[Serious] The Humanities

[Mister Agenda]

Just for the record, if I have something to say about Christians or Christianity, or any other generalization about any religion or ideology, please take it as read that if I didn't say 'always and only', I did not mean 'always and only'.

[possibletarian]

Stories reflect cultural views, of which our religions have only ever been one part, and those religions themselves have been shaped by those views - leading to many christianities, just as one example.  In other cases, leading to christianities..and stories from christians, that are remarkably similar to other stories from non christian cultures that might share...say, a coastal experience.

It would be breathtakingly untrue to announce that only a christian could write so-and-so.

This is the first time I've heard of 'Only possible with Christianity' version of the romances, that are also nonreligious in nature.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a variation on the theme of necessity that dominated christian thinking at the apoapsis of christian hegemony. If a person has a specific preference for the set of fantasies that arose in that period, then they will have had it expounded to them a great many times in a great many ways over a great many subjects by the intelligentsia of the era.

It was never true, but it was truly believed, and so... it found it's way into the humanities. With the benefit of hindsight and a deeper appreciation of the breadth and potential of human narrative skill - it seems impossible to maintain.

[possibletarian]

It's a variation on the theme of necessity that dominated christian thinking at the apoapsis of christian hegemony.  If a person has a specific preference for the set of fantasies that arose in that period, then they will have had it expounded to them a great many times in a great many ways over a great many subjects by the intelligentsia of the era.

It was never true, but it was truly believed, and so... it found it's way into the humanities.  With the benefit of hindsight and a deeper appreciation of the breadth and potential of human narrative skill - it seems impossible to maintain.

Ah i get it, i was looking at the statement in a rather isolated way I suspect. I'll do a little more reading on the subject when i have the time.

I suspect Islam makes similar claims, as maybe do other religions.

[Belacqua]

This is the first time I've heard of 'Only possible with Christianity' version of the romances, that are also nonreligious in nature.

If you believe in some kind of Infinite Universe theory, I suppose you could imagine that Courtly Love and other medieval values could evolve out of Mithraism. Or whatever. 

In the universe we have, those things were rooted in and evolved out of Christian values. The Middle Ages were so thoroughly soaked in Christian thinking that its ideals were taken as givens. 

Again, if you compare Medieval literature in Europe with that of non-Christian countries the differences are clear. Look at Sanskrit epic or the Tale of Genji. Or, again, any Greek epic or tragedy.

The Tale of Genji could only have been written in a culture where Buddhist views of the world are predominant. This is clear despite the fact that neither the narrator nor any character spells out "and this is what the Buddha teaches."

[The Grand Nudger]

They have evolved out of mithraism, and too many other things to count. The claim that only a buddhist could write such and such is as equally false and for the same reasons as the previous assertion.

[Belacqua]

Are you saying essentially that romances with good endings would not be possible without Christianity ?

It would be more accurate to say that what determines "good" for a particular writer in a particular era is determined by the framework through which he interprets the world. A good ending for a Christian writer may well be different from a good ending for writers from different frameworks. 

Also If they contained what are considered Christian values,and only a person with these (religiously motivated ) values could have written them then how do you reconcile the claim they are also nonreligious in nature ?

It looks to me as if some people here think of religion as some detachable accessory in a culture. At best a decorative veneer, at worst an oppressive overlay. 

This may be how modern atheists see religion. Our own framework for interpreting the world isn't religious, so we may make the mistake of thinking that earlier eras were the same. We may think that there is some natural and universal way of interpreting the world, and that religion in any time and place is added on to that. 

I think this view is false. Religion in past times was frequently the major structure through which people interpreted the world and their place in it. The absolutely crucial judgments about value, meaning, use, objectives, etc. -- all the things that are not detectable to science, but are still indispensable in the human world -- these were derived from the dominant religions of the day. The religion was not an add-on but the main framework through which the world was read. 

If we want to understand people in different places and times it's important not to project our modern frameworks onto them. Things were different. 

Of course their understanding of the world was not monolithic. Of course everyone is influenced by multiple aspects of life. The people of Heian Japan were influenced in their views by climate and the local vegetation and the facts of human anatomy, among many other things. But this doesn't change the fact that the conceptual framework through which they experienced their lives was Buddhist. And that this is revealed in their literature. Of course their culture includes Shintoism -- no one who's read the book forgets the emotional struggles around Rokujo-no-miyasudokoro leaving the capital when her daughter is chosen to be priestess of the Shrine at Ise. And the government is based on inconsistently-applied Confucianism. But people's sense of time, their judgments about how to spend that time, their ideas of what constitutes a good life and a happy end, while enduring a constant sense of melancholy and mono no aware, are Buddhist, and constitute the main themes of the book.

