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Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism
A highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today
This short but highly ambitious book asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern states are built. Larry Siedentop argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs, liberalism, emerged much earlier than generally recognized, established not in the Renaissance but by the arguments of lawyers and philosophers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Yet there are large parts of the world - fundamentalist Islam; quasi-capitalist China - where other belief systems flourish and faced with these challenges, understanding our own ideas' origins is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are.
This short but highly ambitious book asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern states are built. Larry Siedentop argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs, liberalism, emerged much earlier than generally recognized, established not in the Renaissance but by the arguments of lawyers and philosophers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Yet there are large parts of the world - fundamentalist Islam; quasi-capitalist China - where other belief systems flourish and faced with these challenges, understanding our own ideas' origins is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published January 30, 2014
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December 23, 2015
1.75 Stars
OVERVIEW:
Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism is an ambitious project. It is nothing less than a genealogy of the ‘Western’ concept of the liberal individual spanning from Antiquity to the Medieval Period, ending right at the birth of the Enlightenment--presumably the moment of parturition of secular Liberalism itself. Siedentop’s historical narrative is motivated by the following thesis: Modern historians of the ‘West’ are mistaken in claiming that the sources of liberalism are to be found in the Ancient Greek or Roman traditions. The undue focus on the classical world obscures the significant role the Christian church played in the formation of modern European consciousness and her institutions. Thus, the Middle Ages, too long considered to be a period of cultural backsliding, need to be rethought as the most significant period in the development of the ideas of universal equality, sovereignty, and free will--i.e. what will become the central tenets of the ‘Western’ secular liberal tradition. “Inventing the Individual” is an attempt to correct this ‘deficiency’ in the literature and give due credit to the impact of Christian canon law on the formation of secular legislation.
Siedentop is motivated by two contemporary concerns, which he addresses only in his Prologue and Epilogue. First, the schism between the ‘East’ and ‘West has been consistently (and dangerously) misperceived as a rift between the religious and secular worlds. By arguing that the locus of secular ‘Western’ thinking lies in Christian religious thought, Siedentop hopes to demonstrate that liberal political philosophy is the ultimate reconciliation of faith and reason. To put it loosely: If only the East would recognize that the West’s ‘secularism’ isn’t so secular, we might not be in such a geopolitical pickle! The second concern, deeply connected to the first, is the rise of religious fundamentalism--within both Islam and Christianity--and with it the (increasingly likely) possibility that WWIII will be an all-out religious war. On Siedentop’s view, fundamentalism gains traction as reason declines. Thus he attributes (American) Christian fundamentalism to the fact that people have lost sight of the ‘rational’ Christian moral intuitions that serve as the bedrock of the very secularism they repudiate on religious grounds.
CRITIQUE
[Tl; dwtr?: I recommend these books instead: E.R. Dodds’ [book:The Greeks and the Irrational|862835], Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine, anything by Peter Brown (particularly Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
Siedentop’s scope is, paradoxically, both too broad and too narrow. This is a symptom of a larger methodological problem: lacking a dialectical account of the transmission of ideas leads to a consistently flattened and overly reductive analysis. On the one hand, It is too broad in the sense that any monograph attempting to capture 2100+ years of history tends to be; there’s simply not enough space to do justice to the subject during any particular period of time without eliding salient historical details or producing an unreadably massive tome. Mercifully, LS’s chapters are short--10 pages, every time--but with each chapter devoted to roughly a century, LS lacks the room to develop much more than a sketch of the incredibly complex political, cultural, religious terrain. More often than not Siedentop’s chapters draw heavily on one or two secondary sources (usually powerhouse historians, to his credit) to do the heavy lifting for him. By “draw heavily” I mean that LS block quotes their conclusions approvingly, often without further comment. I don’t know about you, but I was taught that this is bad scholarship.
Perhaps I am too harsh, and this is not to be read as a serious research project, but as a survey--a sort of toe-dip--into the subject? Acclaim where acclaim is due: as a survey, it is indeed a handy primer, particularly w/r/t the Middle Ages. LS conscientiously shies away from treating the more canonical writers with whom we are most familiar, and instead often lets lesser-known voices stand as representatives of their period. This is an interesting and refreshing strategy, which lends an air of scholarly erudition to the book, and helps it stand out from more popular political histories. However, a quick glance at the footnotes attached to the primary texts cited undermines this initial impression. Direct block quotes of primary texts all come from his secondary material. LS doesn’t cite the original or consistently tell his reader the name of the author he cited. The problem here is not an issue of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’--grand surveys necessitate a reliance on forebears--to suggest otherwise would be disingenuous. The problem is that Siedentop does an enormous disservice to his sources by oversimplifying their evidence and their conclusions. At first this struck me as an unfortunate (but perhaps inevitable) consequence of his overly-broad scope, but soon it becomes clear that LS’s selective treatment of the (extremely good) secondary source material is actually directed by his narrow interest in validating his own claims vis a vis Christianity.
On the other hand, ‘Inventing the Individual’ is too narrow in scope insofar as Siedentop concerns himself primarily with the activities of the ‘Western’ world (Europe), minimizing as much as possible any ‘tangents’ into concurrent developments or conflicts in the ‘East’ and ‘Near East’. In his defense, LS does examine the difference between early Eastern and Western monastic traditions, but he altogether ignores the birth of Islam. On Siedentop’s telling, one might think that the West birthed itself ex nihilo. (Of course, isn’t that exactly what a staunch defender of Western liberalism would propose?!)
Siedentop twice concedes that on-going conflicts with the Islamic world surely had some effect on the medieval public consciousness, but the extent of this effect he leaves altogether unconsidered. Of the 12 mentions of Islam in the book, half of them are LS’s speculative comments about the current state of geopolitics in his Intro and Epilogue. Of the six ‘historical’ mentions of Islam (which existed as a religion for at least 800 years of his 2100+ year monograph, i.e. nearly 40% of the period under question) only two are remotely ‘substantive.’ The first, promulgated at the time of Charlemagne, applies universally to any nonbeliever: “Outside the sway of the church and the rites of baptism, people were not considered, in a sense, fully human” (155). In other words, the killing of anyone who lacked a ‘soul’ (in the Christian sense) was justified, and therefore could not tarnish the individual conscience of the killer. The second--and the only direct mention of Islam in LS’s historical narrative--needs to be quoted at length:
“The appeal by Pope Urban II for volunteers to halt the expansion of Islam...created in Europe a new consciousness of itself…’Prior to the crusades, Europe had never been excited by one sentiment, or acted in one cause; there was no Europe. The Crusades revealed Christian Europe.’ [quoting X]...The Crusades were a truly universal event, involving all strata of the population. The revealed ‘a people’ with a shared identity capable of breaking through the skin of feudal stratification...A papal summons released this new European identity, appealing to the consciences and energies of the individual regardless of their social status. It was, of course, intensified by the centuries-old conflict with Islam and no doubt benefited from the aroma of foreign adventure and loot…” (194, italics mine).
As the only ‘substantive’ mention of Islam within a 360+ page book, this truncated (for brevity) passage deserves serious consideration. First off, obviously: it is not substantive at all. The cause of this “centuries-old conflict” is never addressed, which is quite curious. My Fascist Alarm tinkled at LS’s use of the word ‘universal’ to describe what he sees as an essentially newfound ‘pre-nationalistic’ spirit emerging in opposition to the increase of Muslim power in the medieval world. Ignoring the threat of Islam (a perspective only available in hindsight), LS lavishes nearly breathless praise of the papacy’s shrewd political machinations during its Revolution. He views it as *the decisive moment* in the development of Western Liberalism--for this is the moment that the consolidation of papal power pays in dividends; canon law get its “teeth,” to use a favorite Siedentop euphemism. The strong implication is that canon law’s ‘teeth’ were a positive and necessary development in the creation of Liberalism.
As for the Crusaders themselves, “crowds of the populus, who set out...without preparation, without guides, and without chiefs, followed rather than guided by a few obscure knights”?...Siedentop dismisses them as an irrational and uneducated mob who somehow discovered and responded to the threat of Islam with very little nudging from the newly powerful pope. This is very sneaky, especially considering that LS acknowledges explicitly in the quote above that Pope Urban II blessed the ‘mission.’ The problem here is that LS seeks to insulate (read: exculpate) the Church from any responsibility for the Crusades. This view explains why LS can so haphazardly mention ‘the centuries-old conflict with Islam’ as mere afterthought (hooligans v. hooligans!), devaluing its historical significance in the creation of the ‘European’ identity of which LS is so proud.
LS’s thought laid bare is this, if I may: “The uneducated masses who crusaded did not understand the true message of Christianity, and so anything they did ought not be taken as representative of the Christian worldview.” Embedded within is the following assumption: the masses, due to poverty and ignorance, lacked the appropriate moral apparatus to abstain from wrong behavior when the opportunity for lucre was presented to them. But such an assumption (and argument) about ignorance is fundamentally anathema to Christianity. For pre-Reformation Christians, it was not the knowledge of God (impossible!), but hard work, good deeds, and the grace of God which secured one’s salvation. Witness the serfs: you needn’t be an aristocrat, landowner, scholar, nor a saint to lay claim to the Kingdom of Heaven. To diminish the beliefs of Crusaders as ignorant and unrepresentative is to (inadvertently?) reproduce the false dichotomy between faith and reason that LS is so intent to undermine. What we see in Siedentop’s narrative is an ongoing slippage between the history of events and the history of the ideas behind them that ‘enables’ him to conflate the ideals of Christianity and the historical Church when it suits his purpose, and to decouple them when the historical doings of the Church undermine its universal mission.
One must be wearing some seriously rose-tinted glasses not to see or acknowledge the role of the Church in the selective distribution and suppression of knowledge during the early medieval period. Keeping the masses illiterate kept them pliable and dependent on the clergy for guidance. Pace Siedentrop, the church did very little to empower the serfs to fight for their freedom; instead--more pervasively--the church pacified serfs with promises of delayed justice in the afterlife. Now, what can be safely claimed, is that Christian notions of individual worth gradually seeped into the collective conscience of the serfs, leading them to assert that worth in the Peasant Uprisings. However, it is disingenuous to insinuate, as LS does, that the Church played a direct and active role in such developments. I’d argue, rather, that the power of Christianity as a religion triumphed despite the best efforts of the Church to limit the more egalitarian understanding of its meaning.
At the end of the day, Siedentop’s primary thesis--that Christianity played a pivotal role in the development of the Individual is no doubt true. Siedentop’s more controversial claim--that we are wrong to look for the origins of ‘Western’ Liberalism in Antiquity--really cannot be trusted, motivated as it is by a self-serving catholic interest to provide a an apologetic for the Christian Church (and its abuses) during the Middle Ages. Moreover, It is not clear to me why LS needs to advance the controversial claim at all. Acknowledging Christianity’s importance does not require that we devalue significant advancements in the pre-Christian ancient world. It is quite clear from Siedentop’s nearly constant conflation of Athens and the Roman Republic, that he either lacks a nuanced understanding of the significant differences between them, or that he is not troubled to distinguish between democratic and republican forms of government. It is quite odd to tell the story of the origins of the individual without including a substantive discussion of birth of democracy in Athens. And, while Siedentop is correct that the individual was not the primary social unit in Athenian society, it is egregiously misleading to suggest that there was no individual sense of self in Antiquity. One would need to ignore all of Plato and Aristotle’s works to make this the case. Despite how much LS would like to believe that the Christians invented the conscience, wishing it doesn’t make it so.
In summary: LS’s attempt to center the birth of the individual in the Middle Ages is mistaken because of the important cultural contexts and events that are necessarily left out by his unnecessarily narrow focus. On the one hand, Antiquity’s influence is obscured on account of fact that the ‘individual’ was not yet the primary social unit, but this misrepresents Athens’ significance in development of Liberalism itself. On the other hand, LS’s attempt to characterize the medieval Church as a largely benign, civilizing institution is only plausible if he omits or downplays the barbarity of the Crusades (among many other things). Omitting the Crusades requires that he underemphasize the crucial influence of ascendance of Islam in the ‘East’ as a conflicting and co-constitutive ideology.
OVERVIEW:
Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism is an ambitious project. It is nothing less than a genealogy of the ‘Western’ concept of the liberal individual spanning from Antiquity to the Medieval Period, ending right at the birth of the Enlightenment--presumably the moment of parturition of secular Liberalism itself. Siedentop’s historical narrative is motivated by the following thesis: Modern historians of the ‘West’ are mistaken in claiming that the sources of liberalism are to be found in the Ancient Greek or Roman traditions. The undue focus on the classical world obscures the significant role the Christian church played in the formation of modern European consciousness and her institutions. Thus, the Middle Ages, too long considered to be a period of cultural backsliding, need to be rethought as the most significant period in the development of the ideas of universal equality, sovereignty, and free will--i.e. what will become the central tenets of the ‘Western’ secular liberal tradition. “Inventing the Individual” is an attempt to correct this ‘deficiency’ in the literature and give due credit to the impact of Christian canon law on the formation of secular legislation.
Siedentop is motivated by two contemporary concerns, which he addresses only in his Prologue and Epilogue. First, the schism between the ‘East’ and ‘West has been consistently (and dangerously) misperceived as a rift between the religious and secular worlds. By arguing that the locus of secular ‘Western’ thinking lies in Christian religious thought, Siedentop hopes to demonstrate that liberal political philosophy is the ultimate reconciliation of faith and reason. To put it loosely: If only the East would recognize that the West’s ‘secularism’ isn’t so secular, we might not be in such a geopolitical pickle! The second concern, deeply connected to the first, is the rise of religious fundamentalism--within both Islam and Christianity--and with it the (increasingly likely) possibility that WWIII will be an all-out religious war. On Siedentop’s view, fundamentalism gains traction as reason declines. Thus he attributes (American) Christian fundamentalism to the fact that people have lost sight of the ‘rational’ Christian moral intuitions that serve as the bedrock of the very secularism they repudiate on religious grounds.
CRITIQUE
[Tl; dwtr?: I recommend these books instead: E.R. Dodds’ [book:The Greeks and the Irrational|862835], Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine, anything by Peter Brown (particularly Augustine of Hippo: A Biography, and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.
Siedentop’s scope is, paradoxically, both too broad and too narrow. This is a symptom of a larger methodological problem: lacking a dialectical account of the transmission of ideas leads to a consistently flattened and overly reductive analysis. On the one hand, It is too broad in the sense that any monograph attempting to capture 2100+ years of history tends to be; there’s simply not enough space to do justice to the subject during any particular period of time without eliding salient historical details or producing an unreadably massive tome. Mercifully, LS’s chapters are short--10 pages, every time--but with each chapter devoted to roughly a century, LS lacks the room to develop much more than a sketch of the incredibly complex political, cultural, religious terrain. More often than not Siedentop’s chapters draw heavily on one or two secondary sources (usually powerhouse historians, to his credit) to do the heavy lifting for him. By “draw heavily” I mean that LS block quotes their conclusions approvingly, often without further comment. I don’t know about you, but I was taught that this is bad scholarship.
Perhaps I am too harsh, and this is not to be read as a serious research project, but as a survey--a sort of toe-dip--into the subject? Acclaim where acclaim is due: as a survey, it is indeed a handy primer, particularly w/r/t the Middle Ages. LS conscientiously shies away from treating the more canonical writers with whom we are most familiar, and instead often lets lesser-known voices stand as representatives of their period. This is an interesting and refreshing strategy, which lends an air of scholarly erudition to the book, and helps it stand out from more popular political histories. However, a quick glance at the footnotes attached to the primary texts cited undermines this initial impression. Direct block quotes of primary texts all come from his secondary material. LS doesn’t cite the original or consistently tell his reader the name of the author he cited. The problem here is not an issue of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’--grand surveys necessitate a reliance on forebears--to suggest otherwise would be disingenuous. The problem is that Siedentop does an enormous disservice to his sources by oversimplifying their evidence and their conclusions. At first this struck me as an unfortunate (but perhaps inevitable) consequence of his overly-broad scope, but soon it becomes clear that LS’s selective treatment of the (extremely good) secondary source material is actually directed by his narrow interest in validating his own claims vis a vis Christianity.
On the other hand, ‘Inventing the Individual’ is too narrow in scope insofar as Siedentop concerns himself primarily with the activities of the ‘Western’ world (Europe), minimizing as much as possible any ‘tangents’ into concurrent developments or conflicts in the ‘East’ and ‘Near East’. In his defense, LS does examine the difference between early Eastern and Western monastic traditions, but he altogether ignores the birth of Islam. On Siedentop’s telling, one might think that the West birthed itself ex nihilo. (Of course, isn’t that exactly what a staunch defender of Western liberalism would propose?!)
Siedentop twice concedes that on-going conflicts with the Islamic world surely had some effect on the medieval public consciousness, but the extent of this effect he leaves altogether unconsidered. Of the 12 mentions of Islam in the book, half of them are LS’s speculative comments about the current state of geopolitics in his Intro and Epilogue. Of the six ‘historical’ mentions of Islam (which existed as a religion for at least 800 years of his 2100+ year monograph, i.e. nearly 40% of the period under question) only two are remotely ‘substantive.’ The first, promulgated at the time of Charlemagne, applies universally to any nonbeliever: “Outside the sway of the church and the rites of baptism, people were not considered, in a sense, fully human” (155). In other words, the killing of anyone who lacked a ‘soul’ (in the Christian sense) was justified, and therefore could not tarnish the individual conscience of the killer. The second--and the only direct mention of Islam in LS’s historical narrative--needs to be quoted at length:
“The appeal by Pope Urban II for volunteers to halt the expansion of Islam...created in Europe a new consciousness of itself…’Prior to the crusades, Europe had never been excited by one sentiment, or acted in one cause; there was no Europe. The Crusades revealed Christian Europe.’ [quoting X]...The Crusades were a truly universal event, involving all strata of the population. The revealed ‘a people’ with a shared identity capable of breaking through the skin of feudal stratification...A papal summons released this new European identity, appealing to the consciences and energies of the individual regardless of their social status. It was, of course, intensified by the centuries-old conflict with Islam and no doubt benefited from the aroma of foreign adventure and loot…” (194, italics mine).
