Intro Philosophy: City States & Egyptian Wisdom

Sumer & the First City States

Last time we considered the shaman as the original keeper of knowledge and seeker of wisdom.  As human societies began to leave nomadic life and settle down by building the first city states, they acquired systems of writing that allowed them to communicate knowledge beyond the limits of oral traditions.  The earliest scholars in Sumer and Babylon of the Tigris Euphrates valley began collecting knowledge of the world and the histories of its peoples.  The early city states were gathering sites for many tribes and peoples, so city life was multicultural from the beginning.

While the shaman of a tribe could know the great deal of a tribe’s oral tradition, in the early city states knowledge grew to the point that specialists were required.  Often, centers of knowledge were temples and the texts and study maintained by priests and priestesses ordained in the traditions.  Cosmology, remember, was religion, physics, medicine and psychology together, even as it began to specialize.  Today, we sit at the result of this process that began almost six thousand years ago.

As we consider the origins of civilization and leave nomadic tribes behind, it is important to remember that the last two powerful civilizations, the Muslims and then Europeans, were themselves quite primitive and nomadic just before gaining power as well as the knowledge and technology of previous civilizations.  While European history is often traced to the ancient Greeks, the Germanic and Celtic Europeans (like my ancestors, my father’s side German and my mother’s side Celtic British Isles mixture), were considered barbarians by the ancient Greeks and Romans.  They were not thought capable of rational thought and were traded as slaves to Babylon, Egypt, Persia and India for commodities that were the highest valuables of the ancient world.  The Romans traded slaves, including blond women, for Indian steel, known as wootz, which was the toughest metal of the ancient world and good for swords and spears.

Later, after the Renaissance as Europeans retold the story of history with the Catholic tradition at the center, the Greeks and Romans became the origin of civilization for the role they played in the texts and philosophy of the Bible’s New Testament.  While Renaissance philosophers in Italy still included the Persians and Indians in their timeline of history, the Catholics, and then Protestants, and now modern “Western” scholarship has progressively forgotten even the Romans as they focus on singular events in ancient Greece and then flash forward to Europe in the 1500s and 1600s, just as the tide of trade, gold and silver began to turn along the silk road from most going Eastward to most going Westward.  It was only in the early 1700s that Europe had power and wealth beyond what previous civilizations had achieved.  The roots of European civilization are in fact bound up with the rise of the Germanic and Celtic peoples, as well as the Arabs, nomadic traders across the Arabian peninsula (modern day Saudi Arabia occupies most of this land today) who ran camel caravans across the desert of goods between African civilizations such as Egypt and Nubia and Middle Eastern civilizations such as Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Persia and India.

An excellent book for appreciating the earliest city state civilizations is History Begins at Sumer by Kramer.  Note that the title basically says, “Hey, remember that Sumer happened”.  Sumer was not necessarily the first city state (a walled city that ruled the land surrounding it as a single city empire) but because writing was first developed there it is the first civilization on the written record.  Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia.  At each stage, a city upriver on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers took over a city downriver that had become prosperous through trade with various peoples across the land and sea.

These were progressively multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively to one ethnicity.  This allowed for diverse marketplaces where goods, cultures and ideas could be exchanged.  Cities were centers of trade, such that not only was the city a site for many groups to converge and form a new culture but this culture also traded with other convergent cultures. Many are surprised to learn that ancient Sumer and Egypt traded with India hundreds of years before the Greeks and Israel arose, but archeologists have found stone Buddhas in Alexandria Egypt as early as 300 BCE, likely owned by small communities of Indian merchants living in Egypt. From the earliest times, culture, trade and thought have been international.

Consider the Assyrians. “Assyrian” did not name one ethnicity but rather a citizen of Assyria. Many people of different ethnicities called themselves Assyrians just as many people call themselves Americans. Jesus spoke Aramaic because it was one of the dominant languages of Assyria and the lands they had conquered.  Assyria invented all of the siege weapons that were used in feudal Europe (including the battering ram and the siege tower), but the Assyrians conquered others mostly by trade and diplomacy. Princes would be sent to be educated in Assyria, the center of knowledge in its day, and then the Assyrians would make contracts with the prince’s people to put them on the throne to maintain political control. Just like today the primary method of conquest is economic and military solutions are called for only when the economic methods have failed.

In modern times, John Perkin’s famous book Confessions of an Economic Hitman (he came to speak at BCC a few years ago) gives an excellent account of the same strategy of dominance through economics in modern times as it is used by America today.  Perkins says that he was a businessman who traveled the world helping other countries get into debt with America such that American corporations could come in and take over.  If this fails, Perkins says that the second level is the “CIA Jackals” (his words, not mine) who make a move here and there to smooth things over for the business interests if a politician or people’s movement threatens this.  If they fail, Perkins says the third level is “Here come the marines”, and that Iraq is a result of a failure of the first and second stage of this process.  The poverty of the third world is, in part, due to this and similar economic strategies by other wealthy countries.
Sumer had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the humanities), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments.  One excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and carries off your land”.  My favorite Sumerian lament is recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that in his time, unlike in the glorified past, politicians are corrupt, teenagers are running around and breaking tradition and having sex, and concludes that the world will certainly end soon at the hands of the gods.  The prophet laments of the Bible’s Old Testament (the Jewish Torah) are based on this and other laments from the Tigris-Euphrates civilizations.

Often it is stated that the ancient Greeks invented politics and specifically Athenian democracy, but in Sumer we find the first democratic bicameral congress.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he appeals to the elders of the senate.  The elders do not want war because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept his proposal, probably because as new money they are seeking new opportunities, unlike the senate who have already secured their investments.  Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the community as a whole to go to war with the necessary support and needs the house to override the smaller but higher senate.

As human beings progressed and traded devices and thinking between groups, they gathered into larger groups and settled into cities.  The great ancient empires of Egypt and Persia were made of several of these earlier city state empires gathered into larger empires with many powerful cities.  Consider that the United States is composed of many states, many of which have only one massive central city.  We can see that as many tribes joined together to create city states the number of experts and types of experts multiplied and specialized. The shamans of the tribe became many types of priests and scribes in many temples. We can see that this pattern continued up through the present time. Some priests would specialize in types of math used to chart the stars, others would specialize in healing people and animals. The many hats (or masks, rather) of the shaman became the many types of priests and scribes who recorded knowledge and made new discoveries.



