Books, Bibliophiles and Sacred Scripture

Books and Western Civilization go hand-in-hand.  Ever since Julius Caesar (maybe) invented the codex, aka the book as we know it, we as a civilization have been in love.  This is not to say that books were not important elsewhere (that would just be silly), but I would argue that books have taken on an out-sized role in European culture that has shaped our thought in subtle ways.  I want to use India as my counter-example, as it’s the non-Western region I know the most about, and because of certain similarities of thought.  I would love to hear from anyone who knows something about the Arabic or East Asian traditions on this topic.

            You may be familiar with the idea of an oral tradition and its importance in transferring culture.  When I think of oral tradition in the West, I think of Homer, whose works were recited often only in part by traveling bards, creating varied stories that changed over time.  The philosophers of old, too, relied primarily on oral teachings, such as the lectures of the Athenian Academy, or of those numerous philosophers who didn’t do much writing, but did a lot of influential teaching.  Socrates is the clearest example of this.  Those works which were committed to the page often had an oral quality, from Plato’s dialogues, the speeches of Epictetus (written down by a loyal student who made a big deal about trying to preserve his rhetorical style) and numerous others.

            Thinking of Indian culture, we can see very similar documents.  The Bhagavad Gita is meant to be sung, the Upanishads are often in dialogue form, and the entire Sutra tradition (including Patanjali’s famous work) is structured for maximum ease of memorization.  Traditional Indian teaching relies heavily on memorization of texts, key points, and even grammatical rules, even to this day.  This is Swami’s style, and I struggle with it, and he knows that I have no intention of methodically memorizing texts.  It is however extremely impressive when he rattles off quote after quote in perfect Sanskrit. 

            While in India oral culture has been essentially unbroken, European oral culture essentially died out during the Dark Ages, as barbarians wrecked the Roman Empire, and learned men wilted from lack of patronage and cloistered themselves in monasteries.  Here the book became increasingly important, and as Europe slowly picked itself up and began to rediscover its heritage, the cultural transmission was entirely through the medium of the book.  The Greeks and Romans  were reintroduced to the West by trade with the Arabic world through Spain, as well by the flight of scholars from (and the pillage of) Constantinople, the last vestige of Rome.  These and other rediscovered books contained secrets and mysteries that it seemed no man knew, and they, rather than other men, became the symbol of knowledge.  This plays out in myths through the such icons as the cursed book, the Grimoire, Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, and movies like the underrated “9^th Gate”.  These represent the power of the book to unleash strange and powerful ideas that have the potential to upset the preconceptions of the reader or even the very order of the world.  The stark division between the literate and illiterate in medieval Europe must have exacerbated this.  In largely illiterate societies, writing has often been associated with magic.  In ancient Egypt writing very nearly was magic, and the history of talismans shows the power that strange images and scribbles had upon the imagination.  Consulting books and gleaning strange knowledge by merely glancing at obscure and mysterious symbols must have seemed akin to divination at some level, and indeed, there is even a sub-field of divination – bibliomancy – based on this idea. 

            A natural result of this is the desire to write a great book one’s self.  We hear about the quest for the “Great American Novel” or more previously a single unified Metaphysics, such as was attempted by Spinoza, Descartes, and others.  An interesting effect of the myth of the book is that, with the printing press, this tradition flooded our culture with books, new and old.  I leave it to the historians of science to determine the impact of this on the European scientific revolution, but we can assume a major influence.  An increasingly literate culture, with ever-increasing access to information clearly paved the way for the modern age.  As an aside, consider the fact that more new books were printed last year than existed in the Great Library of Alexandria by its final year.

            There is also a question of authority to consider.  It is the habit of every culture to mythologize and give sacred meaning to the past.  Anything that is old becomes hallowed eventually, whether as museum pieces or immutable and infallible authorities of traditional culture.  The Guru in India certainly fills this role.  The guru is the repository of (often memorized, and thereby monopolized) knowledge passed down from hallowed antiquity, and therefore he is worshiped nearly (or actually) as a god.  In Europe, it is often the book that is so exalted.  The literal adherence to the authority of the Bible, considered literally as "the word of God" even today, speaks to this, but it is not the only example, even if it is the most important.  For centuries, the works of Aristotle and Plato, not to mention the more esoteric Corpus Hermeticum, were considered almost infallible in the same way as the Indian guru.  The academic tradition (now on the decline, for better or worse) of education by the “Great Books” is another, if later, manifestation of the same instinct.

