About the Oxford teacher- British (or English) philosophy had for many years been under the aegis of the analytic school, concerned with narrow issues of logic; it has often turned to linguistic analysis, and considered other branches to be not real philosophy. European thinkers after Kant were classified as 'Continental'; other fields were thought of as hardly the same subject. As late as the 70s I was warned off of studying political philosophy as leading one astray from the sacred grounds of real philosophy.
Popular misconceptions about pre-modern History
- Thread starter ray243
- Start date
-The opposite belief found so often nowadays could be called 'Lord of the Rings' medievalism: an age of benevolent kings and queens, noble warriors and great ladies, wise priests and properly subservient peasants tugging their forelocks.
-Some educated people believed in the round earth theory proved by Erastothenes; belief in a flat earth was widespread.
Ibynyaha said:
"The Reformation was overwhelming a good thing for England, in fact it could be considered a cultural disaster since much was lost with the dissolution of the monasteries."
Which is why England plunged into several hundred years of backwardness and experienced cultural disasters such as William Shakespeare.
-Some educated people believed in the round earth theory proved by Erastothenes; belief in a flat earth was widespread.
Ibynyaha said:
"The Reformation was overwhelming a good thing for England, in fact it could be considered a cultural disaster since much was lost with the dissolution of the monasteries."
Which is why England plunged into several hundred years of backwardness and experienced cultural disasters such as William Shakespeare.
Skallagrim
Banned
Hold on a second, that's a pretty blatant fallacy. The fact that new greatness could be - and indeed was - achieved does not make the dissolution of the monasteries and associated losses any less of a cultural disaster.
Salvador79 said
"1): OK, child mortality factors in a lot here - so what? Would it be better for people not to be aware that long life expectancies are a relatively new (and even today still not global) achievement?"
While I agree with most of your points, this argument has actually been used by conservatives as an excuse for raising the retirement age-
" People live longer, so they can work longer."
"1): OK, child mortality factors in a lot here - so what? Would it be better for people not to be aware that long life expectancies are a relatively new (and even today still not global) achievement?"
While I agree with most of your points, this argument has actually been used by conservatives as an excuse for raising the retirement age-
" People live longer, so they can work longer."
@galanx Indeed I find this LotR medievalism, which in its various shapes hearkens back to the Romanticists, a much more problematic popular conception. Over here in Germany, I would say that this is not the view people come up with at first when prompted to think about the "Middle Ages" (that would be more along the lines of "dirty, poor, witch hunts, uneducated, feudal, stagnant"), but we certainly encounter it so much in fictional popular culture that we already expect it and some people actively seek it.
Both views are evidently gross overgeneralizations and in part blatantly false. But while the "dark ages" frame can be elaborated on and holds at least a degree of explanatory power and tells us to look for the actual lives of people, the "ideal feudalism" frame is a politically malignant pipe dream.
Both views are evidently gross overgeneralizations and in part blatantly false. But while the "dark ages" frame can be elaborated on and holds at least a degree of explanatory power and tells us to look for the actual lives of people, the "ideal feudalism" frame is a politically malignant pipe dream.
Except you haven't provided any examples of the great cultural losses suffered by closing the monasteries- and England did reach new heights thereafter.
Conceptions MUST be polyvalent to SOME degree, i.e. employable across contexts for varying ends, otherwise they're not going to be broadly accepted as useful explanations. The very same conception can be used by the political left to argue for a well-equipped public healthcare system because its introduction was synchronous with rising life expectancies:
"If you abolish or curb what has brought us longer lives, the poor will die younger again."
Skallagrim
Banned
You are seriously going to pretend that there were no cultural losses? Let me name some matters that are relevant here:
-- The destruction and ruination of countless historical monastic buildings, even the ruins of which are currently considered national heritage, and whose destruction is not disputed to have been a major cultural loss in and of itself.
-- The related destruction of monastic libraries. This is considered one of the greatest acts of wanton destruction during the entire English Reformation. Famous examples include the abbey of the Augustinian Friars at York, where a library of 646 volumes was near-completely destroyed (only three books survived) and Worcester Priory which had over 600 books (of which only six have survived). If that's not cultural destruction, I have no idea what is. (Note that those are famous examples, but ultimately the tip of the iceberg: the number of destroyed books is in the thousands.)
