Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge

From Chapter 5, "Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge: The Epistemological Strategy of the Encyclopedie" p. 191-213 in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton, 1984.

"This [A] classification system is significant, Foucault argues, because of the sheer impossibility of thinkingit. By bring us up short against an inconceiveable set of categories, it exposes the arbitariness of the way we sort things out... An enemy defined as less than human may be annilated...

The word encyclopedia, Diderot explained in the Prospectus, derived from the Greek term for circle, signifying 'concatenation [enchainement] of the sciences.' Figurateively, it expressed the notion of a world of knowledge, which the Encylopedists could circumnavigate and map...

Chambers distinguished himself from his predecessors by propounding a view of knowedge as an integrated whole... a 'cyclopaedia,' which would encompass an entire circle of learning... [his] tree had no branch for philosophy as such. The sacred and the secular ran together through all its ramifications...

[In contrast to Bacon] 'We ought not to attempt to draw down or to submit the mysteries of God to our reason,' Bacon warned. So he separated religion from philosophy, underscoring 'the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy hath received by being commixed together; as that which undoubtedly will make a heretical religion and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy.

Nothing could be further from the reasoning of Diderot and d'Alembert. By subjecting religion to philosophy, they effectively dechristianized it... it seemed to subordinate theology to reason, which they described in a Lockean manner, as if one could arrive at a knowledge of God by building sensations into ever more complex and abstract ideas...

Bacon actually envisaged two trees of knowledge, one for revealed and one for antural theology, while the Encylopedists grouped revealed and natural theology together on a single tree and subordinated both to reason...

D'Alembert's Newton served as the perfect modern philosopher... because he restricted philosophy to the study of observed phenomena... By reducing all knowledge to sensation and refelction, he at last eliminated extraterrestrial truth from the world of learning...

[The Discours preliminaire] succeeded in dethroning the ancient queen of the sciences [theology] and in elevating philosophy to her place. Far from being a netural compendium of information, therefore, the modern Summa [Thomas Acquina's Summa Theologica] [aka the Encylopedia] shaped knowledge in such a way as to remove it from the clergy and to put it in the hands of intellectuals committted to the Enlightenment. The ultimate triumph of this strategy came with the secularization of education and the emergence of the modern scholarly disciplines during the nineteenth century. But the key engagement took place in the 1750s, when the Encylopedists recognized that knowledge was power and, by mapping the world of knowledge, set out to conquer it."


A couple of thoughts

1.) The necessity of delineating the non-human to define and eliminate your "enemies" ( aka, unborn children) - very interesting, also shows the masculine disposition of women who define when life begins and ends in their womb instead of intuitively realizing its sacredness at all points.

2.) The promise of grouping revealed and natural theology together for a holistic enterprise, but the temptation of using that to define God on your own terms. It is particularly noteworthy that in doing so, these philosophers subordianted all not to revelation, but to reason, ultimately, as Newton's point shows - to eliminate 'extraterrestrial truth' from the world of learning, and thus, from "academic" pursuits. Elimination thus of intuitive and revealed knowledge (feminine domains of intuition and spirituality) from what is "true knowledge".

3.) Irony of trying to make a "Circle of Knowledge" by hierarchically arranging it -- The Systemitizing and Classification of Knowledge in order to "conquer" it in a masculine way. What is a Feminine and Masculine combined way?

The Freedom of Empty Bombast and Licentious Desires

What a connection was made in my mind today! When I read for the first time the New Testament letters of Peter. The Catholic Epistles are an amazing resource to explain against the errors of the women of our time.

In 2 Peter 1:20-21, the author writes, "Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God." No Reformation emphasis on Sola Fide or individual interpretation, however good the intention, can ever be said to claim any real authority under God. My words here now contain no authority if anything within them contradicts a fundamental doctrine or sensus fidelium of the Church.

Moreover, the fervant desire against heresy in favor of orthodox doctrine is a weight of truth against the arguement that Christianity is only a matter of "being a good person" or letting it be up to personal opinion because "no one really knows" and "only God judges". For even in Paul's letters, "there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and the unstable distort to their own distruction just as they do the other scriptures" (2 Peter 3:16). For "there will be false teachers among you, who will introduce destructive heresies"(2 Peter 2:1).There is Truth. And there is a right answer.