Egyptian Wisdom

Before considering passages of the Egyptian wisdom texts, I want to address two common misconceptions about the Egyptians.

First, the Egyptians are rarely portrayed as an African people but rather museums and text books portray them as a semi-European/Asian people who are quite light in skin color. When we consider that the Egyptians painted all of their statues and carvings (as did the Greeks), and they always painted men as dark red and women as yellow, as well as having black braided hair (Herodotus the Greek historian describes the “wooly” hair of the Egyptians) it seems that the Egyptians were an African people and we are only slowly growing to recognize this. It is a big debate between Eurocentric and Afrocentric scholars today, but the debate is held largely outside of official academia and universities as Afrocentric scholars are perceived as biased, un-academic and unprofessional in their opinions.

Two good books from the Afrocentric side are Martin Bernal’s Black Athena and Cheikh Anta Diop’s The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality.  While these works are well up to academic standards, because some Afrocentric work was done outside academic institutions in unjustifiable ways (one scholar claimed that the ancient Egyptians had batteries and hang gliders), this was used to tarnish all Afrocentric scholarship as dangerously unprofessional.  Thus, the universities and academics retain a Eurocentric bias while calling it objectivity in contrast to the Afrocentric bias.  I have read one work that called for “Acentrism”, recognizing that the origins of civilization do not come from a single geographic location but rather from a network of the earliest settlements.  Hopefully, this perspective can move us beyond the narrow constraints of both Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism, though in my opinion it is Eurocentrism that is quite established and this goes unrecognized.

Second, another common misconception of the Egyptians is that they were a slave-driving, brutal people who were all about authority. This is then contrasted with the Greeks, who are considered to be wise and questioning and the birth of civilized politics. In fact, the Egyptians treated foreigners, slaves and women considerably better than the Greeks, and the pyramids were built not by slaves but by conscripted labor. Recently tombs for workers have been discovered, confirming what Egyptologists have thought for several decades. This misconception comes largely from the Bible and movies like the Ten Commandments.

The Egyptians had many types of scribes and genres of texts, including fictional comedies and tragedies, lists of minerals and plants, essays on medicine, ethics and politics, and important to this class, wisdom literature. The Egyptian wisdom proverbs we read come from this last class of Egyptian texts.  As many tribes converged to live in city states, people began to see more of people than they had before. Suddenly, obvious truths became questionable. Gathering wealth and power looks good at first, but if one has seen many grab for power over the years, one gets wiser.  Rather than never questioning authority, the Egyptians had more variety of authorities and questioning of authority than most cultures before them. They did obey the Pharaoh most of the time, but there were rebellions and civil wars as well.  We can see in the wisdom proverbs the questioning of authority, nobility, knowledge, teachers, prediction, wealth, luxury, punishment, and other fundamental aspects of civilization. The Egyptians were not just great builders and rulers, but also wisdom seekers and questioners.

One concept that appears in the texts is the “heart guided individual”. The heart was thought to be the physical and mental center of the human individual. As Egyptian society developed, increasingly being “guided by the king” was replaced with being “guided by the heart”. The heart is the essence of the human and the intention within the action. Repeatedly in the text, individuals are called to listen to their heart rather than build luxury and maintain authority. These are issues that we all struggle with to this day, and so we can learn much about early human experience by reading these proverbs.

Let us turn now to the proverbs themselves, considering the wisdom of specific passages.

Let not your heart be puffed up because of what you know, nor boast that you are a wise man.
Consult with the ignorant as well as with the wise, for there is no limit to where wisdom can be found. Good speech lies hidden like a precious stone, yet wisdom is found among maidens at the grindstone.

This passage of Phah-hotep (Vizier to the Pharaoh, 2500 BCE) is similar to some we will read in Confucius of ancient China and it is also similar to Socrates of ancient Greece.  We should learn from everyone, and remember that no one is perfect and no one knows everything when we are tempted to put ourselves above others.  This questions not only human knowledge, but social inequality.  It does not call for getting rid of social divisions (indeed, the last verse is somewhat sexist) but it does ask us to look beyond inequality and identify with others.


More acceptable to (the Father/Highest) God is the virtue of a just man than the ox of one who works iniquity.

In this verse, we see Marikare (a local king offering advice to the crown prince, 1500 BCE) questioning the value of traditional sacrifice.  In India, Greece and China, we will see similar thoughts questioning the value of traditional practice over being virtuous.  If the wealthy make sacrifices, but rule with cruelty, those who dare to question will ask if performing sacrifices truly gains one merit.  Jesus chasing the money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals out of the temple is a similar move.


Rage destroys itself.  It damages its own affairs.

Ani (a scribe of the 18th dynasty, 1550-1300 BCE)


Because we refuse to imitate the wicked man, we help him, we offer him a hand…That he may know shame, we fill his belly with bread.

Amen-em-opet (local king, 1800 BCE) is suggesting that we do the opposite of what we typically think to do to those we consider evil.  Rather than punish bad with bad, like fighting fire with fire, we can show them the compassion and consideration they lack even if they do not deserve it.  This is similar to Jesus saying, “Turn the other cheek”.


Never permit yourself to rob a poor man.  Do not oppress the down-trodden, nor thrust aside the elderly, denying them speech.

Amen-em-opet shows not only concern with social justice, but giving freedom of speech to the disempowered.


Who plunders the goods of a poor man takes the very breath of life away from (herself or himself).  Such cheating chokes off justice, but a full measure increases its flow.

The Eloquent Peasant or The Complaint of the Peasant is a story about a peasant who has been robbed by a local official and who gives a series of nine arguments to the local magistrate appealing for justice which shows again that the ancient Egyptians were concerned about the poor and social justice, while also having problems with each as we still do today.  It also shows ancient Egyptian cosmology holds that the world works like a giant person, and breath and air carry order downward from the fire of the stars, sun and moon.  If we do injustice, we not only choke the universe but ourselves as well.  The Egyptians were the foremost doctors of the ancient world and were revered by the Romans in the beginning ages of Roman empire, and only in the empire’s later years did the Romans begin turning to Greek doctors, who had learned much from the Egyptians and added to it.  Consider that we still practice the Egyptian custom of wearing the wedding ring (originally just worn by women) on the ring finger (which is how it got its name) through the Roman Catholic tradition.  There is a large artery running through this finger, which the Egyptians found by doing anatomy, and because it was thought to be associated with lust a man puts a wedding ring on his wife’s finger to serve as a sort of lust collar.  We do not practice the Israelite tradition of wearing the wedding ring on the index finger, which a man would put on his wife’s finger to prevent her from casting curses on him.


