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Four Condemnations 1 Karsten Harries Four Condemnations Philosophy and Religion in Conflict Lecture Notes Fall Semester 2015 Yale University Copyright Karsten Harries Four Condemnations 2 Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. The Aristotelian Cosmos and the Creation Account of the Timaeus 13 3. Christian Appropriations of the Greek Understanding of Nature 22 4. The Arab Aristotle 33 5. The Instability of the Medieval Synthesis 46 6. Divine Freedom 56 7. Human Freedom 73 8. The Condemnation of Meister Eckhart and the Heresy of the Free Spirit 83 9. Medieval Communists 94 10. The Condemnation 105 11. Modes of Knowing 117 12. Anarchic Mysticism 125 13. Eckhart’s Teleological Suspension of the Ethical 137 14. The Burning of a Heretic 148 15. The Ash Wednesday Supper 163 16. The Copernican Revolution 175 17. The Return of the Sun 185 18. Political Implications 194 19. The Crime of Bruno 204 20. The Power of Mathematics 213 21. The Questionable Authority of the Eye 223 22. Conflicting Claims to Truth 234 23. Insight and Blindness of Galileo 246 Four Condemnations 3 24. Bellarmine Contra Galileo 257 25. Religion and the Freedom of Thought 269 26. Truth and Value Today 278 Four Condemnations 4 1. Introduction 1 In this course I plan to take a careful look at four famous condemnations: At issue is the genesis of our modern world, more especially the role that both science and religion play in that genesis. Each condemnation brings a different aspect of that genesis into focus. The four condemnations are 1) the Condemnation of 1277, 2) the condemnation of Meister Eckhart in 1328, 3) the condemnation and execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600, 4) the condemnation of Galileo Galilei in 1633. 1. The significance of the first is suggested by the great historian of science Pierre Duhem, who called the Condemnation of 1277 “the birth certificate of modern physics.”1 The fact that it was conservative theologians, made uneasy by the enthusiastic reception of the philosophy of Aristotle and his Arab interpreter Averroes, which they found incompatible with Christian doctrine, who are said to have issued that “birth certificate” invites reflection. Theology here asserted its priority over secular pagan philosophy. But what does modern physics have to do with theology? Key here is the incompatibility of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature and modern science. The authority of Aristotle had to be called into question for science, as we have come to know it, to evolve. And as we shall see, questioning the authority of Aristotle involved crucially appeals to divine and human freedom. One theme of this course is the relationship of truth and freedom. Is there a sense in which religion, or more especially theology, can be considered the privileged custodian 1 Pierre Duhem, Medieval Cosmology, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1985), p. 4. For the text of the Condemnation see P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'averroisme latin aux XIIIme siècle, 2me partie, textes inédites, Louvain, 1908, pp. 175 - 191 and R. Hisette, Enquète sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277, Philosophes médiévaux (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1977), vol 22. Trans. "The Condemnation of 1277," Philosophy in the Middle Ages: The Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions, ed. Arthur Hyman & James J, Walsh, 2nd. ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1973), pp. 582-591. The numbering of the propositions in this translation follows the Mandonnet edition. Four Condemnations 5 of both? Or is perhaps the very opposite the case, as so many modern philosophers have insisted. 2. The significance of the second condemnation becomes apparent when we consider Meister Eckhart’s teachings in their historical context: especially in his sermons a radical freedom found voice that threatened to undermine an already shaken establishment, threatened also to lead to what Kierkegaard came to call a teleological suspension of the ethical. At issue here, too, is once again the problem of freedom and the question: what should bind freedom? But now that problem appears with a more moral and political, rather than a cognitive cast. 3. The third condemnation, of Giordano Bruno, attempted to defend key dogmas of the Church against Bruno’s vision of an infinite cosmos, judged incompatible with these. Once again we will see how centrally the new cosmology is linked to an insistence on the freedom of thought. What mattered to the Church, however, was, as we shall see, not so much Bruno’s in many ways already modern understanding of the cosmos, which went far beyond what his hero Copernicus had taught, as his refusal to accept central Christian dogmas, especially the dogma of the incarnation. I hope to show that what is at stake is once again the problem of what should bind freedom. A freedom that is not bound at all threatens to degenerate into license. 