Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

The whole structure of Christian thinking was at times inimical to pagan/classical traditions. Rhetoric provides one example. Traditionally, of course, rhetoric could not be separated from the individual who composed it. But in the Christian mind, it was God who spoke through his preachers. This is based on Paul, who stressed the power of the spirit–it is the spirit rather than the individual who speaks, which ultimately means that philosophy and independent thinking in general is rejected as a means of finding truth.14 Gregory of Nyssa was one of the so-called Cappadocian Fathers, great orators who were sympathetic to classical philosophy. Even he was moved to say: ‘The human voice was fashioned for one reason alone–to be the threshold through which the sentiments of the heart, inspired by the Holy Spirit, might be translated clearly into the Word itself.’ By the same token, the dialectical method–as epitomised by Aristotle, for example–was also outlawed: there can be no dialogue with God. It was largely as a result of this that, save for two works of logic, Aristotle vanished from the western world, preserved only because his works were hoarded by Arab interpreters. Scholars in Alexandria and Constantinople continued to read Aristotle and Plato but, as was mentioned above, saw their role as custodial rather than to add new ideas. In 529, as we have seen, Justinian closed the Platonic Academy in Athens on the grounds that philosophical speculation had become an aid to her...