No Robots

I know that it is quite trendy to disparage the role of the talented or genial individual in social progress. This is part of what Brunner describes as the war between the common folk and those of a spiritual bent. Guys like Doherty are cheerleaders for the common folk, and spend their time trying to eliminate genius from history. This is being done with the history of science (or via: amazon.co.uk). How long before it hits art, and we see Beethoven considered a hack who stole everything worthwhile from Austrian peasants?

The key point is not myth, but effect. Brunner says that if William Tell had a demonstrable effect upon the world, then he would have to consider him historical.

These are both works of literature. However, as such, they are quite different from each other.

Well, no. Again, go back to the essay by Brunner. He does adduce other arguments. The equivalent cause argument, though, is primary.


Well, he was literate, so he wasn't strictly speaking amme haaretz. Yet the composition is clearly of a quite inferior kind. Thus I conclude that it derives from the lowest level of literacy.


All I have in electronic format is the German version of Materialismus und Idealismus.

I'm not sure if you then want me to set out my position on these points. I will content myself with a quotation from Brunner:

I have shown that geniuses are born. Once this has happened, it is too late for the critics; what they see in the born genius is always only his ungenial features, and their own moralism.

Sorry. My joke didn't come across. This doesn't seem humorous to people who do not believe in spirituality. For me, though, to say that you aren't spiritual is just as absurd as saying you aren't physical. And just as men are physically stronger than women, so are men spiritually stronger. Thus when a woman exhorts a man to greater spirituality, it is like exhorting him to greater physicality. We would find it humorous if a woman were to demand greater physicality, so I find it humorous for a woman to demand greater spirituality.

The war between the common folk and those of a spiritual bent is being fought on the ground of the former's absolute materialism.

Why don't you look at what Huxley has to say about Jesus? There is a world of difference between men like Caesar and Napoleon on the one hand and men like Christ on the other. And this was understood by Hegel, Brunner and Huxley. Why do you not understand it?


The essence of ethics is the acknowledgement of the One.

Niall Armstrong

So how about Souad?
I suppose all those glowing reviews, testifying about and calling for people to do something about such mistreatment, must be presented as evidence of demonstrable effect. Does this mean that there actually was such a person? Going by Equivalent Cause there would be no need to investigate. The effect speaks for itself: she has to be real. (Though, supposedly, the story could still be fiction.)
But look up Souad at Wikipedia, and despite the terse article, you'll understand that there is room for doubt. Read Therese Taylor's broadside and you'll have no doubt about the skullduggery afoot. And you should have serious doubt about the worth of Demonstrable Effect as a tool in historical pursuits.

No Robots

There is no doubt that hoaxes, misunderstandings and lies have effects. The trick is to keep in view relative impact. There is no comparison between the effect of Souad and that of Christ.

Niall Armstrong

So you admit that non-authentic beings can have Demonstrable Effects. They just have a lesser effect. But where is the limit? Don’t you see that this is the thin edge of the wedge? Where is the limit between the Demonstrable Effect of a lie, and the Demonstrable Effect of a truth? Was the proof for Wilhelm Tell’s existence insufficient until Antoine-Marin Lemierre decided to write a play about him? Had he decided to write a play about Palnatoke, whose performance supposedly inspired the story about Tell, would that have conferred existence upon that Danish hero instead? When does the DE amount to enough to prove the existence of someone? Whenever you want it to?

In my opinion, following Goebbels (“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”) falsehood can actually have greater effects than truths. Prove me wrong!

In one sense the problem is with the original model of Equivalent Cause, based as it is on Newton’s Third Law. This necessitates the possibility of reversal of force (like the little toy with balls hanging on a thread). So EC should state that the result of Genius is Genius (not religion). Claiming that great genius must have great effects (though necessarily being ignored in their own time) is merely a pleasant myth for all self-proclaimed Genii.

It is a flawed model, neither capable of explaining the untidiness of historical developments, nor demonstrable in any way.
I would rather, for a historical model, suggest using Newton 2nd law: gravity. Myths attract other myths, gradually gaining mass, like stars in gaseous clouds. Was there firm ground to start off with? Most likely not. But still the sun shines!

No Robots

Indeed.