As the only ‘substantive’ mention of Islam within a 360+ page book, this truncated (for brevity) passage deserves serious consideration. First off, obviously: it is not substantive at all. The cause of this “centuries-old conflict” is never addressed, which is quite curious. My Fascist Alarm tinkled at LS’s use of the word ‘universal’ to describe what he sees as an essentially newfound ‘pre-nationalistic’ spirit emerging in opposition to the increase of Muslim power in the medieval world. Ignoring the threat of Islam (a perspective only available in hindsight), LS lavishes nearly breathless praise of the papacy’s shrewd political machinations during its Revolution. He views it as *the decisive moment* in the development of Western Liberalism--for this is the moment that the consolidation of papal power pays in dividends; canon law get its “teeth,” to use a favorite Siedentop euphemism. The strong implication is that canon law’s ‘teeth’ were a positive and necessary development in the creation of Liberalism.
As for the Crusaders themselves, “crowds of the populus, who set out...without preparation, without guides, and without chiefs, followed rather than guided by a few obscure knights”?...Siedentop dismisses them as an irrational and uneducated mob who somehow discovered and responded to the threat of Islam with very little nudging from the newly powerful pope. This is very sneaky, especially considering that LS acknowledges explicitly in the quote above that Pope Urban II blessed the ‘mission.’ The problem here is that LS seeks to insulate (read: exculpate) the Church from any responsibility for the Crusades. This view explains why LS can so haphazardly mention ‘the centuries-old conflict with Islam’ as mere afterthought (hooligans v. hooligans!), devaluing its historical significance in the creation of the ‘European’ identity of which LS is so proud.
LS’s thought laid bare is this, if I may: “The uneducated masses who crusaded did not understand the true message of Christianity, and so anything they did ought not be taken as representative of the Christian worldview.” Embedded within is the following assumption: the masses, due to poverty and ignorance, lacked the appropriate moral apparatus to abstain from wrong behavior when the opportunity for lucre was presented to them. But such an assumption (and argument) about ignorance is fundamentally anathema to Christianity. For pre-Reformation Christians, it was not the knowledge of God (impossible!), but hard work, good deeds, and the grace of God which secured one’s salvation. Witness the serfs: you needn’t be an aristocrat, landowner, scholar, nor a saint to lay claim to the Kingdom of Heaven. To diminish the beliefs of Crusaders as ignorant and unrepresentative is to (inadvertently?) reproduce the false dichotomy between faith and reason that LS is so intent to undermine. What we see in Siedentop’s narrative is an ongoing slippage between the history of events and the history of the ideas behind them that ‘enables’ him to conflate the ideals of Christianity and the historical Church when it suits his purpose, and to decouple them when the historical doings of the Church undermine its universal mission.
One must be wearing some seriously rose-tinted glasses not to see or acknowledge the role of the Church in the selective distribution and suppression of knowledge during the early medieval period. Keeping the masses illiterate kept them pliable and dependent on the clergy for guidance. Pace Siedentrop, the church did very little to empower the serfs to fight for their freedom; instead--more pervasively--the church pacified serfs with promises of delayed justice in the afterlife. Now, what can be safely claimed, is that Christian notions of individual worth gradually seeped into the collective conscience of the serfs, leading them to assert that worth in the Peasant Uprisings. However, it is disingenuous to insinuate, as LS does, that the Church played a direct and active role in such developments. I’d argue, rather, that the power of Christianity as a religion triumphed despite the best efforts of the Church to limit the more egalitarian understanding of its meaning.
At the end of the day, Siedentop’s primary thesis--that Christianity played a pivotal role in the development of the Individual is no doubt true. Siedentop’s more controversial claim--that we are wrong to look for the origins of ‘Western’ Liberalism in Antiquity--really cannot be trusted, motivated as it is by a self-serving catholic interest to provide a an apologetic for the Christian Church (and its abuses) during the Middle Ages. Moreover, It is not clear to me why LS needs to advance the controversial claim at all. Acknowledging Christianity’s importance does not require that we devalue significant advancements in the pre-Christian ancient world. It is quite clear from Siedentop’s nearly constant conflation of Athens and the Roman Republic, that he either lacks a nuanced understanding of the significant differences between them, or that he is not troubled to distinguish between democratic and republican forms of government. It is quite odd to tell the story of the origins of the individual without including a substantive discussion of birth of democracy in Athens. And, while Siedentop is correct that the individual was not the primary social unit in Athenian society, it is egregiously misleading to suggest that there was no individual sense of self in Antiquity. One would need to ignore all of Plato and Aristotle’s works to make this the case. Despite how much LS would like to believe that the Christians invented the conscience, wishing it doesn’t make it so.
In summary: LS’s attempt to center the birth of the individual in the Middle Ages is mistaken because of the important cultural contexts and events that are necessarily left out by his unnecessarily narrow focus. On the one hand, Antiquity’s influence is obscured on account of fact that the ‘individual’ was not yet the primary social unit, but this misrepresents Athens’ significance in development of Liberalism itself. On the other hand, LS’s attempt to characterize the medieval Church as a largely benign, civilizing institution is only plausible if he omits or downplays the barbarity of the Crusades (among many other things). Omitting the Crusades requires that he underemphasize the crucial influence of ascendance of Islam in the ‘East’ as a conflicting and co-constitutive ideology.
August 20, 2021
This review is a supplement to my more general review in my general account, see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... In this place I have collected my critical comments on the approach and the focus of Siedentop.
In the first place, his central thesis (that after a process of centuries, Christianity has led to the notion of 'individual' as it is central to modern, secular liberalism) stands and falls with his starting point: the essential inequality of the human and society image of the ancient times, especially with Greeks and Romans. According to Siedentop every person in Antiquity was connected to a family that had a particular order in society; that family was the natural nucleus from which society was built, with a hierarchy both internally and externally, in other words fundamentally unequal. Siedentop posits this with a great deal of certainty, and his principle source for this is .... Fustel de Coulanges, yes, the 19th-century French historian who is also known as the epigone of the positivist approach to history. Strange not? On a side note: Siedentop mainly uses secondary sources throughout the book. And that makes you doubt a little, especially when you think of many well-known antique authors, who speak to us with a distinct personality, and thus individuality. And weren’t there also in Greek and Roman times absolutely no debates about the equality of men? I doubt it.
In the second place, this book in essence looks and feels like an apology of Christianity. Siedentop again and again repeats that the equality concept (moral equality, that is) was introduced by Christianity, and especially by Paul. Of course, there’s something to it, that can’t be denied, but isn’t this exclusivism a bit over the top? The Medieval Church wasn’t exactly a model of moral equality, both in its doctrines, as in its practice. Siedentop defends himself against this criticism by constantly stressing that the whole process of arriving at the concept of a free and equal individual took many centuries, that ancient habits continued to live for a long time and for a part even revived when In the 12th century the writings of Aristotle were eagerly reread (remember the fundamental inequality of the Antiques), and that the church institute itself did indeed apply the equality rule only to a limited extent, and even continued to restrict the freedom rule. But to the author these were rather superficial reflexes, remnants of ancient times, and according to him the ground flow points in the other direction. On the basis of his intellectual history, I can partly follow him, but the practice was indeed a different matter.
By that, we arrive in fact at what is perhaps the weakest element in this book: its teleological tenor. Siedentop in his introduction makes no secret of what his central thesis is, and that he wants to support that thesis by means of a detailed historical analysis. There is nothing wrong with that. But he does so with so much stubbornness, and so exclusively focusing on elements that prove his thesis, that a nuanced representation of things, with an eye for deviating paths, is neglected. The teleological monster, proving history backwards, is the greatest danger of every historiography, and I have the impression that Siedentop has succumbed to the monster, driven by his apologetic urge.
There are still more points of criticism possible, but I’ll stick to only one, to conclude: the eurocentric gaze. Siedentop offers an intellectual history, with almost exclusive attention to what happened in the small circle of Christian intellectuals in the Middle Ages. In doing so, he covers a fairly limited area and his focus remains rather one-sided. Nowhere does he have an eye for external influences (the confrontation with Jewish and Islamic writings and human images, for example), and that is regrettable, because that would have made the story slightly more nuanced.
"Inventing the individual" is certainly not a perfect job. It is not original or super innovative, but Siedentop has succeeded in offering a fascinating, albeit rather one-sided story, that offers much answers but also raises much more questions. His thesis is interesting and cannot simply be swept from the table. But it comes with some caveats.
In the first place, his central thesis (that after a process of centuries, Christianity has led to the notion of 'individual' as it is central to modern, secular liberalism) stands and falls with his starting point: the essential inequality of the human and society image of the ancient times, especially with Greeks and Romans. According to Siedentop every person in Antiquity was connected to a family that had a particular order in society; that family was the natural nucleus from which society was built, with a hierarchy both internally and externally, in other words fundamentally unequal. Siedentop posits this with a great deal of certainty, and his principle source for this is .... Fustel de Coulanges, yes, the 19th-century French historian who is also known as the epigone of the positivist approach to history. Strange not? On a side note: Siedentop mainly uses secondary sources throughout the book. And that makes you doubt a little, especially when you think of many well-known antique authors, who speak to us with a distinct personality, and thus individuality. And weren’t there also in Greek and Roman times absolutely no debates about the equality of men? I doubt it.
In the second place, this book in essence looks and feels like an apology of Christianity. Siedentop again and again repeats that the equality concept (moral equality, that is) was introduced by Christianity, and especially by Paul. Of course, there’s something to it, that can’t be denied, but isn’t this exclusivism a bit over the top? The Medieval Church wasn’t exactly a model of moral equality, both in its doctrines, as in its practice. Siedentop defends himself against this criticism by constantly stressing that the whole process of arriving at the concept of a free and equal individual took many centuries, that ancient habits continued to live for a long time and for a part even revived when In the 12th century the writings of Aristotle were eagerly reread (remember the fundamental inequality of the Antiques), and that the church institute itself did indeed apply the equality rule only to a limited extent, and even continued to restrict the freedom rule. But to the author these were rather superficial reflexes, remnants of ancient times, and according to him the ground flow points in the other direction. On the basis of his intellectual history, I can partly follow him, but the practice was indeed a different matter.
By that, we arrive in fact at what is perhaps the weakest element in this book: its teleological tenor. Siedentop in his introduction makes no secret of what his central thesis is, and that he wants to support that thesis by means of a detailed historical analysis. There is nothing wrong with that. But he does so with so much stubbornness, and so exclusively focusing on elements that prove his thesis, that a nuanced representation of things, with an eye for deviating paths, is neglected. The teleological monster, proving history backwards, is the greatest danger of every historiography, and I have the impression that Siedentop has succumbed to the monster, driven by his apologetic urge.
There are still more points of criticism possible, but I’ll stick to only one, to conclude: the eurocentric gaze. Siedentop offers an intellectual history, with almost exclusive attention to what happened in the small circle of Christian intellectuals in the Middle Ages. In doing so, he covers a fairly limited area and his focus remains rather one-sided. Nowhere does he have an eye for external influences (the confrontation with Jewish and Islamic writings and human images, for example), and that is regrettable, because that would have made the story slightly more nuanced.
"Inventing the individual" is certainly not a perfect job. It is not original or super innovative, but Siedentop has succeeded in offering a fascinating, albeit rather one-sided story, that offers much answers but also raises much more questions. His thesis is interesting and cannot simply be swept from the table. But it comes with some caveats.
January 29, 2019
This is not an easy read. Siedentop delivers an almost purely intellectual history, focusing on mental images of people and society in ancient Antiquity and the Western Middle Ages. He jumps from thinker to thinker, constantly probing the concepts they use and what that says about their image of man and society.
His thesis is simple: the origin of secular liberalism, - conceived of as the intellectual current and attitude that puts the individual at the centre, as a unique acting object and as fundamentally equal to other individuals -, its origins don’t lie in the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, but much earlier, in medieval Christianity. "Secularism is Christianity's greatest gift to the world", he states. Christianity, through Paul and Augustine, put the freedom and equality of the acting man first, in contrast to ancient Antiquity, where inequality determined the character of society and each individual found its place in a certain, natural hierarchy. It took centuries for Christian intellectuals to focus on freedom and equality in their thinking and to make it a natural starting point for people and society. The major breakthrough took place between the 12th and 14th century, in the high Middle Ages. That is the central thesis of this book.
Siedentop certainly is not the first one to emphasize the Christian origins of our modern freedom and equality concept, and to revalue the Middle Ages for their contribution to the gradual development of that concept. But as far as I know, he is the first to do it so systematically and in detail. And every so often he shows unsuspected perspectives on developments in the Middle Ages, which I had not read about anywhere else. In short, it is impressive what Siedentop offers us, although it requires some concentration and perseverance from the reader to keep following his line of thinking.
But ... I did not feel wholly comfortable, as I read this work. There are some issues with the approach and focus of Siedentop, and especially his strongly Christian-apologetic undertone, and the teleological scope (exclusively aimed at proving his position). The critical remarks about that I have collected in my review for my Sense-of-History account on Goodreads. Follow this link https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
His thesis is simple: the origin of secular liberalism, - conceived of as the intellectual current and attitude that puts the individual at the centre, as a unique acting object and as fundamentally equal to other individuals -, its origins don’t lie in the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, but much earlier, in medieval Christianity. "Secularism is Christianity's greatest gift to the world", he states. Christianity, through Paul and Augustine, put the freedom and equality of the acting man first, in contrast to ancient Antiquity, where inequality determined the character of society and each individual found its place in a certain, natural hierarchy. It took centuries for Christian intellectuals to focus on freedom and equality in their thinking and to make it a natural starting point for people and society. The major breakthrough took place between the 12th and 14th century, in the high Middle Ages. That is the central thesis of this book.
Siedentop certainly is not the first one to emphasize the Christian origins of our modern freedom and equality concept, and to revalue the Middle Ages for their contribution to the gradual development of that concept. But as far as I know, he is the first to do it so systematically and in detail. And every so often he shows unsuspected perspectives on developments in the Middle Ages, which I had not read about anywhere else. In short, it is impressive what Siedentop offers us, although it requires some concentration and perseverance from the reader to keep following his line of thinking.
But ... I did not feel wholly comfortable, as I read this work. There are some issues with the approach and focus of Siedentop, and especially his strongly Christian-apologetic undertone, and the teleological scope (exclusively aimed at proving his position). The critical remarks about that I have collected in my review for my Sense-of-History account on Goodreads. Follow this link https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
January 8, 2016
This is a very important book. From the Epilogue: "This is a strange and disturbing moment in Western history. Europeans--out of touch with the roots of their tradition--often seem to lack conviction, while Americans may be succumbing to a dangerously simplistic version of their faith...If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?"
Larry Siedentop, Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, has written a brilliantly clear and passionate defense of the value of Western culture, and a really enlightening analysis of our historical origins.
If you want to understand who we are, and to participate in the leadership of our culture, Inventing the Individual is essential. It is the best book of its kind I have ever read.
Larry Siedentop, Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, has written a brilliantly clear and passionate defense of the value of Western culture, and a really enlightening analysis of our historical origins.
If you want to understand who we are, and to participate in the leadership of our culture, Inventing the Individual is essential. It is the best book of its kind I have ever read.
May 30, 2015
What I really love about this book isn't its erudition, its clarity, the breadth of its author's historical research and cultural knowledge, its quietly cumulative persuasive style - although any of these things would be enough to have gained it the five stars I've given it. Nor is it the remarkable fact that someone has bothered to pen a comprehensive, learned, and accessible survey of where the liberal, individualistic philosophy predominant and ingrained in contemporary European culture came from. No. What I really, really love about it is the way it trashes, completely and utterly, but without ideological posturing or anything resembling political polemic, the quasi-Marxist orthodoxy prevalent in much of academia for the past 50 years, which falsely maintains a reductive, materialist template of philosophical development, and denies the power of ideas to change social and economic reality.
Larry Siedentop only mentions Marx once in nearly 400 pages, but his history demonstrates, beyond any reasonable question, that the reasoning faculty possessed by human beings is even more powerful than the conflicts engendered by temporal economic conflicts, and that irrespective of the "objective conditions" much beloved of Marxists and their apologists the world over, a persuasive philosophical or moral idea can change those conditions, even in the face of opposition from the 'class interests' which supposedly govern the development of all social history. Thus, philosophical currents within the ancient and medieval Christian church are restored to their proper importance, and the crude caricatures imposed, ex post facto, upon Catholic clergy and theologians of those periods separated out into a far more credible and subtle panorama of moral dialectic, whose consequences remain with us today - many of them having directly created our contemporary attitudes toward human rights and freedoms. We patronise the people of the past at our peril.
