework. Angels have a dubious metaphysical status.
Leads to the question how many angels can dance on the head of a pin being the major question of the era.
We also read American Religion and Religions.
The teachings of the compassionate Buddha.
There are communities of remembrance founded around stories with rituals and calendars. Each one claims special access to truth with a capital T, yet disagrees with every similar person to him.
And then I just got into the History of Philosophy as taught in a philosophy department.
The search for knowledge as opposed to true belief by happenstance became the object of inquiry. And then how metaphysics and epistemology of an given epoch have a relation.
Testimony the usual approach to the ineffable, had a dubious epistemic status, especially when you start factoring in self interest.
And then we get to early modern political thought, to seekers of knowledge not true belief, and here comes all of the biblical references.
Moses as lawgiver is used as an example by many.
Covenanting, entering into a covenant together as an account of the origin of political community.
We keep getting reminded to go back to the beginning. Begin at the beginning when you give an account.
Read the primary text, not summaries of it. Get it from the library. Photocopy the relevant chapters. Underline things.
Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book of Genesis, all trying to get at the beginning.
The poems of Santa Teresa learning something new about asceticism, union, and poetry. But this text was not in a philosophy class.
Early modern political thinkers had come to the questions of sovereignty after having dealt with elements of the Theory of Divine Right. So, theories of divine right are doing something for or invoked for reasons by thinkers formulating the early modern concept of sovereignty.
Hobbes had the recent historical horizon of Mistakes of the Reformation. If being correct about one’s confession creates the legitimacy of rule, then every person who claims to be authoritative in matters of faith or reading the Bible ought therefore also have the authority to lead politically. So churches twist into competing political parties vying for power. See excurses on the Thirty Years War and Reformation to explore how this leads to violence.
Machiavelli bore witness to power struggles involving the Pope and sovereigns. The Papacy had functioned like a ‘bloc’ as it would later be referred to in international relations theory. A power in international relations to be reckoned with specifically because it had some rule in legitimating earthly powers.
Spinoza is coming from the Jewish tradition, makes you want to learn more about the Torah.
Deism from the mechanical sciences. What is the political consequence of deism?
Critique of the Catholic Church from Dostoyevsky
A critique of a Christian type of attitude from Nietzsche. Really an analysis of guilt as a negative emotion that is disempowering. Suggests that his account of self overcoming is in a disjunctive relation with Christian soteriology.
When we crack the spine of Max Weber we have to go back to the Bible because he is talking about a calling.
He also talks about the Protestant Work Ethic and its expression in American culture is strong!
Debate between works and grace as it manifests in American culture throughout the 20th century.
Have to deal with the disjunct posed by Leo Strauss with Athens or Jerusalem, Reason or Revelation as the beginning of political thought.
Earlier when reviewing Augustine we get the City of God versus the Pagans
Aquinas writing in a way that was reconciling Aristotle into Christianity.
Alasdair MacIntyre brings Aquinas into modern times with his book After Virtue. In that book in the epilogue he talks about the Dominican Monks as the community type most conducive to ethical life. At the same time, the Religions professor was focused on Monastic Communities.
The Bible keeps coming up. Arendt tries to resurrect some ideas about Love in St. Augustine.
Ricoeur and others discuss forgiveness as a model of how a people comes to grips with its past or heinous social history.
Challenge of Multiculturalism
One legal system over a society where member communities hold something to be the ultimate truth that conflicts with what another group believes.
I would not say that the Bible belongs in philosophy — its an other to that in some ways.
Nevertheless, it does go in the Western History of Political Thought just as the Iliad and the Odyssey do.
It is interesting to note that its more mythology than history. Mythology we are finding out has a huge impact on the imagination.
In the first place, this little project also concerns art. Its about drawing into relation pieces in the history of art with texts in the history of political philosophy. Now, we are centering Hobbes Leviathan and we don’t want to leave any primary text un turned in the threads that weave back and forth to the ancients. Some of the mythologies in the Bible are part of Hobbes’s imagination.
I’m in it for what I can learn about meaning making across centuries, rather than the epistemological status.
Next, there are a lot of bricks on this path between the first century and the mid seventeenth century and there is no way to traverse that distance without the Middle Ages. What has been left to us about their thoughts on life, community, peace, soteriology has been left in architecture and art. And all of this art refers to the Bible as its primary source and sometimes other sources are added in.
And one question we are going to be tracing, is that why is it when a culture starts to experience some revolutionary foment they go back to the ancients.
When I re read the gospels this time for this purpose I am going to pick out verses that speak to themes in the history of political thought like life, social status, and community. I want to observe how Greek philosophy, Roman rhetoric, and Jewish themes are woven together.
So far we have Psalms and The Book of Job because those are the books in which the Leviathan is mentioned.
Hobbes’ mention of the Leviathan, the atheist Spinoza, and all the mentions of Moses are going to have us heading back in the Jewish tradition as well.
Picking a pastor as a Jesus follower is about noticing when Christ’s light is shining through someone might want to take their lead.
But for the purposes of this project I want to choose articles coming from a place of the academic study of the Bible and not apologetics. I don’t want the motive to be reconciling every contradiction or convincing me of some belief. I just want Biblical scholarship.
One of the most if not the most interesting parallel between the History of Political Thought and the Bible is that in both contexts readers are seeking to know how the story ends to know what is the shape of history.
On the one hand you have the warning of reason Prognostications are not to be believed, Prophetic language is suspect. Why? Because it has no epistemic status. Its not knowledge. It someone saying something about what cannot be known in order to reap the social reward of appearing to be a person upon whom special knowledge powers have been given. While exciting, this type of claim lacks the account giving we are looking for in philosophical inquiry.
How were the Biblical characters preoccupied with how the story end?
What is a Messiah for the Jewish tradition.
What were John the Baptist and Jesus other saying about the end times in their time.
Do either of these traditions have something to propose on the shape of time or how we can understand history in a philosophical way.
We have an example with the Odyssey of a very satisfying ending. He came back again to where he started from. This shape of the Odyssey inspired TS Eliot to set out and find yourself back where you started. So we have the shape of a circle.
We have the shape of a circle also due to the concept of eternity.
Then with Polybius we have a circle. But with the description of a republic we get a triangle.
Then we have the idea of a conversion which reminds me of cosign, and then the idea of ups and downs and so sine waves.
When the circle breaks or moves where down becomes up that’s Revolution one of the central topics.
Back to the Bible.
Apocalytical themes in Jesus’ time
Eschatology
Interpretations of how the story ends.
