"The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real." So said Wallace Stevens, a poet. What is true for a poet, one would think, should be true for those of us who indulge in pontificating regarding what is real.
But if true it is ignored by many of those who advertise themselves as being in the business of reality, which is to say some of those we call intellectuals. Especially, it seems to me, those who hold themselves out as such but seem in purporting to know what is "really" real make a point of not adhering to it. This is because of their disregard of the ordinary, the everyday; the what, where, why and how in which we live, in favor of an imagined realm of their own creation.
Sadly for them, and for us as they live among us, albeit grudgingly, their imagination perforce lacks vitality, as Stevens noted. This is due in part I think to the fact that their imagination is wholly academic, not merely in terms of its pertinence (given its disassociation from our lives) but in its source, i.e. the Academy. That place seems less and less real itself. The further away from it one gets, the less one even thinks of it. Of course, I'm rather far away from it now. But it seems in some way a part of one's childhood, which is a curious thought but strikes me as unsurprising.
That particular thought brings on others. Do those who devote their life to it prolong their childhood, after a fashion? Probably not. There is a difference between being a teacher and being a student, and it's difficult to think of teachers as children. But it was questionable even in the far off days of my youth whether teaching is the goal of those in higher education, at least in the larger universities. Research, and publishing, seemed even then to be of primary concern, though happily not in the smaller school I attended.
Even law school has little or nothing to do with the practice of law, I've found. I suspect it's the same with medicine, and the other professions. What accounts for this disconnection between our schooling, and school men and women, and our lives?
I think it results from the fact that other people and their problems, and their impact on us and our problems, are more of a concern in life than they are in school. The school is a very simple, limited environment and is peculiarly focused on issues and concerns which are temporary for most of us and have little relation to life in the world.
In life we encounter problems which are sometimes sources of desperation and despair. They must be dealt with, one way or another. They can't be made the subject of mere speculation; people and their demands cannot be dismissed in real life, or usefully pigeon-holed in such a manner as to render them of only a kind of literary interest. They intrude on us constantly and can do so violently. They can cause physical harm. There is little opportunity for abstract contemplation, and little cause for theorizing, in the real.
So I think it regrettable that a distinction is drawn between the everyday and the "really" real or significant. From that distinction we get such musings as--that's all well and good for ordinary life, but not profound enough otherwise. We see this attitude sometimes among those very strange bedfellows who are willing to accept that science and reason provide the best guides for everyday life or knowledge, but otherwise insist that God, or cultural construction, provide the better way to understand what is truly the case. The strange alliance of religious fundamentalists and academics in the denigration of reason and the fostering of the irrational has been noted before, of course, and cannot be said to be a new insight. But I think there may be more involved than mere science-baiting.
Of greater concern is what I feel is an impulse to avoid the hard work of thinking about the problems we encounter in everyday life. This impulse can be gratified by relying on God to solve our problems or thoughtless adherence to well known divine decrees, or by the comforting belief that no one way of addressing problems is necessarily better than another.
There is something medieval, scholastic, about the disassociation from the everyday which is disturbing in itself. Far more disturbing, though, is the attitude that everyday life is simply not worth thinking about, or that thinking is not required as God has and will provide. We have so many problems, and it's at least possible they can be resolved intelligently if we were willing to recognize that everyday reality is the only reality we have, and that all else is a diversion at best, a delusion at worst.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Sweet Clarity
Clarity. The quality or state of being clear. Lucidity. The quality of being easily understood. From the Latin clarus; claritas.
This quality or state is generally considered desirable, and not just in communication. It's believed fortunate for some of us to experience a moment of clarity or lucid interval. In medicine, a lucid interval may be considered a period of time in which the patient is suddenly alert and responsive; in the law, someone demented may during a lucid interval have the capacity to sign documents such as a Will which are accorded legality despite the fact that they are often non compos mentis.
That's all it takes, really; one doesn't have to be knowledgeable or aware at all times. It suffices to know what you're doing while doing the act which is significant in the law. This is why it can be most difficult to establish someone was incompetent at the time a Will or other document is executed. Someone must testify to that incapacity obtaining at that time. Few are willing or even able to do that except where the incapacity is apparent and is observed at the time of execution of the document.
