It has often been remarked that all Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato. When we study Plato, then, we are examining the foundations of our philosophic tradition. See, for example, G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Thought (1980); David Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas (1976). Aristotle also left a fertile legacy, which we explore briefly in Part III below. For a study of Aristotle and what he meant in his own time, see I. During, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (1957), and Aristotle (1966); David Ross, Aristotle (1964); Werner Jaeger, Aristotle (1948).
Part III. The Christian Way: Experiments in Community
We are fortunate in the literature that links Christianity to ancient thought, notably C. N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (1944), and J. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture (1993). But for this perspective there have been few equals of Edward Gibbon’s ever-lively Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, available in many editions, and especially attractive in the Modern Library edition (3 vols., 1995), with the Piranesi illustrations. For the medieval background we can begin with H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind (2 vols., 1930); E. K. Rand’s compact Founders of the Middle Ages (1957); C. G. Crump and E. F. Jacob, The Legacy of the Middle Ages (1932); and the insightful Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1970). And for reference J. R. Strayer (ed.), The Dictionary of the Middle Ages (13 vols., 1989). To place the Seekers in the long history of Christianity we can not do better than the chapters in Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition (5 vols., 1971-89), and Jesus Through the Centuries (1985). A stirring perspective of medieval institutions is J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), new translation by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1996).
For the rise of the Church a classic introduction is J. Burckhardt, The Age of Constantine the Great (1949). And see Arnoldo Momigliano, The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (1963). Monasteries and monasticism, not amply chronicled in most general histories, have stimulated a literature of their own, especially fascinating to the modern secular mind. A good introduction is Cuthbert Butler, Benedictine Monachism (2d ed., 1924), supplemented by Alban Butler, Butler’s Lives of the Saints (ed. H. Thurston and D. Attwater, 4 vols., 1956-62), and Gregorius I the Great, Life and Miracles of St. Benedict (1980); and for the context, J. M. Hussey, The Byzantine World (1957). Daniel Rees, Consider Your Call (1978), suggests a theology of monastic life today.
Medieval universities offer striking contrasts to their modern descendants and are portrayed for us by scholars with a literary flair. See, for example, the cogent C. H. Haskins, The Rise of Universities (1923), and The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1957). A standard reference is Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (3 vols., rev. ed., 1936). And see G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama (1938). We are grateful to Étienne Gilson for his subtle essays: The History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955), The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1983), and The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (1991). For the life of the monumental Saint Thomas Aquinas, I have found most useful A. Walz, St. Thomas Aquinas (1951), and Vernon J. Bourke, Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom (1965). Selections of Aquinas’s works are in Basic Writings (Anton C. Degas, ed., 2 vols., 1944), and in Great Books of the Western World (Vols. 19 and 20).
The literature of Protestantism is naturally tendentious and often polemical, but the lives of the leaders have invited many sympathetic biographies. The attractive thinker Erasmus has elicited suggestive essays, notably Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (1957), and Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christianity (1982). Erasmus’s Praise of Folly is available in numerous editions and translations—for example, in Penguin Classics (1986). For Martin Luther, a more prickly subject, we can turn to E. G. Rupp and B. Drewery (eds.), Martin Luther (1970), and R. H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1990). We must explore John Calvin’s own Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. John Allen, B. B. Warfield ed., 7th ed., 2 vols., 1936) and can follow his checkered life in T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin (1975), or Williston Walker, John Calvin, the Organiser of Reformed Protestantism, 1509-1564 (1969). Calvin’s legacy in John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (1954), is illuminated by studies of his Geneva—for example, Robert M. Kingdon’s Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France 1555-1563 (1956) and Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564- 1572. Roland H. Bainton has given us a concise and readable history of Protestant intolerance in The Travail of Religious Liberty (1958). For the career of Calvinism in New England, see S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (1930), and for the ideas, Perry Miller, The New England Mind (2 vols., 1939, 1953).
BOOK TWO:
COMMUNAL SEARCH
Part IV. Ways of Discovery: In Search of Experience
Greek myths and the epics of Homer have become such commonplaces of Western education that we have tended to overlook their significance as expressions of ancient Greek culture and as shaping elements in the Western tradition. The best starting point, of course, is Homer, accessible in the Iliad and the Odyssey in classic English translations (for example, by John Dryden and Alexander Pope and in recent translations by Richmond Lattimore [1961] and Robert Fitzgerald [1961, 1974]). Edith Sitwell recounts the career of one of these in Alexander Pope (1948). A delightful recent translation is by Robert Fagles (with an introduction by Bernard Knox). For the place of Homer in the oral traditions: A. J. P. Wace and F. H. Stubbings, A Companion to Homer (1962), and a shorter version, Homer and Epic (1965). And on the limits of the oral tradition, Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power of Writing (1944). I have found especially helpful M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (2d ed., 1977). An admirable anthology is Bernard Knox’s Norton Book of Classical Literature (1993), with his brilliant introduction. For the wider social context, see G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (1973). For a scholarly response to the question we all ask, see Paul Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? (1988).