Medieval religious philosophy was less about angels dancing on pins, and considerably more about what constitutes the individual's responsibility toward others, and the collectivity's responsibility toward the individual. Ironically, of course, Marxism would not have been possible without this, and it is about time the simplistic reductionists who constitute its acolytes - and those of other narrow political and philosophical faiths - started acknowledging the evidence which Larry Siedentop has collected here.
Larry Siedentop only mentions Marx once in nearly 400 pages, but his history demonstrates, beyond any reasonable question, that the reasoning faculty possessed by human beings is even more powerful than the conflicts engendered by temporal economic conflicts, and that irrespective of the "objective conditions" much beloved of Marxists and their apologists the world over, a persuasive philosophical or moral idea can change those conditions, even in the face of opposition from the 'class interests' which supposedly govern the development of all social history. Thus, philosophical currents within the ancient and medieval Christian church are restored to their proper importance, and the crude caricatures imposed, ex post facto, upon Catholic clergy and theologians of those periods separated out into a far more credible and subtle panorama of moral dialectic, whose consequences remain with us today - many of them having directly created our contemporary attitudes toward human rights and freedoms. We patronise the people of the past at our peril.
Medieval religious philosophy was less about angels dancing on pins, and considerably more about what constitutes the individual's responsibility toward others, and the collectivity's responsibility toward the individual. Ironically, of course, Marxism would not have been possible without this, and it is about time the simplistic reductionists who constitute its acolytes - and those of other narrow political and philosophical faiths - started acknowledging the evidence which Larry Siedentop has collected here.
Read
July 14, 2017I dread to think what might happen if anyone came to this book without a fair amount of prior knowledge. Apparently early christianity was where freedom of conscience began - which makes one wonder what all those persecutions of heretics were about, why Constantine moved so swiftly from decreeing general religious toleration in the Edict of Milan to taxing pagans and destroying their temples. The former is mentioned in passing without acknowledgment of how it undermines a core argument; the latter seemingly doesn't merit any reference at all. Similarly, we can "attribute the birth of the individual to Augustine" (are Sappho and Catullus, again unmentioned, really representatives of a society defined solely by class and family?). Siedentop positions himself as a historian rather than an evangelist, but waxes very mystical when extolling the wonders of Paul - a figure now reviled even by many christians, but who here gets the easiest ride I've seen in a long time. Too often the early chapters feel like a very well-done apologia - a covert one, which could easily seduce the unwary, but an apologia nonetheless. This is not to say I don't sometimes enjoy an apologia - GK Chesterton, for instance, is a marvel. But he has a lunatic bravado and a wit about him; this just feels like a sneaky attempt to get assertions past the well-meaning liberal reader unfamiliar with the era. Christianity undermined the power of the paterfamilias, and made marriage a more mutual and equal affair? Tell that to every noble wife who was married off at her father's insistence, then had her husband cheat on her constantly while her own 'virtue' was zealously guarded.
In amongst the flim-flam, though, there are interesting points, the key one being this: christianity had an insistence on judging all souls equally (although this is an equality much more limited in its scope, much less subversive of natural assumptions of human inequality, than Siedentop allows - consider the way that even as late as Shakespeare, royal blood will always out). And this did do something - though again, less than is claimed - to break down the old bonds of family, tribe and race. But wasn't this for the most part a purely selfish project by a power-hungry, aggressively faux-humble church? Even Siedentop has to admit that any genuine freedom from the church - as against the pseudo-liberty of doing what the church tells you you want to do really - was a strictly unintended consequence of this. But what he doesn't seem to note at all is the similarity to the weakening of society and community under the crazed capitalism of recent decades. Any benefit to the individual is a side-effect; the key thing is the erosion of any mutual bonds which can stand against the supreme power.
As it nears the end of the middle ages, the book markedly improves; a suspicion arises that maybe this was the bit Siedentop really wanted to write, and the first 200 pages were a prologue that got out of hand. Lacunae grow fewer and less glaring, and there's an increased readiness to admit that if the church did seed modern liberalism, it did so unintentionally. The section on the battle between the ideas of Aquinas and Ockham, in particular, is excellent. But by that point, too much damage has been done. There is wonderful material distributed unevenly throughout this book; great works will be written which draw on its synthesis and insights. But in and of itself it's far too partial, in both senses, to recommend without strong caveats.
In amongst the flim-flam, though, there are interesting points, the key one being this: christianity had an insistence on judging all souls equally (although this is an equality much more limited in its scope, much less subversive of natural assumptions of human inequality, than Siedentop allows - consider the way that even as late as Shakespeare, royal blood will always out). And this did do something - though again, less than is claimed - to break down the old bonds of family, tribe and race. But wasn't this for the most part a purely selfish project by a power-hungry, aggressively faux-humble church? Even Siedentop has to admit that any genuine freedom from the church - as against the pseudo-liberty of doing what the church tells you you want to do really - was a strictly unintended consequence of this. But what he doesn't seem to note at all is the similarity to the weakening of society and community under the crazed capitalism of recent decades. Any benefit to the individual is a side-effect; the key thing is the erosion of any mutual bonds which can stand against the supreme power.
As it nears the end of the middle ages, the book markedly improves; a suspicion arises that maybe this was the bit Siedentop really wanted to write, and the first 200 pages were a prologue that got out of hand. Lacunae grow fewer and less glaring, and there's an increased readiness to admit that if the church did seed modern liberalism, it did so unintentionally. The section on the battle between the ideas of Aquinas and Ockham, in particular, is excellent. But by that point, too much damage has been done. There is wonderful material distributed unevenly throughout this book; great works will be written which draw on its synthesis and insights. But in and of itself it's far too partial, in both senses, to recommend without strong caveats.
September 4, 2016
Larry Siedentop does many things in this book. He tears down the perception of ancient Greco-Roman thought being the sole intellectual forefather of liberalism, while at the same time arguing that the very feat of liberal secularism is an unintended product, but a product nonetheless, of Christian thought and practice.
Siedentop presents the message of early Christian writing, primarily exemplified through the works of St.Paul, as a revolutionary break from the moral prisms of ancient times, where social inequality was perceived as a mere reflection of a hierarchical natural order, carrying the moral implications of rights being determined by status alone. The Christian message on the other hand, with its focus on the equality of souls and thereby also equal moral status and responsibility for everybody, turned this world-view upside down, and laid down the groundwork for a morality discourse that centered around the individual.
The long and far from linear process of getting from the moral assumptions propagated by the New Testament to the liberal secularism seen in the West today- where society is conceived of as an association of individuals, not families, tribes or castes- makes up the majority of this book. It is probably also where Siedentop generates most of the criticism against his thesis. Questions like “why all the burning, killing, plundering and crusading if Christianity promotes personal autonomy?” are bound to arise. However, the book never attempts to make the theological argument that Christianity has a peaceful or tolerant essence in its core, or that that all the bloodshed carried out in its name was a misconception of the religious message. It simply sets out to show that the ideas that ultimately generated what we understand today as individual rights and freedom of conscience, originated and developed within a Christian context using Christian terminology. Oftentimes, Christian institutions fought against and undermined the very people that promoted these values the most. In the end, these movements ultimately also became the end for the power center that the Church had become during the middle ages.
Siedentop concludes his book by making the thought provoking argument that secularism is the ultimate feat of Christianity, understanding secularism as a form of “freedom of conscience”- which was a central theme in the writings of St.Paul, Augustine and Ockham – or better understood as the freedom of the individual to decide for him or herself what to believe in and how to live. Ultimately, this provides a religious justification for heresy, since secularization is the only condition through which “true” faith can come to existence; that is faith as a product of an inner conviction as opposed to outwards conformity. Only by recognizing this link, Siedentop argues, can we fully appreciate the true legacy of Western moral thought, and stand firm in what he deems to be a current clash of diverging moral intuitions.
Siedentop presents the message of early Christian writing, primarily exemplified through the works of St.Paul, as a revolutionary break from the moral prisms of ancient times, where social inequality was perceived as a mere reflection of a hierarchical natural order, carrying the moral implications of rights being determined by status alone. The Christian message on the other hand, with its focus on the equality of souls and thereby also equal moral status and responsibility for everybody, turned this world-view upside down, and laid down the groundwork for a morality discourse that centered around the individual.
The long and far from linear process of getting from the moral assumptions propagated by the New Testament to the liberal secularism seen in the West today- where society is conceived of as an association of individuals, not families, tribes or castes- makes up the majority of this book. It is probably also where Siedentop generates most of the criticism against his thesis. Questions like “why all the burning, killing, plundering and crusading if Christianity promotes personal autonomy?” are bound to arise. However, the book never attempts to make the theological argument that Christianity has a peaceful or tolerant essence in its core, or that that all the bloodshed carried out in its name was a misconception of the religious message. It simply sets out to show that the ideas that ultimately generated what we understand today as individual rights and freedom of conscience, originated and developed within a Christian context using Christian terminology. Oftentimes, Christian institutions fought against and undermined the very people that promoted these values the most. In the end, these movements ultimately also became the end for the power center that the Church had become during the middle ages.
Siedentop concludes his book by making the thought provoking argument that secularism is the ultimate feat of Christianity, understanding secularism as a form of “freedom of conscience”- which was a central theme in the writings of St.Paul, Augustine and Ockham – or better understood as the freedom of the individual to decide for him or herself what to believe in and how to live. Ultimately, this provides a religious justification for heresy, since secularization is the only condition through which “true” faith can come to existence; that is faith as a product of an inner conviction as opposed to outwards conformity. Only by recognizing this link, Siedentop argues, can we fully appreciate the true legacy of Western moral thought, and stand firm in what he deems to be a current clash of diverging moral intuitions.
February 9, 2016
(In Spanish further down)
The book is entertaining only at times, a few times. It makes a long and tedious examination of Europe's history from pagan and classical Antiquity to the Christian era, the church schisms, the Reformation and the birth of the nationalities. It deals matters of philosophy as well as history, never well explained, not to the layman at least, and whose extension and even presence are not always well justified.
In the last chapter and in the epilogue we do have, finally, a more personal view of the story. The author summarizes the whole book and reveals his intention and his own positioning today in regards to the issues discussed, the issue discussed being the health of Western Liberalism:
by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction (…) Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world (…) Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference.
According to the author in this epilogue Western Liberalism is in danger from within and from without. From within because the peoples have developed strong anti-Christian stances without realizing that they are attacking their own foundations of liberty, since -as the author has tried to explain throughout the book- the reason of being of our Western civilization has been our Greek and Roman culture, Roman Law, and Christianity. The author goes on to propose his own solution to the problem: the “born-again Christians” from America, whom he calls fundamentalists, and the anti-Christians from Europe (I assume it's the Left) must give up their anti-abortion and anti-homosexual stances. Bravo! And why doesn't he give up his? In order to face the external enemy, Islam, that specially non-secular form of society that is incubating more and more into our European territories, this author argues that once a consensus has been reached (to the detriment of the “born-again Christians”) it will be much easier to face, as a united Europe, the pressures and challenges from non-Liberal societies, those Islamic countries where definitely there has been -and the still isn't- no tradition of individual liberty or equality under law.
I have to admit that my candidness didn't allow me to see where the author was coming to until well advanced my read of the book. Traditional parties all over Europe should come to a consensus within our borders to become stronger towards our rivals and potential aggressors. In order to protect our Liberal traditions and stop the wear and tear of our Liberal values within our own societies we must indoctrinate our peoples on how cool those values are, getting rid of those dissident voices, and sticking to “fundamentals” other than just anti-abortion or anti-homosexuality. Let's find a middle-ground, he seems to say. Let's stick together in defense of individual liberty as the base of an egalitarian justice for man and woman. To those Islamic counties we shall say that Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference on religious issues. This is the motto to go under. Well, to believe the author one does have to use some faith. Since today secularism is indeed the tune played by the non-believers and the indifferents. Both this types happen to be the great majority of the population in Europe. Among those who would rather commit suicide rather than live without their State subsidy and those whose goal in life is basically to spend their annual alcoholic-sexual holiday in Majorca (for Spaniards it would be their craze for all kinds of stupid-but-traditional summer parties) there will be no one left to make a stand for individual liberty and our Western Liberal values anywhere in Europe. They wouldn't care for all the historical arguments the author has tried to put forth throughout his book. On the contrary, those who would care, who would be willing to make a stand would be, indeed, those whom the author has told to shut up: the “born-again Christians”, those trouble-makers and mavericks, those anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality people. What a bad PR for our Western congeniality. Consensus is the solution, argues the author. And he asks:
What will happen to its 'civil war' now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam?
The 'civil war' being, according to the author, the bad PR between the opposing forces of -on the one side- those anti-Christians and anti-anything-that-sounds-religious-or-Western and the Christian fundamentalists, the anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality. It's that simple. These poor born-again Christians are, you have to believe him, the real cause of Europe's threat of extinction. Why can't they just be cool as everybody else? See, we in Europe don't care about homosexuals going to jail in Cuba or Syria; why should we care for homosexuals here? We in Europe don't care for women's rights being trampled in Saudi Arabia or Iran; why should be make a fuss about abortion here? It's just not cool, dude! Let's all make love and not war; let's be cool and stand together, and thus we shall save Western Civilization.
Yeah, right.
(In Spanish now)
El libro se hace entretenido solo a ratos. Se hace un repaso a la historia de Europa desde su Antigüedad pagana y clásica, pasando por el cristianismo, los cismas de la iglesia y la llegada de la Reforma y el nacimiento de las nacionalidades. Trata temas tanto filosóficos como históricos, no siempre bien argumentados y cuya presencia y extensión no se justifican bien.
En el último capítulo y en el epílogo sí tenemos, finalmente, las valoraciones del autor que hasta ahora nos faltaban. El autor resume el contenido de su libro y revela cual es su propósito con este libro y su posicionamiento hoy día con respecto a la situación en que se encuentra el liberalismo en Occidente:
by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction (…) Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world (…) Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference.
Según el autor en su epílogo el liberalismo occidental está en peligro desde dentro y desde fuera. Desde dentro porque las gentes han asumido posturas anti-cristianas sin entender que están atacando las mismas bases de su libertad, pues como el libro ha demostrado la razón de existir de Occidente ha sido su cultura greco-romana, el derecho Romano, y el cristianismo. El autor se atreve con la solución para salvar este obstáculo interno: que los “born-again Christians” americanos a quienes llama el autor fundamentalistas cristianos, y los anti-cristianos europeos (entiendo que la izquierda) cedan en sus posturas anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. Bravo, ¿y por qué no cede el autor en las suyas? Para hacer frente al enemigo externo, el fundamentalismo islámico nada secular que se adentra cada vez más como el caballo de Troya en territorio europeo, el autor argumenta que alcanzada la unidad de opinión (su solución anterior) sería más fácil hacer frente, como una Europa unida, a la presión de los países no-liberales, esos países islámicos donde definitivamente no hay ni ha habido tradición de libertad individual ni de igualdad ante la ley.
Debo reconocer mi ingenuidad al no haber visto por donde venía el autor hasta bien avanzado el libro. Para que lo entiendan bien los lectores españoles: este autor propugna una política europea digna de Rajoy: “los que quieran liberalismo o conservadurismo que se vayan al partido liberal o al conservador”, eso había dicho. A Rajoy le va el consenso. A los partidos tradicionales en toda Europa les va el consenso, el llevarse bien con todos, hasta con el peor dictador del mundo: Somos tan tolerantes con otras culturas... Así les va últimamente. El autor no ve otra solución para impedir un mayor desgaste de nuestra cultura liberal que inculcar a la ciudadanía los valores nucleares del liberalismo, aferrararnos a las ideas centrales de nuestra cultura occidental: la libertad individual como base de una justicia igualitaria ante la ley y para todos, hombres y mujeres. A los países islámicos les diremos que secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference. Este es el lema del autor. Pero el creerle me parece un ejercicio de fe, porque hoy día Secularism sí lo esgrimen los no-creyentes y los indiferentes. Los no-creyentes y los indiferentes son la gran masa de población en Europa. Entre los que se suicidarían antes de vivir sin su ayuda del Estado y los que se dedican al turismo alcohólico-sexual en Mallorca y a las sanferminadas veraniegas de España no queda uno que dé un Euro por defender esos valores occidentales que el autor ha justificado desde la Antigüedad hasta el Renacimiento. Precisamente a los que sí les interesa es a aquellos a quienes el autor quiere hacer pagar los platos rotos: a los llamados fundamentalistas cristianos anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. ¡Qué mala imagen dan! El consenso es la solución. El autor pregunta:
What will happen to its 'civil war' now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam?
La “guerra civil” es, según el autor, la mala relación entre los europeos opuestos al cristianismo en general, como extensión de la religión y de la iglesia, y que debido a este odio ven incluso con buenos ojos el islamismo o cualquier ideología que se oponga a nuestra civilización occidental y, por el otro lado, los fundamentalistas que les hacen frente, sí, básicamente para señalarles bien con el dedo, los anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. Increíble: estos pobres individuos resultan ser los responsables del declive de Europa, por no ceder en sus posiciones nada “cool”. Y es que en Irán o Cuba se puede meter en la cárcel a los homosexuales y no pasa nada; en Irán o Palestina se pueden apedrean mujeres y no pasa nada, pero no aquí en Europa, aquí sí está mal, aquí no es chachi-guay-cool. Debemos deducir que al autor le dan igual los homosexuales y los fetos asesinados de niños, que lo que le interesa únicamente es que no haya mal ambiente en Europa por culpa de tonterías como esas y que nos unamos todas como buenos colegas chachi-guays para defendernos del Islamismo y de doctrinas anti-liberales.
