Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home

by Glenn S. Sunshine

Irish monasteries became the main educational centers in Europe during the sixth and seventh centuries. These centers included the continent’s major scriptoria (places where manuscripts were copied) at Luxeuil and Bobbio in France, and particularly a major school at York in England, another church founded by Irish missionaries. In fact, in the late 700s, over a century after the reintroduction of education to the continent, when Charlemagne decided he wanted to overhaul education in his empire, the best scholar he could find was Alcuin, a deacon at York. So Charlemagne sent for him, and Alcuin developed a system of schools, textual study, and copying that laid the foundation for the later widespread revival of education in Europe.

Charlemagne laid the foundation for the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the central political authority of medieval society. Manorialism laid the foundation for the rural economy, and feudalism for the basic political system that would govern most of Europe during the rest of the Middle Ages.

except for Charlemagne’s reign, political power had been decentralized into smaller and smaller political units. With the reigns of Otto I and his successors, creatively named Otto II and Otto III, the Holy Roman Empire was reconstituted in Germany, beginning the process of centralizing political authority in Europe. The papacy, which had degenerated to the point where it was little more than a political football kicked back and forth between Roman noble families — a period frequently called the “papal pornocracy” (“rule by immorality”) — was cleaned up by the Ottonians and eventually emerged as a political force that rivaled the emperor. Feudalism was restructured by the Normans in France and later England to reinforce royal power rather than to disperse it among the nobility.

European population more than doubled between 1000 and 1300.

until the late nineteenth century, more people died in cities than were born in them. Without immigration, the cities would quickly depopulate. Further, towns permitted some social mobility. Towns jealously protected their right to free serfs who had escaped from their land and lived inside their walls for a year and a day. This encouraged immigration and provided a base of workers to help fuel the economy.

Although a few farmers lived in cities, growing food was not the principal function of the towns. Instead, they were centers for manufacturing and commerce; frequently, they also became political centers as well by taking control of the surrounding rural areas and thus becoming city-states like the old Roman towns.

Trials by ordeal, by fire or water, and by combat were commonly used to determine guilt or innocence in cases where the answer was not obvious. All were based on the idea that God would protect the innocent and judge the guilty. In the new millennium, legal scholars began moving toward a more rational criminal procedure with less reliance on supernatural intervention. In some parts of Europe (especially in cities and in Italy), Roman law was revived; in other parts, customary law was codified and rationalized to provide a more systematic, written system of law and criminal procedure.

Truth was seen as rational, anchored in the world of time and space and thus discoverable by human reason. This in itself marks a major shift in worldview in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Labeled “Platonic humanism” by historian R. W. Southern, this worldview was based on the idea that the world came from God and thus can lead us back to God. Without going as far as the ancient Platonic hierarchy of being, twelfth-century scholars believed that the world reflected the God who created it — the “Platonic” part of the worldview — and therefore that studying the world can tell us about God. God created the world separate from himself, and since he is rational, the world he created is also rational and subject to rational analysis.

SCHOLASTICISM

Second, truth is necessary for society, since any society not built on truth is built on a lie and thus will fall.

The more truth, the more durable the civilization. The corollary is that the best guide to truth is the past, since if you study successful civilizations, you will find truth at their core. This fit neatly with the idea that it was possible to integrate pagan philosophy into Christianity, since both are expressions of the same truth. (The idea that there might be different truths for different people would have been seen as ridiculous, because truth was seen as that which corresponds to reality, and reality does not vary from person to person; it is simply the way God made the world and how it works.) So although we can learn new things about the world, it is safer and more reliable to build our understanding of the world on the base of ancient authorities.

the scholastic method comes in. The method consists of five parts. 1. Ask a question. 2. List the authorities that addressed the question and divide them into categories, pro and con. 3. Using a combination of logical tools from Aristotle and surprisingly sophisticated methods of linguistic analysis, analyze the authorities with the goal of resolving as many of the apparent contradictions as possible. 4. Present the solution to the problem. 5. Argue against your solution from as many angles as possible and respond to these anticipated objections.

Some scholars suggested the idea of “double truth,” that is, that something could be true philosophically but not true theologically, and vice versa. In all likelihood, no one really believed this, but it was offered as a possible answer to the problem. Another more promising solution was to suggest that there were some things that could only be known through biblical revelation, so that the ancient philosophers worked things out as best they could from unaided reason, but that ultimately we know better because God has revealed truth to us that is inaccessible to pure human reason.

a strong understanding of truth as an absolute, without contradictions.