For an incisive essay on how the Greeks related their myths to their history, see Bernard Knox, Backing into the Future (1994). To help us place the ancient Greek historian in our tradition, see R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1961), M. I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (1975), The Ancient Greeks (1963). For scholarly assessment of the ancient historians, see Arnoldo Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (1977) or The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (1990). The standard introductory work is J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (1909). The historians have been widely and variously translated, and have invited the best talents. Herodotus and Thucydides are both available in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 6. M. I. Finley offers an attractive brief selection in The Greek Historians (1959). The George Rawlinson translation of Herodotus is most widely relied on, and often edited and reprinted. Thucydides is most often read in the Benjamin Jowett or Richard Crawley translation. The Thomas Hobbes translation (David Grene, ed., 2 vols., 1959) has a special interest because of the eminent translator’s boasted sympathy with the author. An illuminating original view is F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (1971). A rewarding selection from ancient Greek literature is found in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces (Bernard Knox, ed., Vol. 1, 4th ed., 1979).
For Virgil, an excellent introduction is the essay by Jasper Griffin in The Oxford History of the Classical World (1988), Ch. 15 or, more extensively, Jasper Griffin, Virgil (1986). Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics, and the Aeneid are in Great Books of the Western World (trans. James Rhoades), Vol. 13. Virgil, like Homer, has challenged the talents of translators in every generation. John Dryden’s free translation of the Aeneid in 1697 was long standard. We now can read Virgil in C. Day Lewis’s modern verse (1966), and Robert Fitzgerald’s among others. The most widely used translation of Virgil is that of R. A. B. Mynors in the Oxford Classical Texts Series. T. S. Eliot’s essay “What Is a Classic?” in his
On Poets and Poetry (1951) helps us place Virgil in the tradition.
Sir Frederick Pollock dismisses Thomas More from his respected History of the Science of Politics (1923) as “a Platonic or ultra-Platonic fancy, bred of the Platonism of the Renaissance. Even more than the Republic of Plato it belongs to the poetry as distinguished from the philosophy of politics.” Still, the appealing “poetry of politics” has often had more influence than the “philosophy.” More’s Utopia, often reprinted, is accessible in an Everyman Library edition (1928) and selections are in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Vol. I, 4th ed., 1979), with helpful notes. For Bacon and the rise of Western science, see Reference Notes to The Discoverers, Bk. III, esp. Parts X and XI. A readable scholarly biography is Fulton H. Anderson, Francis Bacon (1962). The Advancement of Learning and The New Atlantis are in a Bacon volume in World’s Classics (Oxford University Press). A useful selection of major works is E. A. Burtt (ed.), English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill (Modern Library, 1997). For a wider view, see the suggestive John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (1994).
For Descartes, readable biographies are Elizabeth Haldane, Descartes: Life and Times (1905), and J. R. Vrooman, René Descartes (1970). For the legacy of Descartes, Jacques Maritain offers stimulating suggestions in The Dream of Descartes (1946) and Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (1970), as does Albert B. Balz, Descartes and the Modern Mind (1952). A selection of Descartes’s works is found in Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 31 (trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross).
Part V. The Liberal Way
In the United States today, while “conservatism” has become an icon, the great tradition of liberalism, which for centuries has given meaning and purpose to people and societies in the West, lacks outspoken champions. We would do well to recall some of the Seekers in that tradition, who are suggested in this part. Spokesmen for the liberal spirit have been eloquent in our Western culture. Few have been as durable as John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), whose essays “On Liberty” and “Representative Government” though widely reprinted are too seldom read. The tradition encompasses a wide variety of Seekers who have hoped that the fulfillment of liberty in society will somehow add meaning and purpose to human life.
The writings of the surprising and widely misunderstood Niccolò Machiavelli suggest some of the roots of the communal search for meaning in the modern nation. The Prince is in Great Books of the Western World (Vol. 23); The Prince and the Discourses are in Modern Library (1940). The comprehensive biography is Pasquale Villari, The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli (new ed., 1968). For a recent view, see Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell (1989). A balanced brief introduction is Neal Wood’s article in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Vol. 9). John Locke’s life is readable in Maurice Cranston, John Locke (1957), and his life and works are surveyed in Richard I. Aaron, John Locke (3d ed., 1971). A helpful interpretation is John W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (1963). For the basic writings, see E. A. Burtt (ed.), English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill (Modern Library) and Great Books of the Western World (Vol. 35), and Of Civil Government (Everyman). For an important recent reinterpretation, see Peter Laslett (ed.), Two Treatises of Government (1964).