El autor quiere que los que no opinan como él se auto-inmolen. Y le parece lo más normal del mundo.
The book is entertaining only at times, a few times. It makes a long and tedious examination of Europe's history from pagan and classical Antiquity to the Christian era, the church schisms, the Reformation and the birth of the nationalities. It deals matters of philosophy as well as history, never well explained, not to the layman at least, and whose extension and even presence are not always well justified.
In the last chapter and in the epilogue we do have, finally, a more personal view of the story. The author summarizes the whole book and reveals his intention and his own positioning today in regards to the issues discussed, the issue discussed being the health of Western Liberalism:
by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction (…) Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world (…) Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference.
According to the author in this epilogue Western Liberalism is in danger from within and from without. From within because the peoples have developed strong anti-Christian stances without realizing that they are attacking their own foundations of liberty, since -as the author has tried to explain throughout the book- the reason of being of our Western civilization has been our Greek and Roman culture, Roman Law, and Christianity. The author goes on to propose his own solution to the problem: the “born-again Christians” from America, whom he calls fundamentalists, and the anti-Christians from Europe (I assume it's the Left) must give up their anti-abortion and anti-homosexual stances. Bravo! And why doesn't he give up his? In order to face the external enemy, Islam, that specially non-secular form of society that is incubating more and more into our European territories, this author argues that once a consensus has been reached (to the detriment of the “born-again Christians”) it will be much easier to face, as a united Europe, the pressures and challenges from non-Liberal societies, those Islamic countries where definitely there has been -and the still isn't- no tradition of individual liberty or equality under law.
I have to admit that my candidness didn't allow me to see where the author was coming to until well advanced my read of the book. Traditional parties all over Europe should come to a consensus within our borders to become stronger towards our rivals and potential aggressors. In order to protect our Liberal traditions and stop the wear and tear of our Liberal values within our own societies we must indoctrinate our peoples on how cool those values are, getting rid of those dissident voices, and sticking to “fundamentals” other than just anti-abortion or anti-homosexuality. Let's find a middle-ground, he seems to say. Let's stick together in defense of individual liberty as the base of an egalitarian justice for man and woman. To those Islamic counties we shall say that Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference on religious issues. This is the motto to go under. Well, to believe the author one does have to use some faith. Since today secularism is indeed the tune played by the non-believers and the indifferents. Both this types happen to be the great majority of the population in Europe. Among those who would rather commit suicide rather than live without their State subsidy and those whose goal in life is basically to spend their annual alcoholic-sexual holiday in Majorca (for Spaniards it would be their craze for all kinds of stupid-but-traditional summer parties) there will be no one left to make a stand for individual liberty and our Western Liberal values anywhere in Europe. They wouldn't care for all the historical arguments the author has tried to put forth throughout his book. On the contrary, those who would care, who would be willing to make a stand would be, indeed, those whom the author has told to shut up: the “born-again Christians”, those trouble-makers and mavericks, those anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality people. What a bad PR for our Western congeniality. Consensus is the solution, argues the author. And he asks:
What will happen to its 'civil war' now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam?
The 'civil war' being, according to the author, the bad PR between the opposing forces of -on the one side- those anti-Christians and anti-anything-that-sounds-religious-or-Western and the Christian fundamentalists, the anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality. It's that simple. These poor born-again Christians are, you have to believe him, the real cause of Europe's threat of extinction. Why can't they just be cool as everybody else? See, we in Europe don't care about homosexuals going to jail in Cuba or Syria; why should we care for homosexuals here? We in Europe don't care for women's rights being trampled in Saudi Arabia or Iran; why should be make a fuss about abortion here? It's just not cool, dude! Let's all make love and not war; let's be cool and stand together, and thus we shall save Western Civilization.
Yeah, right.
(In Spanish now)
El libro se hace entretenido solo a ratos. Se hace un repaso a la historia de Europa desde su Antigüedad pagana y clásica, pasando por el cristianismo, los cismas de la iglesia y la llegada de la Reforma y el nacimiento de las nacionalidades. Trata temas tanto filosóficos como históricos, no siempre bien argumentados y cuya presencia y extensión no se justifican bien.
En el último capítulo y en el epílogo sí tenemos, finalmente, las valoraciones del autor que hasta ahora nos faltaban. El autor resume el contenido de su libro y revela cual es su propósito con este libro y su posicionamiento hoy día con respecto a la situación en que se encuentra el liberalismo en Occidente:
by identifying secularism with non-belief, with indifference and materialism, it deprives Europe of moral authority, playing into the hands of those who are only too anxious to portray Europe as decadent and without conviction (…) Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world (…) Secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference.
Según el autor en su epílogo el liberalismo occidental está en peligro desde dentro y desde fuera. Desde dentro porque las gentes han asumido posturas anti-cristianas sin entender que están atacando las mismas bases de su libertad, pues como el libro ha demostrado la razón de existir de Occidente ha sido su cultura greco-romana, el derecho Romano, y el cristianismo. El autor se atreve con la solución para salvar este obstáculo interno: que los “born-again Christians” americanos a quienes llama el autor fundamentalistas cristianos, y los anti-cristianos europeos (entiendo que la izquierda) cedan en sus posturas anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. Bravo, ¿y por qué no cede el autor en las suyas? Para hacer frente al enemigo externo, el fundamentalismo islámico nada secular que se adentra cada vez más como el caballo de Troya en territorio europeo, el autor argumenta que alcanzada la unidad de opinión (su solución anterior) sería más fácil hacer frente, como una Europa unida, a la presión de los países no-liberales, esos países islámicos donde definitivamente no hay ni ha habido tradición de libertad individual ni de igualdad ante la ley.
Debo reconocer mi ingenuidad al no haber visto por donde venía el autor hasta bien avanzado el libro. Para que lo entiendan bien los lectores españoles: este autor propugna una política europea digna de Rajoy: “los que quieran liberalismo o conservadurismo que se vayan al partido liberal o al conservador”, eso había dicho. A Rajoy le va el consenso. A los partidos tradicionales en toda Europa les va el consenso, el llevarse bien con todos, hasta con el peor dictador del mundo: Somos tan tolerantes con otras culturas... Así les va últimamente. El autor no ve otra solución para impedir un mayor desgaste de nuestra cultura liberal que inculcar a la ciudadanía los valores nucleares del liberalismo, aferrararnos a las ideas centrales de nuestra cultura occidental: la libertad individual como base de una justicia igualitaria ante la ley y para todos, hombres y mujeres. A los países islámicos les diremos que secularism does not mean non-belief or indifference. Este es el lema del autor. Pero el creerle me parece un ejercicio de fe, porque hoy día Secularism sí lo esgrimen los no-creyentes y los indiferentes. Los no-creyentes y los indiferentes son la gran masa de población en Europa. Entre los que se suicidarían antes de vivir sin su ayuda del Estado y los que se dedican al turismo alcohólico-sexual en Mallorca y a las sanferminadas veraniegas de España no queda uno que dé un Euro por defender esos valores occidentales que el autor ha justificado desde la Antigüedad hasta el Renacimiento. Precisamente a los que sí les interesa es a aquellos a quienes el autor quiere hacer pagar los platos rotos: a los llamados fundamentalistas cristianos anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. ¡Qué mala imagen dan! El consenso es la solución. El autor pregunta:
What will happen to its 'civil war' now that Europe is faced with the challenge of Islam?
La “guerra civil” es, según el autor, la mala relación entre los europeos opuestos al cristianismo en general, como extensión de la religión y de la iglesia, y que debido a este odio ven incluso con buenos ojos el islamismo o cualquier ideología que se oponga a nuestra civilización occidental y, por el otro lado, los fundamentalistas que les hacen frente, sí, básicamente para señalarles bien con el dedo, los anti-abortistas y anti-homosexuales. Increíble: estos pobres individuos resultan ser los responsables del declive de Europa, por no ceder en sus posiciones nada “cool”. Y es que en Irán o Cuba se puede meter en la cárcel a los homosexuales y no pasa nada; en Irán o Palestina se pueden apedrean mujeres y no pasa nada, pero no aquí en Europa, aquí sí está mal, aquí no es chachi-guay-cool. Debemos deducir que al autor le dan igual los homosexuales y los fetos asesinados de niños, que lo que le interesa únicamente es que no haya mal ambiente en Europa por culpa de tonterías como esas y que nos unamos todas como buenos colegas chachi-guays para defendernos del Islamismo y de doctrinas anti-liberales.
El autor quiere que los que no opinan como él se auto-inmolen. Y le parece lo más normal del mundo.
December 9, 2018
Siedentop takes a detached historical look at what we mean by terms like 'liberalism' and 'secularism' in our European culture today and the general "culture war" over what "European identity" is and the backdrop behind today's consensus and the way in which Europe has come to think.
He offers a very persuasive and cogent account which focuses on the radical teaching of Christ and St. Paul (in the Epistles) which transformed the way in which individuals were seen not as part of a city, family, etc but as individuals who consciously liberated themselves from the collective thinking of ancient society and a system which very much saw some people as better and others as "tools" (as I believe Aristotle called slaves) who have a specific place within nature. He counters the claim of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Montesquieu who offer an anachronistic historiography in pretending that the Ancients were "secular" and that the Enlightenment was somehow a return to a truer, more rational era before the influence of the Catholic Church. He offers astonishing and very interesting detail on the ways in which the earliest records show that the Roman family was very much its own family, with its own altar, and the paterfamilias as an actual deity - similarly, the city was seen as a place where a deity would reside and it was seen as going against the divine in moving the city (one had to take soil from the old city to the new).
He also offers a sweeping narrative of developments in the first seventeen centuries or so of the Catholic Church, charting through the so-called 'Gregorian revolution' which saw the growth of canon law which he persuasively argues led to the reinvigoration of Roman and civil law which in turn led to the dissolution of Feudalism and the ironic growth of individualism through Absolutism where the monarch came to become the ruler 'of his subjects' rather than of a bunch of different titles and fiefs which layered an individual's identity under a series of different secular authorities. He is also very nuanced in his historical presentation, often tracing the beginnings of ideas and then coming back to them when time has unravelled them as different thinkers latch onto their logical conclusions. He offers a very convincing case for the role of the Catholic Church in promoting the individual (far before Luther, invoking for example the Carolingian period) and of course Protestantism itself cannot be understood without reference to what it was 'protesting' against, and the clear separation of church and state (the state's punishment for crimes is rooted in pragmatism whereas the church's is in morality and religion - a murderer is punished by the state because he is a public threat, the church punishes him through excommunication, etc because he has transgressed the moral law) which had never been clearly divided - in pagan societies, for instance, the religious and the secular were virtually indistinguishable (and according to Siedentop law was very much rooted in custom rather than legal principles).
Where my main disagreement with Siedentop might lie, and this is a very specific and perhaps incorrect judgement, is the way in which he ascribes so much credit to the Nominalists (William of Ockham, Duns Scotus to a lesser extent) as carrying on this radical Christian message of individualism whilst Aquinas (and those 'Scholastics', especially of the Dominican school of thought) were recapitulating Aristotelian ideas and polluting Christianity to a certain extent of the radical message of Christ and St. Paul - a hypothesis which seems to me very questionable. I think Siedentop is right to trace the trajectory from Ockham to Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers (and to state how grieved Ockham would have been to have given birth to much modern intellectual scepticism) but to claim that Aquinas and others argument in favour for universals for example (arguing that say, a chair, has an essence which corresponds with a concept which we ascribe as 'chair' which doesn't exist as some sort of detached Platonic form, but is nevertheless a valid ontological statement as things participate in certain categories which make it possible for us to describe them). Not only does it seem tangential to argue that the claim that universalism-nominalism debate some how corresponds to the question of individualism, but Aquinas is very much - it seems to me - precisely attempting to integrate and filter Aristotle and other Pagan thinkers in the light of what he sees as this new radical vision which is unique to Christianity (without, of course, idealising Aquinas).
Ultimately, this is a fantastic book written with a clarity of prose, the occasional wit, and by a writer who clearly has a flair and a passion for this subject. He presents complex ideas in a way in which a layman can clearly understand be they in law, philosophy, or political theory. I would recommend this to anyone from a purely philosophical perspective (about Christianity and its formative role in European history, as well as Paganism), through to questions of secularism and social liberalism which we all invariably have to end up thinking about and commenting on.
He offers a very persuasive and cogent account which focuses on the radical teaching of Christ and St. Paul (in the Epistles) which transformed the way in which individuals were seen not as part of a city, family, etc but as individuals who consciously liberated themselves from the collective thinking of ancient society and a system which very much saw some people as better and others as "tools" (as I believe Aristotle called slaves) who have a specific place within nature. He counters the claim of Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and Montesquieu who offer an anachronistic historiography in pretending that the Ancients were "secular" and that the Enlightenment was somehow a return to a truer, more rational era before the influence of the Catholic Church. He offers astonishing and very interesting detail on the ways in which the earliest records show that the Roman family was very much its own family, with its own altar, and the paterfamilias as an actual deity - similarly, the city was seen as a place where a deity would reside and it was seen as going against the divine in moving the city (one had to take soil from the old city to the new).
He also offers a sweeping narrative of developments in the first seventeen centuries or so of the Catholic Church, charting through the so-called 'Gregorian revolution' which saw the growth of canon law which he persuasively argues led to the reinvigoration of Roman and civil law which in turn led to the dissolution of Feudalism and the ironic growth of individualism through Absolutism where the monarch came to become the ruler 'of his subjects' rather than of a bunch of different titles and fiefs which layered an individual's identity under a series of different secular authorities. He is also very nuanced in his historical presentation, often tracing the beginnings of ideas and then coming back to them when time has unravelled them as different thinkers latch onto their logical conclusions. He offers a very convincing case for the role of the Catholic Church in promoting the individual (far before Luther, invoking for example the Carolingian period) and of course Protestantism itself cannot be understood without reference to what it was 'protesting' against, and the clear separation of church and state (the state's punishment for crimes is rooted in pragmatism whereas the church's is in morality and religion - a murderer is punished by the state because he is a public threat, the church punishes him through excommunication, etc because he has transgressed the moral law) which had never been clearly divided - in pagan societies, for instance, the religious and the secular were virtually indistinguishable (and according to Siedentop law was very much rooted in custom rather than legal principles).
Where my main disagreement with Siedentop might lie, and this is a very specific and perhaps incorrect judgement, is the way in which he ascribes so much credit to the Nominalists (William of Ockham, Duns Scotus to a lesser extent) as carrying on this radical Christian message of individualism whilst Aquinas (and those 'Scholastics', especially of the Dominican school of thought) were recapitulating Aristotelian ideas and polluting Christianity to a certain extent of the radical message of Christ and St. Paul - a hypothesis which seems to me very questionable. I think Siedentop is right to trace the trajectory from Ockham to Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers (and to state how grieved Ockham would have been to have given birth to much modern intellectual scepticism) but to claim that Aquinas and others argument in favour for universals for example (arguing that say, a chair, has an essence which corresponds with a concept which we ascribe as 'chair' which doesn't exist as some sort of detached Platonic form, but is nevertheless a valid ontological statement as things participate in certain categories which make it possible for us to describe them). Not only does it seem tangential to argue that the claim that universalism-nominalism debate some how corresponds to the question of individualism, but Aquinas is very much - it seems to me - precisely attempting to integrate and filter Aristotle and other Pagan thinkers in the light of what he sees as this new radical vision which is unique to Christianity (without, of course, idealising Aquinas).
Ultimately, this is a fantastic book written with a clarity of prose, the occasional wit, and by a writer who clearly has a flair and a passion for this subject. He presents complex ideas in a way in which a layman can clearly understand be they in law, philosophy, or political theory. I would recommend this to anyone from a purely philosophical perspective (about Christianity and its formative role in European history, as well as Paganism), through to questions of secularism and social liberalism which we all invariably have to end up thinking about and commenting on.
March 27, 2020
3.5 stars
April 3, 2017
Larry Siedentop likes the idea of “moral equality” among individual human beings. He believes that this separates the Christian west from the rest of the world, and provides the seed bed from which sprouts liberal ideology and secular humanism. I think he is dead wrong.
“In its basic assumptions,” he asserts, “liberal thought is the offspring of Christianity” for “liberalism rests on the moral assumptions provided by Christianity." Siedentop posits that the the Middle Ages, rather than the Italian Renaissance, saw the “discovery of the individual” but that is not really new as Oxford historian Sir Richard Southern wrote about this back in 1970 on the subject of Western Society and the Church (namely St. Anselm) in the Middle Ages. Southern felt that the reluctant archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, who at the end of the 11th century grappled with the idea of God becoming man, stated that this did not just humanise God, but and this was the important part, conferred dignity upon humanity. I believe Sir Richard nailed it.
Most people like Mrs Barbara Tuchman because of her blockbuster "A Distant Mirror." They, and her, use the idea of courtly love as the rise of humanism. While I thought the book overwrought, that has been the traditional historical view, so Tuchman made no waves there and neither does Siendentop.
But Siedentop is just off the base on so many points. His understanding of Christian cathecism is bizarre and very self-serving: his analogies of the Great Equalization of the Medieval City and apprentices, but the apprentice theory has nothing to do with "equalization" but more about exploiting lowly paid labour, and keeping them down (think of the union method was grew out of it) ....and for a second or two, you really think he is joking waiting for the shoe to drop.