            Strangely, it was the Tea Party movement that inspired this post.  I was reading some ridiculous op-ed piece on Fox News (I like to keep tabs on ‘The Enemy’) and I was struck by the sheer fetishism demonstrated towards the U.S. Constitution.  The founders, because they’re long dead, are hallowed into Saints, and their main document is near worshiped by the modern conservative movement.  Despite the fact that it’s needed to be amended 27 times, it is considered almost infallible to the “strict constitutionalist” type. 

            You can probably guess my feelings on all this. While I myself am something of a bibliophile (I have a library that I’m proud of and a bookshelf of antique or rare books), I clearly don’t approve of traditions of infallibility regarding any text, ancient or modern.  But I’m not really trying to make an argument against such silliness here, which would likely just be me preaching to the choir.  Instead, I want to pose some questions.  Conservatism, narrow-mindedness, and literalist interpretations appear all over the world, in as many different forms as there are cultures (or people).  That said, how much of an influence has the European book tradition had on the particular manifestation of conservatism that we see in this country today?  Has our bibliophile cultural inheritance had a part to play in emphasizing the infallibility of texts such as the Bible of the U.S. Constitution? 

           

Religious Knowledge: Part III (The Revenge)

Continued from Part II...

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali lists three acceptable forms of knowledge: direct experience, logical inference (based on the experience), or testimony from a trusted source.  To me, this is a sound epistemology.  The order in which the three sources of knowledge are listed goes from the most reliable to the least.  We trust our own experiences first, then what we can deduce or induce from them, and lastly, the accounts of others.  In the last is traditionally included scriptural sources.  In most religions, this important order is turned on its head:  the most important knowledge is that which exists in the scriptures, then what is inferred from them, then individual experience.  Absurd!  But the Sutras are essentially a mystic text, full of methods to bring about religious experiences for one’s self.  Therefore experience is considered primary. 

            The above thoughts are leading me to conclude that we must take the heights of religious speculation, presented as infallible dogma which we call scripture, with a sizable chunk of salt.  I believe that scripture still has value,  but most of its value is in its description of religious or mystic experience itself.  The interpretations of these experiences must be carefully weighed, preferably in light of our own experience.  Nothing should be taken as canon, as absolute, or infallible.  We may also find value in scripture when it contains actual mystic techniques used to obtain religious experience.  Here tradition is useful, as it is more likely that a method be tried and true than the metaphysic based on it. Based on these ideas, we may refine our list of religion’s claims of knowledge to a much shorter list, and each item should be kept distinct:

1)      Descriptions of the experiences of the founder.

2)      His interpretations of his experience (which includes the cultural information which informs it).  This may include the actions of the founder, for instance, giving to the poor, as these are the result of conclusions reached by his own primary experience.  Ie. if one experiences God as love, and one then reasons that one should therefore love one’s neighbor, charity should be considered an interpretation, rather than a religious experience in its own right.

3)      Others’ interpretations of his experience. 

4)      Recorded methods of attaining direct experience.

If scripture or tradition does not contain the above, we must either discard it or generously consider it to be either a purely cultural artifact (like literature) or a philosophy as open to criticism as Descartes or Plato. 

            Perhaps someone out there is asking themselves “but what about faith?”  It would be a bit much to tackle this exhaustively here, but I think its important to address in connection to the above.  St. Paul famously defined faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1).   But this clearly won’t satisfy any but the most credulous mind.  I may hope for Santa Claus, but that hope cannot in any way be characterized by evidence of his existence.  Similarly, the faith of billions is not evidence.  The experience of billions would be, however, if it could be reliably replicated by others.  But we can also say we have faith in something known and real – we might have faith in ourselves.  This is confidence in the face of the unknown.  Walking into an unknown situation, faith in one’s self is helpful, especially when based on evidence.  Faith in this sense means “believing something likely, though it is presently unknown or uncertain, based on our prior experience.”  We might immediately notice the similarity of this idea of faith to our idea of an “educated guess”, or inductive reasoning, and ultimately we can’t do without it.  Faith in our methods is certainly crucial in investigating anything (faith in the scientific method is necessary to really pursue science), but I must reiterate that faith is not evidence.  Faith is a temporary measure that bridges the gap between the known and unknown, at least until the unknown becomes the known.  This only happens through experience, and therefore I must conclude that religious faith can never be a source of knowledge, and that religious experience is the only real form of religious knowledge.

