tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post1013870956394818568..comments2023-11-05T04:09:26.194-05:00Comments on e g r e g o r e s: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis (Hutton & Reincarnation, Part Six)Apuleius Platonicushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11761230673724504084noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-44703900708173720162011-02-23T09:42:02.720-05:002011-02-23T09:42:02.720-05:00Siegfreid: bonus points for mentioning Bernal. He ...Siegfreid: bonus points for mentioning Bernal. He was first introduction to Hermeticism!Apuleius Platonicushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11761230673724504084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-77555273812341411362011-02-23T08:13:19.270-05:002011-02-23T08:13:19.270-05:00Dr. Mathiesen,
You're absolutely correct to p...Dr. Mathiesen,<br /><br />You're absolutely correct to point out that scholars are human, like everyone else. This fact precedes a problem of following trends within the tides of existing scholarship, and lacking the boldness to step outside these tides to gain higher ground from which the larger momentum of the archives can be grasped. But the bold are often quickly chastened for stepping out of line, with rigor, erudition, dedication notwithstanding. I think of Martin Bernal, on the bolder side (and whatever one may think of his thesis, rigor, erudition, and dedication characterize it throughout) ; and Carlo Ginzburg on the still-bold but milder side, and both in their own ways, the one more than the other, have been chastized and scolded to trim their well-founded theories within the lines determined by the clique.<br /><br />I've been pointing out the downfalls of primate politics on scholarship for years. There's been some good work written, for example, on how even in the hard sciences, disputes with a wide range of informed opinion are often quickly roped in by the stomping display-behavior of a prestigious alpha-male within the community. That may suffice for gorillas, but not my mind!<br /><br />I don't expect scholars to be perfect. I'd like them to be trained in courage and creativity. The right hand needs the fetters of the archives held in unrelenting examination and close scrutiny, but the left hand needs the wings of imagination. While we're all human, surely it's not too much to ask scholars to behave a little more humbly when their display-behaviors stumble before the contents of classics any one of us can pick up for a couple bucks at a thrift store!<br /><br />It's inexcusable, actually. Even Margot Adler's first edition of "Drawing Down the Moon" made it very clear that pagans as a whole are fairly educated and familiar with the classics, and so for the likes of Hutton to suggest that we don't understand what we're reading when we see obvious parallels between our practice and ancient practices documented on the page is just a circus! And while I understand that newly-emerging subcultures are themselves often a circus, full of charlatans and petty rivalries (demonstration of which I will give full credit to Hutton), such is the state of a burned-down forest in its beginnings stages of succession.<br /><br />Scholars such as yourself who are able to hold your line while at the same time remaining humble I have the greatest respect for.SiegfriedGoodfellowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01696170388891436569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-903413160600956562011-02-09T13:13:59.801-05:002011-02-09T13:13:59.801-05:00Apuleius, as far as "should" goes, and t...Apuleius, as far as "should" goes, and the importance of a "basic high school education," you're right on target, and I also agree with you. <br /><br />But Siegfried seemed to me to expect more of scholars than they are, in the very nature of things, able to give him, and I was addressing that. Perhaps I misunderstood him.<br /><br />Now to address your quite valid points. As an insider, I can tell you that "should" is often miles apart from "is." <br /><br />A "basic high school education" seems to be a thing of the distant past in most cities of the United States. To judge by what I have seen, a significant number of professors with tenure at Ivy League universities (including my own) never got one.<br /><br />Also, accurate and exhaustive scholarship is sometimes mocked in principle by my humanistic or historical colleagues in the Ivy League, who deride it as old-fashioned Germanic pedantry. Their goals as academics are to keep up with the newest trends and to display all the right political and moral shibboleths.<br /><br />In short, the institutional rot runs deep and wide, and it is firmly entrenched by now. A good number of scholars do what they can as individuals to uphold the best traditions of scholarship in the humanities and in history, but they have little institutional support as they do so. And they seem to grow fewer with each new decade.Robert Mathiesennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-5182489776572870732011-02-03T09:19:26.448-05:002011-02-03T09:19:26.448-05:00Robert, a scholar needs to have the basic facts ri...Robert, a scholar needs to have the basic facts right. Uncertainty and errors in scholarship should be due to genuine difficulties and ambiguities in the available evidence, not to the kind of base ignorance that a decent high school education should have removed, as is the case with Hutton.Apuleius Platonicushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11761230673724504084noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-60658732844312737032011-02-02T22:35:36.041-05:002011-02-02T22:35:36.041-05:00[continued from the previous post]