And so it has been going on for nearly two thousand years: the Christ hanged on a tree, the Gnostic Christ, the Christ of religion, the scholastic-Aristotelian Christ; and it will not be long before the present non-existent Christ has just as much power, fame and originality in the world as all the earlier Christs. The Christ who was never born will never die, and will remain for ever as the great constellation in the heavens, outshining all our stars, causing all their fame to fade away! A disgusting originality! Is there nothing we can do against it? Are we so powerless, with our hatred and envy, with all our science? Thus, in its sickness, criticism passionately searches out similarities from every hole and corner of the world, to devalue this originality and strip it of its uniqueness.—Brunner, Our Christ.

No Robots

Here, in a nutshell is the basis of Brunner's reconstruction of 1st century Judaism:

Until now there has never been a real picture of the character of Christ because the necessary and indispensable means were never applied. What can we say about Christ if we are not really acquainted with Judaism, if we have not made the distinction between prophetic and pharisaic Judaism, if we are not aware of the part played by the oral Torah, of the relation of the ammé haaretz to educated society? And above all, what can we say about Christ unless we are aware of mysticism and genius and the Doctrine of the Spiritual Elite and the Multitude (which alone can explain how the historical Christ has become the dogmatic Christ), unless we ourselves are free from superstition?

I see nothing of the "crank" in this.

Kornelis Miskotte is an important theologian. He grouped Brunner with Bloch and Kafka as writers "in whom apocalyptic… 'atheistic' mysticism and the problematic of Job are revived." He deals with Brunner in detail in his book When the Gods are Silent, writing:

Constantin Brunner declared that when Jesus said 'Father,' this was a veiled rejection of the religion of the disciples and a hidden profession of 'atheistic' salvation. Naturally this raised a storm of indignation among the religious liberals. We too believe that Brunner's assertion is untenable, but that it comes closer to the mystery of this giving of a new name to God than does the interpretation which regards the name 'Father' as the apex of general religious experience.

Walther Rathenau wanted to establish with Brunner a Jewish "Christus Bund."

Menuhin wrote:

One of the greatest books on the subject of Jesus was written by a man whom I adopted early on as my favourite philosopher, Constantin Brunner (a nom de plume, his actual name being Wertheimer), a Berlin Jew who held Spinoza in very high regard. I found his book Unser Christus to be one of the most inspiring books I had ever read. It has been published in an English translation thanks to help from various sources, in particular from Günter Henle, a German friend of mine and, with the fortune of one of the German steel firms behind him, a great patron of the arts. I had but to mention to him the fact that since Brunner’s books had been burnt by the Nazis the Germans owed it to humanity to have them republished, for him to respond immediately. (Unfinished journey: 456)

Einstein wrote of Brunner that he found him "quite interesting as a critic." Einstein's statements on Jesus jibe with those of Brunner. Einstein disagreed with Brunner on epistemology, particularly with regard to Brunner's ferocious attack on Kant.

I don't know of any references of Brunner and Schweitzer to each other. This is something that may require some research.

No Robots

We are conducting a scientific investigation into the phenomenon of Christianity. We are looking for a cause equivalent to its effect. To my knowledge there is no phenomenon to which William Tell is a cause. Start with the effect, then work back to the cause.

There is no "absolute lie". There is only the truth and distortions thereof. We are looking for the truth that underlies the phenomena that we observe. Goebbels' belief in the power of the lie is a phenomenon. What is the cause of it? That is a question worth exploring.

A force applied to different objects will have different effects. Genius stimulates reproduction in those who are receptive, and imitation in those who are envious.

Certainly. The question is: what is the core, the initial object around which all the objects coalesce? You say that it must be some myth around which other myths coalesced, right? What myth? What is its attractive power? Who articulated it? How has it come to dominate all other myths? I don't think you can answer these questions in a way that sufficiently accounts for the grandeur of the phenomenon. I think that only the doctrine of genius can do that.

Niall Armstrong

Which is why I asked you: How great do these effects have to be to be able to guarantee that their cause was an existent being? You have already admitted that even non-existent beings (e.g. Souad) can have effects, so the question may be refined as to how to we calculate the limit between the DE of non-existent and existent beings? If you find the question absurd, don’t be afraid to say so.
(Brunner does in his “definition” of Equivalent Cause, as I remember it, state that Wilhelm Tell also is guaranteed to have existed. You’d better ask him what the effect of his genius was. I presume, though, that, in addition to Lemierre’s play, Brunner believed that Switzerland was the result of Tell’s Genius.)