Surprisingly, (to me at least) it seems to be the case that clarity in language is not accepted as preferable, or worthy, or good in all cases, and that this is true in particular in the case of certain circles in philosophy. Perhaps I should say that this is alleged to be true. It is claimed, even, that certain philosophers practice obscurantism; i.e. they are deliberately ambiguous, they try to be incomprehensible.
I find this hard to believe. I can't understand why a philosopher would want to incomprehensible. The charge of obscurantism seems to come from those philosophers of the analytical tradition and is applied to those of the continental tradition, and this itself renders it suspect as far as I'm concerned. Analytic philosophers are inclined to consider continental philosophy obscure by nature, I suppose. But why would anyone want to be obscure?
It's difficult for me to imagine being against the clear, the lucid. It strikes me as similar to worshipping a god who delights in or is intent on destroying the wisdom of the wise. It makes no sense, unless there is a particular purpose in mind, and such a purpose would seem to me to be necessarily contrary to reason. But proponents of the irrational would see this as desirable, no doubt.
There's no denying that I find it very difficult to read continental philosophers. I don't find them hard to read as I find Dewey hard to read. I find Dewey hard to read because he writes badly. It's difficult to read his work as a result, but I'm reasonably certain I know what he's saying (or trying to say) in most cases. I don't think I know what continental philosophers are saying, or trying to say. The words they use are often unfamiliar to me, as they are used, and they seem excessively inclined to metaphor. This isn't necessarily to say they write badly, though. Rather, they substitute metaphor for explication.
There's a danger is this method, though. Metaphor may be essential in evoking certain thoughts and feelings, but to use language as needed to achieve evocation of this kind is a rare talent. One sees it only in great poets, in my experience. Philosophers are dreadful poets. When they try to be poets or artists, I don't think they create great philosophy. They create bad art.
It's quite possible to write obscurely without intending to do so. To claim that philosophers deliberately try to be obscure seems to me the equivalent of claiming that they commit a fraud, and a claim of that kind shouldn't be made without evidence.
Obscurantism would be something engaged in by those who wish to limit or restrict knowledge to a certain group, already possessing that knowledge. When knowledge is intended to be hidden from others, it may take on occult characteristics. The knowledge becomes secret, a kind of gnosis open only to a few, the initiated. Certain words or phrases are used which have meaning only to the initiates.
A difficulty arises, though, when complaints that writing is unclear are met by claims that it is unclear only to those unable or unwilling to comprehend, or that the meaning is so sophisticated that it cannot be expressed in everyday, ordinary language. That kind of response implies that the meaning is open only to those capable of transcending language; those who no longer need to have meaning explained to them.
From that point on, it becomes an open question whether obscurantism is at work. Clarity simply is not something one would want to dispense with or avoid if there is a desire to communicate thoughts and ideas. When it is dispensed with it must be presumed that it cannot be obtained, which suggests that there is nothing worthwhile to be communicated, or that it is undesirable, which suggests much the same.
This quality or state is generally considered desirable, and not just in communication. It's believed fortunate for some of us to experience a moment of clarity or lucid interval. In medicine, a lucid interval may be considered a period of time in which the patient is suddenly alert and responsive; in the law, someone demented may during a lucid interval have the capacity to sign documents such as a Will which are accorded legality despite the fact that they are often non compos mentis.
That's all it takes, really; one doesn't have to be knowledgeable or aware at all times. It suffices to know what you're doing while doing the act which is significant in the law. This is why it can be most difficult to establish someone was incompetent at the time a Will or other document is executed. Someone must testify to that incapacity obtaining at that time. Few are willing or even able to do that except where the incapacity is apparent and is observed at the time of execution of the document.
Surprisingly, (to me at least) it seems to be the case that clarity in language is not accepted as preferable, or worthy, or good in all cases, and that this is true in particular in the case of certain circles in philosophy. Perhaps I should say that this is alleged to be true. It is claimed, even, that certain philosophers practice obscurantism; i.e. they are deliberately ambiguous, they try to be incomprehensible.
I find this hard to believe. I can't understand why a philosopher would want to incomprehensible. The charge of obscurantism seems to come from those philosophers of the analytical tradition and is applied to those of the continental tradition, and this itself renders it suspect as far as I'm concerned. Analytic philosophers are inclined to consider continental philosophy obscure by nature, I suppose. But why would anyone want to be obscure?