Moreover, for me, Second Peter's description of these false prophets at the end of Chapter 2 is a haunting portrayl of old feminist error. He writes,

• For, talking empty bombast, they seduce with licentious desires of the flesh those who have barely escaped from people who live in error. They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a person is a slave of whatever overcomes him... For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them. What is expressed in the true proverb has happened to them... "A bathed sow returns to wallowing in the mire." (2 Peter 2:18-19, 21-22)
  

Oh that I could write a treatise explicating this passage's application to the feminist movement!

The weight and potency of the empty bombast of "consciousness-raising" and "reclamations of power". The seductive desire of quarter-filled sex that denies procreation and thus true unity. The licentiousness of promiscuity, concubinage and on-demand divorce. All advocated by those who had barely escaped living in error - not in Peter's sense of Jews or Gentiles just recently converting to Christianity, rather, of falling away from his Gospel and his Church. The foremost feminist activists and scholars have disproportionately arisen among those who reject the Catholic faith. In order to advocate along the typical strains of old feminism, I would argue, you'd have to.

Old feminists promise the freedom of all the world, yet they are slaves of what has overcome them - the distorted masculine dispensation for power, lust and revenge and their own over-reliance on sentimentality and personal authority. Is it not better to be a slave of Christ?

The most dispairing cases being those who were once in the fold and who now reject its truth, light and love: Catholic women for "free choice" as if a decision to kill one's child was a power of liberation, proponents of a female priesthood which would deny their own authority and glory and worshippers of a female goddess who cannot ever be considered the Christian God. They had something of the truth, yet somehow they were led away. The Church must take the initiative to reconnect, touch, explain and bring them back as well as take responsibility for the women and girls struggling to see the light under her wings. So many have had their bodies washed clean through the waters of Baptism, but have yet returned to the sloth and darkness of the fetid mire. Mary, pray for your daughters!

Blessed are they who do not give in to the apple of domination but who when insulted, return no insult and when suffering, return no threats (1 Peter 2:23). For all that you do humbly, obediently and lovingly in the name of Christian Truth, blessed, blessed are you. (1 Peter 4:13-14)

The Importance of Living in Creation

If we are truly looking to uncover the implications of a feminine perspective in theology, there is one aspect that has lately struck me as being of great import - that of living in creation.

Yesterday night I was at a day retreat with the fellow members of my Newman Club and we went to pray at the Blessed Sacrament. After kneeling in prayer, I sat back and picked up Thomas A Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ" and read a section on Truth and Freedom. The words, however, not to my dismay but certainly to my curiousity, emphasized the banalities of earthly and fleshly existence. Heaven is our true goal and the spiritual heaven is our fulfillment. This clicked with my friend Jeff's narrative of St. Francis an hour or so afterwards - a renunciation of the world, even if that time it was a significant improvement that a hermetical lifestyle was being practiced within it.

One of the implications of Theology of the Body, for me, though, is a celebration of all Creation for the mere fact that our physical realities make visible the invisible spiritual realities of God. They are not always something, then, to just be renounced or lived in poverty, denial and celibacy. These are all good and worthy things that do point us to the heavenly direction. But I do not believe Christian tradition has taken into account the implications of all that is to point us to Heaven - a spiritual and physical resurrection of our bodies. How are we to understand how to use the world and physicality well and God-like if our conceptions of sanctity and holiness do not incorporate the full reality of living in Creation well - of using our sexuality appropriately and with holy reverence and appreciation, of treating every drop of food as a component of the nourishment of Christ in the Eucharist, of rejoicing in the beauty - both natural and man-made beauty - of the clothes on our backs, the buildings we inhabit, the dressings of the world.

These can be abused. These can be idolized. Or, they can be seen as manifestations of the glory of God to be used joyfully and appropriately at every stage in our lives. John Paul the Great has given us the metaphysical understanding for how this can be so, but Women, as the body of the Church and symbol of Creation, can sense the impact of the world - its eyes that glow, skin that prickles, tongues that envelop, aromas that entrance, drums that resound and intution that ensues.

There have been saints that have lived in the world - wives and husbands, rulers and professionals, homemakers and academics - but what exactly is our appreciation for their worldliness? Why is it so important? I can't help but think, that that is exactly what our times need. A saint to live in the world and live in the world well - and who can show us the importance of doing so. For those of us who have realized that we are not called to the consecrated life, that is our calling. That is our vocation under God.

Anticipation of Old Feminism

I wonder if Feminists from the past realized how many of the women they would "liberate" forty years down the road would come to read their tracts with the same dismay and tears as they themselves had when reading chauvinist patriarchy?

The faces of NOW indicate not without another fight.