But it does not because alas, he is not.
“In its basic assumptions,” he asserts, “liberal thought is the offspring of Christianity” for “liberalism rests on the moral assumptions provided by Christianity." Siedentop posits that the the Middle Ages, rather than the Italian Renaissance, saw the “discovery of the individual” but that is not really new as Oxford historian Sir Richard Southern wrote about this back in 1970 on the subject of Western Society and the Church (namely St. Anselm) in the Middle Ages. Southern felt that the reluctant archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, who at the end of the 11th century grappled with the idea of God becoming man, stated that this did not just humanise God, but and this was the important part, conferred dignity upon humanity. I believe Sir Richard nailed it.
Most people like Mrs Barbara Tuchman because of her blockbuster "A Distant Mirror." They, and her, use the idea of courtly love as the rise of humanism. While I thought the book overwrought, that has been the traditional historical view, so Tuchman made no waves there and neither does Siendentop.
But Siedentop is just off the base on so many points. His understanding of Christian cathecism is bizarre and very self-serving: his analogies of the Great Equalization of the Medieval City and apprentices, but the apprentice theory has nothing to do with "equalization" but more about exploiting lowly paid labour, and keeping them down (think of the union method was grew out of it) ....and for a second or two, you really think he is joking waiting for the shoe to drop.
But it does not because alas, he is not.
June 21, 2018
A bit difficult to read but a strong central argument throughout.
Lots of helpful quotes below.
http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/artic...
"This new universality- the attributing of conscience and will to 'all souls'- helped to sound the death knell of ancient slavery." pg173
"The church's 'care of souls' encouraged a form of self-respect that had not been available in antiquity." pg 193
pg230- trial by ordeal was ruined by canon law
pg233- marriage, women and natural children protected by canon law
pg234- authority flows upwards
pg338- "Yet liberalism rests on the moral assumptions provided by Christianity... The view that the Renaissance and its aftermath marked the advent of the modern world- the end of the 'middle ages'- is mistaken. By the fifteenth century canon lawyers and philosophers had already asserted that 'experience' is essentially the experience of individuals, that a range of fundamental rights ought to protect individual agency, that the final authority of any association is to be found in its members, and that the use of reason when understanding processes in the physical world differs radically from normative or a priori reasoning. This is the stuff of modernity."
pg353- "Through its emphasis on human equality, the New Testament stands out against the primary thrust of the ancient world, with its dominant assumption of 'natural' inequality. Indeed, the atmosphere of the New Testament is one of exhilarating detachment from the unthinking constraints of inherited social roles. Hence Paul's frequent references to 'Christian liberty.'
pg360- "Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world, ideas and practices which have often been turned afainst 'excesses' of the Christian church itself. What is secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies [sic] that there is a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to 'equal liberty.'
Lots of helpful quotes below.
http://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/artic...
"This new universality- the attributing of conscience and will to 'all souls'- helped to sound the death knell of ancient slavery." pg173
"The church's 'care of souls' encouraged a form of self-respect that had not been available in antiquity." pg 193
pg230- trial by ordeal was ruined by canon law
pg233- marriage, women and natural children protected by canon law
pg234- authority flows upwards
pg338- "Yet liberalism rests on the moral assumptions provided by Christianity... The view that the Renaissance and its aftermath marked the advent of the modern world- the end of the 'middle ages'- is mistaken. By the fifteenth century canon lawyers and philosophers had already asserted that 'experience' is essentially the experience of individuals, that a range of fundamental rights ought to protect individual agency, that the final authority of any association is to be found in its members, and that the use of reason when understanding processes in the physical world differs radically from normative or a priori reasoning. This is the stuff of modernity."
pg353- "Through its emphasis on human equality, the New Testament stands out against the primary thrust of the ancient world, with its dominant assumption of 'natural' inequality. Indeed, the atmosphere of the New Testament is one of exhilarating detachment from the unthinking constraints of inherited social roles. Hence Paul's frequent references to 'Christian liberty.'
pg360- "Secularism is Christianity's gift to the world, ideas and practices which have often been turned afainst 'excesses' of the Christian church itself. What is secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies [sic] that there is a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to 'equal liberty.'
May 10, 2015
Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentop concludes by asking a question worth indulging, “If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?”
Sidentop attempts to trace the intellectual history of individualism through the Middle Ages to early modernity. In so doing he makes the claim that liberalism has its foundation in various achievements of Christian theology, moral philosophy, canon law, and, consequently, political theory.
This is the second work I’ve read in the past few months that has sought to challenge the perception of the Middle Ages as a dark, or historically impertinent period. In fact, both books ended with calls to revisit the Middle Ages for insights into our contemporary circumstances and thought. In particular, raising the question of early-modern anticlericalism’s responsibility for our present fear of religious fervor.
This is perhaps representative of an important change in historiography, for the latter question, but also to potentially reclaim a lost millennium.
About face, backward, march.
Sidentop attempts to trace the intellectual history of individualism through the Middle Ages to early modernity. In so doing he makes the claim that liberalism has its foundation in various achievements of Christian theology, moral philosophy, canon law, and, consequently, political theory.
This is the second work I’ve read in the past few months that has sought to challenge the perception of the Middle Ages as a dark, or historically impertinent period. In fact, both books ended with calls to revisit the Middle Ages for insights into our contemporary circumstances and thought. In particular, raising the question of early-modern anticlericalism’s responsibility for our present fear of religious fervor.
This is perhaps representative of an important change in historiography, for the latter question, but also to potentially reclaim a lost millennium.
About face, backward, march.
September 6, 2014
Oxford professor Siedentop's new book will doubtless have its early knee-jerk detractors, especially among those who are either secular liberals or evangelical Protestants. However, they will have difficulty refuting his thesis, for Siedentop has produced the goods to buttress it. Through meticulous research into the history of ancient, medieval, and contemporary assumptions, he has simultaneously overturned the Enlightenment's historical mythology of the Middle Ages, demonstrated the basis of personal human rights in Christian morality, and challenged both left and right to remember whence their rationality in politics has arisen and whither the challenge to the West's future may lie, all while being careful to recognize the complicated nature of social changes. This really is an important work that should bring about a sea change in Western humanity's understanding of its development. Although some scholars may chip at the edges on minor issues, Larry Siedentop's principle claims will not be easily undermined.
May 16, 2020
Larry Siedentop’s broad, encyclopedic history of the concept “individual,” as developed in medieval European societies influenced by Christian claims of universal moral equality, is an impressive, if nevertheless flawed, effort to tell an overlooked story of unintended consequences. In effect, Siedentop strives to demonstrate that liberalism, rooted in basic claims about moral equality, individual liberty, the sacrosanctity of conscience, and representative authority, is the descendent of Christianity, even if Christian thinkers who developed such concepts did not intend to produce modern liberalism. This story is important to tell, Siedentop insists, because modern secularists (many of them liberals) position themselves in opposition to Christianity, while fundamentalist Christians likewise position themselves in opposition to liberalism as an atheistic secular project. Both sides, Siedentop claims, have inherited and appropriated a mistaken narrative disseminated by early modern philosophes and political theorists, whose proto-liberal humanism contested the hierarchical authoritarianism of a reactionary Catholic Church that consistently allied itself with royalists and anti-liberals from the start of the French Revolution to at least the First Vatican Council. Yet to accept these humanists’ claims at face value, and in particular to accept their own claims that they inherited their secular, proto-liberal values from a freer, less superstitious, and more individualist ancient milieu, utterly misses complex intellectual and institutional developments in the medieval period, when Christian monastics, popes, canon lawyers, and university professors developed the very ideas that later humanists would use to discredit and undermine ecclesial authority. In particular, to accept such a narrative likewise paints a false portrait of radically unequal ancient Mediterranean societies and the philosophical assumptions that underpinned its social cohesion. To understand the roots of modern liberalism, then, one must trace the development of its constitutive ideas across more than a millennium, as the radical ideas first offered by Paul slowly conquered the Mediterranean world, and as Christians worked out the full implications of these ideas in later centuries.
Siedentop tells a persuasive story. In the first three chapters, he seeks to paint a very different portrait of ancient Mediterranean societies than that offered by Renaissance humanists, who saw Greece and Rome as less superstitious, less authoritarian, and more rational societies than those of post-Reformation, early modern Europe. Siedentop strives to dispel this myth: the family, not the individual, was the fundamental unit of society in the ancient world, with the paterfamilias as the authoritative head of a hierarchical household with absolute power over his subordinates, which included children, women, and slaves. A hierarchical model of society similarly structured the ancient city, with citizens at the top and resident aliens, then slaves at the bottom. For most ancient philosophers, the cosmos, too, was structured hierarchically; inequality was not a sociocultural phenomenon, but a natural consequence of the hierarchical, rational order of the universe. On Siedentop’s narrative, Christianity, and especially Paul, upended the intellectual assumptions that underpinned the ancient Mediterranean world’s social mores. “Paul’s vision of a mystical union with Christ introduces a revised notion of rationality—what he sometimes describes as the ‘foolishness’ of God,” Siedentop writes. This vision “amounted to the discovery of human freedom” rooted in “the moral equality of all humans . . . a status shared equally by all (59-60). Paul, in other words, asserted that each and every human person has a pre-social identity constituted by his or her relationship with Christ, with respect to which she or he has freedom—that is, the freedom that accompanies faith, by which the Christian is liberated from enslavement to sin. For Paul, because Christ atoned for the sins of all humanity, this freedom is universally shared which, in turn, funds the Christian moral notions of moral equality and reciprocity. Since no one is excluded from the Christ-relationship, no one is superior or inferior to anyone else. Thus Paul, per Siedentop, subverts the ancient assumption that inequality is rational and, just as importantly, that one’s identity is exhausted by one’s social role and responsibilities. Paul carves out a pre-social, “inner” realm of identity that precedes and is ultimately more important than one’s “external” identity, tethered to whether one is a citizen or slave, man or woman.
Siedentop calls this a “moral revolution” and insists that the Pauline notion of moral equality is utterly novel in the ancient Mediterranean world. He probably overstates his case. Siedentop demonstrates little familiarity with the many variations of ancient philosophy and is over-reliant on Plato and Aristotle in his contrast between Paul and his pre-Christian forebears; he thus overlooks to what extent Paul inherits, either consciously or not, philosophical ideas related to moral equality and freedom that precede him—the Ciceronian idea of humanitas, for example, hints at some broader notion of humanity, even if Cicero understands it primarily as a civic virtue. The irony in this hyperbole, however, is that Siedentop’s thesis does not require Paul to be as novel or unique as he repeatedly insists; Paul only needs to be as important and influential to the later Christian tradition that Siedentop focuses on later in the book in order to establish that Pauline moral equality is the essential idea upon which Christianity is founded. This, obviously, is a far easier and more reasonable case to make even if, like Siedentop, I tend to view the Pauline moral vision as more radically distinct from Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, or any of the ancient mystery cults than scholars of ancient philosophy and classicists would probably have it. If Siedentop is correct, as I think he is, to identify moral equality rooted in the mystical Body of Christ as central to Pauline Christianity, and if the importance of this idea persisted in Christianity as it spread across the Roman empire and soon came to dominate the social and political life of medieval Europe, then whether Paul’s moral vision marked a “revolution” is not especially relevant to the thesis advanced in this book—namely, that Christianity’s emphasis on moral equality and equal liberty led to institutional, intellectual, and political developments that ultimately birthed modern liberalism.
Siedentop covers an immense period of time as he traces the development of Pauline moral equality and Christian liberty over hundreds of years with subtly and nuance. This story is too complex to summarize here, but it suffices to mention that it involves numerous twists and turns in the evolution of the Catholic Church, its relationship with the Germanic invaders of the late Roman empire, the development of canon law, the nascent popularity of monasticism, later monastic reform movements, and the ecclesial subversion of feudalism. In particular, Siedentop is impressively attuned to the development of law in the centuries after the fall of the western Roman empire; he carefully explains the complex relationship between the Roman law the Germanic invaders inherited from late antique society, tribal custom, and positive law fashioned by Frankish rulers in conjunction with ecclesial authorities and clerical advisors. The most consequential moment in this longue durée comes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, when Catholic popes who strove to establish their supremacy over secular monarchs turned to the pastoral rhetoric of “care of souls” to establish a direct relationship between each and every Christian and the pope, their pastoral father and vicar of Christ on earth. Canon lawyers worked with the popes to establish the basis for papal supremacy, captured in the notion of the papacy’s plenitudo potestatis, its “plenitude of power.” This idea, derived from the Pauline notion of universal moral equality, was the basis for the Church’s complete autonomy from secular control and thus further institutionalized the basic Christian thesis that there are two types of authority: one secular, the other spiritual. Europe’s rulers wielded temporal secular authority, while the pope wielded spiritual authority, and whereas each ruler’s authority was mediated by intermediary feudal authorities and a byzantine mixture of positive law, custom, and Roman law to fill whatever lacunae surfaced between them, the pope’s authority vis-à-vis individual Christians was direct and immediate. On this model, the fundamental unit of (Christian) society is the individual, not the collective.
Little could the Catholic popes envision how, in later centuries, secular rulers would employ precisely the same framework to establish their supreme authority over their subjects in an effort to dispense with intermediate relations between individuals and their monarch. More to the point, it was far from both the popes’ and absolute monarchs’ minds how individual citizens could also mobilize the conceptual notion of moral equality to undermine the authority of both church and (monarchical) state. That is, Siedentop consistently reasserts that even if the fundamental tenets of modern liberalism have their roots in Christian moral discourse, ecclesial institutions, and canon law, it is not as if either Paul, Pope Innocent III, or Louis XI intended to create the modern liberal project; they were not even aware that the ideas of moral equality, freedom of conscience, and the like could or would coalesce into a comprehensive political theory. In fact, at least with respect to the medieval popes and absolute monarchs, they would (and later did) oppose political liberalism in the form it would take by the time of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, Siedentop insists, whatever these historical actors would make of modern liberalism, and whatever current liberals do make of liberal Europe’s Christian ancestry, there is an intimate relationship between liberalism and Christianity indexed to the principle of moral equality. Reactionary anti-liberal Christians and atheistic liberal secularists would do well, Siedentop tells us, to remind themselves of this connection.
I stated earlier that while I find Siedentop’s thesis persuasive and meticulously defended, this book is nevertheless flawed. To conclude, then, I will canvass a few of the ways in which Siedentop’s colossal effort falls short. First and foremost, as numerous other reviewers have noted, Siedentop relies too heavily on secondary sources, however well-respected those sources are. This is especially problematic in the first three chapters on ancient Mediterranean society, in which Siedentop draws almost exclusively from Fustel de Coulanges’s The Ancient City. In Chapter Two, for example, twelve out of Siedentop’s thirteen footnotes reference The Ancient City. However sophisticated Fustel de Coulanges’s analyses of Greco-Roman societies may be, it is simply not excusable to rely so heavily on a nineteenth-century historian to the exclusion of more recent work from classicists and ancient historians whose scholarship is more focused and, typically, more attentive to non-textual sources. The trend continues in later chapters as well, in which Siedentop leans on historians such as Peter Brown, François Guizot, and Brian Tierney to tell much of his story. Relatedly, and even more problematically, is Siedentop’s ostensible lack of familiarity with primary sources relevant to his project; in each of the first three chapters, almost every primary text cited is quoted from a secondary source and, once more, this habit persists in later chapters. While Siedentop has clearly read widely, his failure to plumb the depths of the primary source material undermines the credibility of his claims; his footnotes imply that rather than consult the primary texts he cites to interpret them himself, he trusts that his secondary sources have translated them faithfully and interpreted them adequately. Good historians do not do this. While these bad research habits do not completely discredit Siedentop’s thesis, they may well inhibit its scholarly reach in academic circles where such practices are simply not permitted. This would be an unfortunate outcome, since Siedentop has an important, even powerful story to tell. Perhaps other historians amenable to his claims—specialists in each of the periods this book covers—can correct these blunders with additional research more attentive to the vast array of primary texts that implicate Siedentop’s broader historical project.
Siedentop tells a persuasive story. In the first three chapters, he seeks to paint a very different portrait of ancient Mediterranean societies than that offered by Renaissance humanists, who saw Greece and Rome as less superstitious, less authoritarian, and more rational societies than those of post-Reformation, early modern Europe. Siedentop strives to dispel this myth: the family, not the individual, was the fundamental unit of society in the ancient world, with the paterfamilias as the authoritative head of a hierarchical household with absolute power over his subordinates, which included children, women, and slaves. A hierarchical model of society similarly structured the ancient city, with citizens at the top and resident aliens, then slaves at the bottom. For most ancient philosophers, the cosmos, too, was structured hierarchically; inequality was not a sociocultural phenomenon, but a natural consequence of the hierarchical, rational order of the universe. On Siedentop’s narrative, Christianity, and especially Paul, upended the intellectual assumptions that underpinned the ancient Mediterranean world’s social mores. “Paul’s vision of a mystical union with Christ introduces a revised notion of rationality—what he sometimes describes as the ‘foolishness’ of God,” Siedentop writes. This vision “amounted to the discovery of human freedom” rooted in “the moral equality of all humans . . . a status shared equally by all (59-60). Paul, in other words, asserted that each and every human person has a pre-social identity constituted by his or her relationship with Christ, with respect to which she or he has freedom—that is, the freedom that accompanies faith, by which the Christian is liberated from enslavement to sin. For Paul, because Christ atoned for the sins of all humanity, this freedom is universally shared which, in turn, funds the Christian moral notions of moral equality and reciprocity. Since no one is excluded from the Christ-relationship, no one is superior or inferior to anyone else. Thus Paul, per Siedentop, subverts the ancient assumption that inequality is rational and, just as importantly, that one’s identity is exhausted by one’s social role and responsibilities. Paul carves out a pre-social, “inner” realm of identity that precedes and is ultimately more important than one’s “external” identity, tethered to whether one is a citizen or slave, man or woman.
