• Home
  • Richard E. Rubenstein
  • Aristotle's Children_How Christians Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages

Aristotle's Children_How Christians Muslims and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages Read online




  Aristotle's Children

  How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages

  Richard E. Rubenstein

  * * *

  HARCOURT, INC.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  * * *

  Copyright © 2003 by Richard E. Rubenstein

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,

  Harcourt Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887–6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Illustrations by David Toohey

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rubenstein, Richard E.

  Aristotle's children: how Christians, Muslims, and Jews rediscovered

  ancient wisdom and illuminated the Dark Ages/Richard E. Rubenstein.—1st ed. p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-15-100720-9

  1. Scholasticism. 2. Aristotle—Influence.

  3. Faith and reason—Christianity—History of doctrines. I. Title.

  B734.R79 2003

  189'.4—dc21 2003006582

  Text set in Fournier

  Designed by Linda Lockowitz

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition

  A C E G I K J H F D B

  * * *

  For Susan

  "Love calls us to the things of this world."

  * * *

  Contents

  PREFACE ix

  PROLOGUE The Medieval Star-Gate 1

  ONE "The Master of Those Who Know" ARISTOTLE REDISCOVERED 12

  TWO The Murder of "Lady Philosophy" HOW THE ANCIENT WISDOM WAS LOST, AND HOW IT WAS FOUND AGAIN 47

  THREE "His Books Have Wings" PETER ABELARD AND THE REVIVAL OF REASON 88

  FOUR "He Who Strikes You Dead Will Earn a Blessing" ARISTOTLE AMONG THE HERETICS 127

  FIVE "Hark, Hark, the Dogs Do Bark" 168

  ARISTOTLE AND THE TEACHING FRIARS

  SIX "This Man Understands" 206

  THE GREAT DEBATE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

  SEVEN "Ockham's Razor" THE DIVORCE OF FAITH AND REASON 239

  EIGHT "God Does Not Have to Move These Circles Anymore" ARISTOTLE AND THE MODERN WORLD

  NOTES 299

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 337

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 351

  INDEX 353

  * * *

  Preface

  FROM THE BEGINNING, Aristotle's Children has been a series of surprises. One maps out a book in advance, of course, just like planning for any other journey. But there are books that carry the author in unforeseen directions—journeys that end with the traveler gazing, wide-eyed, at a landscape that resembles nothing in any tourist guide.

  I first came across the story of the Aristotelian Revolution while doing research on the causes of religious conflict. In the twelfth century, I learned, Christian churchmen working in formerly Muslim Spain rediscovered the bulk of Aristotle's writings, which had been lost to the West for almost a thousand years. No intellectual discovery before or after had anything like the impact of this remarkable find. Translated into Latin by multicultural teams of scholars, and distributed throughout Europe's new universities, the recovered documents triggered a century-long struggle that forever altered the way we think about nature, society, and even about God.

  The story itself was the first surprise. What most astonished me was how little known it was, considering its high level of dramatic interest and great historical importance. The Aristotelian Revolution transformed Western thinking and set our culture on a path of scientific inquiry that it has followed ever since the Middle Ages. The confrontation between faith and reason that turned the medieval universities into ideological battlegrounds continues to this day in societies around the globe. One could hardly imagine a more pertinent story for modern readers, yet few people outside a small circle of academic specialists seemed to know anything about it. This was a puzzle whose solution eluded me until I had written most of the book.

  One clue was the growing uneasiness I felt as I plunged more deeply into research about life in the medieval universities and the Church's reaction to the Aristotelian challenge. The historical materials seemed to contradict much of what I had been taught to believe about the emergence of the modern world from medieval backwardness. I knew—or thought I knew—that the High Middle Ages in Europe was an era of passionate religious faith and the bloody Crusades, inquisitorial terror, and fierce doctrinal dogmatism. I knew—or thought I knew—that Aristotle was the Father of Science, a thinker who believed that human reason, not tradition, revelation, or sentiment, could uncover objective truths about the universe. Naturally, in bringing these volatile extremes together, I expected an explosion. The Aristotelian Revolution would no doubt be a drama like Galileo versus the Inquisition or Charles Darwin versus the Creationists: an earlier version of the modern morality play in which brave Reason suffers at the hands of villainous Superstition before triumphing in the sunny dawn of Science.

  Wrong! The story I found myself telling was far more complex and interesting than this stock scenario. Yes, scientific thinking in the West did begin in the intellectual explosion that followed the rediscovery of Aristotle's writings. But European Christians did not split into "rationalist" and "fundamentalist" camps, as I had expected. In a way that violated all of my modernist preconceptions, the leading force for transformative change in Western thinking turned out to be the leadership of the Catholic Church—the very same leadership that was also conducting anti-Muslim Crusades and burning Christian heretics.