-- If you wish to argue that there may have been other copies of said books: let me assure you that was often not the case. Countless unique works were destroyed. One might think of the many manuscript books of English church music, none of which had then been printed. All gone.
-- Suppression and forced closure of religious hospitals. These had been the prime caretakers in England when it came to caring for the elderly poor. A very few of these were exempted by special royal dispensation, but most closed, their residents being discharged with small pensions. This may be deemed a humanitarian crisis that resulted in much needless suffering.
-- Monasteries also supplied free food and alms for the poor and destitute in general. It is disputed by what extent, but most historians who have studied the matter do believe that the dissolution had a noticable negative effect on British society, in that it created a veritable "army of beggars" that had previously found relief in the form of Church charity.
-- Schooling. Monasteries were often institutes of education, and their dissolution left a lamentable vacuum in that respect as well.
The 1940es-1950es-early1960es being a more ,moral` era than modern age.
Misconceived as that may be, I think the 40's, 50's, and 60's all count as modern, not pre-modern history.
Yeah, I think that in France at least, we're still in that shifting paradigm of absorbing the fact we did some unpleasant stuff to our colonies.
So we went from White Man Supreme to Let's talk about every aspect of the Other.
I think that this was the wrong reaction. Rather than erasing the National Narrative, it had to be rebuilt with doors in, or including the Other, in a coherent narrative.
I also believe this is especially important right now, as we're trying to build a European Nation.
It's the job of historians to go in the finer details of cross cultural identity and Black Presence in XVIIth century Europe. The common person doesn't need to know all that, and a footnote can be put there for people who want to extend their knowledge. That's what bibliographies are for.
Example, as an amateur historian, I specialize in Indochinese history. Most of what I read doesn't need to reach people. What they need to know is that colonisation was contested and was made partly on good but misguided intentions, as well as economic interests.
If you could sum that up in a rhyme and a song it'd be great and sufficient.
France went oversea to conquer
For money, goods and labor
Some priests and doctors went for the ride
To go where they thought people were wild
This was a bit bullshit as we must now admit
@Tanc49 LOL
Love that rhyme, though the last two lines might see improvement.
Also, didn't France also conquer for glory?
Germany's very late colonizations were all nonsensical irrational bullshit undertaken mostly for nationalist aggrandizement...
I agree with your statement about the big picture and the details. Do French schools really FOCUS on issues like Black people in 17c. Europe? That would indeed be... confusing, I guess, for all those children who don't have a lot of Puzzle pieces of any big picture yet. It IS important to show early on that, with every generalization, we're omitting stuff, and one can indeed exemplarify follow this or that trail off the beaten track. But we also do need the big picture first before we can deconstruct it, and I agree that Europe's unification process makes this even more important.
Love that rhyme, though the last two lines might see improvement.
Also, didn't France also conquer for glory?
Germany's very late colonizations were all nonsensical irrational bullshit undertaken mostly for nationalist aggrandizement...
I agree with your statement about the big picture and the details. Do French schools really FOCUS on issues like Black people in 17c. Europe? That would indeed be... confusing, I guess, for all those children who don't have a lot of Puzzle pieces of any big picture yet. It IS important to show early on that, with every generalization, we're omitting stuff, and one can indeed exemplarify follow this or that trail off the beaten track. But we also do need the big picture first before we can deconstruct it, and I agree that Europe's unification process makes this even more important.
You could also add the vandalism or destruction of religious statues, painting, stained glass, vestments, and chalices, which, whilst not directly a result of the Dissolution, was most certainly a result of the Reformation.
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha
Gone Fishin'
Ottoman Empire collapsed. Not happened. Most if not all the nations that got independent of the Ottomans were because they were torn apart. Greece and Bulgaria for example were due to great power interventions.
Ottoman Empire did not reform until the mid 19th century. Not hearing this anymore but the way they tell you about Ottoman reforms sound like they did nothing between 1620 and 1808. Which is of course false.
Europe being backward and all in education and trade. Although not entirely false but it is exaggerated. The Church kept a lot in tact and Trade was reduced to the Coast mostly.