Honor men of achievement and the people will prosper, but keep your eyes open.  Too much trust brings affliction…Exalt no man because of birth.  Judge the man by his actions.  A man should do that which profits his soul.  Let him perform the services of his temple.  Let him share in the mysteries of his religion.

Merikare shows great skepticism of authority, not only of political position and noble birth but of a central singular religious tradition.  Notice both ritual and mystery being included as religion.


Love the wife who is in your house.  Feed her belly, clothe her back.  Provide oil and cosmetics for her limbs.  Gladden her heart all the days of your life, for she is like a field that will prosper its owner, but do not go into court with her, and never let her get control of your house.

Ptah-hotep is being quite sexist, but shows us that women had the power to speak in court and ruled the home as they often do in Islamic traditional culture and our own today in spite of the sexism.  Ptah-hotep is giving this advice to his son.


Provide generously for your mother with double rations, and carry her even as she once carried you.  It was a heavy load that she bore, but she did not cast it off, and even after you were born, did she not feed you at the breast for three years?  Your dirt was unpleasant, but she did not say, “Why should I bother with him?”  It was she who placed you in school.  It was she who came daily with food and drink for you.

Ani seems to be giving us the old, “You never call, you never write” routine of ancient Egyptian mother syndrome.  It is hilarious how he is not only reminding us to take care of the elderly, but of our own mothers as well.


If you have grown to some account in greatness, do not forget the time when you were small.  If you have now become a rich man in your city, do not forget how it was when you were in need.

Ptah-hotep shows us that there was social mobility in ancient Egypt, and one could become wealthy or poor depending upon circumstances.  Like the passage that tells us the maidens at the grindstone have wisdom yet no one can obtain it entirely, it suggests we always keep the view of the poor and unfortunate in mind to not only appreciate what we have but prevent ourselves from being unjust.


Boast not how many jars of beer you can drink!  Soon your speech turns to babbling nonsense, and you tumble down into the gutter…and when people seek to question you, they find only a helpless child.

Ani shows us that as people gathered into ancient city states, they became critical of human behavior.


Eat no bread while another waits in want, but stretch out your hand to the hungry.  One man is rich, another is poor.  Yesterday’s master is today’s servant.  Don’t be greedy about filling your belly.  Where only last year the river ran, this year the course is dry.  Great seas have turned to desert wastes, and the sandy shore is now an abyss.

Ani again shows us that one could become rich or poor in society, and it is wise to remember it.


Do not lie down at night being afraid of tomorrow.  When day breaks, who knows what it will be like?  Surely, no man knows what tomorrow will bring.

Amen-em-opet, like Aztec poets and the Indian Vedas, reminds us that no one can predict the future, either through prophecy or science.

Room Changed to 52 for Intro Philosophy

After talking to the office, we will be changing classrooms.  From now on, Intro Philosophy (Phil 1) will be meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 AM in room 52.

Modern European Philosophy: The Origins & History of Modern European Thought

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy has been called "thinking about thinking", questioning and answering the very process of questioning and answering itself. Human thought, and thus the human world, is dominated by pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (which we can label ‘positive’) and doubt (which we can label ‘negative’).  Belief is an answer or answering, and doubt is a question or questioning.

According to Hegel, one of my favorite modern European philosophers, human thought is an endless battle between dogmatism and skepticism. In systems of thought, dogmatists lean towards answers and affirming the truths of the system stating "There are certain facts, morals and truths", while skeptics lean towards questions and doubting the truths of the system, asking "Are there certain facts, morals and truths?". In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the traditions and institutions looking to the stability and consistency of the past, while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution  looking to the openness and change of the future.  In addition, dogmatism likes singular objective inclusive truth, also known as truth with a capital ‘T’, ‘all or none’, ‘black and white’ truth, while skepticism likes plural subjective inclusive truth, also known as truth with a lowercase ‘t’, ‘some and some not’, ‘shades of grey’ truth.

This battle is a symbiotic evolution, a cooperation as much as a competition requiring both sides.  While each individual, tradition and institution is complex and cannot be put exclusively in one box or the other, this dynamic is quite dominant in human thought.  When we look at the history of human thought, from its origins in animism and shamanism to its evolution and specialization in religion, philosophy, art and science, we can see that both dogmatism and skepticism play necessary roles. Without a base that is assumed and unquestioned, nothing new can be produced. However, without reaching for the new and questioning the old there is no growth to improve and fit new circumstances. The great thinkers in human thought, across all systems, incorporate the old while bringing us the new, questioning and challenging the very systems that then make them celebrated matriarchs and patriarchs. Often they are called heretics in their time and only canonized after they are safely dead because they have to question the very systems that they stand for.

The Greek word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". What is wisdom?  The German philosophers Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as dogmatism and skepticism fight and cooperate on the social level. These two parts are understanding and reason, and these correspond to knowledge and wisdom. Understanding tries to hold things set and steady (the conservative force) while reason tries to challenge and rearrange things (the progressive force). Knowledge is a set understanding, while wisdom is the ability to reason. All systems of thought use both understanding and reason to produce both knowledge and wisdom.  When the situation is normal, the set understanding is decent enough, but when there are problems, a re-reasoning of the understanding and situation is required.

The Greek philosophers were known for wisdom, for questioning the ways that individuals and societies can have knowledge, beliefs and answers. Were the Greeks the first or only ancient people to have philosophers? In Miguel Leon-Pontilla's book Aztec Thought and Culture, he argues that the Aztec and Mayan poets questioned their societies and systems of knowledge, asking open ended questions such as "Do we know the gods exist?", "Is there an afterlife, like the ancestors said there is?", and "Can we ever know these things?". The priests were more dogmatic and conservative, in their rituals proclaiming the existence of the gods and afterlife.  Indeed, when we look at ancient cultures such as Egypt, Persia, India and China, we find both questioning and answering, knowledge as well as wisdom.  Consider that in the philosophy of science, the debate between those who believe in objective fact versus those who believe in subjective theory rages on today.  No society would flourish without pushing in both directions.  Systems of thought are always sites of disagreement as much as they are of agreement.

Many unfortunately believe that philosophy was born in ancient Greece, when in fact wisdom is universal to human kind even though it is difficult to achieve.  The wise, though rarer than we would like, have been celebrated in all cultures, and their wisdom is similar across all cultures even though their beliefs can differ widely.  While the word ‘philosophy’ is an ancient Greek word, great thinkers and questioners can be called philosophers and sages in any culture.


