Descartes
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Desmond Tutu On Descartes' Radical Individualism
"Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human....[If you have Ubuntu] then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, inextricably bound up, in yours.' We belong in a bundle of life. We say 'A person is a person through other persons.' It is not, 'I think, therefore I am.' It says rather: 'I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.'"
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 31. (New York: Random House, 2000)
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Mersenne, Education, and Intellectual "Property"
French cleric Marin Mersenne was the academic journal of his day. I have heard it said that in the seventeenth century the saying was "If you want to tell Europe, tell Mersenne."
Hobbes mentions Mersenne several times in his verse autobiography - high praise for a Roman Catholic cleric from someone whose antipathy for the Roman church and its philosophy was both deep and wide. But when Hobbes needed friends during his exile in France, Mersenne was glad to be one of those friends. Mersenne was a friend to all who were engaged in research. He was a living example of that idea of Justin Martyr's that Christians need not fear any books at all, since all the truth they contain belongs to the God who made and sustains it.
He was a friend to Galileo, and he passed Galileo's research on the regular oscillation of pendula along to Huygens in Holland, since he knew Huygens was trying to invent a more regular way of keeping time, leading to the invention of the pendulum clock. He corresponded with Pascal, Gassendi, and Descartes, and what he learned from one he shared with others who could use it.
In his Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson claims that one of the reasons for technological flourishing in the west is that western cultures treat knowledge as property that can be sold in the marketplace. I can't say whether Hanson's causal inference is correct, but his observation about intellectual "property" is acute.
But alongside it we should add another observation, namely that universities have long been places where ideas are exchanged freely. Yes, students pay tuition, but we also give free public lectures, allow free or inexpensive auditing, etc. What is being sold in the university is not the information but the cost of maintaining a place of intentional colloquy and pedagogy. We aren't selling ideas to students; we are allowing them to join us in the maintenance of a vital institution, and as members of that institution they participate in its life and share in its learning.
Mersenne was not a merchant of ideas but their curator, a steward ushering them to the places they were most needed. He was a gardener who made very few original contributions but who shared the best cultivars he could find with others in whose gardens they could flourish. His approach to knowledge was like that of the church in its earliest years, where "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" and goods were "distributed to each as they had need."
Mersenne's model is relevant to our contemporary conversations about the meaning and cost of an education, the value of universities, and the publication of scientific journals. Some money will be needed to maintain these institutions, but we should resist reducing them to market-based enterprises, or valuing their contributions in terms of revenues. There is also the shared work of curiosity, and of desiring to see our neighbors, and their ideas, flourish.
Hobbes mentions Mersenne several times in his verse autobiography - high praise for a Roman Catholic cleric from someone whose antipathy for the Roman church and its philosophy was both deep and wide. But when Hobbes needed friends during his exile in France, Mersenne was glad to be one of those friends. Mersenne was a friend to all who were engaged in research. He was a living example of that idea of Justin Martyr's that Christians need not fear any books at all, since all the truth they contain belongs to the God who made and sustains it.
He was a friend to Galileo, and he passed Galileo's research on the regular oscillation of pendula along to Huygens in Holland, since he knew Huygens was trying to invent a more regular way of keeping time, leading to the invention of the pendulum clock. He corresponded with Pascal, Gassendi, and Descartes, and what he learned from one he shared with others who could use it.
In his Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson claims that one of the reasons for technological flourishing in the west is that western cultures treat knowledge as property that can be sold in the marketplace. I can't say whether Hanson's causal inference is correct, but his observation about intellectual "property" is acute.
But alongside it we should add another observation, namely that universities have long been places where ideas are exchanged freely. Yes, students pay tuition, but we also give free public lectures, allow free or inexpensive auditing, etc. What is being sold in the university is not the information but the cost of maintaining a place of intentional colloquy and pedagogy. We aren't selling ideas to students; we are allowing them to join us in the maintenance of a vital institution, and as members of that institution they participate in its life and share in its learning.
Mersenne was not a merchant of ideas but their curator, a steward ushering them to the places they were most needed. He was a gardener who made very few original contributions but who shared the best cultivars he could find with others in whose gardens they could flourish. His approach to knowledge was like that of the church in its earliest years, where "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common" and goods were "distributed to each as they had need."
Mersenne's model is relevant to our contemporary conversations about the meaning and cost of an education, the value of universities, and the publication of scientific journals. Some money will be needed to maintain these institutions, but we should resist reducing them to market-based enterprises, or valuing their contributions in terms of revenues. There is also the shared work of curiosity, and of desiring to see our neighbors, and their ideas, flourish.
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Proofs of God's Existence
Every time we encounter a proof of God's existence or non-existence, we should use it as an opportunity to ask: why is this proof being offered?
Too often I have seen Anselm's "ontological" argument abstracted from its context, as though the fact that his Proslogion begins with a prayer were inconsequential to the argument; or Descartes' proofs abstracted from his Meditations, as though it were not important that "God" serves an instrumental purpose for Descartes, allowing for the re-establishment of the world after he doubts its existence.
Anselm already believes when he writes his argument. He has arrived at his belief in some way other than argumentation, and there is no shame in that. Most of us arrive at most of our beliefs in less-than-purely-rational ways, and as William James has argued, we have the right to do so. It looks to me like Anselm is writing not in order to defeat all atheism (though that may be one of his aims) but in order to see if his faith and his understanding can be in agreement with one another.
Descartes might believe or he might not; I don't know how I could know. God matters in his Meditations because God offers an "Archimedean point," a fulcrum on which to rest the lever of reason, allowing Descartes to lift the world anew from the ruins of doubt. Whether or not Descartes believes in God's existence, God is useful to Descartes.
My point is that it is mistaken to assume that arguments about God - for or against God - are detached and detachable from other concerns, and when we neglect those concerns we might just be missing the most important aspect of those arguments, namely the human aspect. When we argue about God, we are usually also arguing about something else.
Too often I have seen Anselm's "ontological" argument abstracted from its context, as though the fact that his Proslogion begins with a prayer were inconsequential to the argument; or Descartes' proofs abstracted from his Meditations, as though it were not important that "God" serves an instrumental purpose for Descartes, allowing for the re-establishment of the world after he doubts its existence.
Anselm already believes when he writes his argument. He has arrived at his belief in some way other than argumentation, and there is no shame in that. Most of us arrive at most of our beliefs in less-than-purely-rational ways, and as William James has argued, we have the right to do so. It looks to me like Anselm is writing not in order to defeat all atheism (though that may be one of his aims) but in order to see if his faith and his understanding can be in agreement with one another.
Descartes might believe or he might not; I don't know how I could know. God matters in his Meditations because God offers an "Archimedean point," a fulcrum on which to rest the lever of reason, allowing Descartes to lift the world anew from the ruins of doubt. Whether or not Descartes believes in God's existence, God is useful to Descartes.
My point is that it is mistaken to assume that arguments about God - for or against God - are detached and detachable from other concerns, and when we neglect those concerns we might just be missing the most important aspect of those arguments, namely the human aspect. When we argue about God, we are usually also arguing about something else.