This thing of Warring is no part of Philosophy, but managed by Parasites, Pandars, Cut-throats, Plow-men, Sots, Spendthrifts and such other dregs of Mankind, not philosophers.
This thing of Warring is no part of Philosophy, but managed by Parasites, Pandars, Cut-throats, Plow-men, Sots, Spendthrifts and such other dregs of Mankind, not philosophers.
I am awaiting Jonathan Kemper's response to my suggestion that a contest be held to determine what titles are to adorn the front wall of the new library's jumbo-parking lot. Mr. Kemper - member of the Kemper family dynasty, president of Commerce Bank, a godfather of downtown Kansas City's renaissance - is the prime mover of the downtown library into the renovated, Renaissance neoclassical style First National Bank building across the street from his office - the new library is the inspiring centerpiece of the commercial Library District real estate project. Mr. Kemper had stated, "The biggest question is not what titles to select, but what we want those titles to say to the community." Therefore I suggested that We The Community be included in our patron's "we." I referred him to my favorite title, The Praise of Folly, by the humanist Desiderius Erasmus.
Perhaps I should not hold my breath while waiting for Mr. Kemper's determination. After all, according to The Kansas City Star, "people have described him as dismissive", and as an "uninterested listener." I certainly hope he has not dismissed my idea, or, if he has, I hope he will give me his reason therefor. I have good reason for hoping that he will respond, for he and I have much in common: first of all, he is a bookish person who loves history. Furthermore, I too come off as "cerebral" "pompous" "stuffy" "righteous" "presumptuous" "dismissive" and so on. Of course my friends say, "That's just Dave," and Jonathan's friends say, "That's just Jonathan." We are both introverts who practice "unnatural" extroversion, yet we are "funny" and sometimes we watch The Simpsons. Jonathan's anonymous detractors attribute his traits to wealth, wherefore I must see my father and question my paternity - perhaps I was born rich and the stork laid me at the wrong doorstep.
A little bird has told me that my own recommendation, The Praise of Folly, should be dismissed because the author, Erasmus of Rotterdam, was not an American, and that only United States authors should be privileged to have their titles on the walls of a library's parking lot.
Of course the United States of America had not been been conceived and declared yet. The discovery of the New World was the talk of Europe then, although Erasmus said next to nothing about it in writing; methinks because he was most interested in the Old World that inspired the Renaissance because the Classical was considered to be vastly superior to almost everything medieval, especially the barbarous and irrational Gothic culture. His biographer Stefan Zweig said that Erasmus the book-lover loved the art of book-making most of all.
"Erasmus loved many things," Zweig wrote, "which we ourselves are fond of; he loved poetry and philosophy, books and works of art, language and peoples; he loved the whole of mankind without distinction of race or colour, loved it for the sake of a higher civilization. One thing alone did he wholeheartedly detest and that was fanaticism, which he looked upon as contrary to reason. He himself was the least fanatical of mortals.
We do well to reiterate that Erasmus loved books very much. He believed that reading and writing would save the world from, from the top down. He visited a town or city because it had an excellent library and a clean inn nearby with good food and, even more important than food, fine wine. And scholars and princes often visited that place because Erasmus, the star of letters, was there.
True, Erasmus was not an American - of course not. And neither is the Renaissance style a specifically American style. Americans did not invent Greek columns and Roman arches and domes and other things classical. Erasmus in fact was a cosmopolitan, a Christian humanist who abhorred fanatic nationalism and religious bigotry, and that is one good reason for placing his name by the neoclassical facade of the new Kansas City Library, underneath the title The Praise of Folly - a satire wherein Madame Stultitia made a fools out of warmongers and bigots among others, including his own type, the scholar and wise man. A broken-down knight and highway robber by the name of Ulrich von Hutten, in Expostulatio cum Erasmo, called his former friend Erasmus a fickle, fortune-hunting coward who had betrayed protestant evangelism. Erasmus replied with a sponge, to soak up Hutten's aspersions, Spongia adversus Hutteni, wherein he stated his aversion to partisanship:
"In many books, in many letters, in many disputations, I have unfalteringly declared that I refuse to mix myself in the affairs of any party whatsoever...." Again, "I love freedom and I will not and cannot serve any party."
We might as well quote a child of the French Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson, in that context. Jefferson, claimed by both the Democratic and Republic parties as their alma pater, quoth:
"I am not a federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." (Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, Paris, March 13, 1789)
Erasmus knew that the German Lutheran movement would lead to a national church instead of his desired ecclesia universalis. He eventually charged Luther with throwing the "apple of discord" into the world, inspiring the Peasant Rebellion and bloody reprisals. Early on, in reply to Luther's flattering letter of March 28, 1519, he wrote, "I refuse to have anything to do with party." Further, "So far as may be, I wish to keep neutral in order to do my share in promoting the renascent sciences; and I believe a shrewdly manipulated reticence will achieve more than impetuous interference."