It's difficult for me to imagine being against the clear, the lucid. It strikes me as similar to worshipping a god who delights in or is intent on destroying the wisdom of the wise. It makes no sense, unless there is a particular purpose in mind, and such a purpose would seem to me to be necessarily contrary to reason. But proponents of the irrational would see this as desirable, no doubt.
There's no denying that I find it very difficult to read continental philosophers. I don't find them hard to read as I find Dewey hard to read. I find Dewey hard to read because he writes badly. It's difficult to read his work as a result, but I'm reasonably certain I know what he's saying (or trying to say) in most cases. I don't think I know what continental philosophers are saying, or trying to say. The words they use are often unfamiliar to me, as they are used, and they seem excessively inclined to metaphor. This isn't necessarily to say they write badly, though. Rather, they substitute metaphor for explication.
There's a danger is this method, though. Metaphor may be essential in evoking certain thoughts and feelings, but to use language as needed to achieve evocation of this kind is a rare talent. One sees it only in great poets, in my experience. Philosophers are dreadful poets. When they try to be poets or artists, I don't think they create great philosophy. They create bad art.
It's quite possible to write obscurely without intending to do so. To claim that philosophers deliberately try to be obscure seems to me the equivalent of claiming that they commit a fraud, and a claim of that kind shouldn't be made without evidence.
Obscurantism would be something engaged in by those who wish to limit or restrict knowledge to a certain group, already possessing that knowledge. When knowledge is intended to be hidden from others, it may take on occult characteristics. The knowledge becomes secret, a kind of gnosis open only to a few, the initiated. Certain words or phrases are used which have meaning only to the initiates.
A difficulty arises, though, when complaints that writing is unclear are met by claims that it is unclear only to those unable or unwilling to comprehend, or that the meaning is so sophisticated that it cannot be expressed in everyday, ordinary language. That kind of response implies that the meaning is open only to those capable of transcending language; those who no longer need to have meaning explained to them.
From that point on, it becomes an open question whether obscurantism is at work. Clarity simply is not something one would want to dispense with or avoid if there is a desire to communicate thoughts and ideas. When it is dispensed with it must be presumed that it cannot be obtained, which suggests that there is nothing worthwhile to be communicated, or that it is undesirable, which suggests much the same.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Amor Fati
It's odd that Nietzsche, who excoriated the Stoics in a frantic rant I referred to a few posts ago, referred often to amor fati,"love of fate." He did so in such a manner as it appears to have been to him a kind of ideal state.
The phrase is a profoundly Stoic one, and acceptance if not love of fate is found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and others of The Porch. I'm tempted to say Nietzsche was indebted to the Stoics for the idea. This may even account for his anger at the Stoics. So many of us come to hate those who benefit us, gratitude being a burden as Tacitus noted. Nietzsche apparently also was inclined to refer fondly to the idea of eternal recurrence, another view held by the Stoics, though in their case this idea had a more cosmological meaning; the world would eventually perish only to begin again and have an unchanged existence, only to perish again and come to be again.
I doubt, though, that Nietzsche himself was ever a lover of fate. His end was grim enough it would have taken a Stoic Sage to bear it happily, but it would seem Nietzsche was far too discontented with life, with people, to love fate, condemned as he was to a life of seemingly endless disappointment.
The idea of love of fate, acceptance of fate, strikes many as objectionable. It's thought to foster a submissive, passive nature and is reviled by some as promoting, or at least ignoring, injustice. Self-styled radicals and revolutionaries, primarily those who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries, like to refer to it as being a bourgeoisie attitude--unthinking acceptance of the status quo.
It is not, however. It is an expression of the Stoic doctrine that one shouldn't allow oneself to be emotionally or mentally disturbed by matters not in one's control, but it is in the way of emphasizing the equally Stoic doctrine that one should rightly make use of what is in your control, i.e. one should be virtuous. Acting rightly would include acting against injustice, to the extent one can. In the one case, the Stoic is not controlled by things, events and people who are not in his/her control; in the other case the Stoic uses what is in his/her control for good.
This is something generally ignored by critics of the Stoics, who often seem to buy into the idea that Stoics are cold, unfeeling, and unmoved. They prefer to see only one facet of Stoicism and fail to give it what it is due. But it is a persistent misconstruction of Stoic doctrine.
