Posted on 12/26/2003 4:58:06 PM PST by Federalist 78
On the birthday of Christ, it is appropriate to compare Jesus with four Westerners who influenced the mental development of the world.
The Athenian philosopher Plato was admired at Western universities throughout the millennium of their existence. Plato ascribed his wisdom to Socrates, who was generally considered, among the educated in the West and Russia even in the 20th century, the wisest person who ever lived, the sage of sages.
Published in 1987 by Professor Allen Bloom was a study entitled "The Closing of the American Mind." What is the cause? American universities do not pay sufficient attention to Plato and Socrates.
The best-known book of Plato-Socrates, written by Plato, since Socrates did not write but expressed himself orally, describes the ideal State and hence is entitled "The State," mistranslated into English as "The Republic," though "republic" is a Latin, not Greek, word that appeared after Plato’s death.
The ideal State of Plato-Socrates resembles the tyrannical Sparta, a mortal enemy of Athenian democracy, but this ideal State of Plato-Socrates is far more Spartan than Sparta. It is a countrywide cattle-breeding farm on which pedigree human cattle are raised.
Men and women live separately, and a man and a woman, selected by the proper authorities to produce pedigree progeny, meet only for this "pairing" or "coupling," the resulting child being taken away from them for proper collective upbringing and education – provided the child satisfies the pedigree standards; otherwise, the child is destroyed. If it is born without the due pairing or coupling authorization, it is destroyed ipso facto then and there.
If someone is so sick that he or she cannot work, he or she should not be treated, but should be allowed to die as not fit for survival. If alive, he or she will mar the pedigree purity of the human cattle as a whole. The weak, the sick, those unable to work must die off and thus make the pedigree human cattle as a whole stronger and healthier.
About 23 centuries after Plato, an English clergyman studying nature and named Darwin discovered that man had evolved from the monkey. All the more reason to breed human cattle on a countrywide cattle-breeding farm (or a zoo?). Darwin’s contemporary (and disciple!) Nietzsche contended, with triumph, that man is the most predatory animal, a super-beast, a "bestia."
The Romans used to say, "Man to man is a wolf." But wolves have not been especially noted for attacking one another. On the other hand, a Mongol army, a pack of Mongols, would attack a city and, unless it surrendered, the attackers not only killed its entire population but also smashed all the buildings into stones so small that it was impossible to find that the city ever existed.
If wolves could invent and write down proverbs, a wolf, wishing to put down wolves, would say: "Wolf to wolf is a man."
Marx invented not a ruthless war of nations or religions, but a ruthless war of classes. The rich are the enemy. The rich do not surrender. The rich should be destroyed. As sung in "The Internationale," the anthem of communism, "The entire old world of coercion we will raze to the ground." As the Mongols razed to the ground a city that would not surrender.
Christ was born to a Jewish woman, named in English "Mary"; grew up as a Jew; spoke, read and wrote no language except Hebrew; lived his life and died in a Jewish country and had only Jews as disciples.
According to Luke 2:47, when Jesus was 12, Mary and Joseph discovered the boy in the Temple (in Jerusalum), "sitting among the Teachers" – the rabbis. Jesus was a prodigy, matching at 12 the Teachers of 40 or 80: "Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."
Jesus did, indeed, become, when he was "about thirty years old" (Luke 3:23), a Teacher, teaching his disciples not within orthodox synagogues but in the streets and the bosom of nature. Jesus said that he was not to "abolish the Law and the Prophets [that is, Judaism], but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17).
To put this into modern lay language, it can be said that thus a scientist of genius does not abolish the science created before him, but "fulfills" it. Accordingly, the Christian Holy Bible consists of the Judaic (Hebrew) Old Testament Christ knew so well already at the age of 12, and the New Testament Christ created, to "fulfill" the Old Testament.
What was it that Christ created to "fulfill" Judaism?
Nietzsche applied to himself the name "anti-Christ." He used to say that Christianity is the worst evil in history. Had Jesus been an essayist, able to see his opponents for 20 centuries ahead and five centuries behind, he would have called himself anti-Plato, anti-Nietzsche, anti-Darwin and anti-Marx.
The first and the last (in the social hierarchy or in Plato’s opinion) may be the last and the first (in human value). If you are rich, give away your wealth to the poor. Do not resist evil with equally evil or more evil evil. Blessed are not the strongest fighting men, but the weak (such as women and children), the meek, the suffering, the poor, the unfit for survival, and they need thy compassion, pity and help.
Of course, for example, the notion of charity looms large in Judaism. But Christ made it a critical spiritual need, as did Nietzsche when he protected a horse against blows with his own body (see below).
To the four opponents, Christ would have said:
What happened in the fourth century is as strange as Nietzsche’s attempt to protect a horse with his own body. The Roman Empire, obsessed with power, including wars of expansion, and with wealth, including wars of acquisition of wealth, adopted the teaching of Christ after three centuries of Christian persecution, beginning with the crucifixion of Christ.
How did Christianity change Christendom? Wars continued, but there appeared a Christian-aristocratic knighthood, chivalry, rules of war – while two Chinese colonels published at the close of the 20th century the book "Unrestricted Warfare," denying any rules. Infectious microbes were discovered in 19th century Europe, which has not, however, waged bacteriological war.
Christendom never practiced Mongolic, Chinese, Nazi or Soviet mass exterminations, though the British Empire came close in its imperial zeal, helped by Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase "the struggle for the survival of the fittest," used by Darwin as basic to his theory of evolution. Spencer argued that the British were the fittest for survival, and a high death rate among colonial nations merely contributed to the pedigree health of the human race.