The Condemnations of 1277 were a major watershed for medieval thought.

Questions about the origin of the universe were part of theology, since they clearly had theological implications. But beyond that, theology also included studies of the natural world. Today, we call this “science,” but from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century, it was called “natural philosophy” or “natural theology.” The best way to understand its significance is to look back to Platonic humanism, where the physical world was studied as a vehicle to lead us back to God. In other words, understanding the physical universe was a means of understanding bigger philosophical and theological issues, since the world is an integrated whole. As a result, medieval scholars believed it was possible to learn moral and spiritual lessons from the physical world. This, in turn, meant that studying the natural world was actually considered a branch of theology.

work done by scholars, monks, and craftsmen helped to set the stage for the later scientific revolution. Among many examples that could be cited, two stand out. The first was in the area of mechanics . To build the great cathedrals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, medieval architects needed to develop a solid understanding of statics, the branch of mechanics dealing with stationary objects. Medieval scholars also worked on basic questions of dynamics, the branch of mechanics dealing with moving bodies. Aristotle had a complete (though incorrect) theory of dynamics. With the Condemnations of 1277, medieval natural philosophy began to develop in new directions.

the best method of learning about the world was not deductive reasoning but direct study and examination of the world. The importance of this shift is hard to overstate, since it laid the foundation for the tremendous success of Western science in later centuries.

But the mullahs soon prohibited studying speculative thought (including philosophy) from non-Islamic sources. For example, the prominent Sufi scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali argued in his book The Incoherence of the Philosophers that Muslim philosophers who in any way called into question the teachings of the Qur’an or of Islam were infidels. This may sound similar to the Condemnations of 1277 except that al-Ghazali added that killing infidels was obligatory for all good Muslims. This kind of thinking put a real damper on philosophical development.

What they did not do, however, was develop science, in the sense of explanations of why the physical world works the way it does. This highlights the second difference between orthodox Muslim thinkers, such as al-Ghazali, and the Condemnations of 1277. Islam teaches that Allah directly controls everything and can do as he pleases with the world. Seeking explanations of physical processes was thus either not possible or inappropriate. So, for example, al-Ghazali argued that the idea that there were natural laws was blasphemous because it denied Allah’s freedom to govern the universe as he saw fit. Similarly, Ibn Rushd (known in Europe as Averroes) was dismissed from his position under the emir of Al-Andalus (Spain) because his rationalistic arguments collided with the emir’s orthodox beliefs.

Islam taught that since Allah controlled all things, disease was not spread by contagion but by the will of Allah, who alone determined who lived and who died during an outbreak of disease. As a result, Ibn Khatimah, a Muslim physician living in Spain, had to argue that plague was not caused by a contagion. The Arabs had believed in contagion before Islam, but now they knew better. It is open to debate whether he believed what he said, but it is clear that he believed he had to say it to keep from attracting unwanted attention from the religious and civil authorities. Ibn al-Khatib, another Spanish Muslim physician, argued that plague certainly was contagious. He was imprisoned in 1374 for holding non-Islamic views. A mob of people broke into the prison and lynched him, apparently in part because his views of contagion were non-Islamic.

The church opposed efforts to scapegoat Jews for causing the plague, pointing out that they were dying from it just as Christians were.

This in turn meant that to avoid infection, people needed to breathe purified air. So, for example, to keep from becoming infected, Pope Clement VI sat between two roaring fires (which proved successful, but not for the reasons he thought it did). Other people carried flowers on their shoulders or in packets to sweeten the air, a practice which eventually produced the corsage.

The anonymous sculptor at the cathedral in Naumburg, Germany, began producing exceptionally realistic sculptures in the early 1200s, a good two hundred years before Italian Renaissance artists began to produce comparably realistic work. The statue of one woman, Uta by name, was so beautiful that Adolf Hitler promoted her image as the picture of the ideal Aryan woman. Since the sculpture of her husband (Ekkehard) next to her was not so attractive, Hitler promoted another sculpture, known as the Bamberg Rider (possibly by the same artist), to be Uta’s male counterpart.

these sculptures mark the beginning of a trend toward increasing realism in art.

In keeping with Genesis, the medieval mind thought of work as production, either in agriculture or in manufacturing. As we have seen, monks in the monasteries were required (in principle) to engage in productive labor. But because they were also to live austere lives (again, at least in principle), they could not spend the income from their labors on conspicuous consumption. They could and did give to the poor, but what were they to do with the rest? If productive work was good, then investing the profits to increase production would also be good. And so, ironically, the stricter the monastic order, the more austere the lifestyle, the harder their work — the richer they became. The key was reinvesting profits to increase production, one of the central principles of capitalism. But without the initial concept, drawn from the Bible, of the inherent goodness of the physical world and of labor, this idea would not have emerged in the West any more than it did in any other region of the world.