Stoicism is certainly not a Romantic philosophy, and followers of Romanticism (like Nietzsche, at least sometimes) tend to despise it. This may be due to the fact that it is thought to espouse the repression of emotion while the Romantic revels in it. Stoicism does indeed teach that we should live according to nature, which is to say reason; among the ancients nature was infused with the Divine Reason and we shared in it. The Romantics of course were reacting against what they saw as too great a reliance on reason, and were often embarrassingly maudlin or zealous in extolling and expressing their emotions. But again, this is to misunderstand Stoicism, which teaches only the dissipation of bad emotions such as anger and hate.
It is also I think to misunderstand reason, and the Enlightenment, and science, and we see this in those intellectuals who may be considered the successors to the Romantics as well as the religious zealots and fanatics who plague us today. The successors of the Romantics question not only whether we should be reasonable but whether we can be, and denigrate science and reasonable assessment as mere narratives no more worthy of respect than myths. The religious mistrust science and reason because neither will support their beliefs when those beliefs are put to the test.
So, science and reason are set upon by both these groups, and they or, better yet, the Enlightenment are blamed for everything from the Holocaust to the teaching of evolution in our schools to crime. The narrowness of vision and arrogance of such as the "New Atheists" and in earlier times the logical positivists serve to empower these reactionary views.
As a result of anti-reason and anti-science, we may well be living in a world of the kind Yeats wrote of, where "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." It seems something to be expected where reasonable judgment and conduct are considered no more worthwhile than any other kind of judgment or conduct, and where the words of books written thousands of years ago are considered to be the words of God, which others cannot be allowed to question.
The phrase is a profoundly Stoic one, and acceptance if not love of fate is found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and others of The Porch. I'm tempted to say Nietzsche was indebted to the Stoics for the idea. This may even account for his anger at the Stoics. So many of us come to hate those who benefit us, gratitude being a burden as Tacitus noted. Nietzsche apparently also was inclined to refer fondly to the idea of eternal recurrence, another view held by the Stoics, though in their case this idea had a more cosmological meaning; the world would eventually perish only to begin again and have an unchanged existence, only to perish again and come to be again.
I doubt, though, that Nietzsche himself was ever a lover of fate. His end was grim enough it would have taken a Stoic Sage to bear it happily, but it would seem Nietzsche was far too discontented with life, with people, to love fate, condemned as he was to a life of seemingly endless disappointment.
The idea of love of fate, acceptance of fate, strikes many as objectionable. It's thought to foster a submissive, passive nature and is reviled by some as promoting, or at least ignoring, injustice. Self-styled radicals and revolutionaries, primarily those who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries, like to refer to it as being a bourgeoisie attitude--unthinking acceptance of the status quo.
It is not, however. It is an expression of the Stoic doctrine that one shouldn't allow oneself to be emotionally or mentally disturbed by matters not in one's control, but it is in the way of emphasizing the equally Stoic doctrine that one should rightly make use of what is in your control, i.e. one should be virtuous. Acting rightly would include acting against injustice, to the extent one can. In the one case, the Stoic is not controlled by things, events and people who are not in his/her control; in the other case the Stoic uses what is in his/her control for good.
This is something generally ignored by critics of the Stoics, who often seem to buy into the idea that Stoics are cold, unfeeling, and unmoved. They prefer to see only one facet of Stoicism and fail to give it what it is due. But it is a persistent misconstruction of Stoic doctrine.
Stoicism is certainly not a Romantic philosophy, and followers of Romanticism (like Nietzsche, at least sometimes) tend to despise it. This may be due to the fact that it is thought to espouse the repression of emotion while the Romantic revels in it. Stoicism does indeed teach that we should live according to nature, which is to say reason; among the ancients nature was infused with the Divine Reason and we shared in it. The Romantics of course were reacting against what they saw as too great a reliance on reason, and were often embarrassingly maudlin or zealous in extolling and expressing their emotions. But again, this is to misunderstand Stoicism, which teaches only the dissipation of bad emotions such as anger and hate.
It is also I think to misunderstand reason, and the Enlightenment, and science, and we see this in those intellectuals who may be considered the successors to the Romantics as well as the religious zealots and fanatics who plague us today. The successors of the Romantics question not only whether we should be reasonable but whether we can be, and denigrate science and reasonable assessment as mere narratives no more worthy of respect than myths. The religious mistrust science and reason because neither will support their beliefs when those beliefs are put to the test.