Foucault used the word "episteme" to refer to the set of ideas that are possible for people to accept in a given time and place. 

"Each society has its regime of truth, its "general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true." 

I suspect that many atheists today reject this. They may well say that there is only one truth, that it is revealed through science, and that variations are simply mistakes. Maybe so. But I would say that such opinions show us our own episteme, and we should keep in mind that every episteme so far in history has been contingent and subject to change.

Even if we hold that the findings of science are true and unchanging, science doesn't address the human world. Values, meanings, uses, etc. -- these are projected into the world by human minds. And none of us makes them up entirely for ourselves. We are all products of our society. And when religion dominates a given society, the values of that episteme are invariably a part of its literature. 

Ultimately I think this comes down to a matter of empathy. Empathy, for me, isn't merely the idea that we shouldn't poke someone else in the eye because I don't like being poked in the eye. Such empathy in fact doesn't require me to know anything about the other person, only about myself. Deeper empathy would demand that I come to understand the necessity that other people have in seeing the world as they do. In admitting that enormously intelligent and good people can disagree with my own episteme entirely, not because they need a crutch or are momentarily stupid, but because that is how their conceptual framework presents the world to them. This is why the humanities are good.

[Succubus]

Can someone tell me what this thread's about. Or is it just another of Bel's free writing exercises.

[Anomalocaris]

Can someone tell me what this thread's about. Or is it just another of Bel's free writing exercises.

It’s about Bel not being Christian despite Christianity being such a good thing in his deep and profound opinion that without it nothing good whatsoever in this entire universe could ever exist, nothing!

Oh and he is not a misanthrope because he grants that humans can achieve nothing without Christianity which teaches they were born sinners and can never actually deserve their alleged salvation.

[possibletarian]

It would be more accurate to say that what determines "good" for a particular writer in a particular era is determined by the framework through which he interprets the world. A good ending for a Christian writer may well be different from a good ending for writers from different frameworks. 

But clearly a writer from a different framework? could just as easily write a similar ending.

It looks to me as if some people here think of religion as some detachable accessory in a culture. At best a decorative veneer, at worst an oppressive overlay. 

This may be how modern atheists see religion. Our own framework for interpreting the world isn't religious, so we may make the mistake of thinking that earlier eras were the same. We may think that there is some natural and universal way of interpreting the world, and that religion in any time and place is added on to that.

I think this view is false. Religion in past times was frequently the major structure through which people interpreted the world and their place in it. The absolutely crucial judgments about value, meaning, use, objectives, etc. -- all the things that are not detectable to science, but are still indispensable in the human world -- these were derived from the dominant religions of the day. The religion was not an add-on but the main framework through which the world was read. 

The religions themselves came from those values, one can see how religions evolve through the human experience, and also what happens when people allow religion to as you say  be 'the main framework through which the world is read' it really is easy to see the stupidity of relying on 'religion' as being a wise framework to put any human values in.

If we want to understand people in different places and times it's important not to project our modern frameworks onto them. Things were different. 

well of course if we are talking about the past, but primarily as I understand your post, it's more of a 'what now'

Of course their understanding of the world was not monolithic. Of course everyone is influenced by multiple aspects of life. The people of Heian Japan were influenced in their views by climate and the local vegetation and the facts of human anatomy, among many other things. But this doesn't change the fact that the conceptual framework through which they experienced their lives was Buddhist. And that this is revealed in their literature. Of course their culture includes Shintoism -- no one who's read the book forgets the emotional struggles around Rokujo-no-miyasudokoro leaving the capital when her daughter is chosen to be priestess of the Shrine at Ise. And the government is based on inconsistently-applied Confucianism. But people's sense of time, their judgments about how to spend that time, their ideas of what constitutes a good life and a happy end, while enduring a constant sense of melancholy and mono no aware, are Buddhist, and constitute the main themes of the book.

The fact that there as so many different religions, with different beliefs seems to testify that religions were culture made, not the other way around.  Despite many religions being centuries old they have evolved and the writing now mean different things than they would have then.

In my opinion it really is time to get rid of religions as a framework for anything, at best they tend to simply muddy the waters, especially ones that champion the supernatural world, and or the absolutes of a god. At worse they add a sense of fantasy to the way we look at the world, allowing themselves to be used as an excuse for heinous murders and mayhem for the pettiest of behaviour.