Siedentop calls this a “moral revolution” and insists that the Pauline notion of moral equality is utterly novel in the ancient Mediterranean world. He probably overstates his case. Siedentop demonstrates little familiarity with the many variations of ancient philosophy and is over-reliant on Plato and Aristotle in his contrast between Paul and his pre-Christian forebears; he thus overlooks to what extent Paul inherits, either consciously or not, philosophical ideas related to moral equality and freedom that precede him—the Ciceronian idea of humanitas, for example, hints at some broader notion of humanity, even if Cicero understands it primarily as a civic virtue. The irony in this hyperbole, however, is that Siedentop’s thesis does not require Paul to be as novel or unique as he repeatedly insists; Paul only needs to be as important and influential to the later Christian tradition that Siedentop focuses on later in the book in order to establish that Pauline moral equality is the essential idea upon which Christianity is founded. This, obviously, is a far easier and more reasonable case to make even if, like Siedentop, I tend to view the Pauline moral vision as more radically distinct from Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, or any of the ancient mystery cults than scholars of ancient philosophy and classicists would probably have it. If Siedentop is correct, as I think he is, to identify moral equality rooted in the mystical Body of Christ as central to Pauline Christianity, and if the importance of this idea persisted in Christianity as it spread across the Roman empire and soon came to dominate the social and political life of medieval Europe, then whether Paul’s moral vision marked a “revolution” is not especially relevant to the thesis advanced in this book—namely, that Christianity’s emphasis on moral equality and equal liberty led to institutional, intellectual, and political developments that ultimately birthed modern liberalism.
Siedentop covers an immense period of time as he traces the development of Pauline moral equality and Christian liberty over hundreds of years with subtly and nuance. This story is too complex to summarize here, but it suffices to mention that it involves numerous twists and turns in the evolution of the Catholic Church, its relationship with the Germanic invaders of the late Roman empire, the development of canon law, the nascent popularity of monasticism, later monastic reform movements, and the ecclesial subversion of feudalism. In particular, Siedentop is impressively attuned to the development of law in the centuries after the fall of the western Roman empire; he carefully explains the complex relationship between the Roman law the Germanic invaders inherited from late antique society, tribal custom, and positive law fashioned by Frankish rulers in conjunction with ecclesial authorities and clerical advisors. The most consequential moment in this longue durée comes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, when Catholic popes who strove to establish their supremacy over secular monarchs turned to the pastoral rhetoric of “care of souls” to establish a direct relationship between each and every Christian and the pope, their pastoral father and vicar of Christ on earth. Canon lawyers worked with the popes to establish the basis for papal supremacy, captured in the notion of the papacy’s plenitudo potestatis, its “plenitude of power.” This idea, derived from the Pauline notion of universal moral equality, was the basis for the Church’s complete autonomy from secular control and thus further institutionalized the basic Christian thesis that there are two types of authority: one secular, the other spiritual. Europe’s rulers wielded temporal secular authority, while the pope wielded spiritual authority, and whereas each ruler’s authority was mediated by intermediary feudal authorities and a byzantine mixture of positive law, custom, and Roman law to fill whatever lacunae surfaced between them, the pope’s authority vis-à-vis individual Christians was direct and immediate. On this model, the fundamental unit of (Christian) society is the individual, not the collective.
Little could the Catholic popes envision how, in later centuries, secular rulers would employ precisely the same framework to establish their supreme authority over their subjects in an effort to dispense with intermediate relations between individuals and their monarch. More to the point, it was far from both the popes’ and absolute monarchs’ minds how individual citizens could also mobilize the conceptual notion of moral equality to undermine the authority of both church and (monarchical) state. That is, Siedentop consistently reasserts that even if the fundamental tenets of modern liberalism have their roots in Christian moral discourse, ecclesial institutions, and canon law, it is not as if either Paul, Pope Innocent III, or Louis XI intended to create the modern liberal project; they were not even aware that the ideas of moral equality, freedom of conscience, and the like could or would coalesce into a comprehensive political theory. In fact, at least with respect to the medieval popes and absolute monarchs, they would (and later did) oppose political liberalism in the form it would take by the time of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, Siedentop insists, whatever these historical actors would make of modern liberalism, and whatever current liberals do make of liberal Europe’s Christian ancestry, there is an intimate relationship between liberalism and Christianity indexed to the principle of moral equality. Reactionary anti-liberal Christians and atheistic liberal secularists would do well, Siedentop tells us, to remind themselves of this connection.
I stated earlier that while I find Siedentop’s thesis persuasive and meticulously defended, this book is nevertheless flawed. To conclude, then, I will canvass a few of the ways in which Siedentop’s colossal effort falls short. First and foremost, as numerous other reviewers have noted, Siedentop relies too heavily on secondary sources, however well-respected those sources are. This is especially problematic in the first three chapters on ancient Mediterranean society, in which Siedentop draws almost exclusively from Fustel de Coulanges’s The Ancient City. In Chapter Two, for example, twelve out of Siedentop’s thirteen footnotes reference The Ancient City. However sophisticated Fustel de Coulanges’s analyses of Greco-Roman societies may be, it is simply not excusable to rely so heavily on a nineteenth-century historian to the exclusion of more recent work from classicists and ancient historians whose scholarship is more focused and, typically, more attentive to non-textual sources. The trend continues in later chapters as well, in which Siedentop leans on historians such as Peter Brown, François Guizot, and Brian Tierney to tell much of his story. Relatedly, and even more problematically, is Siedentop’s ostensible lack of familiarity with primary sources relevant to his project; in each of the first three chapters, almost every primary text cited is quoted from a secondary source and, once more, this habit persists in later chapters. While Siedentop has clearly read widely, his failure to plumb the depths of the primary source material undermines the credibility of his claims; his footnotes imply that rather than consult the primary texts he cites to interpret them himself, he trusts that his secondary sources have translated them faithfully and interpreted them adequately. Good historians do not do this. While these bad research habits do not completely discredit Siedentop’s thesis, they may well inhibit its scholarly reach in academic circles where such practices are simply not permitted. This would be an unfortunate outcome, since Siedentop has an important, even powerful story to tell. Perhaps other historians amenable to his claims—specialists in each of the periods this book covers—can correct these blunders with additional research more attentive to the vast array of primary texts that implicate Siedentop’s broader historical project.
June 26, 2020
This book was fantastic. I had been looking for a tracing of ideas in Western political philosophy, but most books begin with the Renaissance, or the Scientific Revolution or the Age of Discovery or the Enlightenment, but this one actually shows how the political ideas of those ages began long before, and bridges Ancient Greek and Roman ideas through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. The theme that allows that bridge is the evolution of the revolutionary ideas of the Christian Church of the "golden rule" do to others as you would have done to you. With all "souls" equal before God, it subverts the ancient hierarchies that centered around the Paterfamilias or a hierarchical "natural order" of beings. However, since that idea was so revolutionary, it took 1500 years to evolve that idea inside of the Church and inside of the fledgling political units of Western Europe.
It would be easy to get lost in these unexciting centuries but the author traces the evolution of the idea very carefully, century by century, minor evolution by minor evolution in clear, crisp, and lively writing. Even the references in the back are well done, with each chapter focused on a relatively small number of sources that are discussed in more detail in the back, so the text is not broken up into a mass of footnotes or references. Its like the author read the best 5 books for each century and summarized them chapter by chapter, tracing out the evolution of Western Liberalism as he went. Really well done.
OK - the specifics (I sometimes paraphrase and sometimes direct quote what I like or find interesting):
Chapter 1: The Ancient Family - He starts in a very cool beginning, reminding us that the ancient family was nothing like what we consider the family to be, and that society was not seen as a group of individuals, but a group of families. Referencing the work of N. D. Foustel de Coulanges, he reminds us that the family was the basic religious institution, with each family worshiping the family ancestors who had a direct line through the male line up to the patriarch. Altars within each family to these ancestors had a sacred fire that was to be kept burning an the role of the patriarch was not just an economic and military role, but a religious role to perform the sacred rituals to keep the ancestors happy. Nobody was an individual, you were part of the family line and each person had a role to play.
Chapter 2: The Ancient City - The ancient city was founded by one or more patriarchs, who's families constituted the city's leaders and whose ancestors were the city's ancestors. Over time, keeping these ancestors satisfied turned into cults within each city of mythical gods "as the scale of association increased, the gods of nature or polytheism became more important - for these were the gods that could more easily be shared. Laws of the city were the laws of the religion and patriotism was intense because everything - the family, property, laws, pride were all tied up in the success of the city. "Liberty" to the ancient citizen was the liberty to participate in that city life and its politics and military. The domestic sphere was inconsequential and those who were not participants were second class. Over time in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the battles were between aristocrats who held on to the priestly power of the cities and of expanded citizenship to participate in government.
Chapter 3: The Ancient Cosmos: Wider participation required better skills at debate, which led to skills such as logic and rhetoric to be prized and developed, which led to the emergence of abstract philosophical thinking out of religion and poetry (Athens as the center and symbol of that). Admiration of other citizens was what mattered, and it could be achieved by single-minded devotion to the public weal. Rationality was supreme.
Chapter 4: The World Turned Upside Down: Paul - Jews had a different vision of time - uni-linear with a progression of God's will, not cyclical, and the Law embodied his Will for ALL people (not just the citizen class), none could resist it. "The experience of submitting to a remote Roman ruler" may have led to an understanding of a more universal submission to larger forces beyond the city state. "The set of roles provided by the city state was disrupted" and people turned inward instead. Saul of Tarsus, who became St. Paul, "invented" Christianity as a religion and created an entirely new conception of God in Christ. "The Christ stood for the presence of God in the world". "For Paul, it was through the Christ that God was reconciling the world - individual souls - to himself". "Paul's conception of the Christ overturns the assumption on which ancient thinking had hitherto rested, the assumption of natural inequality. Instead Pail wagers on human equality. It is a wager that turns on transparency, that we can and should see ourselves in others, and others in ourselves. A leap of faith in human equality reveals - beneath the historical accumulation of unequal social statuses and roles 0 the universal availability of a God-given foundation of human action, the free action of love. That action is what Paul's vision of the Christ revealed. As deployed by Paul, the concept of the Christ becomes a challenge to the ancient belief that humans are subject to an immutable order or 'fate'. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus amounted to the discovery of human freedom - of a moral agency potentially available to each and everyone, that is, to individuals."
The argument that all humans can become 'one in Christ'.. reveals Paul grafting a new abstractness onto Jewish thought. It is an abstraction that would foster Christian understanding of community as the free association of the wills of morally equal agents, what Paul describes through the metaphor as the 'body of Christ'. The metaphor conjures up a mystical union which moralizes individual wills by relating them to the source of their being. This mixture of elements which became Christianity was profoundly indebted to developments in Greek thought. For the discourse of citizenship in the polis had initiated a distancing of persons from mere family to tribal identities, while later Hellenistic philosophy had introduced an even more wide ranging, speculative 'universalist' idiom. That intellectual breadth had, in turn, been reinforced by the subjection of so much of the Mediterranean world to a single power, Rome. What Paul did in effect, was to combine the abstracting potential of later Hellenistic philosophy - its speculations about a universal or 'human' nature - with Judaism's preoccupation with conformity to a higher or divine will. In order to do so, Paul ceases to think of that will as an external, coercive agency."
Chapter 5: The Truth Within: Moral Equality. - very early Christianity after Paul, reducing the focus on reason that came from Greek Philosophy.
Chapter 6: Heroism Redefined: Lots of martyrs and focus on the needs of the poor reshaped the views of urban elites towards Christianity.
Chapter 7: A New Form of Association: Monasticism. Theological issues were being discussed on the streets. "By the third century, 'dedicated virgins' had acquired a new prestige in upper class families, and indeed, in the Christian community at large. What was the most striking evidence of a woman's freedom in the 'new age'? The answer was sexual renunciation, a manifest act of individual will. Monasticism soon gave these moral developments further impetus. The creation of ascetic communities for women - what were to become convents - marked the emergence of women from the ancient family, from the permanent subordinations of the domestic sphere. It is hardly surprising that upper class women led the way. But that was not all. The way of life associated with the monks also had another important, if unintended, consequence. It rehabilitated 'work' separating work from its association with a servile status, from the stain of ancient slavery. Work acquired a new dignity, becoming even a requirement of self-respect." As the pax romana was being undermined by the overthrow of the Western Empire by the Germanic invasions and the Muslim conquests, monasticism preserved an image of social order, but not the social order of the ancient world, a glimpse of 'another world' that approximated Christian moral intuitions.
Chapter 8: The Weakness of the Will: Augustine - "That intense account of Augustine's relations with himself and with his God.. has led some to attribute the birth of the individual to Augustine. For he portrayed 'the will' as the indispensable middle term between 'reason' and 'appetite'. He embedded the will in our conception of the self." "For Augustine, the inwardness of the individual is by no means a sphere of silence. It is a sphere of dialogue, of conversation with God... Inventing the individual - in the sense of acknowledging the equality of humans in the face of their maker - is not an exercise leading to isolation. Instead it is the creation of a self-consciousness that undercuts merely social identities, statuses conferred by the conventional terms of a language.""Augustine insisted, in his great work, the City of God, that human weakness and vices beset all societies (the 'earthly cities'). All were subject to the vicissitudes that follow from the weaknesses of human nature. Nor was the church exempt. The city of God (or 'eternal city') could not therefore be identified with the organized church. At best, the church could help to open the individual soul to the work of grace, encouraging humility, continence, and prayer. ... Nonetheless, it was the task of the church to try to create and tend to consciences."
Chapter 9: Shaping New Attitudes and Habits: Lots of changes, but slowly. Christian beliefs destroyed the ancient family and its eldest male as chief priest (and the power that comes with it). This led to more freedom for women and questioning slavery. Medieval cities were born with the Christian Basilica, with the Bishop as the de-facto ruler of the city (based on "democratic" rather than "aristocratic" base of power, even though bishops came from aristocratic families).
Chapter 10: Distinguishing Spiritual from Temporal Power. "We must try to put ourselves into the minds of the clergy who were faced with the collapse of the empire. They had to deal with invaders with whom they did not at first share any beliefs and who had a virtual monopoly of material force. They were overcome by fear. What they sought was not supremacy but survival. And survival involved getting some access to the minds of the invaders. Rather than directly challenging Germanic customs, the clergy sought to identify a sphere of their own, a sphere where force, by its very nature, could not prevail. And they had long since been used to distinguishing the 'sacred from the 'profane', invoking Christ;s injunction to five to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is his. Not they pointed to a "God-given law" that offered to mortals the hope of life after death, as a 'moral' law distinct from custom or human command. When dealing with the Germanic invaders, the clergy could therefore hardly fail to dwell upon the difference between eternal or 'spiritual' and mere temporal concerns. The clergy defended a realm to which they alone offered access. The law of an invisible king - the Chris who offered hope of 'salvation' to individuals - became a moral sword wielded with dramatic effect by the hard-pressed clergy.
"If the Christian Church had not existed, the ... world must have been abandoned to purely material force. The church alone exercised a moral power. It did more: it sustained, it spread abroad the ideas of a rule, of a law superior to all human laws."
"The urgent need for the church to create a tolerably educated clerical class contributed to an important difference between Western Europe and the Eastern Empire. In the latter, the imperial administration remained in place. The Eastern Empire preserved... relations between church and state that had been characteristic of the whole empire in the century after Constantine adopted Christianity. Those relations were marked by a considerable deference of the church to the state. Memories of subordination died hard, especially when mixed with gratitude for the official adoption of Christianity. In consequence, the clergy in the East did not feel any need to reshape the state."
Chapter 11: Barbarian Codes, Roman Law, and Christian Intuitions. Church began to try to mold the attitudes of the Goths, Burgundians, Merovingians, and Franks who had taken over the Roman empire. Church tried to fight against polytheism and customary practices and to strip intentionality from the physical world. Then Charlemagne came on the scene, and ruled for 50 years, dominating the Church but also building it up.
Chapter 12: The Carolingian Compromise - Charlemagne had his subjects take oaths, and those oaths included language like "Every Christian Person" and "absolutely everyone, without exception", implying that even women and slaves had souls and should be treated as such. He also insisted all people understand the oath and do it of their own *will*. "The emphasis on individual will and understanding represents a momentous moral step." "Nonetheless, the universalizing of oath taking - assimilating the relationship of superiors and inferiors to that of lords and their oath-bound followers - reveals the rhetoric of the Christian people modifying German habits. For it introduces, however precariously, an element of free will into general social relations, acknowledgement of a role for conscience. Charlemagne recommended that all free men should place themselves under a superior or lord, in return for benefits and protection. No doubt local circumstances made that a practical necessity. Yet by presenting it as an act of will, he introduced a new feature into the relations between rulers and the ruled."
