A good friend sent me a copy of an essay from the New York Times, 8/14/2021, by Ross Douthat, on faith and world-view changes. The article, by someone I always I enjoy reading, reminded me of an either/or I used to inflict on my students on slow days. I know, they thought all my class days were slow! Humph!
Douthat’s essay presents the either/or in a context that makes it compelling and devilishly interesting. My late night, clipped, want-to-sleep version. More later possibly.
It goes something like this:
EITHER: Mind gave rise to Matter, so to speak; mind, as Douthat explains, from the religious perspective, “precedes” matter. But is it true and how do you know? Of course, I come down on this side of the issue, being a Christian. Not to trivialize the issue, ha, C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew is a delightful imaginative presentation of the idea as Aslan sings Narnia into being. Another such rendering is Tolkien’s creation song at the beginning of the Silmarillion. Then of course there is Genesis, the Gospel of John, Augustine’s Confessions, and Aquinas, etc. A good deal of medieval and Renaissance literature finds this perspective inherent in it. Consider, for example, the great works: Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales; Spenser’s The Faerie Queene; Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Tempest, Measure for Measure, etc.; Milton’s Paradise Lost. Etc.
Look what happens to the perspective on human nature and divinity in the eighteenth century: the seminal work is Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Look at the way Swift’s imagination captures the “dissociated sensibility” now inherent in the new world view. Gulliver is not and cannot be a tragic hero like Lear; instead he is a “gull,” a fool committed to a truncated view of human nature who thus ends up sleeping with his horses rather than his wife. His limited perspective is inherent in the first three books of the Travels (why is the Queen so upset when he puts out the fire in her castle chambers in the way in which he so magnificently does, and thus vows never to use them again?); his perspective is made objectively clear in Book 4: he identifies with the “inhuman” rational Houyhnhnms and rejects the physical aspect of humanity in the Yahoos. God, from the Christian perspective, created characters with “right reason,” people who could think rationally and love, and who had passion. The rational horses in 4 do not have the capacity to love. Edmond in Lear and the two evil daughters use their reason to serve their self interest; they are quite good at it up to a point, but their reason is not “right.” They are evil; how do we know and what difference does it make? Wonderfully it is their very inability to understand right reason (which includes love and self sacrifice) that leads to their downfall. In the eighteenth century the idea of human nature in the world view undergoes a radical shift that includes the loss of something very precious, our capacity to love, especially our capacity to love God.
In my experience the most important quest image in medieval literature is that for the Holy Grail; my reason should be obvious at this point. None of these elements proves that the either/or idea I believe is true is actually true. I believe, however, that Mind “precedes,” creates, gives rise to matter. My basis for believing that to be true lies elsewhere in my experience. Truth, regardless of the age, needs to be at the center of one’s self. Much of Gulliver’s world is relative—big and little, little and big—but not everything. There is, I think, also an absolute present in his world too. And it is not difficult to see, though as always it is somewhat hidden!
OR: Matter gave rise to Mind. Given the “modern” materialistic perspective inherent in secular culture, this idea is not difficult for heirs of Marx, Darwin and Freud, etc. But again is it true and how do you know?
For now now that’ll do, Babe! Now it’s also to sleep, I hope.
Of course, that either/or fits into the fundamental, underlying existential question:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
[Oops! Neuropathy! I hit the wrong box. Ah, well. There are no accidents, so….written first late last night; obviously I have been back at it.]
Except for continuing, random editing, I think I am done. Regarding the final question In bold, one of the two perspectives surely must contain the answer, but that is always for the truth-seeking individual to discover.
Gulliver reluctantly taking his leave! There is no real change in the satiric character throughout literature.