The Eastern, Middle Eastern and Western Golden Ages

This class focuses on modern European philosophy, the thought of European philosophers since 1600 CE up until the present day.  Before we given an overview of this period, paying particular attention to the split in the late 1800s between the Analytic and Continental traditions, we will consider the often ignored golden ages of the world that occurred before the European Enlightenment of the 1600s.  Before the European golden ages of the Renaissance of the 1400s and Enlightenment of the 1600s, many technological, medical and mathematical advancements were made in two previous golden ages, those of China and Islam.  


The Tang and Song Dynasties of China

During the Tang and Song Dynasties of China, between 600 and 1200 CE, many of the basic machines and resources were developed that would continue to serve as the base of later golden ages in Islamic and Christian lands.

The Four Great Inventions, as they are known in Chinese and European scholarship, are paper, printing, the magnetic compass, and gunpowder.  In 1620, the famed European scientist Sir Francis Bacon wrote that three of these, gunpowder, the magnetic compass and block printing, were the most significant advancements of humankind in all of history, separating ancient and modern times.  He was unaware that all three were Chinese, originating in the Tang and Song Dynasties.  Much later in the 1800s, Karl Marx wrote that these same three inventions brought about capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the middle class that is needed to regulate the poor in the interests of the rich.  Scholars in Communist China agree with Marx’s theory, while noting that these Great Four were merely the most significant inventions that passed from East to West, not the most sophisticated innovations of the Tang and Song.

Gunpowder was invented by Daoist alchemists, who sometimes blew themselves up in caves, as they searched for elixirs of immortality.  While Islamic and European alchemists sought to transmute lead into gold, the primary purpose of Chinese alchemy was transmutation of the body and mind.  While alchemy is now discredited, it was not a useless venture.  As with most discarded models and pursuits, much is discovered as a byproduct before problems become significant enough to require a paradigm shift (a term coined by Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science we will cover near the end of the course).

Paper took many forms, such as wall paper, toilet paper (which was originally only for the rich), and tea bags.  With paper and block printing came paper currency, which we still use today.  Block printing, using movable and set type of wood or metal, was used also for textiles and playing cards.  Materials such as paper, wood and metal were made fireproof and waterproof with lacquers.

In addition to these inventions, there were many other Chinese mechanical innovations that had a profound significance on life and engineering.  Cast iron, developed in China, made its way to medieval European blacksmiths.  Many of the basic components of mechanics, such as gear systems, the belt drive, the chain drive, and the spring allowed for the development of countless devices useful in all aspects of life, as they still do today.  The waterwheel, the windmill and the mechanical clock all passed from China into Islamic lands, and from there into Europe forming the basis of mechanical advancements of Leonardo Da Vinci and other innovators of the Italian Renaissance.  Automata, mechanical people primarily used for entertainment, followed this same route, such as the figures that dance attached to clocks which first entertained sultans before delighting the German public and much later Disneyland tourists in clock towers.


The Islamic Golden Age

During the Islamic Golden Age, between roughly 700 and 1400 CE, innovations from China and India were incorporated and further developed.  Most significant of these was the development of Algebra by Islamic mathematicians out of earlier Indian mathematics, which included the Indian-Arabic numerals we still use today as well as the concepts of zero and the resolvable variable.  Algebra led to Calculus in Europe, invented by both Newton and Leibniz, one of the European philosophers we will cover next week.  We still use Leibniz’s notation in Calculus today because Newton tried to name everything after himself, a plan that did not prove popular.  Several of the great philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age were also scientists, doctors, logicians and mathematicians.

Al Kindi (801-873), a pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method, was also one of the scholars that introduced Indian numerals to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra.  He wrote numerous medical treatises, including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm.  Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, he argued that time and space are relative, as all things save God are relative, subjective, and contingent (dependent on other things).  Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.

Al Farabi (872-950) took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond.  Farabi paid much attention to imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy.  He argued that if you learn and think critically, you can have greater and greater visions of the cosmos and its workings, the ability of both prophets critical of society and scientists investigating nature.  Imagination and a psychological understanding of truth would continue to be influential, even foundational, for later European thought.

Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037) was the foremost doctor of his time.  As a boy he learned Indian Arithmetic from an Indian grocer in his neighborhood.  His Canon of Medicine was used as a textbook for Europe in translation until the 1700s.  His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together.  He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, hypothesizing that microscopic organisms are the cause, randomized control trials, major concepts of psychiatry including hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, and epilepsy.  He was the first to correctly show the workings of the eye, arguing that light comes into the eye rather than emanates out of it, otherwise we would be able to see in the dark.  He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle.  He was also a pioneer of equations and propositional algebra.

Avicenna’s floating man thought experiment is important for a Modern European Philosophy class because it is strikingly similar to Descartes’ Deceiving Demon, one of the first major concepts of modern European philosophy which we will study next week.  Avicenna, who worked with anesthetics in publicly funded hospitals, asks us to imagine that we are slowly unable to feel our feet, then body, then sight and sensation, then memory and imagination.  What is left, the last and most essential thing that is ourselves?  Avicenna replies that it is consciousness.  With that, we still can be said to exist as self-aware.  Descartes, who we will study next week, has us imagine that there is a demon who is deceiving us and creating the world as an illusion, but the one thing the demon can not trick us about is that we are as we are aware of ourselves.  Descartes concludes with his famous, “I think, therefore I am”, just as Avicenna concluded that we are because we are conscious.


Modern European Philosophy and the Analytic/Continental Divide

Clearly in China and the Middle East life had become more complex, with increasingly sophisticated technology and with this a relatively greater understanding of the human body and mind.  Between 1400 and 1700 CE, as the golden ages of China and Islam drew to a close, Europe surpassed previous cultures in wealth through trade and power through technology.  By 1700, more gold and silver were passing West rather than East along the Silk Road for the first time in history.  

Unfortunately, as also happened in China, Islam and many other societies as they rise to become dominant, Europeans transitioned from saying that they could be just as civilized as other powerful civilizations during the Renaissance of the 1400s, to saying that no one was civilized like they were during the Enlightenment of the 1600s.  The central message became that, like the ancient Greeks, modern Europeans were uniquely free, and thus free to reason.  Unfortunately, this arrogant distinction was not itself reasonable, and certainly not wise.  The balancing of freedom and authority is a complex problem that is not distinctly European, nor is wisdom a distinctly European value.