Meanwhile Charlemagne tried to follow the Pope Gregory the Great's advice. "...Gregory turned the abbot's authority over monks into a model not only for bishops but also for lay rulers. In order to achieve his goal, Gregory emphasized the importance of engaging the individual conscience. Rulers should seek to exercise moral authority and not just naked power over their subjects. That was their 'heavy responsibility'"
"...Charlemagne tried to combine two visions of the foundations of social order in his rule - lordship and the 'care of souls'. In the course of pursuing the second vision he had created a far better educated and more cohesive higher clergy, a disciplined Christian elite. It was that elite that survived the decay of his empire. In the late ninth and tenth centuries the higher clergy sought to preserve unity trhough its vision of the care of souls...struggling against the increasingly hereditary local lordships,... [continued in the comments...]
It would be easy to get lost in these unexciting centuries but the author traces the evolution of the idea very carefully, century by century, minor evolution by minor evolution in clear, crisp, and lively writing. Even the references in the back are well done, with each chapter focused on a relatively small number of sources that are discussed in more detail in the back, so the text is not broken up into a mass of footnotes or references. Its like the author read the best 5 books for each century and summarized them chapter by chapter, tracing out the evolution of Western Liberalism as he went. Really well done.
OK - the specifics (I sometimes paraphrase and sometimes direct quote what I like or find interesting):
Chapter 1: The Ancient Family - He starts in a very cool beginning, reminding us that the ancient family was nothing like what we consider the family to be, and that society was not seen as a group of individuals, but a group of families. Referencing the work of N. D. Foustel de Coulanges, he reminds us that the family was the basic religious institution, with each family worshiping the family ancestors who had a direct line through the male line up to the patriarch. Altars within each family to these ancestors had a sacred fire that was to be kept burning an the role of the patriarch was not just an economic and military role, but a religious role to perform the sacred rituals to keep the ancestors happy. Nobody was an individual, you were part of the family line and each person had a role to play.
Chapter 2: The Ancient City - The ancient city was founded by one or more patriarchs, who's families constituted the city's leaders and whose ancestors were the city's ancestors. Over time, keeping these ancestors satisfied turned into cults within each city of mythical gods "as the scale of association increased, the gods of nature or polytheism became more important - for these were the gods that could more easily be shared. Laws of the city were the laws of the religion and patriotism was intense because everything - the family, property, laws, pride were all tied up in the success of the city. "Liberty" to the ancient citizen was the liberty to participate in that city life and its politics and military. The domestic sphere was inconsequential and those who were not participants were second class. Over time in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the battles were between aristocrats who held on to the priestly power of the cities and of expanded citizenship to participate in government.
Chapter 3: The Ancient Cosmos: Wider participation required better skills at debate, which led to skills such as logic and rhetoric to be prized and developed, which led to the emergence of abstract philosophical thinking out of religion and poetry (Athens as the center and symbol of that). Admiration of other citizens was what mattered, and it could be achieved by single-minded devotion to the public weal. Rationality was supreme.
Chapter 4: The World Turned Upside Down: Paul - Jews had a different vision of time - uni-linear with a progression of God's will, not cyclical, and the Law embodied his Will for ALL people (not just the citizen class), none could resist it. "The experience of submitting to a remote Roman ruler" may have led to an understanding of a more universal submission to larger forces beyond the city state. "The set of roles provided by the city state was disrupted" and people turned inward instead. Saul of Tarsus, who became St. Paul, "invented" Christianity as a religion and created an entirely new conception of God in Christ. "The Christ stood for the presence of God in the world". "For Paul, it was through the Christ that God was reconciling the world - individual souls - to himself". "Paul's conception of the Christ overturns the assumption on which ancient thinking had hitherto rested, the assumption of natural inequality. Instead Pail wagers on human equality. It is a wager that turns on transparency, that we can and should see ourselves in others, and others in ourselves. A leap of faith in human equality reveals - beneath the historical accumulation of unequal social statuses and roles 0 the universal availability of a God-given foundation of human action, the free action of love. That action is what Paul's vision of the Christ revealed. As deployed by Paul, the concept of the Christ becomes a challenge to the ancient belief that humans are subject to an immutable order or 'fate'. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus amounted to the discovery of human freedom - of a moral agency potentially available to each and everyone, that is, to individuals."
The argument that all humans can become 'one in Christ'.. reveals Paul grafting a new abstractness onto Jewish thought. It is an abstraction that would foster Christian understanding of community as the free association of the wills of morally equal agents, what Paul describes through the metaphor as the 'body of Christ'. The metaphor conjures up a mystical union which moralizes individual wills by relating them to the source of their being. This mixture of elements which became Christianity was profoundly indebted to developments in Greek thought. For the discourse of citizenship in the polis had initiated a distancing of persons from mere family to tribal identities, while later Hellenistic philosophy had introduced an even more wide ranging, speculative 'universalist' idiom. That intellectual breadth had, in turn, been reinforced by the subjection of so much of the Mediterranean world to a single power, Rome. What Paul did in effect, was to combine the abstracting potential of later Hellenistic philosophy - its speculations about a universal or 'human' nature - with Judaism's preoccupation with conformity to a higher or divine will. In order to do so, Paul ceases to think of that will as an external, coercive agency."
Chapter 5: The Truth Within: Moral Equality. - very early Christianity after Paul, reducing the focus on reason that came from Greek Philosophy.
Chapter 6: Heroism Redefined: Lots of martyrs and focus on the needs of the poor reshaped the views of urban elites towards Christianity.
Chapter 7: A New Form of Association: Monasticism. Theological issues were being discussed on the streets. "By the third century, 'dedicated virgins' had acquired a new prestige in upper class families, and indeed, in the Christian community at large. What was the most striking evidence of a woman's freedom in the 'new age'? The answer was sexual renunciation, a manifest act of individual will. Monasticism soon gave these moral developments further impetus. The creation of ascetic communities for women - what were to become convents - marked the emergence of women from the ancient family, from the permanent subordinations of the domestic sphere. It is hardly surprising that upper class women led the way. But that was not all. The way of life associated with the monks also had another important, if unintended, consequence. It rehabilitated 'work' separating work from its association with a servile status, from the stain of ancient slavery. Work acquired a new dignity, becoming even a requirement of self-respect." As the pax romana was being undermined by the overthrow of the Western Empire by the Germanic invasions and the Muslim conquests, monasticism preserved an image of social order, but not the social order of the ancient world, a glimpse of 'another world' that approximated Christian moral intuitions.
Chapter 8: The Weakness of the Will: Augustine - "That intense account of Augustine's relations with himself and with his God.. has led some to attribute the birth of the individual to Augustine. For he portrayed 'the will' as the indispensable middle term between 'reason' and 'appetite'. He embedded the will in our conception of the self." "For Augustine, the inwardness of the individual is by no means a sphere of silence. It is a sphere of dialogue, of conversation with God... Inventing the individual - in the sense of acknowledging the equality of humans in the face of their maker - is not an exercise leading to isolation. Instead it is the creation of a self-consciousness that undercuts merely social identities, statuses conferred by the conventional terms of a language.""Augustine insisted, in his great work, the City of God, that human weakness and vices beset all societies (the 'earthly cities'). All were subject to the vicissitudes that follow from the weaknesses of human nature. Nor was the church exempt. The city of God (or 'eternal city') could not therefore be identified with the organized church. At best, the church could help to open the individual soul to the work of grace, encouraging humility, continence, and prayer. ... Nonetheless, it was the task of the church to try to create and tend to consciences."
Chapter 9: Shaping New Attitudes and Habits: Lots of changes, but slowly. Christian beliefs destroyed the ancient family and its eldest male as chief priest (and the power that comes with it). This led to more freedom for women and questioning slavery. Medieval cities were born with the Christian Basilica, with the Bishop as the de-facto ruler of the city (based on "democratic" rather than "aristocratic" base of power, even though bishops came from aristocratic families).
Chapter 10: Distinguishing Spiritual from Temporal Power. "We must try to put ourselves into the minds of the clergy who were faced with the collapse of the empire. They had to deal with invaders with whom they did not at first share any beliefs and who had a virtual monopoly of material force. They were overcome by fear. What they sought was not supremacy but survival. And survival involved getting some access to the minds of the invaders. Rather than directly challenging Germanic customs, the clergy sought to identify a sphere of their own, a sphere where force, by its very nature, could not prevail. And they had long since been used to distinguishing the 'sacred from the 'profane', invoking Christ;s injunction to five to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is his. Not they pointed to a "God-given law" that offered to mortals the hope of life after death, as a 'moral' law distinct from custom or human command. When dealing with the Germanic invaders, the clergy could therefore hardly fail to dwell upon the difference between eternal or 'spiritual' and mere temporal concerns. The clergy defended a realm to which they alone offered access. The law of an invisible king - the Chris who offered hope of 'salvation' to individuals - became a moral sword wielded with dramatic effect by the hard-pressed clergy.
"If the Christian Church had not existed, the ... world must have been abandoned to purely material force. The church alone exercised a moral power. It did more: it sustained, it spread abroad the ideas of a rule, of a law superior to all human laws."
"The urgent need for the church to create a tolerably educated clerical class contributed to an important difference between Western Europe and the Eastern Empire. In the latter, the imperial administration remained in place. The Eastern Empire preserved... relations between church and state that had been characteristic of the whole empire in the century after Constantine adopted Christianity. Those relations were marked by a considerable deference of the church to the state. Memories of subordination died hard, especially when mixed with gratitude for the official adoption of Christianity. In consequence, the clergy in the East did not feel any need to reshape the state."
Chapter 11: Barbarian Codes, Roman Law, and Christian Intuitions. Church began to try to mold the attitudes of the Goths, Burgundians, Merovingians, and Franks who had taken over the Roman empire. Church tried to fight against polytheism and customary practices and to strip intentionality from the physical world. Then Charlemagne came on the scene, and ruled for 50 years, dominating the Church but also building it up.
Chapter 12: The Carolingian Compromise - Charlemagne had his subjects take oaths, and those oaths included language like "Every Christian Person" and "absolutely everyone, without exception", implying that even women and slaves had souls and should be treated as such. He also insisted all people understand the oath and do it of their own *will*. "The emphasis on individual will and understanding represents a momentous moral step." "Nonetheless, the universalizing of oath taking - assimilating the relationship of superiors and inferiors to that of lords and their oath-bound followers - reveals the rhetoric of the Christian people modifying German habits. For it introduces, however precariously, an element of free will into general social relations, acknowledgement of a role for conscience. Charlemagne recommended that all free men should place themselves under a superior or lord, in return for benefits and protection. No doubt local circumstances made that a practical necessity. Yet by presenting it as an act of will, he introduced a new feature into the relations between rulers and the ruled."
Meanwhile Charlemagne tried to follow the Pope Gregory the Great's advice. "...Gregory turned the abbot's authority over monks into a model not only for bishops but also for lay rulers. In order to achieve his goal, Gregory emphasized the importance of engaging the individual conscience. Rulers should seek to exercise moral authority and not just naked power over their subjects. That was their 'heavy responsibility'"
"...Charlemagne tried to combine two visions of the foundations of social order in his rule - lordship and the 'care of souls'. In the course of pursuing the second vision he had created a far better educated and more cohesive higher clergy, a disciplined Christian elite. It was that elite that survived the decay of his empire. In the late ninth and tenth centuries the higher clergy sought to preserve unity trhough its vision of the care of souls...struggling against the increasingly hereditary local lordships,... [continued in the comments...]
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January 30, 2020This is a brilliant book, one where you have to read the first 100 pages extremely carefully and then you can mostly coast. Two millennia of Western intellectual history are all here in one book. It's a decidedly pro-Christian and I'm an atheist whose family has suffered horrifically from the Catholic church. But I have to give this book its due for its erudition and careful thought even if I don't share in its enthusiasms.
January 5, 2019
This is an important book. A pity that it probably won't be widely read, due to its rather academic nature. If one was in a hurry, one could skip straight to the epilogue, which gives an excellent and concise synopsis of the book.
Siedentop shows that western secular liberalism has its roots in Christianity, rather than being opposed to it. Instead of seeing secularism as an empty materialism and consumerism, without any belief and unable to inspire people in a time when it must be defended against other, imported, non-secular systems of belief such as Islam, it should be recognized that the fundamental liberal idea of individual freedom is a continuation of the christian idea of the equality of all individuals before God, as agents with a personal conscience and free choice, and moral rights and duties towards other individuals. An equality of souls. As Siedentop writes: secularism is christian. It's Christianity's greatest gift to the world,
Today in Europe liberalism/secularism is often said to have its roots in the classical Greek-Roman world, while Christianity is repudiated, and even considered a bit embarassing. This is a historical mistake, caused by the anti-clerical reaction, beginning in the renaissance and culminating in the 18th century, against the authoritarian tendencies of an often corrupt catholic church, and in modern times by a reaction against islamism and islamic terrorism, as well as by the new atheist movement that perceives religion as just a belief in supernatural things for which there is no proof.
In the US, on the contrary, christian fundamentalism is on the rise, as a reaction against a secularism that is considered an enemy because of its perceived materialism and amoralism.
Most of Siedentop's book is dedicated to showing A: that the classical world was not secular at all, was based on inequality and restriction of individuals, who were subjected to social roles and rituals, first of the family with its pater familias and ancestor worship, and later of the polis with its founder hero, and B: how the revolutionary ideas of people like Paul and John changed this, throughout the centuries that followed.
This is a long haul (where I did a lot of cowardly skipping), dealing with, among others, the destruction of the religious cult of the family, the egalitarianism of monastic orders, natural law and natural rights, democratization, the first steps to the nation state, and how the egalitarian christian moral intuitions finally turned against the privileged, authoritarian role of the church itself, and then against that of the state, whence we arrive at secular liberalism.
Siedentop shows that western secular liberalism has its roots in Christianity, rather than being opposed to it. Instead of seeing secularism as an empty materialism and consumerism, without any belief and unable to inspire people in a time when it must be defended against other, imported, non-secular systems of belief such as Islam, it should be recognized that the fundamental liberal idea of individual freedom is a continuation of the christian idea of the equality of all individuals before God, as agents with a personal conscience and free choice, and moral rights and duties towards other individuals. An equality of souls. As Siedentop writes: secularism is christian. It's Christianity's greatest gift to the world,
Today in Europe liberalism/secularism is often said to have its roots in the classical Greek-Roman world, while Christianity is repudiated, and even considered a bit embarassing. This is a historical mistake, caused by the anti-clerical reaction, beginning in the renaissance and culminating in the 18th century, against the authoritarian tendencies of an often corrupt catholic church, and in modern times by a reaction against islamism and islamic terrorism, as well as by the new atheist movement that perceives religion as just a belief in supernatural things for which there is no proof.
In the US, on the contrary, christian fundamentalism is on the rise, as a reaction against a secularism that is considered an enemy because of its perceived materialism and amoralism.
Most of Siedentop's book is dedicated to showing A: that the classical world was not secular at all, was based on inequality and restriction of individuals, who were subjected to social roles and rituals, first of the family with its pater familias and ancestor worship, and later of the polis with its founder hero, and B: how the revolutionary ideas of people like Paul and John changed this, throughout the centuries that followed.
This is a long haul (where I did a lot of cowardly skipping), dealing with, among others, the destruction of the religious cult of the family, the egalitarianism of monastic orders, natural law and natural rights, democratization, the first steps to the nation state, and how the egalitarian christian moral intuitions finally turned against the privileged, authoritarian role of the church itself, and then against that of the state, whence we arrive at secular liberalism.
December 28, 2019
Inventing the Individual by Larry Siedentrop was not exactly the book I was expecting. The author takes a resolutely sociological, even anthropological stance in the first part of his book to explain the origins of liberalism in western societies, starting from prehistorical periods. This was a bold choice allowing Siedentrop to reassess our vision of ancient communities, all the way to Greek and Roman civilisations that we tend to idealise according to him. The fact is that, despite Socrates and Pericles, modern folks would probably find Athens atrociously barbaric since the mere concept of individual agency and natural rights were absent from the men of this age. Societies evolved from the family cell, to tribalism, and eventually to cities/communities of citizens, supported at each level by a strong sense of patriarchy, the veneration of ancestors and the passing of responsibilities from father to son with no thinking about individuality and life choices (citizen's son became citizen, slave's son became slave etc). Then enter Christianism, and a long narration about a thousand-year rethinking of individual agency, based on the introduction of inner sin, moral equality, natural right and, eventually, secularism.
Despite being sometimes guilty of selection bias, like many works of intellectual history, the point made by Siedentrop is eventually very compelling. The story of Christianism is the story of a struggle against the tribal instinct present in every human. The church planted the seed of moral equality in Western European minds at a time of unquestioned patriarchy, the universal practice of slavery and the dissolution of centralised power with the fall of the Roman Empire. A millennia later, Europe was giving to the world the concept of natural rights, centralised nation state system, individual moral agency, and Cervantes' and Shakespeare's characters, whose inner struggles still sound so modern to our 21st century ears. The conclusive argument of Siedentrop will not please everyone, as he makes a plea for the defense of classical liberal values, heritage of Christianism according to him, that are seriously at odds with both extreme, and trendy, forms of conservatism and progressivism. But whatever your political standpoint, I can only recommend such a stimulating reading and beautiful prose.