Recognizing Erasmus in the Heart of America would be particularly apt given the recent drift of the United States to right-wing, anti-democratic public and private corporate government, loosely associated with 'fascism' (see the Oxford English Dictionary) by those Europeans who are more mindful of fascism's horrors during the last century. Most of the world was recently outraged that the United States government officially spat in its face three times, then proceeded with pre-emptive belligerence against its will in order to save the the world whether the world liked it or not. Intelligent people all over the world were dismayed by the behavior of the president, whom they perceived as a fanatic and bigot who was in the pocket of big corporations eager to profit from destruction and reconstruction ("creative destruction"); and they were appalled that Junior Bush, like Hitler, was so popular with his people that they initially gave him a blank check to proceed at will; however, his nationalism did not include socialism, and unemployment soared as the rich soaked the poor even more.
The few United States citizens who protested against the Bush administration's drive to pre-emptive war were called traitors. Many were fired from their jobs on pretexts. Entertainers who dared to speak out against the administration were penalized economically. Deja vu.
"It comes to this," wrote Erasmus in Complaint of Peace, "that if one ventures to open his mouth against war he is looked upon as not much better than a brute beast, as a fool, and as being unchristianly." And, "The Plaint of Peace is rejected by all the nations and peoples of Europe, and driven forth and slain." As for the hatred between English, French, and German, "Why do such foolish names still exist to keep us sundered, since we are united in the name of Christ?"
In his Dedicatory Epistle to Elmer Davis, Hendrick Willem van Loon writes about the destruction of Rotterdam by the Nazis, and how Erasmus' home there would no doubt be destroyed in the conflagration, for Hitler care for nothing, he was no recognizer of persons, his violence was indiscriminate:
"(Erasmus) wanted mankind to be set free from fear and disaster by being set free from his own ignorance; he hoped for a world in which intelligence, common sense, good manners, tolerance and forbearance should dominate the scene instead of violence, ignorance, prejudice and greed. We now realize that he made a fatal mistake which prevented him from being victorious. He began with the top of the pyramid of enlightenment, whereas he should have begun with the bottom."
As for war, Lady Folly observed, "This thing of Warring is no part of Philosophy, but managed by Parasites, Pandars, Cut-throats, Plow-men, Sots, Spendthrifts and such other Dregs of Mankind, not Philosophers." Furthermore, "War is so Savage a thing that it rather befits Beasts than Men, so outrageous that the very Poets feigned it came from the Furies, so pestilent that it corrupts all men's manners, so injust that it is best executed by the worst of men, so wicked that it has no agreement with Christ; and yet, omitting all the other, they (Christian leaders) made this their only business. Here you'll see decrepit old fellows acting the parts of young men, neither troubled at their costs nor wearied at their labours, nor discouraged at anything, so they may have the liberty of turning Laws, Religion, Peace and all things else quite topsie turvie. Nor are they destitute of their learned Flatterers that call palpable Madness Zeal, Piety, and Valour, having found out a new way a man can kill his brother without the least breach of that Charity which, by the command of Christ, one Christian owes another." (The Praise of Folly)
Erasmus admitted that men are by nature violent, but, he observed, small-scale violence burns out unless fanned by an ideal, by some fanatic ideology of a part posing as the whole, enlisting men to mass organized murder in its name. Of course the highest thinkers of high civilization strive for the liberal Universal that peacefully comprises the particulars, instead of imposing a particular perspective upon all as a false universal, absurd the moment that it is proposed, because its assertion of the part contradicts the rest of the whole. Indeed, the nature of reason itself is to generalize, to mediate, to find similarities among differences, to arrive at a consensus or reasonable compromises, all the while remaining scientifically skeptical of any final solution proposed. Liberty for all under the law means that no particular faction or fraction, whether it be a minority or a majority, will be allowed to lord it over the rest as tyrant.
With that in mind, I have no doubt that Kansas Citians should feel free to adorn their new library with a title of a book written by Erasmus, a foremost cosmopolitan humanist who graced the world at the acme of the Renaissance, a period whose architecture represented a return to a well balanced, rational order of peace and tranquility. Not that Erasmus was a pagan: he was a Christian scholar. But he was not a bigoted Christian: he was an eclectic who recognized the truth of the Christian ideal wherever he found it, including in 'Saint Plato's works. Erasmus admired the Sermon on the Mount most of all. He contributed to the translation of Greek scripture; for instance, he was attacked for omitting from his bible a pious fraud - the Trinity -perhaps interpolated in John by Priscillian (A.D. 380) - not a single Greek document included the Trinity. He did not agree with the doctrine of original sin, but he did not care to engage in theological disputations on points of dogma.