Modern European Philosophy started as a single tradition but then split into two separate branches in the 1800s, the Continental tradition of Germany and France (also Italy, Spain and Russia) and the Analytic tradition of Britain and America (also Canada, Australia and South Africa, the English speaking countries of the former British Empire).  The first several European philosophers we will study, those between and including Descartes and Kant, are shared by both traditions.  Modern European Philosophy taught at American universities typically covers Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Kant with few additions.  While courses in Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger are offered as electives, the core classes focusing on mind, language, logic and ethics are taught from an Analytic perspective primarily using works by American Analytic philosophers.

The Analytic tradition continues after Kant to study the first Analytic philosophers: Frege from Germany, Russell from Britain, and Wittgenstein from Austria.  After the initial German and Austrian, most Analytic philosophy comes from the English speaking countries of Britain and America.  The Continental tradition largely consists of German and French thought, and continues after Kant to study the German philosophers Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and then several French philosophers influenced by these earlier Germans.  Why the split between the two camps?  Two strands of thought went in opposite directions from Germany, the Continental tradition embracing Hegel, the Analytic tradition rejecting him and Continental thinkers influenced by him.  There are both political and philosophical reasons for this.

While Hegel became a conservative in later life, his thinking spelled out the path of radical change and revolution.  As mentioned, Hegel saw history, as well as the history of each branch of human thought, as a battle between right and left, between understanding and reason, between dogmatism and skepticism.  Hegel had a student named Karl Marx, one of the coauthors of the Communist Manifesto and the founding philosopher of Communism.  Nietzsche, who epitomized German pessimism and the turn against a belief in objective reason toward perspectivism, like Marx in the same period saw society as in need of radical change, as did Heidegger, who unfortunately became drawn towards fascism as a result.

In the early 1900s, WWI and Russian Revolution split England and English speaking countries such as America from German thought beyond the work of Frege.  German-Americans, like my father’s family, learned to lose German culture and assimilate as white Americans.  Britain and America turned anti-communist, while much of German and French thought continued to embrace Marx via socialism, Marxism and Post-Marxism.  In Analytic thought, dominant in the wealthiest countries so far in history, democracy and science are in no need of a revolution.  In Continental thought, all human forms of culture and ideology are to be critically, even suspiciously, examined in the hopes of change.  Notice that this makes Analytic thought lean towards the dogmatic, and Continental thought lean towards the skeptical, regarding the present state of society.

Someone once said that in the Continental tradition, philosophy wants to be an art, whereas in the Analytical tradition, philosophy wants to be a science.  German and French thought likes the profound and dramatic, British and American thought likes the dry and tidy.  Too often, this means that Continental thought is confusing and difficult, but deep and meaningful, whereas Analytic thought is clear and precise, but shallow and uninspiring.  Let us first look at the Analytic and then the Continental tradition to further understand this difference.


British and American Analytic Philosophy

The term ‘Analytic’ was first used by American philosophy professors in the 1930s, and then increasingly by Americans and British professors after WWII.  Analytic philosophy focuses on logic and language, prioritizing the objective and impersonal.  Frege revolutionized logic, using mathematical structures to describe reasoning.  Russell, who saw in Frege’s logic a method for clarifying and solving philosophical problems, argued that the unclear and unnecessary can be stripped away, revealing the clear and objective truth, much as math strips away the qualities of things to analyze them in terms of pure quantity.  

Russell was reacting against Hegel, who followed Kant, the last link between the two traditions.  Kant wanted to legitimize philosophy and logic as a distinct natural science and genuine objective knowledge.  Unfortunately, this meant that Kant had to maintain the exclusive distinction between objectivity and subjectivity.  Hegel believed that, though dogmatism and skepticism had battled throughout the history of thought, the two had to be reconciled and joined together as two sides of the same coin for us to grasp the truth in its fullness.  Hegel argued that one of the greatest insights that humanity can achieve is that objectivity is intersubjectivity, that objective truth is shared through agreement and disagreement subjectively.  Reality is a matter of perspective, but perspectives form a conjunction that shows us each genuine aspect.

For Russell and Analytic thought which followed, mixing subjectivity and objectivity confuses things that should be kept distinct.  Writing against Hegelians by name, he identified two schools of philosophy, ‘Continental’ and ‘British’.  While Hegel argued that reality is an evolving historical situation of oppositional perspectives and contradictions, Russell argued that mathematics and science work through eliminating contradictions to discard the subjective and historical leaving only the objective and universal, and that philosophy should do the same.  While Continental thinkers enjoy contradictions and speaking in paradoxes (such as Heidegger writing “Every revealing is a concealing”, or the Italian existentialist and Catholic philosopher Vattimo who said, “It is only thanks to God that I am an atheist”) Analytic thinkers hate this, believing Continental thought to appear deep but in fact mean nothing.  

Wittgenstein followed Russell in his early period, inventing the truth table method we use today in logic, though in his later work Wittenstein distanced himself from Russell and believed that objective truth “in the world” and subjective truth “in the head” could not be exclusively divided and that paradoxes are not necessarily false.  Logical positivists such as the Vienna Circle picked up and developed Wittgenstein’s earlier work.  They thought philosophical problems would disappear if logically analyzed.  This continues to largely be the position of British and American Analytic thought today.

However, British Utilitarianism and American Pragmatism survive in the wings as rebellious counter traditions, as an offshoots that still value science and its methods but are skeptical of claims to absolute distinctions and objective truth.  Both argue that concepts and descriptions are true insofar as they are useful and practical, and that there is no objective or exclusive truth beyond this.  We will study both the positivists and the pragmatists in the second half of the course.


German and French Continental Philosophy

Just like ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Utilitarianism’, ‘Continental’ was a label Analytic philosophy professors from Britain and America used against which they distinguished themselves as ‘Analytic’ in the 1930s, then increasingly 50s and 60s.  Continental thinkers have only recently taken up the term to distinguish themselves from the Analytic camp, which they don’t often admire.  In America, there was a surge of interest in Continental thought in the political upheaval of the 1960s, and courses on phenomenology, existentialism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and later postmodernism became popular amongst some professors and students.  We will be studying each of these along with positivism and pragmatism in the second half of the course.