So, science and reason are set upon by both these groups, and they or, better yet, the Enlightenment are blamed for everything from the Holocaust to the teaching of evolution in our schools to crime. The narrowness of vision and arrogance of such as the "New Atheists" and in earlier times the logical positivists serve to empower these reactionary views.
As a result of anti-reason and anti-science, we may well be living in a world of the kind Yeats wrote of, where "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity." It seems something to be expected where reasonable judgment and conduct are considered no more worthwhile than any other kind of judgment or conduct, and where the words of books written thousands of years ago are considered to be the words of God, which others cannot be allowed to question.
Friday, May 1, 2015
"I Will Destroy the Wisdom of the Wise"
St. Paul quotes these words in a letter to "the Corinthians"; those Christians residing in Corinth. It appears the Corinthians were being unduly quarrelsome, or at least too quarrelsome for Paul, who modestly described himself as "called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." But I wonder just what was going on, in addition to quarrels, as in this letter Paul indulges in something of a tirade against wisdom, something not normally the subject of anger or disdain.
The words used by Paul which make up the title of this post are borrowed from the cheerful works of the prophet Isaiah, and are attributed to God. God, it seems, wants to destroy the wisdom of the wise. It's unclear why he would. Paul adds to this, stating that God made foolish the wisdom of the world, apparently because the wise failed to understand Jesus was God before Jesus was born and that failure continues as Paul writes.
According to Paul, the wise did not come to God through wisdom, and God choose instead to save those who believe through the "foolishness" of his message. Greeks, says Paul, seek wisdom, and think the preaching of "Christ crucified" is foolishness. But the foolishness of God, writes Paul, is greater than the wisdom of the wise.
It's possible I suppose that Paul was being ironic in his use of "foolishness" here, though the Christians of that time and for centuries later were (and are now) not notably ironic in their proselytizing of, or apologies for, Christianity. They were generally in grim earnest. So, it's at least possible that Paul thought God's message, and Christ crucified, as establishing the existence of the true God or as signs of it, were ostensibly foolish. This is a remarkable claim for a believer to make, or at least for a thinker to make. Wisdom is inadequate to bring us to God--it's foolishness that does the trick, or at least that which is to all appearances foolish.
Given this curious use of language on Paul's part, I'm given to suspect that his supposed encounters or debates with pagan philosophers may not have gone as well for him as we've heard. Perhaps he was unable to rebut claims that Christian beliefs were foolish, and so was compelled to take the position that if they are in fact foolish, that's the way God wants it. Being God, the fact that he choose foolish means to bring the truth to fools, rather than the wise, has the result that fools and foolishness are greater than the wise and wisdom.
Regardless, though, such language and such claims regarding the wisdom of the world and the wise, when taken to be the words of God or God's agents, doing his bidding, can have serious consequences. I think they did have serious consequences indeed when the religion which adopted such claims came to dominate the Roman Empire, as it became part of the doctrine of the state as well as the prevailing religion that the wisdom of the world and of the wise was nothing, the "foolishness" of God everything.
Perhaps it began with the repression of paganism and persecution of pagans during the reign of the Christian emperor Theodosius I. It's said that Justinian closed the last surviving pagan schools of philosophy some 200 years later. Perhaps the "triumph" of Christianity wasn't entirely at fault, and that the view that the world is insignificant and truth to be found outside the world which we find in Plato prompted the Western world to turn away from life and the first efforts towards science we see among the ancient Greeks.
It's been maintained that what are called the Dark Ages weren't nearly as dark as they've been claimed to be, and I'm willing to believe that is the case. But it seems beyond dispute that little in the way of new knowledge was acquired in Europe during those times, and that what passed as knowledge was primarily if not exclusively what was found in the Bible or in the works of the Church Fathers. The standard of living fell far below that of the Roman Empire, even as to the great of the time. And why not, the world in which we live being without value? In a way, the Church if not God did indeed destroy the wisdom of the wise, if that wisdom related to how to live well and flourish in the world, and to the value of learning of the world and its wonders.