Mongolians were barbarians. utterly false. They had a better society than most of Europe if you were Pagan, Jewish or Muslim. Of course this wasn't the case if you lived in a city and the Mongols were besieging it. Other than that, they were quite easy in their rule.
Ottoman Empire did not reform until the mid 19th century. Not hearing this anymore but the way they tell you about Ottoman reforms sound like they did nothing between 1620 and 1808. Which is of course false.
Europe being backward and all in education and trade. Although not entirely false but it is exaggerated. The Church kept a lot in tact and Trade was reduced to the Coast mostly.
Mongolians were barbarians. utterly false. They had a better society than most of Europe if you were Pagan, Jewish or Muslim. Of course this wasn't the case if you lived in a city and the Mongols were besieging it. Other than that, they were quite easy in their rule.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Most of the cultural losses were from huge devastating fires in the cities, where the ex-monastic collections had been gathered by scholars
If they had remained in monasteries, fire risk would have been a lot lower
That doesn't in itself say that dissolution of the monasteries was a bad thing, but does show how it led to the destruction of a lot of things that the monasteries had held
If they had remained in monasteries, fire risk would have been a lot lower
That doesn't in itself say that dissolution of the monasteries was a bad thing, but does show how it led to the destruction of a lot of things that the monasteries had held
Medieval Europeans produced epics like Beowulf and The Song of Roland, so clearly nothing of any real cultural value was lost when Rome fell.
My understanding was that Longshanks' justification for being overlord was that both Scottish king claimants had accepted his adjudication to who was the rightful king. Regardless, the legitimacy of the argument matters less than what was actually practically established, which is that the King of England established his rule over Scotland for a period. That is not true of France over England.
Not all witch hunts were “witch hunts.”
All societies produce dissentients; in societies where the social fabric was woven tight (oppressive) by religious belief the disenfranchised often found solace in the anti-social practice of witchcraft.
Witchcraft was an actual threat to medieval theocracies.
(This is not to suggest that a 100,000 plus were not murdered [as witches] for political and economic gain, they were.)
All societies produce dissentients; in societies where the social fabric was woven tight (oppressive) by religious belief the disenfranchised often found solace in the anti-social practice of witchcraft.
Witchcraft was an actual threat to medieval theocracies.
(This is not to suggest that a 100,000 plus were not murdered [as witches] for political and economic gain, they were.)
What I meant by this is the naive idea many people (including on this forum) have that the Roman Empire turned towards Christianity because monotheism was structurally better than polytheism - that there was something about the idea of one god that, once introduced, overpowers alternative beliefs by default. That doesn't even apply to the Roman Empire itself (the civil religion was headed toward collapse by the Crisis of the Third Century, but monotheistic Christianity was only one religion that fit the bill for a replacement), and breaks down to total nonsense when you consider anything outside of Europe. India has been solidly polytheistic for its entire history, China makes you question whether "gods" is even a coherent religious concept, etc. Buddhism in particular is a great example - when Buddhism came into contact with local religious traditions it incorporated them and became more "polytheistic".
In any case, the burden of proof is on those who say that there's something structurally better about monotheism, rather than those who don't.
You're misinterpreting me here - reasonably, since I was tired when I wrote my comment and didn't give much explanation. "Jewish stubborness theory" is a pseudo-historical idea that the reason Judaism has stuck around, unlike all other indigenous Near Eastern religions, is because the Hebrew people had a peculiarly uncompromising attitude and a "special" religion in some way. The more we know about extra-biblical Jewish tradition, the more we see that this is just post hoc reasoning.
Prior to the Babylonian Exile "Judaism" was basically henotheistic, with Yahweh just the sole patron god of the Hebrew people. Monotheism only started to coalesce during the Exile - and that was such a massive social trauma that it would be surprising if they hadn't differentiated their patron god in some way. And even once monotheism was established, there is plenty to show that Jews weren't any less willing to adjust their beliefs as much as any other people of the Eastern Mediterranean, at least up until the Maccabees. And even after that there was significant religious accommodation with the Romans, etc etc.
If anything, IMO, the thing that really differentiates the Jewish people from others in the ANE was Christianity's obsession with them (for obvious reasons) - nothing "inevitable" at all. But people see the history of Judaism today and think "well, there must have been something innately special about their religion beforehand". I disagree, I think that's a big historical misconception.
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