While Analytic thought, like Russell, sought to strip away the subjective and historical, revealing the objective and universal, Continental thought focused on the union of the perspective and personal together with the social and historical. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the two forerunners of existentialism, argued that philosophy was always a personal confession, an experience of personal struggle, and self awareness.  They agreed with Hegel that reality is composed of perspectives that are in agreement and disagreement, but they rejected Hegel’s claim to have revealed the objective and total unity of the full set of perspectives, arguing that it is valuable to pursue truth but that claims to total objectivity are naive and foolish.  Rather than strip away the subjective as Russell advocated, or claim to have built objectivity out of the sum of subjectivities as Hegel had, existentialism held that the problem of subjectivity and objectivity was always open ended, never resolved, and that it was therefore the responsibility of individuals to discover truth for themselves.

After existentialism, continuing through structuralism, poststructuralism and postmodernism, Continental thought refused to take a detached “objective” third person view, seeing truth as something shared socially and historically but lived individually.  If we want to use our reason to understand problems that are meaningful to ourselves, we must understand them as complex rather than attempt to solve or dissolve them as Analytic thought proposed to do.  If social and historical context is stripped away in the interests of simplicity and mathematical precision, the complex meaning of the problem likewise disappears, which does little to solve the problem as we live it.  Philosophy should thus be meaningful like art, which has no simple answer, rather than attempt to legitimate itself as a science by focusing on accuracy and exclusion.

Consider the often mentioned experience of psychologists who attempted to teach Russian peasants in remote undeveloped areas arithmetic.  As we will consider next week, Descartes, the first modern European philosopher, used the example of “two plus three equals five” as a truth that appears to be so regular that we can assume it is universally and objectively true.  Russian peasants, when asked what two plus three equals, would often ask, “Two plus three of WHAT?”.  The psychologists replied that it didn’t matter, to which the Russian peasants would object, “Yes, it does matter, because if it is potatoes I can hold five easy, but if it is cats or donkeys I may not be able to keep them all together”.

Consider that if I have three coconuts, and you have two, and we decide to bring them together, we may not end up with five, because coconuts, unlike the abstract concepts of ‘two’ and ‘three’, can get lost, crushed, or stolen.  While it is easy, as Russell advocated, to strip away the possibilities of coconuts rotting, or coconut thieves, and focus on pure quantity, the contingencies of the situation are as important to us practically as two coconuts added to three equalling five is abstractly.  Nietzsche was critical of thinkers who treated abstract conceptions such as quantities, values, and traditions as more real than the physical objects they represent and arrange.  In his later thinking, Wittgenstein argued that when we give explanations and descriptions of things in mathematics, language and logic, we are adding additional elements, complicating the situation, not stripping the meaningless away, simplifying things.

Which is stronger or more accurate, describing things simply, or complexly?  Should we try for the clarity of black and white, or the complexity of shades of grey?  If you want certainty and exclusivity, such as in a situation where there will be terrible consequences unless barriers are held in place, simple, absolute black and white is best.  If you want complexity and inclusivity, such as in a situation where experimentation and alternatives are safe and permissible, complex, relative shades of grey is best.

Should philosophy close more than it opens, or open more than it closes?  On the Analytic side, reason should bring us to secure understandings, such that we have a foundational basis for making important decisions.  On the Continental side, much of what is most important to us, such as social struggle or our attitude towards death, are murky and not exclusively black and white, which is what makes them so dynamic, dramatic, emotional, and meaningful.  Clarity can be relative.  Ambiguity and plurality are as much our reality as clarity and singularity.

Analytic philosophy has been accused of being socially impotent.  Removing the situation and saying meaning is static and universal does not allow for social difference and change.  Hence, feminists and critics of racism often turn to Continental thought.  Questions of social identity, repression, ideology all are ‘meaningless’ to Analytics, even though many people, particularly intellectuals, find these quite meaningful.  Thus, at UC Berkeley, Continental thought thrives in the English and Rhetoric departments, particularly the latest French thought of Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida, while these are almost invisible in the Philosophy department.  Lately, Analytic thought has opened up to consider more complex social issues, attempting to speak precisely about matters that were considered too murky to render precision by earlier logical positivists.

Some Continental thinkers have admired Analytic thought for its clarity, as much of Continental thought is overly complex and verbose, impossible for the average person to read.  While Nietzsche is clear in his writing while asking deep questions, Hegel, Heidegger and later French thinkers can confound even experts.  Monique Schneider, a French philosopher and psychoanalyst who admires the clarity of Analytic thinkers, said that she has attended Lacanian psychoanalysis lectures which overjoyed students would leave saying, “It was wonderful...I couldn’t understand a thing”, assuming that the incomprehensible must be profound.  On an episode of the Simpsons, Homer watches a David Lynch movie, and says, “It’s brilliant...I have no idea what it means”.  While surrealists such as Lynch enjoy intentional obfuscation, shunning simple narratives and morals, there is a balance to be struck between clarity and depth.

Given the divide between the two traditions, what should we do as we study the history of thought?  My answer, as always, is rather than swear cultural allegiance to any particular side, we should each examine every side that we can and freely develop our own thinking as we like.  Philosophy is an exercise, a training of the mind.  Whether or not we close out answers or open up questions, we are training ourselves to think.  This is why we study a great range of thought, with all of its disagreements and oppositions, as we learn just as much from a philosophy to which we are opposed as we do to a philosophy with which we agree.

Social & Political Philosophy: Tribal & City State Politics

Politics Among the Apes

Apes have hierarchy, with a tension between authority and individuality.  Apes are capable of understanding basic forms of owning.  Consider the case (from an old Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee ignoring another male chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex, and how the female only snatches the banana for herself when the male ape gets bored and goes out of sight so that there is no expected reciprocity.  Apes are also capable of lying, which is important for politics, of course.  In one of the most fascinating stories of ape behavior I have heard, researchers documented that a young male baboon made the mistake of trying to force himself sexually on a high ranking female baboon of his tribe.  When the female screeched, the rest of the tribe began chasing the young male along the ground floor.  Suddenly, the young male turned and gave the call for leopard.  The chasers dashed up into the trees and out of sight, while the young male stood, watching them leave, on the ground in no danger from any leopard.  The researchers concluded that they had witnessed and documented an ape lying to save his own skin.  Thus, we can assume, humans have been lying since before they were human.


The Positives and Negatives of Human Thought

Human thought, and thus the human world, is dominated by pairs of opposites. It is often useful to think of these opposites in terms of positive and negative. Good is positive, while bad is negative. Happy is positive, while sad is negative. Being is positive, while non-being is negative. Full is positive, while empty is negative.