For a time, at least. It's true that Europe gradually became aware of the wisdom of the ancient wise, and even valued it after a fashion. The Church, which was at the time the only institution having any interest in books and writing, is to be thanked for the dissemination of the old knowledge it has so ruthlessly suppressed. That began to take place, though, roughly 600 years after Justinian. And the Church was grudging, even miserly, in its disclosure of what was lost. It was another 200 years or so before the Renaissance was possible.
It's fun to speculate what would have happened had wisdom not been destroyed. But we seem to live in a time when the pursuit of knowledge of the world is once more mistrusted and even under attack in some parts of the world. Religion is once again involved in this, or at least religious fanaticism. Let's hope historians of the future won't refer to a "New Dark Ages."
The words used by Paul which make up the title of this post are borrowed from the cheerful works of the prophet Isaiah, and are attributed to God. God, it seems, wants to destroy the wisdom of the wise. It's unclear why he would. Paul adds to this, stating that God made foolish the wisdom of the world, apparently because the wise failed to understand Jesus was God before Jesus was born and that failure continues as Paul writes.
According to Paul, the wise did not come to God through wisdom, and God choose instead to save those who believe through the "foolishness" of his message. Greeks, says Paul, seek wisdom, and think the preaching of "Christ crucified" is foolishness. But the foolishness of God, writes Paul, is greater than the wisdom of the wise.
It's possible I suppose that Paul was being ironic in his use of "foolishness" here, though the Christians of that time and for centuries later were (and are now) not notably ironic in their proselytizing of, or apologies for, Christianity. They were generally in grim earnest. So, it's at least possible that Paul thought God's message, and Christ crucified, as establishing the existence of the true God or as signs of it, were ostensibly foolish. This is a remarkable claim for a believer to make, or at least for a thinker to make. Wisdom is inadequate to bring us to God--it's foolishness that does the trick, or at least that which is to all appearances foolish.
Given this curious use of language on Paul's part, I'm given to suspect that his supposed encounters or debates with pagan philosophers may not have gone as well for him as we've heard. Perhaps he was unable to rebut claims that Christian beliefs were foolish, and so was compelled to take the position that if they are in fact foolish, that's the way God wants it. Being God, the fact that he choose foolish means to bring the truth to fools, rather than the wise, has the result that fools and foolishness are greater than the wise and wisdom.
Regardless, though, such language and such claims regarding the wisdom of the world and the wise, when taken to be the words of God or God's agents, doing his bidding, can have serious consequences. I think they did have serious consequences indeed when the religion which adopted such claims came to dominate the Roman Empire, as it became part of the doctrine of the state as well as the prevailing religion that the wisdom of the world and of the wise was nothing, the "foolishness" of God everything.
Perhaps it began with the repression of paganism and persecution of pagans during the reign of the Christian emperor Theodosius I. It's said that Justinian closed the last surviving pagan schools of philosophy some 200 years later. Perhaps the "triumph" of Christianity wasn't entirely at fault, and that the view that the world is insignificant and truth to be found outside the world which we find in Plato prompted the Western world to turn away from life and the first efforts towards science we see among the ancient Greeks.
It's been maintained that what are called the Dark Ages weren't nearly as dark as they've been claimed to be, and I'm willing to believe that is the case. But it seems beyond dispute that little in the way of new knowledge was acquired in Europe during those times, and that what passed as knowledge was primarily if not exclusively what was found in the Bible or in the works of the Church Fathers. The standard of living fell far below that of the Roman Empire, even as to the great of the time. And why not, the world in which we live being without value? In a way, the Church if not God did indeed destroy the wisdom of the wise, if that wisdom related to how to live well and flourish in the world, and to the value of learning of the world and its wonders.
For a time, at least. It's true that Europe gradually became aware of the wisdom of the ancient wise, and even valued it after a fashion. The Church, which was at the time the only institution having any interest in books and writing, is to be thanked for the dissemination of the old knowledge it has so ruthlessly suppressed. That began to take place, though, roughly 600 years after Justinian. And the Church was grudging, even miserly, in its disclosure of what was lost. It was another 200 years or so before the Renaissance was possible.
It's fun to speculate what would have happened had wisdom not been destroyed. But we seem to live in a time when the pursuit of knowledge of the world is once more mistrusted and even under attack in some parts of the world. Religion is once again involved in this, or at least religious fanaticism. Let's hope historians of the future won't refer to a "New Dark Ages."
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