Despite being sometimes guilty of selection bias, like many works of intellectual history, the point made by Siedentrop is eventually very compelling. The story of Christianism is the story of a struggle against the tribal instinct present in every human. The church planted the seed of moral equality in Western European minds at a time of unquestioned patriarchy, the universal practice of slavery and the dissolution of centralised power with the fall of the Roman Empire. A millennia later, Europe was giving to the world the concept of natural rights, centralised nation state system, individual moral agency, and Cervantes' and Shakespeare's characters, whose inner struggles still sound so modern to our 21st century ears. The conclusive argument of Siedentrop will not please everyone, as he makes a plea for the defense of classical liberal values, heritage of Christianism according to him, that are seriously at odds with both extreme, and trendy, forms of conservatism and progressivism. But whatever your political standpoint, I can only recommend such a stimulating reading and beautiful prose.
July 11, 2016
The premise of this book is that modern day liberalism has its roots in Christianity's egalitarianism. The book is more of a "work of interpretation" rather than a book exploring facts, so I find it's a little thin on the history, even if I generally agree with the premise of the book. It starts out describing the fundamental values of Antiquity-- how individual identity was bound by family, clan and social roles. There was no individual per se-- everyone was defined by their relationships, social and political roles. Christianity introduced the idea that every individual had value and was equal in the eyes of God, therefore worthwhile. Individual worth was no longer bound up in hierarchical roles. It took many centuries to develop, but eventually, the individual became to be seen as the fundamental unit of society. Some of the developments that led to rise of individualism were: the subjection of all to the papacy (thus even kings were on the same level as everyone else in their subjection-- hence the equality of all), the development of canon law, and then civil law, and the rise of nominalism (which put the will as the basis of human agency.)
My big beef with this book is that it doesn't answer the obvious objection: what about all the times Christianity was used to support hierarchy and subjection? What of these contradictory tendencies? He makes some passing reference to the schizophrenic nature of Carolingian Christianity. The last chapter of the book does address it a little bit, but I would have liked a more in-depth confrontation. There are many nay-sayers who think Christianity was equality's biggest opponent, and it would have been intellectually satisfying to see their arguments addressed.
My big beef with this book is that it doesn't answer the obvious objection: what about all the times Christianity was used to support hierarchy and subjection? What of these contradictory tendencies? He makes some passing reference to the schizophrenic nature of Carolingian Christianity. The last chapter of the book does address it a little bit, but I would have liked a more in-depth confrontation. There are many nay-sayers who think Christianity was equality's biggest opponent, and it would have been intellectually satisfying to see their arguments addressed.
March 5, 2020
As a history of thought of the Christian church, this book was interesting to me. Also interesting was the thesis that 'moral equality' and Paul's 'Christian liberty' were derived in Christianity from the notion of the resurrection. That these notions were fundamental to the development of secular liberalism and democracy was a stretch for me without a comparison to the development of equality or 'individualism' of other religions and other cultures. For example, the development of secularism may have been as strongly influenced by Mulsim secularism in the Andalusian culture which reintroduced Greek thought to Christian culture.
Another aspect that nagged me while reading the book was the concept of the 'individual', which wasn't really defined until the last pages. Perhaps 'The Invention of the Individual' would be better read as 'The Invention of Equality'?
And since the book made every effort not to discuss other religions, it was awkward at the end for the author to introduce a caricature of Islam to contrast with radical evangelicalism and consumer-secularism in the United States, suggesting that secularism was Christian: "The rapid growth of Christian fundamentalism – in part, no doubt, a reaction to the threat of radical Islam – may now jeopardize the traditional American understanding of secularism as the embodiment of Christian moral intuitions." Way too big a leap at the end of a book, leaving the reader in mid-cringe.
Lop off the Introduction and the Epilogue and you have an interesting book on the emergence of equality from a Christian perspective.
Another aspect that nagged me while reading the book was the concept of the 'individual', which wasn't really defined until the last pages. Perhaps 'The Invention of the Individual' would be better read as 'The Invention of Equality'?
And since the book made every effort not to discuss other religions, it was awkward at the end for the author to introduce a caricature of Islam to contrast with radical evangelicalism and consumer-secularism in the United States, suggesting that secularism was Christian: "The rapid growth of Christian fundamentalism – in part, no doubt, a reaction to the threat of radical Islam – may now jeopardize the traditional American understanding of secularism as the embodiment of Christian moral intuitions." Way too big a leap at the end of a book, leaving the reader in mid-cringe.
Lop off the Introduction and the Epilogue and you have an interesting book on the emergence of equality from a Christian perspective.
September 3, 2016
This is the most provocative and inspiring book I have read in a long time. It challenges the idea that Western liberalism was born during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Instead, Larry Siedentop maintains that the crucial ingredients are found in St Pauls invention of Christianity, in particular the idea that all humans are equal before God, combined with a modified rationalism from Greece and Rome. The struggle between and within church and state in the context of the dissolution of the Roman empire, and the interaction between ideas and society during the Middle Ages laid the essential groundwork for the idea of secularity, among other things. The main intellectual inventions required for liberalism were already in place before the Renaissance. Please note that the author does not maintain that liberalism requires faith in Christianity, only that it grew out of it. The writing is clear and straightforward. The only criticism I have is that the author hammers home his thesis a little too often.
March 10, 2015
I'm struggling with writing this review. It is one of those times that I know what I think but I can't figure out exactly why. I've been reading reviews (both here, on Amazon and professional reviews) to try to find a way to articulate it. Everyone seems to love this book but I just can't. On the one hand, I found it tedious. On the other hand, the argument seems just too oversimplified. I was poking around online and came across this quote from Paul Johnson (mind you, I don't like his work), "To [the Jews] we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility, etc." I think there has to be more to the story than just that Christianity gave us liberalism. When I figure out why, I'll let you know....
August 15, 2017
الكتاب محاولة لإثبات دور القرون الوسطى في تشكيل الغرب بالصورة التي نراها حاليا. الكاتب يحذر من استمرار استقطاع هذه الفترة من مسيرة التاريخ الاوروبي، ويرى ضرورة الاعتراف بمآثر المسيحية على الحضارة الغربية 'العلمانية'. هو يحذر من ان إهمال العنصر الجامع للغربيين، الدين المسيحي، سيؤدي الى ذوبانهم او على الأقل ضعف مناعتهم امام التحديات الوجودية المفروضة عليهم.
الكتاب يمثل اتجاها حاليا في الغرب يدعو الى التماس هوية مشتركة في النصرانية، ولكن الذي اعجبني حقا في الكتاب هو دفاعه عن النصرانية وإعطاءه وجهة نظر مخالفة لوجهة النظر الدارجة من ان النصرانية لم تكن لها أياد على الغرب وهذا هو الأقرب لان الحق المشوب بباطل: اي النصرانية بعد تحريفها، هو بالتأكيد أفضل من الباطل الخالص: العلمانية. فمثلا مما ذكره ان النصرانية كانت تحث على تحرير العبيد، وكانت هو الأساس لفكرة المساواة بين البشر بعد ان كانت الطبقية هي الامر الطبيعي في الغرب.
لم يعجبني تحامل الكاتب الذي كان ظاهرا في بعض فقرات الكتاب، كذا إهماله لأثر احتكاك الغربيين بالمسلمين في الأندلس في تشكيل نهضتهم الحديثة.
الكتاب يمثل اتجاها حاليا في الغرب يدعو الى التماس هوية مشتركة في النصرانية، ولكن الذي اعجبني حقا في الكتاب هو دفاعه عن النصرانية وإعطاءه وجهة نظر مخالفة لوجهة النظر الدارجة من ان النصرانية لم تكن لها أياد على الغرب وهذا هو الأقرب لان الحق المشوب بباطل: اي النصرانية بعد تحريفها، هو بالتأكيد أفضل من الباطل الخالص: العلمانية. فمثلا مما ذكره ان النصرانية كانت تحث على تحرير العبيد، وكانت هو الأساس لفكرة المساواة بين البشر بعد ان كانت الطبقية هي الامر الطبيعي في الغرب.
لم يعجبني تحامل الكاتب الذي كان ظاهرا في بعض فقرات الكتاب، كذا إهماله لأثر احتكاك الغربيين بالمسلمين في الأندلس في تشكيل نهضتهم الحديثة.
September 7, 2023
A fascinating and persuasively stated thesis - that Western liberalism grew in Christian soil, and not primarily in the later thinking of the Enlightenment. A scholarly work, there is more detail than the average reader (myself included) needed, but I am glad to have read it.
May 15, 2019
SUMMARY:
In the earliest Greek and Roman law, the individual had no social, religious or political entity. The family was the basic social unit, and each family worshipped their own ancestor gods. The paterfamilias was the earthly representative of the ancestor gods through which worship flowed. Even the sale of real estate was prohitibited or penalized, as the soil belonged not to individuals, even not to the living family, but to the family including ancestors.
Later Greek and Roman societies evolved city gods, often resulting from individual families identifying common ancestors to worship.
There was no notion of the rights of individuals against the claims of the gods or even of individual conscience or choice.
Ancient rationality was limited to certain castes or classes, building upon what was seen as the natural inequality of men.
Enter Jesus.
In the earliest Greek and Roman law, the individual had no social, religious or political entity. The family was the basic social unit, and each family worshipped their own ancestor gods. The paterfamilias was the earthly representative of the ancestor gods through which worship flowed. Even the sale of real estate was prohitibited or penalized, as the soil belonged not to individuals, even not to the living family, but to the family including ancestors.
Later Greek and Roman societies evolved city gods, often resulting from individual families identifying common ancestors to worship.
There was no notion of the rights of individuals against the claims of the gods or even of individual conscience or choice.
Ancient rationality was limited to certain castes or classes, building upon what was seen as the natural inequality of men.
Enter Jesus.
"First, Jesus crucified; then, Jesus resurrected. Previously in antiquity, it was the patriarchal family that had been the agency of immortality. Now, through the story of Jesus, individual moral agency was raised up as providing a unique window into the nature of things, into the experience of grace rather than necessity, a glimpse of something transcending death. The individual replaced the family as the focus of immortality."
"‘Let it be known to you, therefore, my brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sin is proclaimed to you; by this Jesus everyone who believes is set free …’ Paul’s message is directed not merely to Jews but to all humanity. It is an invitation to seek a deeper self, an inner union with God. It offers to give reason itself a new depth. Rationality loses its aristocratic connotations. It is associated not with status and pride but with a humility which liberates."
"The Gospel of Thomas urges a new project on believers: nothing less than turning women into men! They are to become as ‘one’. By that it is clearly meant that women should be enabled to become rational agents, to recognize that they have the same rational and moral capacities as men. ‘When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner … and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, then you will enter (the kingdom).’13 That reconstruction of the self, which Paul had urged on his followers, is here tied overtly to a change in the status of women. The implication of the text is that only when women are free can men also be truly free – that the reciprocity which belief in human equality entails is only possible when their shared nature is fully acknowledged."
"By transferring religious authority from the father to a separate priesthood, the Christian church removed the religious basis of the paterfamilias. It curtailed the claims to authority of the family head, relaxing the ties of subordination that had previously bound its members. An early symptom of this was the changed role of women. It became much harder to look upon women as mere chattels, as completely subject to the authority of the paterfamilias. The early church insisted on the equal obligations imposed by the bond of marriage."
"Moved by their belief in the equality of souls, the clergy began to reject the German custom of assigning different legal values to the lives of men."
"While ‘equal subjection’ is a necessary condition for the state and sovereignty, moral equality also provides the basis for limiting the power of the state and its sovereign authority. The intellectual sword raised by the papacy was thus two-edged."
"The ancient doctrine of natural law was being revised to take account of belief in the incarnation, the idea that ‘God is with us’. For that belief removed the previous radical divide between divine agency (whether in the form of the ‘gods’ of polytheism or the Old Testament’s Yahweh) and human agency. The idea of the incarnation is the root of Christian egalitarianism. It lies behind the transformation of the ancient doctrine of natural law into a theory of natural rights. For the idea of the incarnation suggested that deity is not something remote from human agency but rather something intrinsic to its rightful exercise."
"While pregnant with further moral development, Judaism remained tribal. By contrast, Christianity held up the prospect of an essentially individual rather than a tribal relationship with divinity. It called individual wills into existence and gave them a glimpse of the transcendent. It offered a relationship that informed social life rather than being determined by it. Franciscan arguments implied that neither pagan philosophy nor Judaism could fully emancipate the individual from conventional social roles."
"The view that the Renaissance and its aftermath marked the advent of the modern world – the end of the ‘middle ages’ – is mistaken. By the fifteenth century canon lawyers and philosophers had already asserted that ‘experience’ is essentially the experience of individuals, that a range of fundamental rights ought to protect individual agency, that the final authority of any association is to be found in its members, and that the use of reason when understanding processes in the physical world differs radically from normative or a priori reasoning. These are the stuff of modernity."
"secularism can be seen as Europe’s noblest achievement, the achievement which should be its primary contribution to the creation of a world order, while different religious beliefs continue to contend for followers. Secularism is Christianity’s gift to the world, ideas and practices which have often been turned against ‘excesses’ of the Christian church itself."
May 25, 2020
It is a dense read that felt twice as long. But if there ever was a page turner about the evolution of a philosophical concept through medieval theological debates, this must be it.
One should note the subtitle, because that is what the book is truly about. Inventing the individual is important because it leads, for Siedentop, to the invention of nothing less than the Western civilization. Individualism, evolving over a long period of time but finally coming to fruition between the 11th and 14th centuries, led to everything we came to associate with the Western civilization: political liberalism, the modern notion of sovereignty, democracy, the Scientific Revolution, and then the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, and more. By tracing the evolution of the idea of the individual, Siedentop really goes for the roots of the Western Civilization. And he does it not in the way of writing a general history, but writes an argumentative intellectual history. He conspicuously ignores some commonplaces in general histories of the rise of the West (such as the Magna Carta), and actively diminishes others (such as the Renaissance). Instead, he sticks with his narrow argument on the role of Christianity in the evolution of individualism, and follows it through centuries.
I am in no position to judge how well the argument will hold up against criticism, and I am looking forward to reading some critical reviews. But he builds the argument very carefully and supports it richly, which makes for a very rewarding reading experience.
One should note the subtitle, because that is what the book is truly about. Inventing the individual is important because it leads, for Siedentop, to the invention of nothing less than the Western civilization. Individualism, evolving over a long period of time but finally coming to fruition between the 11th and 14th centuries, led to everything we came to associate with the Western civilization: political liberalism, the modern notion of sovereignty, democracy, the Scientific Revolution, and then the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, and more. By tracing the evolution of the idea of the individual, Siedentop really goes for the roots of the Western Civilization. And he does it not in the way of writing a general history, but writes an argumentative intellectual history. He conspicuously ignores some commonplaces in general histories of the rise of the West (such as the Magna Carta), and actively diminishes others (such as the Renaissance). Instead, he sticks with his narrow argument on the role of Christianity in the evolution of individualism, and follows it through centuries.
I am in no position to judge how well the argument will hold up against criticism, and I am looking forward to reading some critical reviews. But he builds the argument very carefully and supports it richly, which makes for a very rewarding reading experience.
January 10, 2024
I read with the hopes that individualism and an understanding of the self would be engaged in terms of moral philosophy, and at times that’s what Siedentop did. The book was more sociopolitical history than what I bargained for. Nonetheless, still very impressive work. The foundational piece which Siedentop kept coming back to - contrasting ancient understandings of man and natural law with those of modernity - was stellar and wildly clear. I certainly agree with his central argument, which is that Christianity laid the foundations for modern liberalism, and thus, is the source rather than the enemy of secularism. Siedentop goes farther than I would in watering down and seemingly ignoring the ways in which Christianity *does* differ, and has quite often, from modern individualistic tendencies. But wholehearted agreement isn’t why good books should be read. This is a book worth reading, for Christian and non-Christian alike.
“Secularism is Christianity’s gift to the world, ideas and practices which have often been turned against ‘excesses’ of the Christian church itself.
What is the crux of secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies that there is a sphere in which each should be free to make his or her own decisions, a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to ‘equal liberty.’ Is this indifference or non-belief? Not at all. It rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the blind following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others.
This is also the central egalitarian moral insight of Christianity…Enforced belief was, for Paul and many early Christians, a contradiction in terms…
Certainly secularism is not a neutral or ‘value-free’ framework…Rather, secularism identifies the conditions in which authentic beliefs should be formed and defended…secularism in the United States has been identified with moral intuitions generated by Christianity.” (P. 360-361)
“Secularism is Christianity’s gift to the world, ideas and practices which have often been turned against ‘excesses’ of the Christian church itself.
What is the crux of secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies that there is a sphere in which each should be free to make his or her own decisions, a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to ‘equal liberty.’ Is this indifference or non-belief? Not at all. It rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the blind following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others.
This is also the central egalitarian moral insight of Christianity…Enforced belief was, for Paul and many early Christians, a contradiction in terms…
Certainly secularism is not a neutral or ‘value-free’ framework…Rather, secularism identifies the conditions in which authentic beliefs should be formed and defended…secularism in the United States has been identified with moral intuitions generated by Christianity.” (P. 360-361)
May 17, 2021
This was a fascinating book exploring the origins of liberalism and individualism in Western society. The basic message is that ancient society was patriarchal, roles were defined by hierachy, and things like fate and natural order were supposed to be fixed and incontrovertible. The author relates how Christianity brought the idea that all souls are equal, regardless of gender or social status, and that the exercise of free will, tempered by an individual's conscience was also a central tenet that was promoted. Via an admittedly torturous and at times corrupt process, these concepts were refined and distilled into the ideals of individual equality and self-determination that we hold as values in our society today. This was a really interesting read.
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