The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World (44 page)
Read The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World Online
Authors: Daniel J. Boorstin
Tags: #General, #History, #Philosophy, #World
These notes will help the reader walk some of the paths in the search for meaning that I have found most rewarding. At the same time they will indicate the sources for these chapters and my heaviest debts to other scholars. I have selected here, for the most part, works likely to be found in a good public library or college library. For each book the date of the most recent publication is given, and I have tried to note works still in print and in paperback editions. I have omitted many of the specialized monographs and articles in learned journals. The reader should be reminded that in humanist studies, unlike the sciences, the latest works are not necessarily the best. Earlier works can retain remarkable insights and a classic quality. Where subjects in this volume overlap or touch on those in the companion volumes,
The Discoverers
and
The Creators,
the reader should consult their Reference Notes. In treating works from languages other than English, I have tried, where the quoted passage is lengthy and of literary interest, either in the text or in these Reference Notes, to credit the translator, who is all too seldom adequately recognized. Passages quoted from the Bible are in the translation of
Today’s English Version (TEV) Bible
(American Bible Society, 1976).
The search for meaning is so vast a subject that I have focused my chapters (and these Reference Notes) on those Seekers—persons and institutions—who have spoken most eloquently and suggestively to me of Western man’s search, his dilemmas, and his rewards. Other aspects of the search, not a subject of this book, would, for example, include cosmology, explored in Edward Harrison’s
Masks of the Universe
(1985), psychology (and “logotherapy”), in Viktor E. Frankl,
Man’s Search for Meaning
(1963), and semantics, as in the classic C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards,
The Meaning of Meaning
(3d ed., 1930), and still others. For this book I have selected some Seekers who have expressed and shaped the great changes in Western culture. As a longtime aficionado of dictionaries, reference books, and general treatises, I have enjoyed their ways of leading me to questions I had never thought of asking. High on this list are
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
(latest edition), the
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
(C. C. Gillispie, ed., 16 vols., 1970-80), the
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
(David L. Sills, ed., 17 vols., 1968), and its still helpful predecessor,
The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
(Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., 15 vols., 1930-34). Articles especially useful for the subject of this book are found in the admirable
Encyclopedia of Religion
(Mircea Eliade, ed., 16 vols., 1987), and its predecessor
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
(James Hastings, ed., n.d.), and in
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
(Philip P. Wiener, ed., 4 vols., 1974). Many of the texts by the Seekers whom I treat are found in the handsome and convenient volumes of
Great Books of the Western World
(Robert M. Hutchins, ed., 54 vols., 1952 and later editions).
BOOK ONE:
AN ANCIENT HERITAGE
Part I. The Way of Prophets: A Higher Authority
The prophets and the role of prophecy have invited a vast literature, which is sometimes as cryptic as the utterances of the prophets themselves. But there is an admirable introduction to the ideas and institutions of prophecy in Mircea Eliade,
A History of Religious Ideas,
Vol. I:
From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries
(1978). Eliade has further illuminated the subject with his lively style and vivid examples in his
Patterns in Comparative Religion
(1972) and
Cosmos and History; the Myth of the Eternal Return
(1959). For the social context of early prophets, see A. Leo Oppenheim,
Ancient Mesopotamia
(1964), and Klaus Koch,
The Prophets
(Vol. I, 1983); and for the world of the Hebrew prophets, J. Lindblom,
Prophecy in Ancient Israel
(1962), and Joseph Blenkinsopp,
Prophecy and Canon
(1970); Martin Buber’s classic
Moses
(1946) and
The Prophetic Faith
(1985); and see David E. Aisne,
Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World
(1983). Job has continued to inspire a literature on the problems of justifying God’s ways to man, and the virtue of protest, recently in William Safire’s
The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today’s Politics
(1992). To see how various are the explanations and justifications of the existence of evil in the different world religions a good introduction is John Bowker,
Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World
(1970). And this spectrum is illustrated in Alan Watts,
The Spirit of Zen
(1955); Wendy D. O’Flaherty,
The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology
(1976); K. Cragg,
The House of Islam
(2d ed., 1975); and Martin Buber,
Tales of the Hasidim,
Vol. I:
The Early Masters
(1947).