            The next step, and I think it is an important one, is to separate the actual content of experience from the theologies that spring from them.  For instance, we can separate the idea of God from the experience of God.  Perhaps I have an experience of something which appears to me to be eternal, or to be full of being, knowledge and bliss.  When I come down from my altered state of consciousness, I then ask myself “what the hell was that?”  I might well suppose it to be God, especially if I’ve heard about the supposed characteristics of God from others.  If we belong to a particular religious tradition, it’s likely I would then relate my experience to scripture and tradition.  Such adherence to a tradition may well even color the experience itself, so that this experience (which we might tentatively call God) takes on certain characteristics during or after the fact, becoming Shiva, or Jesus, or God the Father.  The fact that few believers have experiences that contradict their own scriptures, but may contradict those of other faiths makes me suppose that the conclusions reached by others (inherited metaphysics) may limit, or even shape the experiences of those who hold their beliefs as dogma.  In order to get at the actual, objective thing that is experienced as ‘God’ or whatever you choose to call it, we have to first separate the experience itself from whatever is layered upon it, especially a restrictive pie-in-the-sky metaphysic.  In order to do this, we must cultivate a new methodology to generate religious experience that is not dependant on metaphysics. Such a methodology would have some rather serious implications.  For one, morality that is based upon scripture and induction, for instance the Christian notion that morality is based on divine commandment and law, would be rejected insomuch as it claims to be absolute.  This would not necessarily lessen the beneficial implications of such ideas as “thou shalt not kill”, but such ideas cannot necessarily rest on the idea of divinity.  Any such behavioral prescriptions would be suspect so far as they claim to be based on the idea of “what God wants.”  Unless, of course, you heard God command such yourself. 

            But that just raises more questions.  Even direct religious experience is full of traps and pitfalls.  The modern neo-pagans are a great example of people working in the mystic tradition to achieve knowledge of deity.  But they too quickly can make themselves silly, as when High Priest #1 has a vision of Apollo that tells him to build a replica of the oracle of Delphi in his basement and that he shall be placed in charge of the millions who are about to return to the ancient religion of Greece.  It gets worse when High Priest #2 has his own vision of Apollo that tells him that High Priest #1 is a fraud and that he should build his own oracle in the shed behind his mom’s house.  Assuming that both individuals are truthful in their claims, the content of their religious knowledge differs.  What is a High Priest to do? 

            Reconstructist Pagans (probably the more intellectual of the bunch), who are trying to literally reconstruct the extinct religion of their choice or ancestry, have come up with an interesting solution to this problem.  They regard “the lore” as paramount, including primary sources from the period in question (for instance, Hesiod, Homer, Plutarch, etc, among the Greek reconstructionists), and treat matters of personal revelation as ‘Unsubstantiated Personal Gnosis,’ usually shortened to ‘UPG.’  This is treated as suspect, until it is ‘verified’ by others, or it becomes too emotionally convincing to stay objective about.   Of course, this treatment creates the same problems as religious metaphysics of the mainstream religions – personal experience is subordinated to some kind of scriptural canon.  This problem is often exacerbated in reconstructionism in that the religion in question went extinct at some point, and often much of the textural context has been lost to history.  In a group like the Norse Reconstructionists, there is a terrible lack of primary sources, and what remains to work with often enough comes down through descriptions of the pagans by Christian monks, who were clearly not impartial.  The tradition, wary of ‘UPG’, and having little to base their reconstruction on, may well feel rather incomplete (as is anything in the process of being reconstructed.)  This is not to say the endeavor is not worthwhile, but its difficulties must be addressed honestly.

            The real question, and one I don’t have anything resembling an adequate answer to, is how can we judge primary religious knowledge ('UPG')?  By what standards can we critique such experiences?  My intuition tells me that Carl Jung may have been one of the few who tackled this area, but that’s a whole different can of worms. 

            Clearly this is a bigger job than any one blogger can take on.  If you’ve actually read this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts! 

Religious Knowledge: Part II

Continued from Part I...

In classical philosophy the discipline of metaphysics was a very popular way to try to understand the universe and our place in it.  Literally meaning “after physics,” the word comes from the untitled section of Aristotle’s work that follows the section entitled “physics,” hence ‘metaphysics’.  Metaphysics, as the word is used in philosophy, refers to an attempt to formulate a comprehensive, all-inclusive theory of reality, defining and describing its nature.  Prior to the development of the scientific method, this included “natural philosophy” (the old name for science) as a sub-section.  The primary method for creating a ‘metaphysic’ is inductive reasoning – drawing general conclusions about the world from a finite amount of experiences.  Wikipedia gives us a great example of an inductive reasoning:  Every life form we know of depends on water to live (an observation.)  Therefore, every life form depends on water to live (an inductive conclusion).  Clearly the second is not necessarily true based on the observation, although based on what we know, we might assume that this will hold true, even on other planets.  But that’s an assumption, not a fact.  We can call induction, and thereby metaphysics itself, nothing more than an ‘educated guess’. 