Voltaire, one of the wittiest and most persuasive of the Seekers, was also one of the most versatile and productive. A convenient introduction is Ben Ray Redman (ed.), The Portable Voltaire (Penguin Books, 1977). For readable scholarly biography, see Theodore Besterman, Voltaire (1969), and Gustave Lanson (intro. by Peter Gay), Voltaire (1966). A stirring essay is John Morley, Voltaire (1973). For his life and works, see the comprehensive Ira O. Wade, The Intellectual Development of Voltaire (1969). And for special aspects, see: A. Owen Aldridge, Voltaire and the Century of Light (1975); Peter Gay, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (1977); T. D. Kendrick, The Lisbon Earthquake (1956). Voltaire’s wide acquaintance with leading thinkers of his day gives his letters a wider than biographical significance, as in Theodore Besterman (trans. and ed.), Selected Letters (1963). Besides the voluminous Complete Works (Theodore Besterman, ed.), individual works have been frequently translated and reprinted. Candide (trans. Richard Aldington) and Philosophical Letters are brought together in Modern Library (1997). The Age of Louis XIV and The History of Charles XII are in the Everyman Library. For the range of Voltaire’s thought, see The Philosophy of History (1965) and Philosophical Dictionary (2 vols., 1962). And for a suggestive sequel, John R. Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (Vintage, 1993).
For a new perspective on Diderot and Encyclopedism, we owe much to Robert Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of The Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 (1979), of wider significance than its title suggests. We can find new insights in P. N. Furbank, Diderot: A Critical Biography (1992). And see Lester G. Crocker (ed.), Diderot, Selected Writings (1966); and Jonathan Kemp (ed.), Diderot, Interpreter of Nature: Selected Writings (1979).
Rousseau has incited a copious, romantic, and polemical literature. We are therefore grateful to Maurice Cranston for his ample, balanced, and perceptive Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in progress: Vol. I, Early Life: 1712-1754 (1982), and Vol. II, Noble Savage: 1754-62 (1991). For a sense of Rousseau’s idiosyncrasies we should all taste his Confessions, often reprinted, e.g. Everyman (2 vols., 1941) and in Penguin (1953). The Social Contract (trans. G. D. H. Cole) and Émile are in Everyman Library. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract are in Great Books of the Western World (Vol. 38). There are few historical polemics as stirring as Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), which alerts us to the contemporary moral and immoral implications of Rousseau’s ideas.
The whole literature on Thomas Jefferson, ranging from muckraking to hagiography, is vast. In it there is a rich resource of balanced and readable scholarly works. For a focused treatment of Jefferson and his fellow Seekers on the American scene, see Daniel J. Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (new intro., 1993); and for the wider context, Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Bk. II. A good starting point for the life is the article by Dumas Malone in The Dictionary of American Biography or Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (1970), amplified by Dumas Malone’s definitive Jefferson and His Time (6 vols., 1948-81). For informed guidance into special topics, see Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson, a Reference Biography (1986) and Silvio A. Bedini, Thomas Jefferson Statesman of Science (1990). Accessible editions of Jefferson’s writings are in Modern Library, Adrienne Koch and William Peden (eds.), The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Merrill D. Peterson (ed.), The Portable Jefferson (1975); or Saul K. Padover (ed.), The Complete Jefferson (1941). The definitive edition of Jefferson’s writ-ings is edited by Julian P. Boyd and successors (1950- ). Jefferson’s life and his vision continue to be an endless source of illuminating history, recently in Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (1996), an engrossing account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. For biographies of Jefferson’s fellow Seekers on the American scene, see The Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
The copious literature on Hegel is, not surprisingly, dominated by polemics and influenced by Hegel’s Germanic and Prussian chauvinist bias. For a balanced and sympathetic survey of his life and writings, see the brief article by the philosopher Morris R. Cohen in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1932), Vol. VII, or that by George Liehtheim in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968), Vol. 6. For a cogent treatment of the founder of the idealist movement, see the article on Kant by Ernst Cassirer in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. VIII. Less sympathetic is Bertrand Russell’s lively treatment of Hegel (along with Kant) as part of the Idealist movement in Ch. XXII of his History of Western Philosophy (1945). For a readable introduction to that movement, see A. D. Lindsay, Kant (1934). An accessible selection of Hegel’s writings, translated into English, is in the Modern Library, The European Philosophers from Descartes to N
ietzsche (ed. Monroe C. Beardsley, 1992, with updated bibliography). The full text of Hegel’s Philosophy of History is available in English (trans. J. Sibree, Bohn’s Libraries, 1902).
BOOK THREE:
PATHS TO THE FUTURE
Part VI. The Momentum of History: Ways of Social Science
A striking witness to the resilience and energy of Western culture is the appearance in the same era—and almost simultaneously—of thinkers offering dogmas and ideologies proposing skeleton keys to experience and all history, while others equally eloquent and persuasive were seeking refuge in sanctuaries of doubt. Positivism and existentialism were symbols of the restless seeking spirit—demanding simple keys to experience and history, yet never quite satisfied with the latest answers. The earlier answers could be qualified, or discredited, and the Seeking spirit would remain alive and vigorous, somehow finding the meaning in the seeking.
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