Part II. The Way of Philosophers: A Wondrous Instrument Within
Ancient Greece has continued to invite a rich and readable literature of history and interpretation. C. M. Bowra,
The Greek Experience
(1957), and M. I. Finley,
The Ancient Greeks
(1964)
,
are an attractive scholarly beginning, to follow popular interpretations like Edith Hamilton,
The Greek Way
(1961), and G. Lowes Dickinson,
The Greek View of Life
(1958). Standard views of the social and political context are found in J. B. Bury,
History of Greece
(1907); M. Rostovtzeff,
Greece
(1972); and Robin Lane Fox,
Alexander the Great
(1974). For ancient Greek thought and institutions we are fortunate to have Werner Jaeger’s elegant and lively
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture
(3 vols., 1967-71) and E. R. Dodds’s subtle
The Greeks and the Irrational
(1951). To relate ancient political thought to later movements, see: C. H. McIlwain,
The Growth of Political Thought in the West
(1932); Christopher Morris,
Western Political Thought,
Vol. I:
Plato to Augustine
(1967); and Karl Popper’s polemical
The Open Society and Its Enemies
(2 vols., 1966-72). Each of the ancient Greek philosophers has stimulated a library of biography and interpretation. Convenient resources are Bernard Knox (ed.),
The Norton Book of Classical Literature
(1993), with a brilliant introduction and illuminating notes, and W. H. Auden (ed.),
The Portable Greek Reader
(1948). The best place to begin, of course, is with each of their own writings or reported utterances. Selected dialogues of Plato (in the Jowett translation) are available in Vol. 7 and works of Aristotle in Vols. 8 and 9 of
Great Books of the Western World.
A convenient edition of the dialogues of Plato is the Random House edition (Jowett trans.), 2 vols. Plato’s
Symposium
is in Modern Library (rev. Jowett trans.). For the works of Aristotle, see the Modern Library volume, Richard McKeon (ed.),
Introduction to Aristotle
(1992). A scholarly general history, readable and balanced, is W. K. C. Guthrie,
The Greek Philosophers
(6 vols., 1962-81), and see F. M. Cornford,
Before and After Socrates
(1960). A. E. Taylor has provided basic scholarly biographies in
Socrates
(1932) and
Plato, the Man and His Works
(1936). Our legacy from pioneer nineteenth-century classical scholarship is George Grote,
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates
(new ed., 4 vols., 1974). For modern reverberations, see Paul Elmer More,
Platonism
(1917).
It has often been remarked that all Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato. When we study Plato, then, we are examining the foundations of our philosophic tradition. See, for example, G. M. A. Grube,
Plato’s Thought
(1980); David Ross,
Plato’s Theory of Ideas
(1976). Aristotle also left a fertile legacy, which we explore briefly in Part III below. For a study of Aristotle and what he meant in his own time, see I. During,
Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition
(1957), and
Aristotle
(1966); David Ross,
Aristotle
(1964); Werner Jaeger,
Aristotle
(1948).
Part III. The Christian Way: Experiments in Community
We are fortunate in the literature that links Christianity to ancient thought, notably C. N. Cochrane,
Christianity and Classical Culture
(1944), and J. Pelikan,
Christianity and Classical Culture
(1993). But for this perspective there have been few equals of Edward Gibbon’s ever-lively
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
available in many editions, and especially attractive in the Modern Library edition (3 vols., 1995), with the Piranesi illustrations. For the medieval background we can begin with H. O. Taylor,
The Medieval Mind
(2 vols., 1930); E. K. Rand’s compact
Founders of the Middle Ages
(1957); C. G. Crump and E. F. Jacob,
The Legacy of the Middle Ages
(1932); and the insightful Morris Bishop,
The Middle Ages
(1970). And for reference J. R. Strayer (ed.),
The Dictionary of the Middle Ages
(13 vols., 1989). To place the Seekers in the long history of Christianity we can not do better than the chapters in Jaroslav Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition
(5 vols., 1971-89), and
Jesus Through the Centuries
(1985). A stirring perspective of medieval institutions is J. Huizinga,
The Waning of the Middle Ages
(1924), new translation by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch,
The Autumn of the Middle Ages
(1996).