As I said, “Was there firm ground to start off with? Most likely not.” I do not think that there was one myth to start off with. The creation of stars (if I’ve understood it right) consists of the gradual attraction and contraction of gas, with no core around which it coalesces. The creation of a religion (or at least Christianity) may also have been the gradual attraction of various myths to each other, not around a central core.
[But let’s, for the fun of it, give some short answers to those queries:
What myth? Not one single, but many gradually collecting (“sacrificed for our sins”, “Yahweh’s Logos communicates with Man”, “Day of the Lord is coming” are probably the earliest, while the Q-pack is added on later, with “Jesus teaches”, “Blessed are the meek!” “Son of Man will judge” etc, independently accumulated.)
What is its attractive power? All of these myths have emotional power, seen not least when Marx translated them into class politics. Their mutual attraction derives from the desire of religious people to combine their power (By saying that “Jesus teaches” is equal to “Yahweh’s Logos communicates”, we get a nice humane learning atmosphere filled with the power of divine inspiration, and not just a human teacher on the one hand and mystical visions on the other.)
Who articulated it? Well, Philo translated Logos to the Jewish religion. “Sacrificed for our sins” was apparently invented by the author of one of the books of the Maccabees (forget which). “Day of the Lord is coming” is… I forget… the author of Daniel? Apparently a Peter had a vision of Jesus Christ. Paul seemingly comes up with “Christ crucified”, and probably “justification by faith”. The Q-pack is introduced to the other Jesus myths by the author of Mark’s gospel (or someone else around his time). The Virgin Mary is introduced after Mark, again. And so it accumulates!
How has it come to dominate all other myths? Hasn’t quite reached that point, yet, thankfully. But it has indeed grown tremendously popular. And how that has happened is an exciting story, which can be surmised as “Historical Accident”. Had it not been for Constantine, Christianity may have been about as unknown as the worship of Sabazios. Had it not been for the discovery of the Americas, Christianity may have been as popular as Shintoism. The Genius of Jesus (or the words attributed to him) has been a minimal factor in the growth of Christianity.]
And what is this “grandeur of the phenomenon”? I presume your talking about Christianity, in some fashion. Blame my lack of spirituality, but I fail to see the grandeur. At least, I fail to see how it surpasses the grandeur of other religious phenomena.

No Robots

Here is what Brunner says about William Tell:

Thus they speak about a Christ-myth in the same terms as the myths of Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Siegfried or William Tell. I too in no way believe in a historical Tell, Siegfried, Heracles, Theseus....
....

For if we were acquainted with significantly unique and inspired deeds under the names, for instance, of Sargon, Romulus, Perseus, Theseus, Heracles, Siegfried and Tell, then I would have to believe, if I were not to betray my fundamental notion of resultant phenomena having a cause (for every cause must produce its specific result, and every result must have its specific cause). This would follow even if I had never so little to show of the causes involved, of the originators of such works; for, in cases like this, the minus in terms of the kind of experiential certainty which is supplied by sense-data and other external information is outweighed by the plus of inner conviction. Thus I would have to believe that these deeds had creative personalities behind them, and so I would call them Tell, Siegfried, Heracles, Theseus, Perseus, Romulus and Sargon, just as I call Shakespeare the author of the unmistakably distinctive literary marvels, pointing to a single originator, that go under his name, in spite of the fact that we have as little certain knowledge of the life of the man Shakespeare as of the life of the man Christ—nay, we have less.

With Souad there is no discernible effect. Thus there is no discernible Souad.

I do not find your questions absurd. Sometimes I think my answers appear evasive. If you think the same, keep pressing. I do prefer to take the easy way out, generally speaking. Your persistence is forcing me to speak patiently about things that to me are quite obvious.

Look, there is always something around which the interstellar clouds coalesce. Water vapor coalesces around a dust particle to form a raindrop. Likewise, the interstellar clouds are composed of something, ie. they are material objects. There is no such thing as an immaterial object. This is true of myths: myths are indeed ideas, but these ideas have origins which we can investigate. It is unscientific to throw up your hands and say, "the origins of this myth are lost."

But here's the thing: as we 'demythologize' we find nothing but the man, and yet this man is more impressive than the myths that surround him.


But these are accumulations around the man.

What you are providing in your answers here is a metaphysics of myth: how myths originate, aggregate and propagate. But your introduction of "historical accident" is a deus ex machina. It attempts to conceal causality with an appeal to the random interplay of historical factors. It is a modern version of the supernatural miracle.

By "grandeur" I simply mean the scale of the effect.

premjan

I like this guy - like Merleau-Ponty. He really seems to understand and not just think.