The same could not have been said of slaves in slave-based economies. Similarly, much of biblical law in the Old Testament focuses on rules for property ownership, so much so that not even kings could take land that belonged to a family. As a result, Thomas Aquinas argued that property was a fundamental right, and William of Ockham contended that since property is a right, it is more fundamental than laws and thus cannot be taken away arbitrarily by the government. This type of thinking

THE GUILD SYSTEM

To regulate the more important crafts, a system of guilds evolved in the towns. Each guild covered a single craft. Their main responsibility was setting rules of production and, to some extent, sale. So, for example, all shops in a guild might have to be on the same street to allow buyers to compare products and to make sure the rules of production were followed. The guilds also set production standards; for example, a chandlers guild (candle makers) would set a minimum weight for the candles and a minimum percent of animal fat in the wax. To do so was particularly important for crafts that would be exported, since the reputation of the town’s products could be ruined if one shop exported inferior goods. Guilds set employment rules (the number of apprentices and journeymen who could be in a single shop, for example), and they regulated the entry of new masters into the guild and controlled the number of shops in the town. Contrary to what is often said, however, no guild was permitted to set prices; pricing was handled by competition. The object of all this was to maintain as level a playing field as possible between the guild shops. Some craftsmen would excel, but the intention was to prevent one master from competing unfairly and thus taking business from another.

guild members had to attend Mass together on the feast day of their patron saint.

Saint Augustine lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in the declining years of the Roman Empire. He was a converted Neoplatonist who eventually became a bishop at Hippo Regius in North Africa. He spent much of his career trying to deal with challenges to orthodox Christianity from Manichaeism (a descendant of Gnosticism), Donatism, and Pelagianism. Many of his letters and writings deal with practical political and legal issues related to these problems. His most important work on politics, the massive book The City of God, was written in response to a different threat — a pagan revival buoyed by the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths. The pagans believed Rome was sacked because it turned away from its ancient gods. In The City of God, Augustine argued that the problem with Rome was not that it had become too Christian but that it was not Christian enough.

when God first created Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they were innocent but capable of sinning if they chose to do so (Latin, posse peccare). Once they ate the forbidden fruit, they and all of their descendents were so affected by sin that they could no longer prevent themselves from sinning (non posse non peccare). Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for his followers to decide not to sin (posse non peccare), and those who go to heaven will no longer be able to sin (non posse peccare). What all of this means is that right now, we are in a world dominated by evil on both the individual and the institutional levels.

Augustine commented that Cain, the first murderer, founded a city; the righ teous Abel, whom Cain murdered, did not. In the end, the City of Man, with its vast accomplishments and even vaster abuses, will come to naught; only the City of God and its values will endure.

The City of Man uses terror from the enforcement of laws to compel good behavior and to promote a peace and stability in which good people can live their lives unmolested by the wicked. In contrast, the only weapons that the City of God has against evil are penitence, grace, and mercy. Indeed, one role of the magistrate is to use terror to encourage penitence, thus bringing the two cities closer.

Augustine’s vision of government is thus profoundly pessimistic, based as it is on the idea that in the absence of grace, humanity moves always toward selfishness and evil. Yet at the same time, despite worldly government’s corruption, he does carve out a space where a Christian can serve in the government and even gives the government a role in suppressing evil and encouraging repentance.

Virtually all medieval reform movements (as well as heretical movements) saw the wealth of the church as a fundamental problem. With political power, land, and influence, the church had grown very wealthy, with members of the higher clergy and even some monks living in luxury.

the sanctity and goodness of the community.

theologians had to wrestle with the effects of sin on government. Once again, Aristotle helped them, having argued that there were three basic types of government, each of which could exist in positive or negative forms: • The first pair is monarchy and tyranny. Both are characterized by rule by a single individual, though in a monarchy this individual rules for the common good, whereas a tyrant rules for self-interest. A strong point of monarchies is that they can respond quickly in an emergency, but their weakness is that if the monarch makes a mistake, no one can correct it. • The second pair is aristocracy and oligarchy. Both have to do with rule by a small group or council, again with the distinction that aristocracies work for the common good, while oligarchies pursue their own selfish interests. The strength of the aristocracy is its ability to deliberate to make wise decisions; its weakness is that it can be slow to act in an emergency. • The last pair is republic and democracy. A republic is rule by representation; a democracy is literally rule by the mob, through direct decision making by the populace. Democracies are a degenerate form of government because they are inevitably susceptible to falling under the control of a demagogue, a charismatic leader who can sway people to her or his own ends rather than to the common good. Republics are buffered from this danger by the representatives who run the government, yet this system of government also retains the grea...