Charity became a common notion, as it was in Judaism. Many Americans do not understand that "democratic socialism" and Christian Socialists in Europe had nothing to do with Marx. The word "socialism" came into use in France and England soon after 1825 and had been probably coined by Auguste Comte, a mathematician and the founder of sociology (also his word).
What has been called in the United States "social benefits," "social security," "welfare," etc., can also be called socialism, which sprang from the same Judaic-Christian notion of charity. The manifesto that Marx and Engels published in 1848 was entitled "The Communist [not Socialist!] Manifesto" and proclaimed a world proletarian revolution – that is, a world class war to seize power all over the world. They condemned peaceful socialism, stemming from the Christian notion of charity, and Christianity itself as enemy devices to delay a world proletarian revolution.
Lenin and his Bolsheviks, or Communists, persecuted the Russian democratic socialists as their worst foes, traitors and criminals.
As for sociology, even after the death of Marx and Engels, the orthodox Marxists (in Soviet Russia and post-1949 China, for example) considered it a "bourgeois pseudo-science" up to the 1960s!
The suspension of Christianity in Lenin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, as well as the advent of Marxism in Mao’s China, led to class or ethnic mass exterminations, with the implication that human beings can be exterminated the way animals are, for human beings are animals that should be bred like cattle, and the war for survival must be as ruthless as unrestricted warfare in the two Chinese colonels’ recent book.
Have you read "The Closing of the American Mind" Federalist 78?
Didn't read it, but I remember it was favorably reviewed in the conservative press and probably prompted, Review 'The Closing of the American Heart' by Ronald H Nash
I think Jefferson and Adams were right.
Great that Plato believed in God. But that doesn't make him centered in all his philosophy. Jim Bakker believes in God too.
I've only read about what he wrote, so I'll have to take your word on his knowledge of St. Paul and the Law -- you're probably right, though. It's often true that those who "hate best" also make it a point to know the most about what they hate. (A good example being that certain class of "lapsed-Catholic anti-Catholics.")
I think Nietzsche's position is probably best described as a grand exposition of the logical end of atheism. The real beauty of his writings stems from his being on the ragged edge of insanity -- which made him immune to the shame and horror that prevents "lesser" atheists from taking their position to its ultimate conclusion.
Oh well, sloppiness is a way of life for some people, and it's reflected in their writing.
Jefferson goes up several notches in my book.
Ya man and your living in the world he divined and did not bring about. In truth it is you who are the dunce.
"Nobody is 100% accurate with their assessments and with their recommendations; but, some people are 99% dead-wrong with theirs."
Lev Navrozov NewsMax.com columnist and journalist. One of the most brilliant minds in the world, according to many distinguished Westerners and Russians. Published over 1,000 columns and articles on the destiny of civilization, world culture, foreign policy, strategy, defense, and intelligence work since his emigration from Russia in 1972. Winner of the Albert Einstein Prize for outstanding intellectual achievements. Author of The Education of Lev Navrozov (Harper & Row, 1975), compared by the reviewers to Mark Twain, Proust, Orwell, Voltaire, and Dostoyevsky. More than twenty of his articles are in the United States Congressional Record. navlev@cloud9.net
Thinkers have different places in the intellectual universe. Darwin may be fine in some sphere of biology and its development, but not be a good guide to things outside that sphere. I don't know whether he ever claimed to be any sort of moral teacher or guide to life. Even if he did, we don't have to.
Nietzsche is a different case -- a truly dangerous thinker. But it wouldn't hurt to remember how he grew out of Victorian conditions. When life becomes safe and predictable, some people inevitably seek danger. It's not something one should form one's philosophy of life around, but Nietzsche is a good reminder that if we don't have real challenges, we seek more powerful artificial sensations and end up destroying ourselves.
Navrozov wrote a fine autobiography about growing up in the Soviet Union, but he's a very eccentric and erratic thinker, and something of a narcissist. His writing doesn't always have a focus, and he throws himself into pointless feuds with other writers. His son, also a writer, shares some of his father's traits.
If Jesus knew how to write Hebrew, then why don't we have any of his writings? Surely his early disciples would have presevered whatever they could have of the writings of the man they thought was the Messiah.
But perhaps the reason there are no writings is because he didn't know how to read or write Hebrew.
We can conjecture about a lot of things and talk about the possibility of this and that. But that is quite different from stating something as fact.
A great book, but the trouble with this paragraph is that it isn't accurate.
The Closing of the American Mind doesn't argue that Americans have become narrow because we've ignored Plato. The book argues that the educational crisis that has overtaken America is due to German relativist philosophy which has undermined the status of reason within Western society.
This crisis isn't something that can be overcome by a new set of priorities. It will require a philosophical defense of reason and a broadside attack on Weber and Nietzsche.
Never hurts to try.
Happy Holidays just the same.
True christianity is allowing people to give out of a true sense of compassion, not compulsion.
Very well put.
By the way...the more I read of Plato, the fruitier I think him.
Authors Most Frequently Cited By The Founders Of The United States Founders didn't think much of him either.
1 St. Paul (Biblical) 9.00%
12 Cicero (Classical) 1.20%
26 Plato (Classical) 0.50%
restoringourheritage.com • Restoring America's Founding Dream
And I see how you react to facts and the need for correction in thinking.
Hardly Socratic of you.
Not sure that Jesus would ever have written anything religious or philisophical that he or his disciples would have preserved; Jesus taught using oration...but that doesn't mean he COULDN'T write.. The writing job would be for his disciples years later who were communicating to believers miles away.
His writing doesn't always have a focus,
Until your comment, I though his article was a rough draft that was accidentally posted.
No, that is one point I am not Socratic in. Socrates despised the passions, and for that some Jewish thinkers disrespect the Platonized divinity that courses from Augustine to Kant.
But both Socrates and and I need correction in thinking. On that point we have been best of friends.
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