Nor is it just...[continued from the previous post]<br /><br />Nor is it just *ancient* esoteric writings (or unwritten teachings) that have been lost. I can think of a few seminal esoteric works published in the late 1800s or even the early 1900s, which anyone might have purchased at the time, that have come down to our days in only one known copy, or have even been wholly lost.<br /><br />So no scholar, working at a given time and place, can ever get access to all of the relevant sources. And even the sources that he can access are often so vast that no one scholar can work through them all in a single lifetime and still manage to keep everything straight that he has found in them.<br /><br />In short, perfect, flawless scholarship is n ideal that is beyond the strength and ability of any mortal scholar. We scholars do what we can, but you should never take anything we publish as the last word on any subject. You should correct us whenever you have found evidence that we did not take into account. <br /><br />The best of us will thank you for correction openly. Many of us will insist on a hard argument to make you prove your point before yielding -- and that is only fair, I think, since we treat our fellow scholars in the same way. Others, being all too human, will only grudgingly admit that they were wrong and you were right. <br /><br />But if you ever find a scholar, so-called, who absolutely refuses to believe in principle that he could ever be wrong, or who will not admit that there have ever been errors in anything he has published, then that person is not a scholar at all, but a charlatan, or possibly a fool. (For whatever it may be worth, I have not found Hutton to be such a person.)<br /><br />For some reason, outsiders always seem surprised to hear such things about scholars, and sometimes they are even disappointed to hear them. Don't be! Know what we actually are, and forget about dreams of what you would like us to be. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of what sort of people scholars actually are will empower the reader.Robert Mathiesennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-59653639738251388182011-02-02T22:34:35.911-05:002011-02-02T22:34:35.911-05:00It's scant consolation, Siegfried, that I have...It's scant consolation, Siegfried, that I have to offer. Being a professor (retired) at an Ivy League university myself, I can tell you that almost all published scholarship, at least in the humanities and in history, is highly *provisional*, and all of it is always subject to correction. Also, any scholar worth his salt knows that everything he has published only *approximates* to "the way things actually were/are." <br /><br />If he is at all honest with himself, he knows, too, that much of his work will someday be made obsolete by the work of younger scholars who, perhaps, are yet to be born. Only the charlatans and fools among our ranks think otherwise.<br /><br />So why be a scholar? The journey of a thousand miles is only to be accomplished step by tiny step, and there may be no end to the road at all. We scholars of today are the heirs of scholarly traditions that are older than the pyramids of Egypt; and yet our best efforts will seem as child's play to scholars who come after us five thousand years from now. Any single scholar, even the whole work of any single generation of scholars, is just a step or two down a very long road toward a destination none of us can imagine in any detail. Scholarship is a calling -- much more than it is a profession, and very much more than it is a job.<br /><br />Along that road, too, much will be lost from one century to the next. For example, the Pagan author Celsus, writing against Christians in the 2nd century, tells us that Plato had something to say about the Third Eye. No extant work of Plato now mentions the Third Eye, but what we have of Plato is only his exoteric writings, and maybe only some of them. Plato's esoteric writings have been wholly lost to the ravages of time, and with them whatever he had written about the Third Eye. Or, perhaps, it was a part of Plato's teaching that he wholly refused to put into writing, which had come down to Celsus by oral tradition. (Plato mentions this unwritten teaching of his in one of his Letters.) <br /><br />(By the way, this example is also relevant to Apuleius's argument about Western vs. Eastern sources for certain esoteric teachings. The Third Eye is another of those things in Western esoteric doctrine that are credited by some scholars to the influence of the East. The truth may be more complicated than that.)<br /><br />So we have to be careful in supposing that Plato's extant writing give us everything of importance that he taught. They did not. We must also consider the evidence of later Platonists whose teachings may descend from Plato's esoteric writings or from his unwritten teaching. <br /><br />[continued in the next post]Robertt Mathiesennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7817911217098974229.post-66933741958990581382011-02-02T16:00:19.405-05:002011-02-02T16:00:19.405-05:00Thank you for compiling this preponderance of evid...Thank you for compiling this preponderance of evidence. Given all this, it is shocking that a university scholar could overlook it all. Meanwhile, those snide and ultimately shallow scoffers who for a brief time got to look down their noses at other pagans because they now felt superior due to seemingly scholarly backing can be chastened by the fact that many of us, unwilling to descend to their level, knew the truth all along. And how is one to trust the word of someone certified to be familiar with the archives who shows such astounding ignorance of such monuments within it? Any of us might be excused for overlooking the overwhelming minutiae within the archives, but to remain so ignorant about the classics and their lasting legacy? Astonishing. But the wheel, I think, is turning, and returning to some sense. The outrageous claims of many on all sides can be set aside for common sense, and you will prove to have been one of the architects in this new and restored edifice.SiegfriedGoodfellowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01696170388891436569noreply@blogger.com