            The problem with induction, and metaphysics as a whole, is that it relies on pure reason to take a stab in the dark about unobserved phenomena.  If we accept a particular metaphysic and its inductive reasoning, we tend to limit our thinking.  For instance, if we reason that, based on observed life (life on earth) needing water to live, all life, including that on other planets, needs water to live, then we think of potential life in a limited (although reasonable) way.  When looking for life on other planets, we look for water first.  That may or may not work out for us, but if life forms exist somewhere out there that do not require water, we are less likely to find them. 

            We use induction constantly.  We assume that because gravity has held true for all of known history, it will continue tomorrow, although there’s actually no certainty of that (no empirical observation).  We assume that, based on the fact that we are alive today, we will be alive tomorrow, although there’s clearly no guarantee.  Metaphysicians of the past have used induction to ‘prove’ the existence of God (Spinoza), a Platonic world of ideas, and the division of nature into mind and matter (Descartes), but thanks to the advent of empiricism and the scientific method, modern philosophy regards their conclusions as suspect.

            Turning back to religion, we find that their founders had certain religious experiences that we can equate with observation in science.  A certain uncommon thing (something different than average day-to-day experience) was experienced by a person, and this person tried to make sense of it.  In other words, the religious founder had an uncommon experience which impacted his current understanding of the world in one way or another, and in order to create a new worldview incorporating the new information, created a sort of metaphysical theory by inductive reasoning.  I know, I’m being extremely vague and general, but only because I want to include all major religions.  Each founder reacted differently, may have experienced differently, and certainly induced different conclusions.  Lets use the Rishis as an example:  Consciously searching after truth beyond the appearance of the world (based on what they heard from others), they used various methods (yoga, hallucinogens, etc) to bring about certain experiences.  They described these experiences as Indra, Brahman, Shiva, etc.  From this basis, they induced a metaphysical corpus which includes everything from moral law, social law, physical theories, even medical theories.  As each of these seers described things in different ways, their accounts were later organized by others into 4 Vedas, which were then connected to later commentaries and inductive speculation (the Upanishads), integrated with fictional epics (Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita), and refined by a commentarial tradition into Vedanta (meaning literally “The end, or conclusions, of the Vedas”).  Over thousands of years we come to a rich body of religious and cultural information we call Hinduism. 

            While we may look at this rich tradition and admire its complexity and beauty, we cannot ignore the problems.  The inductive reasoning that postulated that different types of people should follow laws appropriate to their role in society (dharma) became crystallized into the unfortunate caste system of the India.  Further, the deep cultural respect for tradition discouraged any attempt to look beyond what is in the scriptures (like only looking for life on water-rich planets), creating a setting in which thousands of years of guess-work based on limited spiritual experience defines one’s world view.  Intellectual life for a long time in India included logical debates which were less about reality or truth than about the clever ability to manipulate the massive scriptural corpus to prove one’s point.  My guess is based upon your guess, like a castle on a cloud. 

            The same certainly holds true for Christianity.  After the initial spate of religious experience among Christ and the Disciples, quite a few Gospels turned up around the ancient world.  Eventually the four we know became canon, around the time of St. Augustine (4^th century).  Many Gospels were rejected to make room for those four, most because they were either suspect in authenticity, or they conflicted with the metaphysics of those with the most influence.  The “Church Doctors” then put together their metaphysics based on the canon (and really, the New Testament doesn’t give us a lot of actual information about the world), and this became the Christian tradition.  The dogmas of a church are really just metaphysics, but regarded as infallible by tradition. Heresy is really just when one person’s inductive reasoning conflicts with the standard metaphysic.

            For this reason, empiricists tend to regard metaphysics and religion both as a waste of time, even calling religious or metaphysical statements “meaningless”.  David Hume wrote of classical metaphysics:

“When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles [Hume’s empirical principals], what havoc must we make?  If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?  No.  Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?  No.  Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing by sophistry and illusion.” – Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 

When we also consider the difficulties of knowledge and perception, we become even more skeptical that such grandiose conclusions, such as offered by metaphysicians and theologians, can ever attain to real knowledge.  Consider further the fact that if the speculations of metaphysically inclined ‘natural philosophers’ could be so wrong in their conclusions about the physical world that everyone can touch and see without any special effort, then what is the likelihood of any metaphysic being accurate in describing the nature of what is not seen by all?  I’d say it’s not bloody likely. 