Notice that "positive" does not always mean happy or good and "negative" does not always mean sad or bad. When we say "order" and "chaos", closure (stability) sounds good and openness (instability) sounds bad. However, when we say "freedom" and "restraint", openness (unconstrained) sounds good and closure (constrained) sounds bad. When we want stability or order, openness is bad ("chaos"). When we want to be free and unconstrained, openness is good ("freedom"). A person, place or thing can be positive in some ways and negative in others. It depends on context, position and location.

Human thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution (often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the openness of the future). In systems of thought, dogmatists or positivists lean towards answers and affirming the truths of the system ("There are certain facts, morals and truths.") while skeptics lean towards questions and doubting the truths of the system ("Are there certain facts, morals and truths?"). According to Hegel, one of my favorite philosophers, human thought is an endless battle between positivism and skepticism. This battle is also a symbiotic evolution requiring both sides.

When we look at the history of human thought, from its origins in shamanism to its evolution and specialization with religion, philosophy, art and science, we can see that both positivism and skepticism play necessary roles. Without a base that is assumed and unquestioned, nothing new can be produced. However, without reaching for the new and questioning the old there is no growth to improve and fit new circumstances. The great thinkers in human thought, across all systems, incorporate the old while bringing us the new. Often they are called heretics in their time and only canonized after they are safely dead because they have to question the very system that they stand for.

What is philosophy?

Philosophy has been called "thinking about thinking", questioning and answering the very process of questioning and answering itself. The ancient Greek philosophers (such as Plato and Aristotle, who we will study later) questioned their traditions and brought new answers by questioning the human mind and society. While these Greek thinkers should be read and admired, they were not the first or only ancient thinkers to ask abstract questions about thought itself.

The Greek word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". What is wisdom?

German Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as positivism and skepticism fight and cooperate on the social level. These two parts are understanding and reason, and these correspond to knowledge and wisdom. Understanding tries to hold things set and steady (the conservative force) while reason tries to challenge and rearrange things (the progressive force). Knowledge is a set understanding, while wisdom is the ability to reason. All systems of thought use both understanding and reason to produce both knowledge and wisdom.

The Greek philosophers were known for wisdom, for questioning the ways that individuals and societies can have knowledge, beliefs and answers. Were the Greeks the first or only ancient people to have philosophers? In Radin’s book, Primitive Man as Philosopher, he argues that all societies (paying particular attention to North American tribes and African tribes) have a small number of individuals who are radical questioners and pioneers in innovation and individual thought.  In Miguel Leon-Pontilla's book Aztec Thought and Culture, he argues that the Aztec and Mayan poets questioned their societies and systems of knowledge, asking open ended questions such as "Do we know the gods exist?", "Is there an afterlife, like the ancestors said there is?", and "Can we ever know these things?". Indeed, when we look at ancient cultures we find both questioning and answering, knowledge as well as wisdom, in ancient Greece and everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in both directions.

“Shaman” is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” from the Latin root. The Shaman is the expert of the tribe, the one who not only holds the traditions of knowledge but who seeks new answers to problems. The shaman is both the preserver of the old and the seeker of the new.

It is quite amazing to consider that shamanism is the original human culture, found from Africa to Europe to the Americas to small islands in the pacific. While it is always different in each place, the similarities are quite profound.

In tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an answer must be sought for a problem. To do this, the shaman goes on a quest (both physical and mental) for the solution and new knowledge needed to solve the problem. Often the shaman is selected as a youth who has gone through a near death experience (sickness, struck by lightning, attacked but survives). The shaman is thought to have an affinity for seeking into the unknown because they are already experienced in the unknown.


Ancient World Cosmology

Many ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and even the Hawaiians) have a very similar cosmology. Cosmology is the term used to cover the ancient study of the world, which included physics, psychology, biology, medicine, philosophy, religion and most areas of study all together as a single study by the educated and the wise.

The world was thought to be like a big person (making the individual person a microcosm or mini-cosmos within the larger cosmos or world). The elements, including fire, air, earth and water stacked from lightest on the top (fire and air) to heaviest on the bottom (earth and water). This was not only observed in nature (star fire above, winds next, then earth above water) but also in humans (the mind is fire and visions of light, which heats and activates the breath in speech like orders and commands, and the water in the lower regions and functions of the body which often was identified with chaos). Order and reason were identified with the higher elements (fire and air, mind and breath) and chaos and desire were identified with the lower elements (earth and water, flesh and fluid). When the stack of elements is in order the cosmos and the individual are in order, and when the stack of elements are out of order the cosmos and individual are out of order. The higher elements were believed to be eternal just as the cosmos itself and Being are eternal, and the lower elements were believed to be temporary like the individuals and beings are temporary.

One can find in religion and philosophy in ancient cultures (including Christianity, Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy) the same message repeated again and again: reason and the mind must be placed above and in charge of desire and the body. The eternal way of things is to be placed above the temporary ways and wants. This gains the individual wisdom, reason and insight into the workings of the cosmos. When the lower elements are in charge, there is ignorance and destruction. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.


The Problem of the One and the Many

One early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many: this reality is one thing, but also many things. Shamans in many different cultures had visions of an All Tree or Tree of Life, the one yet many of all things. All or Being itself is the trunk, and the many things and species of the world are the branches or the fruit. One of the recurrent philosophical insights we will see in India, Greece and China is that it takes wisdom to see that the many things are all one reality and the one reality is seen from many perspectives.

Notice that the problem of the one and the many has political implications.  Unity and sameness is privileged over diversity and difference.  Early cultures did appreciate, sometimes reluctantly, individual thought and innovation, but it was and still often is subordinated to the good of the whole or unity of a culture.  Native American, African, and Celtic European tribes came together for meetings of many individuals and sometimes many tribes in order to come to agreements, and consensus was sought that balanced diverse wants and opinions.  When Native Americans took and held Alcatraz in the 60s, and there were differences of opinions among the tribes and individuals, they told the stubborn to be democratic and “stop being like white people”.  This shows us that all cultures value heroes and individual achievement, but they also seek to unify the whole of society and come to common agreement and consensus.

PRIMITIVE MAN AS PHILOSOPHER by Paul Radin

Modern Historians are supposed to look at societies other than their own free from bias and prejudice.  However, historians have so far been prejudiced and assumed that aboriginal/tribal societies are innately inferior.  This is due to the profound differences of social customs and because the tribes people could not stick up for themselves against the modern historian.  Romanticism also played a part in sustaining the assumption that tribes people are simple children and savages, unintelligent and lacking individuality.  The rise of the theory of evolution convinced many that tribes people are pre-logical and pre-individualistic because they have not reached required stages of social development, and this view has gained academic and scientific credibility.