The concept of natural law lent further support to the emerging idea of inalienable rights. In this context, natural law refers to the idea that God wove moral laws into the fabric of the universe. Living (or ruling) according to those laws leads to goodness in this world, while violating them will lead to chaos and evil. Legislation must conform to the dictates of natural law, since “an unjust law is no law.”

This provides a foundation for criticizing government and finds its echo in Thomas Jefferson’s argument that the pursuit of happiness (by which he meant goodness and virtue) is an inalienable right.

The Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the European discovery of the Americas, and the rediscovery of an ancient form of skepticism set the stage for momentous changes in the European worldview.

Renaissance thinkers had far more in common with the medieval worldview than they did with either the ancient or modern worldviews. Third, Renaissance thought was hardly progressive and forward looking. The very word renaissance means “rebirth” and refers to a rebirth of classical civilization, of ancient Greece and Rome. In other words, they used the ancient past as the measuring rod for everything. How is that progressive?

one of the themes of Renaissance writers was the decay of nature: • Everything in nature dies and decays; • human societies exist in the natural world; • therefore all human societies (including ours) will die and decay.

The Renaissance was born in the fourteenth century, an era that was arguably the worst in European history. It was shot through with problems — economic decline, continent-wide crop failures, the Hundred Years War, the papacy being moved to Avignon, multiple popes, and, of course, the Black Death. In this context, people began to think that the world had gone seriously wrong and that something better had to be out there. In southern Europe and especially in Italy, they had right in front of them evidence of a better world — the remains of Roman monumental architecture, roads, aqueducts, and artwork. To make a long story short, Italian thinkers in the fourteenth century began to argue that Rome was the epitome of civilization, and when Rome fell, civilization ended. Quite naturally, then, these writers looked to Rome and Greece as sources of values and standards for just about everything — art, literature, education, philosophy, military organization, political structures, and so on.

In essence, the Renaissance was a victim of its own success. They had accomplished their task of recovering the surviving knowledge of the ancient world, and vast amounts of new texts had been made available. But at the same time, the overwhelming amount of new material caused their broader intellectual project to collapse under its own weight. Of course, the scholastics had weathered this kind of disappointment earlier, and it might be that Renaissance thinkers would have as well, had this been the only problem they were facing. As it is, however, it was only the first of the challenges Europe faced during this period.

The idea of the divine right of kings was developed to support absolutism: God placed the king on the throne, so he was answerable only to God. Everyone else must submit to the king’s decisions, since to do otherwise is to resist the person whom God has placed over the kingdom. The hope was that this would enable the king to force obedience on those under him and thus prevent civil war. This idea was in marked

Even kings are subject to original sin, and so they cannot be trusted with unlimited power. Instead, there should be constitutional limits on royal power. Absolutism tended to be associated with Catholic powers, with the result that particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world Catholicism was associated with tyranny. It was also a factor in some of the religious wars of the seventeenth century.

an ancient Greek skeptic named Pyrrho, brought to light through the writings of one of his followers, a Roman author named Sextus Empiricus. Pyrrho was in many ways an anti-philosopher. Where most philosophers were interested in finding truth, Pyrrho was not. Instead, he seemed determined to show that knowing anything with certainty was impossible — though he knew it would be foolish to actually make that claim. When academic skeptics would assert that it was impossible to know anything, Pyrrho would respond, “How do you know that?” You see, the statement that you cannot know anything is itself a claim to know something, so it is self-contradictory. If it is true, it is false.

Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French writer who first employed the term essay (meaning “attempt”) to describe short pieces of writing. The idea was that he was “attempting” to describe himself and his thinking. Pyrrhonism makes an appearance in some of Montaigne’s essays, particularly in his social criticism. For example, in his essay “On Cannibals,” he outlines the supposed cannibalistic practices of peoples in the New World in some detail, but then asks whether this kind of practice should be condemned and whether it is any worse than the horrors Christians inflict on each other in Europe. The belief of European and Christian superiority to the “savages” in the New World is questioned, but it is neither affirmed nor denied.