Erasmus wrote a Christian handbook, Dagger (Handbook) of the Christian Knight. He perceived Christian humanism as a feudal order lead by an intellectual aristocracy. He advocated a sort of Christian activism: Christianity was a life, not a creed, and that life should imitate Christ, whose truth is related to the antique truths before him. The ethical and moral life lived is a life tempered by reason. Erasmus, then, was blessed with a synthesis of the piety of the German mystics - the devotio moderna of the Brethren of the Common Life among whom he was raised - and the virtually godless philosophy of the Florentine Platonic Academy. Preserved Smith put the dynamic dialectic this way:
"Widely different, indeed mutually hostile. as appeared the sources of the inspiration of the German mystics and the Italian humanists, both agreed in asserting, against the stiffening of the religion through dogma and organization, the claims of an inner, personal piety. The mystic, by emphasizing the role of the spirit, the other by cherishing the rights of reason, arrived at the point where theology and ritual alike were regarded as hindrances alike to the inner life, and where the ethical interest emerged uppermost." (Erasmus 1923)
In sum, Erasmus promoted Good Literature, the Philosophy of Christ, and Peace.
In contrast to Luther's fanaticism, nationalism, rigidity, revolution, irrationalism, militarism, and fatalism, Erasmus preached humanism, cosmopolitanism, versatility, reform, reason, peace, and free will.
Erasmus failed for the time being. His failure has been attributed to his belief that reform can be accomplished by reasonable means, from the top down, by educating the leadership. Although princes praised him and cited his pacific phrases, they hypocritcally made war. Our pseudo-conservative (neo-con) leaders supposedly have a better education; they speak of war as a necessary means to keep the peace or to resolve moral conflicts, peace being merely a brief interlude between wars. They believe that patriots should be loaded guns who will shoot on their command. And they manage their economic corporations anti-democratically, as if businesses were military enterprises - now engaged in a war in favor of the rich and against the poor and their own employees.
A renascimento is presently required, a resurrection of the human mind, of the free human spirit, in correlation with the downtown renaissance of Roman architecture and Greek columns. We recall that Greek democracy was limited to the small portion of the population who were Greek citizens. Our democracy is delimited to a very small portion of the population, the power elite who represent or control the "democratic republic." Families and clans have always vied for power over nations and states. Certain family dynasties managed, by virtue of intellect, force of arms, and inheritance to maintain their dominant influence for centuries.
The Medici family of bankers and city bosses are interesting in our context, for they expended vast sums financing the Renaissance - from a financial perspective, the expenditures were foolish. Cosimo the Elder, by the way, sponsored the first public library in Florence. He also sponsored Brunelleschi's famous dome project among other great things - the architect was called a fool by some of his own masons.
Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent worked to undermine republican institutions and to establish a New Rome in Florence. They favored their friends and the lower classes, ruling as a sort of mafioso. The Medician New Rome was resented of course not only by republican leaders from other families but by the likes of Savoranola - he hated the vain licentiousness of the Renaissance, and worked to establish a theocracy, a New Jerusalem. The Medici family lasted nearly four centuries; now extinct, its influence lives on everywhere, including downtown Kansas City, Missouri, where local family dynasties, led by the Kemper banking dynasty, have cooperated to finance the new $50 million library. Kansas Citians are glad to have it despite their urban cynicism and the protest of unknown artists, architects, and writers whose suggestions were dismissed offhand. Lady Folly has already said that "Jonathan's buidling" will succeed because he is a fool.
"The Renaissance," said Stefan Zweig, "was the result of the triumph of commerce (by means of money and credit) over the earlier medieval method of trading by barter.... the way in which it usually made itself manifest was by an outbreak of widespread interest in architeture.... When they (patrons) presnted their townsmen with a new hospital, or a new church, these were evidences of their desire for learning, their respect for true scholarship, their love of beauty." (The Arts 1937)
Mystically speaking, time is unreal.
Wealthy patrons who speak of downtown revitalizations and renaissances and whose power and prestige and real estate values are enhanced by monumental charitable works deserve to be praised for their folly. Therefore, when selecting the titles to adorn the parking lot, I suggested that We The Community be included in our patron's "we," and referred him to my favorite title, The Praise of Folly.