For the rise of the Church a classic introduction is J. Burckhardt,
The Age of Constantine the Great
(1949). And see Arnoldo Momigliano,
The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century
(1963). Monasteries and monasticism, not amply chronicled in most general histories, have stimulated a literature of their own, especially fascinating to the modern secular mind. A good introduction is Cuthbert Butler,
Benedictine Monachism
(2d ed., 1924), supplemented by Alban Butler,
Butler’s Lives of the Saints
(ed. H. Thurston and D. Attwater, 4 vols., 1956-62), and Gregorius I the Great,
Life and Miracles of St. Benedict
(1980); and for the context, J. M. Hussey,
The Byzantine World
(1957). Daniel Rees,
Consider Your Call
(1978), suggests a theology of monastic life today.
Medieval universities offer striking contrasts to their modern descendants and are portrayed for us by scholars with a literary flair. See, for example, the cogent C. H. Haskins,
The Rise of Universities
(1923), and
The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century
(1957). A standard reference is Hastings Rashdall,
The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages
(3 vols., rev. ed., 1936). And see G. G. Coulton,
Medieval Panorama
(1938)
.
We are grateful to Étienne Gilson for his subtle essays:
The History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages
(1955),
The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas
(1983), and
The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
(1991). For the life of the monumental Saint Thomas Aquinas, I have found most useful A. Walz,
St. Thomas Aquinas
(1951), and Vernon J. Bourke,
Aquinas’ Search for Wisdom
(1965). Selections of Aquinas’s works are in
Basic Writings
(Anton C. Degas, ed., 2 vols., 1944), and in
Great Books of the Western World
(Vols. 19 and 20).
The literature of Protestantism is naturally tendentious and often polemical, but the lives of the leaders have invited many sympathetic biographies. The attractive thinker Erasmus has elicited suggestive essays, notably Johan Huizinga,
Erasmus and the Age of Reformation
(1957), and Roland H. Bainton,
Erasmus of Christianity
(1982). Erasmus’s
Praise of Folly
is available in numerous editions and translations—for example, in Penguin Classics (1986). For Martin Luther, a more prickly subject, we can turn to E. G. Rupp and B. Drewery (eds.),
Martin Luther
(1970), and R. H. Bainton,
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther
(1990). We must explore John Calvin’s own
Institutes of the Christian Religion
(trans. John Allen, B. B. Warfield ed., 7th ed., 2 vols., 1936) and can follow his checkered life in T. H. L. Parker,
John Calvin
(1975), or Williston Walker,
John Calvin, the Organiser of Reformed Protestantism, 1509-1564
(1969). Calvin’s legacy in John T. McNeill,
The History and Character of Calvinism
(1954), is illuminated by studies of his Geneva—for example, Robert M. Kingdon’s
Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion in France 1555-1563
(1956) and
Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564- 1572.
Roland H. Bainton has given us a concise and readable history of Protestant intolerance in
The Travail of Religious Liberty
(1958). For the career of Calvinism in New England, see S. E. Morison,
Builders of the Bay Colony
(1930), and for the ideas, Perry Miller,
The New England Mind
(2 vols., 1939, 1953).
BOOK TWO:
COMMUNAL SEARCH
Part IV. Ways of Discovery: In Search of Experience
Greek myths and the epics of Homer have become such commonplaces of Western education that we have tended to overlook their significance as expressions of ancient Greek culture and as shaping elements in the Western tradition. The best starting point, of course, is Homer, accessible in the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
in classic English translations (for example, by John Dryden and Alexander Pope and in recent translations by Richmond Lattimore [1961] and Robert Fitzgerald [1961, 1974]). Edith Sitwell recounts the career of one of these in
Alexander Pope
(1948). A delightful recent translation is by Robert Fagles (with an introduction by Bernard Knox). For the place of Homer in the oral traditions: A. J. P. Wace and F. H. Stubbings,
A Companion to Homer
(1962), and a shorter version,
Homer and Epic
(1965). And on the limits of the oral tradition, Henri-Jean Martin,
The History and Power of Writing
(1944). I have found especially helpful M. I. Finley,
The World of Odysseus
(2d ed., 1977). An admirable anthology is Bernard Knox’s
Norton Book of Classical Literature
(1993), with his brilliant introduction. For the wider social context, see G. S. Kirk,
Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures
(1973). For a scholarly response to the question we all ask, see Paul Veyne,
Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths?
(1988).