            While most empiricists call for rejecting religion as a whole on these grounds, this seems to me a bit hasty.  As top-heavy as religious doctrine becomes, it is still based on human experience.  People have spiritual experiences all the time, to varying degrees of intensity, and I myself have had quite a few.  As skeptical as I am about most theology, I cannot doubt what I have experienced, just as you don’t doubt that the earth exists under your feet.  We also cannot doubt that unlike a perception of political rights, the scientific method, or written language, religion is a truly universal cultural phenomena.  Religious experience, in its primary sense, is universal to humanity, in the same way as spoken language, an upright walk, and music exist wherever there is man.  For a modern atheist to proclaim that there is no God is bad inductive reasoning.  He makes a negative observation: “I have never experienced God” and by inductive reasoning concludes “there is no God.”  By that same logic we might go from “I have never seen Transformers 2” and therefore “Transformers 2 doesn’t exist.”  As much as I wish that were the case, just because I lack experience of it, does not make it not exist.  Mr. Atheist might then say “but Dave, you can read reviews of Transformers 2, hear about it from others, and even go rent it yourself and watch it.  You can verify its existence, but you can’t do that with God.”  To which I must respond that there are no shortage of churches out there who profess God’s existence, you can hear about him from people who’ll even come knock on your door to chat, and according to the mystics (like the yogis), you can even train yourself to eventually experience God.  While that might take years, it also takes quite a bit of training to personally verify most scientific claims.  Most atheists, secure in their own inductive reasoning, are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to even attempt having a religious experience.  We might liken this to the fact that, despite the efforts of those who might insist on its existence, I’m unwilling to sacrifice my time, intelligence or sanity to verify the existence of Transformers 2 by actually watching it.  

Cont. in Part III

Religious Knowledge: Part I

I’ve been thinking a lot about religious knowledge this week, and I wanted to try to organize my thoughts here.  The exercise was helpful, but boy did it take forever.  Due to its length (and it could have been much longer), I’ve separated this into three parts to make it easier to digest.  The thoughts herein are rather raw, so I would love to hear from anyone who reads this.  Please, comment away, and let me know if my reasoning is sound.

            Before we proceed, we have to first figure out what I’m talking about when I say ‘religious knowledge.’  What I don’t mean is knowledge about religion; facts like knowing the 10 commandments or which religions trace their lineage back to the biblical Abraham.  These facts may or may not be important historically or socially, but they are clearly not required for participation in religion.  What I mean by religious knowledge is the special knowledge professed by adherents of a particular religion.  A Christian might claim to “know” that Christ is the Lord, or that the Bible is the literal word of God.  A Buddhist may claim that the nature of life is suffering, but there is a way to salvation from it.  All religions, in one form or another, claim to possess special knowledge, and in an effort towards building an understanding of these claims, as well as a means to analyze them, these claims need to be given a close look. 

            To critique religious knowledge is an unpopular pastime.  If a physicist creates a new theory, dozens of other experts in that field attempt to reproduce the experiments that gave rise to the theory, and then follow the methodology and logic of the original physicist to see if the new theory holds water.  Trying to do the same thing with religion is often frowned upon, or is considered impossible.  People will inevitably say “people have the right to believe as they like,” or “how can you judge another culture’s ways?” By this logic, burning children as witches as is done even today in Africa, or throwing acid on the face of a woman refusing to wear a Burqa is perfectly fine and reasonable.  After all, these are cultures other than ours and we would be cultural imperialists to foist our ways upon others.  We need to be able to ask ourselves “what is the function of religion, and do x, y, and z practices serve this role or hinder it?”  It is clear, at least to me, that for the betterment of humanity, we need to be free to call people out on their barbarism when religion serves to degrade us rather than upraise us. (For more on this, check out Sam Harris' excellent Ted Talk).

            Some people say that critiquing religion is completely different than a hard science like physics, and we can never verify religious claims at all.  Religious criticism, at best, becomes roughly as objective as a food critic.  To this idea, I have to say “bullshit.”  If religions claim knowledge, this knowledge had to come from somewhere, and in all cases, this knowledge came through the medium of human beings, just like us.  I’ll get into this more in a bit. First, let’s look at what types of things religions claim.  Let me know if I missed anything:

1)      Religions make claims about reality.  This is the area of the most overlap with science, as well as the most conflict.  Religions usually have something to say about the world around us, perhaps its origin through a creation story, how it will end, even what it might be ‘made’ from (its substance).  This is also where God (when he appears) usually comes into the mix, either as a creator, the metaphysical foundation of material existence, etc. 

2)      Religions make claims about morality.  Usually based on their claims about reality, religions claim to tell us what is right and wrong behavior, how to live our lives, what a good life entails, and how to engage with our fellow beings and environment.