Because of this, the most pressing need in history, sociology, psychology and other fields is to examine and question this prejudice, particularly the convictions that tribal people have a dead level of intelligence, that the individual is always submerged in the group, and that there are no thinkers or philosophers.  This book particularly examines the role of intellectuals in the earliest societies.

Every human group has members who are different in their individuality and who examine life and its problems with what we can call philosophy.  Languages of tribal peoples are sometimes more complex than our own and their vocabularies are sometimes just as large.  Their vocabularies have words with the same abstract connotations as our own, but in spite of this there are many theorists who do not believe tribal people to be capable of abstract thought.  They point out the concrete nature of words and expressions while ignoring that our own modern languages use similar concrete terms to express abstract thought.

The complexity of a society has little to do with the existence of philosophy or individual thought.  Indeed, complex civilizations can often stifle or even prohibit philosophizing and the asking of deep and abstract questions.

Often, academics has held to the view that the ancient Greeks and their cultural descendants have a special kind of mentality that allowed and still allows them to think individually, critically, and philosophically, but it is not clear what the nature of this special mentality is.  The best way to critically examine and correct this error is to provide examples of tribal people indulging in philosophical speculation.  Aristotle and the Greeks are called special for thinking systematically, even though all cultures transmit their thought in whole, unified systems.  Philosophical speculation flourishes most in times of crisis and change, as it did in the greatest periods of Greek and Chinese philosophy.

Throughout this book it is assumed that tribal people have the same distribution of intelligence and ability as do modern societies.  This has grown from a hypothesis to a conviction through the direct experience of tribal societies by the author.  The object of the book is to describe tribal society from the viewpoint of the intellectuals and thinkers of the tribe.

The intellectual often looks down on the practices of the ordinary people, but the ordinary person also looks with amusement on the distance between the real and practical world and the behavior of the scholar.  It is, however, the scholar who writes the history books and so it is this perspective that we often encounter when reading about the past of this and other civilizations.

When looking at isolated practices of “magic” ritual, such as the Winnebago Native American shooting an arrow at a trail to ensure good deer hunting, it is often forgotten that this act does not guarantee success and is interwoven with many practical behaviors.  If one asks the tribal individual if magic alone will bring home a deer or grow crops, they are quite amused at the lack of understanding.

Tribal people are in direct contact with their reality, while modern people are removed from many aspects of their own lives.  Magic was not a world apart from physical reality, but interwoven with it such that practical and physical situations were recognized while interpreted in traditional ways.  One does not ask for rain from a cloudless sky, nor seek protection for actions that are impractical or dangerously stupid.  The traditional systems of thought are an aid for dealing with physical and practical reality, not a substitute for reality.  Tribal people, like advanced modern people, do and do not understand reality and the forces behind it, so they work in accord with systems that sometimes do and sometimes do not work so that generally the society and individual will be well and overcome obstacles.

Individuals have relative freedom and individuality in tribal societies.  It is possible that we view the tribal individual as an automata, with no freedom or individuality, because modern life saturated with technologies has turned human individuals into automata.  It is a mistake to believe that tribal people do not have variation in ritual and belief but modern people do.  There is always variations in ritual and belief amongst any people, and modern life has in fact standardized beliefs more than they ever have been.

When one draws the community together and asks about the reasons behind an aspect of culture, one will find not only variation but contradictions and arguments.  This is as true of tribal beliefs as it is of modern academics and science.  A community is always an agreement and disagreement of beliefs and perspectives.  All societies, tribal or modern, believe that there are immutable and permanent truths, but there is no complete agreement as to what these truths are or how they are structured or caused.  Even if there is a great deal of consensus, this does not prevent radical variation in belief among individuals and minority groups.  If this variation is sometimes concealed, this is due to fear of ridicule or rejection by the majority.  Individuality that contrasts with the beliefs or behavior of the majority is in danger of being labeled a mistake or deviancy.  It is always safer to either conform to the majority or remain silent.
Individual members of any society have to balance and integrate their individuality with society.
Sometimes it is even asserted that tribal people are so varied in belief that they cannot form coherent systems.  It is often asserted that the Greeks and Europeans are “systematic thinkers” relative to others, but also that they are also free and various in thinking relative to others.

With the development of writing, a welcome oasis given the dynamic and ever-changing world, beliefs and systems of thought were able to be highly standardized.  The written word was deified and identified with the unchanging way of the cosmos.


HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER by Kramer

Sumer is the birthplace of the written word, one of the earliest city state societies.  Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia.  These were multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively to one ethnicity.  The primary way that cultures were dominated was, as it is today, not with war but with trade.  War typically means efforts to dominate through economic means have failed.

Sumer had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the liberal arts), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments.  One excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and carries off your land”.  My favorite Sumerian lament is recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that teenagers are running around and breaking laws and having sex, concluding that the world will certainly end soon.

Very important for this class, in Sumer we find the first democratic bicameral congress.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he appeals to the elders of the senate.  The elders do not want war because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept his proposal.  Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the community as a whole and needs the house to override the smaller but higher senate.


MYTH TODAY by Roland Barthes

Barthes, a French thinker and literary critic, argues that any speech can be mythologized and through any medium.  He uses the example of roses being given as a gesture of passion to illustrate his concept of a sign, and then describes how signs can serve myths which then become larger signs that signify other things.

At the barbershop one day, he is upset by the cover of Paris-Match (a magazine much like Newsweek & Time in America).  On the cover is a young African boy in French military dress saluting.  Barthes writes that the boy is clearly being depicted saluting the French flag, and the cover is meant to signify that France is a great empire in which all are equal and love the empire.  Barthes writes that this boy is being made to serve his colonialist oppressors and that the image is a sign that serves a modern myth: France stands for freedom.  It is a game of hide and seek with meaning.  It is an open association or coherence that does not demand what it means but highly suggests what it means.  In doing this, it is a deformation and distortion of the realities of French colonial Africa.  It is a gesture that is deliberately misleading, alienating the meaning from the situation.  It is an alibi for French colonialism.
Consider that, coupled with Radin, we may wonder whether we live in times of less or greater mythology considering the forms of media and the dislocation of modern society.