  Rather than choose between the new learning and the old religion, the popes and scholars of the High Middle Ages tried to modernize the Church by reconciling faith and reason. This Herculean task generated one of the richest, most searching debates in Western history—a battle of innovative thinkers whose discussions ranged over a vast spectrum of disputed issues, from the nature of scientific knowledge and the basic structures of mind and matter to the hope of immortality, the problem of evil, the sources of moral value, and the basic criteria for living a good life. Meeting the great scholastics and reliving their stormy debates proved an unexpectedly moving and absorbing experience—so much so, that my friends and students claimed that I had "disappeared" into the Middle Ages. But it was not really an escape from the present, since the concerns of these medieval thinkers resonate so sonorously with ours.

  The Aristotelian Revolution took place during a period of economic growth, political expansion, and cultural awakening unprecedented in Europe: a turbulent, creative, dangerous era that some call the "medieval renaissance." People then, as now, felt a great yearning for wholeness and meaning in a world suddenly grown both smaller and more unfamiliar. They were consumed by the desire to understand, and by the need to make their lives on earth count for something. Perhaps that is why memorable characters like Peter Abelard and Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Meister Eckhardt seem to speak to us so directly about matters of common con
cern. Like us, they were experiencing an unsettling sort of "globalization." Their great passion was to integrate their understanding of the way things are and the way they should be. Their mission as Aristotelians and as Christians was to bring intellectual and moral order into a transforming world.

  By the fourteenth century, despite these efforts, faith and reason were already headed toward the conflict-ridden separation that has characterized their relations ever since. What our story demonstrates, however, is that this condition is not eternal. The civilization that we call modern, with its split between the cultures of the heart and the head, its sanctification of power, "privatization" of religion, and commodification of values, emerged out of a very different past, and is in the process of evolving toward a very different future. Late in the writing process, it dawned on me that this might account for the studied indifference that has all but erased the Aristotelian Revolution from our historical memory. Such blank spots are often the result of the semiconscious neglect reserved for stories that run counter to generally accepted notions of who we are as a people, and how we got that way. Even though they relate to events that happened long, long ago, these contrary tales still have an unsettling capacity to "rock the boat."

  So it is with the story told here. In reliving the Aristotelian Revolution, we understand that we are not just the children of Copernicus and Galileo, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson, but Aristotle's children: the heirs of a medieval tradition that seems more intriguing and inspiring as the shortcomings of modernity become clearer. Of course, most of us would not return to the Middle Ages if we could. Few people today would embrace the assumptions and conclusions of the medieval scholastics. But the Aristotelians' quest for meaning is also ours, and we have much to learn from their vision of a science infused by ethics and a religion unafraid of reason. In this little-known but formative chapter of our history, we may detect hints of a more humane and integrated global future.

  * * *

  Prologue: The Medieval Star-Gate

  THERE ARE FEW stories more appealing than tales of ancient knowledge long lost, then astonishingly found. In the classic version, an unsuspecting discoverer uncovers buried tablets while digging in a field, stumbles upon clay jars in a cave, or finds a dust-covered lamp or chest in the attic. Worthless junk, surely. On the verge of discarding it, however, the finder hesitates. What odd signs and symbols are these, etched in the metal, inscribed in stone, or inked on rolls of stiffened parchment? Perhaps the musty old thing has some value after all. The innocent discoverer has no idea, of course, that these arcane markings embody the voices of a vanished world. Someone more knowledgeable will have to recognize the relic for what it is: an intellectual treasure far more precious than gold or jewels. A source of ancient wisdom and power. Yes—a potent talisman capable of conjuring up the past, altering the present, and disclosing the path to the future.

  The tale I am about to tell does not have this classic storybook form—there are many discoverers, not just one, and many discoveries as well—but in some ways it is more wonderful than the story of Aladdin's lamp or the search for the lost Ark of the Covenant. Make no mistake about it, this is a history not a fairytale. But it is not the sort of history to which the inhabitants of a scientific age are accustomed.

  Could there be hidden in some long-forgotten storehouse a treasure trove of ancient knowledge—a body of learning so powerful and advanced that recovering it would revolutionize our thinking and transform our lives? From the standpoint of modern science, the notion is utter fantasy. We understand that scientific learning is cumulative, with each generation building on the work of its predecessors. We know a great deal more about the universe than our grandparents did, and their knowledge far outweighs that of their ancestors. Looking back, this implies a law of diminishing intellectual returns—a regression in knowledge that, projected back a millennium or two, leaves little room for the "secrets of the ancients." Moreover, the old documents we do discover, like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels, do not contain revolutionary truths. As fascinating as they are, they do not threaten to overthrow our worldview, transform our science, or provide us with new models of social or political organization. Except in science fiction, one would not expect ancient writings to reveal a practical method of time travel, the secret of eternal youth, or even a cure for the common cold.