3)      Religions make claims about our value and place in the world (Our “life myth”).  This would tell us what our place in the world is, the relationship between humanity and the animal kingdom, as well as each other. 

4)      Religions make claims about the “problem” of life, as well as a means for overcoming it.  Every religion identifies a problem that should be addressed:  sin for Christianity, forgetfulness of God in Islam, desire and suffering in Buddhism, ignorance in Hinduism, and so on.  Each touches upon a rather important and near-universal feeling that something isn’t right with the world, that the world is not as it “aught” to be, or at least that we are not as we aught to be.  After all, if we were just hunky-dory from the start, why would religion be so prevalent and popular?  I think this last, in combination with moral guidance, sense of place, and certainty of the nature of the world provides the major psychological force of religious ‘needs’. 

5)      Religion creates community and is a vehicle for non-religious information.  This can be cultural (as in the connection of art to the Church), or practical (networking).  But this is not really a form of religious knowledge, so we’ll ignore it for now.

            Assuming that all religious knowledge falls into one of the above, we must ask for the source of this knowledge.   Ask the Christians and they will point to the Bible, ask the Muslims and they’ll point to the Koran, ask the Hindus and they’ll point to the Vedas.  Ask them where these various books came from and the answer is the same – God.  But clearly none of them imagine God sitting down somewhere, pen in hand, to write these books, and then plopping them onto some prophet’s lap saying “here’s some eternal truth for you, go forth and make 4 billion photocopies.”  No, tradition has Moses writing down the Pentateuch, the Evangalists writing down the Gospels, Mohammed writing down the Koran, and the Rishis (Seers or Sages) writing down the Vedas.

            Essentially, all religious knowledge originates with human beings who had certain experiences, told others, and perhaps wrote them down.  Swami Vivekananda puts this perfectly in his book Raja Yoga:

            “…if you go to the fountainhead of Christianity, you will find that it is based upon experience.  Christ said he saw God; the disciples said they felt God; and so forth.  Similarly, in Buddhism, it is Buddha’s experience.  He experienced certain truths, saw them, came in contact with them, and preached them to the world. …Thus it is clear that all the religions of the world have been built upon that one universal and adamantine foundation of all our knowledge – direct experience.”

            Of course, this is the same exact foundation as found in the empiricism of the physical sciences.  Theories come from what is observed, or experienced.  The difference is in the method, but also in the terms and the way the terms are understood.  In empiricism, experience leads to theories, which are by nature tentative, and open to change; and in religion, experience leads to doctrine, dogma, and tradition, which is canonical, and not open to change.

Cont. in Part II.

Virtue, East and West

“Of that unique man

Whose name is not to come from the lips of the wicked.

Theirs is not the right to praise him-

Him who first revealed clearly

By word and by deed

That he who is virtuous is happy.

Alas, not one of us can equal him.”  Aristotle, Fragment 623.

            Much of what is best (to my limited knowledge) of ancient Greek thought is summarized by the above.  Aristotle is specifically referring to his teacher, Plato, and credits him with an important idea, that virtue and happiness are of the same nature. 

This emphasis is also central to the yoga school, whose Yoga Sutras and Bhagavad Gita, two central texts, were written around the same time as the flowering of Greek Thought (around 200BCE).  Virtue and the development of character are central to philosophies both East and West. 

            So what then is virtue anyway?  Typically we think of it as moral excellence, and I in the past have considered it in my relativistic way as the conformity to social standards of behavior and moral values. But let’s consider the word itself.  Our word virtue comes from the Latin word virtūs, meaning manliness, excellence, or worth, as well as moral virtue in general.  Virtūs comes from Vir, the word for man, or true man, husband, or soldier.  Similarly we get words like virile (from virīlis; of a man, manly, bold or firm) and vigor (from vigor, physical or mental energy).  Another related word to consider is vīres, a plural form of the word vīs or vim, meaning strength, control, force, power, resources, value, or meaning.  On the whole, we get an idea of the original meaning of Virtue (at least as the Romans understood it) as great strength and control, as befits a “true man”, ie. a responsible citizen and exemplar of the human race. 

            Interestingly in Sanskrit, we have a similar word, वीर, vīra, which means man, but especially a brave or eminent man, in a word, a hero.  For those of you who are wondering, yes this is the origin of the sanskrit names for vīrāsana (hero’s pose), and vīrabhadrāsana (warrior pose).  From this root, numerous derivatives come, including a word given an important place in the Yoga Sutras, vīrya, meaning strength in a very similar way to the Latin vigor.  As I was writing this, I found an even more interesting connection with the Latin, वीरत्व vīratva, meaning manliness.  Keep in mind that in Latin, the letters v and w are essentially the same (and related to the letter u), and in Sanskrit the letter व can be pronounced either as v or w.  So we can prounce that last word as “veeratwa” which is not particularly far from our word virtue. 