4. The fourth condemnation, finally, the condemnation of Galileo, sought to reassert the authority of the Church as the custodian of truth against the claim that the truth is open in principle to any unprejudiced observer and thinker. Here, too, what is at issue is the relationship of truth to freedom, and the meaning of both. The continued timeliness of the Galileo affair is suggested by a remark made by Richard Rorty. In The Mirror of Nature Rorty asks whether today we can “find a way of saying that the considerations advanced against the Copernican theory by Cardinal Bellarmine — the scriptural descriptions of the fabric of the heavens — were ‘illogical’ or ‘unscientific’?” Rorty argues that today we have to answer this question with a “no.”2 The argument … centers around the claim that the lines between disciplines, subject matters, parts of culture, are themselves endangered by 2 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 328-333. Four Condemnations 6 novel substantive suggestions. … Bellarmine thought the scope of Copernicus’s theory was smaller than might be thought. When he suggested that perhaps Copernican theory was just an ingenious heuristic device for, say, navigational purposes and other sorts of practically oriented celestial reckoning, he was admitting that the theory was, within its proper limits, accurate, consistent, simple, and perhaps even fruitful. When he said that it should not be thought of as having wider scope than this he defended his view by saying that we have excellent independent (scriptural) evidence for believing that the heavens were roughly Ptolemaic. Rorty goes on to ask: “What determines that Scripture is not an excellent source of evidence for the way the heavens are set up?” He thus invites us to think Cardinal Bellarmine’s attempt to limit the scope of Copernicus’ astronomical claims as fundamentally no different from Galileo’s attempt to limit the scope of Scripture. Both Galileo and the Bible claim to describe “the way the heavens are set up.” As it turned out, the future made Galileo the victor. The establishment of science, as we tend to take it for granted, is part of that victory. But this, according to Rorty, does not justify the claim that Galileo had reason on his side. According to this post-Copernican, post- modern philosopher, we simply do not know how to draw a clear line between theological and scientific discourse. I want to make here the opposite claim. Philosophy today, if it is to be more than an aesthetic play, must be able to explain why we must reject Cardinal Bellarmine's reflections, not as illogical, but as unscientific. What forces us to side with Galileo against Bellarmine is the commitment to objectivity that is a presupposition of being scientific. And this commitment is not only a presupposition of science, but also a presupposition of the world we live in, of our understanding of reality. As we shall see, the privilege that modernity has accorded to objectivity was won in a pattern of thought we can call Copernican reflection. But, as Nietzsche knew, the commitment to objectivity carries with it also the threat of nihilism or a loss of value. And again the problem arises: what then will bind freedom so that it does not degenerate into license. Four Condemnations 7 2 At issue in this course is thus the often uneasy relationship between religion and science, or more generally, between religion and freedom of inquiry. It is still an issue today. Think of the creationism debate. Does it make sense to claim with the philosopher Alvin Plantinga that what we need today is a Christian science?3 Science and religion have both claimed to be the privileged custodians of truth. Concerned as it is with the uneasy relationship between religion and science, this course is also concerned with the issue of truth. How is the conflict between religion and science to be settled? Just what is at stake? Behind that conflict lies the problem of freedom. The question of truth, as should become clear, is bound up with the issue of freedom. The pursuit of truth demands freedom of thought. But is the very word religion not tried to binding? Although the etymology that ties the word “religion “ to the Latin “religare,” to bind again, is not generally accepted, despite the authority of Lactantius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas,4 must a religious person not experience his or her freedom as bound by and to what is taken to matter unconditionally and most profoundly, bound, we can say, by what is experienced as sacred? And must the human being perhaps be bound as religion insists? I will not attempt here to tackle the issue of the relationship of religion and truth directly. But I do not believe that one can do philosophy without also doing the history of philosophy.