  Of course not, seeing that "hard" scientific knowledge is cumulative. What one might expect to find in ancient manuscripts is noncumulative knowledge, "soft" learning involving issues of faith, ethics, folk wisdom, and personal philosophy. When it comes to deciding how to live and die, many people find the stories and sayings of the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and other sacred books inspiring, although it is not at all certain how (or even whether) their truths can be proved. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." "Love thy neighbor as thyself." "God helps those who help themselves." Nowadays people call such thoughts "wisdom," although the ancients themselves would never think of separating ethical, religious, or philosophical knowledge from knowledge of the universe in general. 1 But we have been taught to make precisely this separation. The split between knowledge and wisdom, between the provable, apparently objective truths of science and the intuitive, subjective truths of religion and personal philosophy is a hallmark of what people now call the modern perspective. Ancient wisdom is fine in its place, says the modernist gospel, but when it comes to understanding how Homo sapiens and the rest of the universe are constructed, how they evolved, and how they operate, we will not find much of this sort of learning before the Age of Reason.

  Yet the idea of lost knowledge haunts even the skeptical consciousness of a scientific age. Banished from respectable discourse, it reappears in the form of legends and folktales about secrets of the pyramids, chariots of the Gods, and powerful relics that guard their treasures against impure investigators. One of the most vivid versions of the myth is that recounted by science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, which Stanley Kubrick brought to the screen in his classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that film, modern scientists discover an ancient artifact—a black monolith—buried on the moon. Eventually they come to understand that the mysterious object is a bequest from an alien people, a gift planted on Luna eons ago by representatives of an advanced interstellar species. Although the object's discovery seems accidental, the astral visitors who buried it made sure that human beings would find it only when they were prepared to appreciate and use it—that is, ready to take the next step in their social evolution. Unimaginably ancient (Clarke envisions a similar monolith stimulating the original transformation from hominid to man), its real function is that of a "star-gate": a portal to the interplanetary future.

  Our story, as I said, is not fantasy or science fiction, but the discovery it describes is far more like Arthur Clarke's monolith than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Once upon a time in the West, in Spain, to be exact, a collection of documents that had lain in darkness for more than one thousand years was brought to light, and the effects of the discovery were truly revolutionary. Aristotle's books were the medieval Christians' star-gate. For Europeans of the High Middle Ages, the dramatic reappearance of the Greek philosopher's lost works was an event so unprecedented and of such immense impact as to be either miraculous or diabolical, depending on one's point of view. The knowledge contained in these manuscripts was "hard" as well as "soft," and it was remarkably comprehensive. Some three thousand pages of material ranging over the whole spectrum of learning from biology and physics to logic, psychology, ethics, and political science seemed to be a bequest from a superior civilization.

  Or, I should say, from two superior civilizations. For Aristotle's books were not discovered written in Greek and stored in clay jars, but written in Arabic and housed in the libraries of the great universities at Baghdad, Cairo, Toledo, and Cordoba. After the fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of order in Europe, the works of Aristotle and other Greek scientists became the intellectual property of the prospero
us and enlightened Arab civilization that ruled the great southern crescent extending from Persia to Spain. As a result, when Western Europeans translated these works into Latin with the help of Muslim and Jewish scholars, they also translated the works of their leading Islamic and Jewish interpreters, world-class philosophers like Avicenna, Averroës, and Moses Maimonides. The result was stunning. It was as if one were to find preserved in an antique vessel not just the works of some ancient Einstein but interpretations, applications, and updates of the material by Einstein himself and other modern physicists. Because of these commentaries, Aristotle's work turned up in immediately usable—and highly controversial—form. For medieval Christians, reading his books for the first time was like finding a recipe for interstellar travel or a cure for AIDS inscribed on some ancient papyrus. It was the sort of knowledge that is quite capable of overthrowing an existing world-view, revolutionizing science, and providing its readers with new models of human organization.

  For this reason, the reappearance of Aristotelian ideas in Europe had a transformative effect totally unlike that of any later discovery. It did not cause the far-reaching changes taking place in European society in the late Middle Ages: the increases in food production and trade, the development of cities, the spread of learning, and the growth of popular religious movements. The usefulness of Aristotle's methods and concepts (like that of Clarke's star-gate) depended upon the achievement of a certain level of technical and economic progress, the development of a certain cultural momentum, by the receiving society. Given this momentum, however, the discoveries had a slingshot effect, accelerating the pace and deepening the quality of scientific and philosophical inquiry. In the Latin West, Aristotle's recovered work was the key to further developments that would turn Europe from a remote, provincial region into the very heartland of an expansive global civilization.