            The Greek word for Virtue is Arete, and means more specifically excellence.  Having never studied Greek, I must rely on Wikipedia, which tells me that Arete would be attributed to excellence in everything, ie, an excellent stove, an excellent car, etc.  The Latin equivillents would only be attributed to a human being.

            It should be clear from the above that our understanding of virtue has changed over time.  Certainly the influence from Christianity cannot be ignored.  Plato’s four cardinal virtues as listed in the Republic are Wisdom, Courage or Fortitude, Temperence, and Justice.  Wisdom is sometimes translated as prudence, which is this sense means the same thing: the ability to judge good actions from bad.  Christianity, while accepting these virtues (allegorial forms of which appear in many churches, stained glass works, and other forms of Christian art), added to them, and due to the Church’s all-pervasive influence in the Middle Ages, thereby substantially changed the way we think of virtue.  

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”  Corinthians 13:12-13

            Even here, these virtues are connected to manliness, at least in its sense of adulthood.  I should also note for completeness that the Greek word used here for love, agape, is sometimes given as charity (you may be more familiar with Faith, Hope and Charity from the King James Version), as agape represents the kind of impersonal “brotherly” love existing between all men everywhere.  Charity is clearly a natural extension of this. 
            I’m not judging Christianity’s influence on virtue one way or another (at least not right now), as certainly I can’t find fault with faith, hope or love.  I am pointing out the distinction, as we moderns naturally tend to associate virtue with these ideas, and that is not necessarily the way the word was understood by the Stoics and their contemporaries.  That said, what did the Stoics think about Virtue?
            To Epictetus, a Greek Stoic teaching in the 2^nd Century C.E., like many of the other Greek and Roman Philosophers, the question of Virtue rests primarily with the first of Plato’s four cardinal virtues – wisdom.  Wisdom is the ability to make accurate judgments concerning right and wrong, and it naturally follows that this must be present for the other virtues to exist.  What is the faculty which makes these distinctions?  Stoicism agrees with the Socratics in this absolutely: wisdom is a product of a well-developed reason. 
From this an old debate emerges:  Is it possibly to teach virtue?  The Stoics, like the Socratics, would argue that as virtue (read: wisdom) is a product of reason, it can be taught by means of reason.  By education and cultivation of the intellect, wisdom arises, and as Aristotle pointed out to us at the outset of this post, thereby arises true happiness.  (This interesting op-ed piece by Stanley Fish is an interesting read in this connection.) 
            In the Stoicism of Epictetus, this virtue (wisdom) takes the form of distinguishing between Externals and Internals, or those things we can control, and those we cannot.  As I cannot explain it better than Epictetus, I’ll let him speak for himself:

“We are responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held responsible.  The former include our judgment, our impulse, our desire, aversion, and our mental faculties in general; the latter include the body, material possessions, our reputation, status – in a word, anything not in our power to control.  The former are naturally free, unconstrained and unimpeded, while the latter are frail, inferior, subject to restraint – and none of our affair.” – Enchiridion (The Manual), 1-2.  (Italics added)

           The development of virtue then, according to Epictetus, is really about the development of those things we can control, in other words, our judgment (wisdom), the mind, and our values. This virtue of wisdom has an important equivalent in yoga, which is called in Sanskrit विवेक viveka, discrimination.  What exactly is discriminated is very different; it is the Self, or immortal, changeless soul (or in a Vedantic gloss, Consciousness itself), discriminated from the world of manifest existance, which includes not only Epictetus’ list of externals, but also the entirety of the list of externals, with a possible, but extremely debatable exception of Judgement (without veering TOO far off course, judgement is associated with the idea of the Buddhi, or highest part of the mind, which is said to be material, but exceedingly subtle.  The problem is whether or not the Self, being changeless and complete in its own nature, has agency.  Hence the debate.) Like Stoicism, the yoga philosophy encourages a renunciation of those things which we cannot control, although in yoga this is because these things (the world) distract us from the realization of the Self, while in Stoicism it is due to the inevitability of dissappointment, trouble and unhappiness which comes from giving valuing externals.

           In Stoicism, virtue is close to its Latin meaning of manliness, strength and control. These faculties are normally directed outward (used for the control of nature, of other people through government, commerce, and physical coersion, of material goods and pleasures, etc) become inwardly directed, and concern themselves primarily with Self-Control.  From this sense of self control come the other virtues; Temperence (a man in control of his desire does not go to excess), Justice (a man uninterested in externals is not personally concerned, ie selfishly concerned about another man’s business, and therefore is able to be just in all his dealings – he has no hidden agenda), and Fortitude.  For this last, I turn to Epictetus once again:

“It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them.  Death, for example, is nothing frightening, otherwise it would have frightened Socrates.  But the judgement that death is frightening – now, that is something to be afraid of.  So when we are frustrated, angry or unhappy, never hold anyone except ourselves – that is, our judgements – accountable.  An ignorant person is inclined to blame others for his misfortune.  To blame oneself is proof of progress.  But the wise man never has to blame another or himself.” - Enchiridion (The Manual), 5.

          This matches our modern idea of what it means to be stoic – one who is apparently indifferent to pleasure or pain, which is really the outward impression of someone who is self-controlled and who has renounced the externals.  This may be even taken negatively, as in a person who appears to be unfeeling or unemotional to the extreme, but this is all still on the surface.  If a person gets into a car accident, totaling their vehicle, because another driver wasn’t looking where they were going, the expected reaction is anger towards the other driver.  In fact, if I were the other driver, I’d expect to see anger expressed by the driver of the car I hit.  Now, if I hit a Stoic, someone who viewed their car as an external, and was not particularly concerned about having it totaled, or even the brief inconvenience of a jolt to the body (or injury for that matter, as the body is external), then clearly there would be no anger.  I as the other driver would probably be a little confused by the other guy lack of passion. 

           It’s a sad fact that we come to expect that everyone around us will immediately react to and express emotional impulses full-throatedly, with a big dramatic display.  When someone reacts dispassionately, due to either the yogic pratice of vairagya, non-attachment (to externals), or the Stoic equivalent, everyone around them is often a little thrown off.  I’ve found that sometimes just reacting dispassionately is enough to actually nip a big dramatic display in the bud, and may even stop a fight.  That, of course, is assuming that there isn’t someone present who considers manliness in its lowest form, macho posturing, to be virtue.  In this case, a person who is used to defining all impressions as either “safe” or “threatening” will interpret their confusion and my own lack of a response as a threat, and get angry themselves.  Similarly, others might feel anger for you, rather than at you, almost as if they were trying to teach you how to play their social game.

            Plato defined man as the “reasonable animal” and reason is essentially the capacity for mental reflection.  Turning our strength and power to control from its natural outward focus inwards by reflection seems to me to be the difference between the virtue of an animal and that of a “real man.”  Machismo, and any other expression ruled by pure emotion, is therefore the reaction of not a man, but of an animal in the body of a man.  The philosophers of Greece and Rome, along with those of India hold that the happiness possible for this animal man is inherently unstable, as it is bound to externals, while only in reasonable man is a higher, more firmly grounded happiness (or absolute happiness, ie, Liberation), possible.  You take their stuff, they suffer.  You make them late, they suffer.  You say you don’t like them, they suffer.  All because they’ve chosen to base their happiness on things outside themselves.  We might call this person dependent, much as we would call a child (“put away childish things…”).  You might not be wrong to call that person a slave.  A person who is a slave to passion or objects lacks the power of discrimination between what is good for us, and what is bad for us, or at least the strength or inclination to change one’s habitual responses.  As the Bhagavad Gita says: “Men of demonic nature do not have the discriminative understanding of what should be done and what should be avoided.” (BG 16.7)   Here demonic is used much as I mean animal above.  We must remember that most depictions of demons, East or West, are really nothing more than a hybrid human with various animal traits: horns, tails, large jaws, hooves, etc.

            Stoicism teaches that once we differentiate between those things which we can control, and those we cannot, we must purify our natural tendency for desire (attachment) and aversion, so that we only desire those things which are good and are only averse to those things that are bad for us.  This duality of attachment and aversion plays a prominent place in both Stoicism and Yoga, and that’ll be the next topic I chew on.

            It might be a good idea to mention here that I recognize how hard it is to live up to such ideas of virtue and self-control.  I struggle with it every day, and I feel that I’m far from successful.  After all, I’m not only up against my own animal instincts, but the habits of years.  Even the desire to cultivate virtue comes rather late to me, and those who’ve known me for years may be surprised that I’ve started now.  Still, it seems to me a worthy endeavor, and what success I have had in the practice of non-attachment has shown me a peace and happiness that was not possible only a few years ago.  As they say, the proof is in the pudding.  You’ve got to taste it to know for sure.