1 comments about Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy) (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy).

1. I have just finished reading "Voegelin Recollected--Conversations on a Life," edited by Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn (U. of Missouri Press,2008) 292 pp plus index, chronology and select photos.
   
   The book consists of transcripts of interviews conducted by Cooper in the US and Bruhn in Germany. This involved extensive travel. Bruhn also translated the German language interviews. Some of the interviews must have taken place at an annual convention of the American Political Science Association, while the contributors were in attendance.
   
   The book is organized in a surprising yet effective way. The chronology is reversed, the interviews running from Voegelin's death backwards to his early years as an academic. (Voegelin was born in 1901 and died in 1985.) The chronology is divided into four periods: Stanford, Munich, Louisiana and Vienna. There is also a chapter for Notre Dame, where he taught every third semester or so to protect his American citizenship while he was at Munich and continued the relationship for ten years after that. Not surprisingly, the Munich years are given the greater weight, because this was the time when he had the most intense interaction with graduate assistants and other students as well as his most intense interaction with the surrounding milieu (The "Hitler and the Germans" lectures). By comparison, the Vienna years are sparsely covered.
   
   You can add Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn (who was then Jodi Cockerill) to the list of contributors, because their questions are often revealing commentaries based on their own knowledge of Voegelin.
   
   I don't think Bruhn is old enough to have known Voegelin personally, but she brings an insight into human character and occasionally asks questions that deal with personal aspects of Voegelin's relationships. One example: Michael Hereth, an early student, believed many of Voegelin's students in Munich saw EV as a father-figure. In a number of instances, their own fathers had been killed in World War II.
   
   This would tend to explain the still evident bitterness of Manfred Henningsen in his 1995 interview, although his break with Voegelin (which he describes) had taken place a quarter century earlier.
   
   Lissy Voegelin tells us much about their life together for over fifty years. She was a wonderful wife for Eric. She accepted a life of being the "Frau Professor" and did everything for him. He didn't answer the phone or take out the trash. Later when he became relatively wealthy from stock market speculation, he tried to make it up to her for their many years of near penury. Paul Caringella helps Lissy with her recollections. It becomes evident that he had become her loving son and cared for her like no one else.
   
   Tilo Schabert is one of the better contributors. His memory seems to be especially good. The personality of Reinhold Knoll, a true Viennese scholar and gentleman, comes across warmly in his commentary. I hadn't known that his parents were friends of EV back in the 1920's. Ellis Sandoz, a student of Voegelin from 1949 and general editor of the 34 volume Collected Works, provides a steadying voice that helps maintain perspective.
   
   There are some funny stories, like the time when Miss Germany enrolled in EV's class. Or when the student asked EV whether Justinian preceded or followed Socrates.
   
   I was surprised to learn that Bruno Schlesinger, distinguished head of the Christian Culture program at St. Mary's Notre Dame, had been a student of EV in Vienna in the early '30's.
   
   There are certain thematic questions which recur through the book. One is EV's religion. To one student who could not deal with the trappings of Christianity, he said, "Christ is a true myth." This seems to have brought relief to the student, to have cut the Gordian knot. Some thought he was an agnostic. Some a sort of Lutheran. Many assumed he was Catholic and his position in Munich was likely procured for him by Bavarian Catholics who thought so.
   
   Another theme is his demeanor towards others. He was courtly at times (One remembered him as having dance student manners "Tanzstudent"!) and he could be nasty if he thought you were a provocateur (A tale told by Walter Nicgorski, former editor of the Review of Politics). Glenn Hughes also tells a horrendous tale.
   
   Quite unexpected are the accounts of the reasons for his decision to become an American. Apparently EV considered his flight from Vienna to be a life-altering exodus of the spirit from the land of Egypt. One way he expressed his gratitude for finding a new life in America was his apparent contentment with his living conditions. He never complained about anything when he was at LSU, according to his long time secretary, Joe Scurria (who emerges as a capable "gal Friday" and the only one who, even at the time of the interview, could read all his manuscripts). He would have preferred a better position at Yale or at Johns Hopkins (The latter position torpedoed, apparently on good evidence, by no one less than Leo Strauss).
   
   When he returned to Munich, he returned as an American, not as a German refugee coming home. It was said he read the Herald Tribune rather than the Munich papers. He apparently did not bind himself to the society of Munich and remained aloof. As one person put it, EV would have been happiest in a boat anchored in the middle of the Atlantic. Apparently with his inaugural lecture he managed to alienate many of his Catholic supporters. As a politician, he was inept or disinterested, and in either case the result was the same: he saw his dream of a Voegelin school in Munich erode to a point where he was ready to leave. Richard Allen worked to create a position for him at the Hoover Institution and he was happy to accept it following his mandatory retirement.
   
   Friendship is another recurring theme. Those interviewed seem to agree that he had no friends (except possibly Alfred Schütz or Gregor Sebba) in the sense of unguarded exchanges between sympathetic equals. Robert B. Heilman is interviewed and adds a few new notes to his long essay about EV. Heilman was a formidable scholar of English literature and yet was saddened by his inability to think and talk with EV at his own level. Quite different was EV's relationship with Strauss. It is brought out here, and evident in their published correspondence, that EV was open and enthusiastic and detailed while Strauss was quite the opposite. Apparently at Notre Dame EV spent a lot of time in the faculty cafeteria with Anton Herman Chroust, whom I remember as rumpled and unshaven and dirty, though certainly a genius. A picture is drawn here of the sartorially splendid EV passing the time with the grungy Tony Chroust.
   
   In the book there is a photo of EV sitting in a lounge chair at Notre Dame. No exact location is given but I think I recognize the coffee urn in the background so I am guessing the photo was taken in the law student lounge at the law school, a few paces from the auditorium where EV lectured.
   
   At the end of the book there is a chapter listing the 52 contributors and it gives a sentence or two about their careers and present whereabouts. Most of the interviews were conducted between 1995 and 1997. I didn't realize this until I reached the contributor list and was surprised and a little shocked to read remarks such as "He died in April 2005."
   
   One would like to know why ten years passed before this book finally appeared. We are told there was an attempt to organize the book by topics and that didn't work. That alone would have consumed time. Perhaps the editors needed an inspiration and that proved to be the idea of the reverse chronology.
   
   What we do know is that they conducted their interviews before it was too late.
   
   I believe this book will become the affectionate memorial to Eric Voegelin.
   
   Highly recommended.

No comments about Confucius: His Life and Thought.

No comments about New Life Of Dante.

1 comments about Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis.

1. Owen Barfield is probably my favorite unknown author. Everyone who has an interest in philosophy or religion ought to read his masterpiece,Saving the Appearances. This book on Lewis doesn't belong in that category, though I recommend it nonetheless because of Barfield's graceful way with words and the occasional interesting anecdote concerning Lewis. You will learn something of Barfield's own philosophy, but less than a reading of his masterpiece will teach you. So: a qualified recommendation. If you really want to deepen your knowledge of Lewis, read his correspondance.

5 comments about Anti-Abortionist At Large: How To Argue Abortion Intelligently And Live To Tell About It.

1. I found this book to be extremely engaging, interesting, and substantive on the morality of abortion. Dennehy, a philosopher, writes for the general educated reader here, and the result is a very useful and practical book for those interested in the moral issues surrounding abortion. Dennehy presents strong and very clear philosophical (not religious) arguments against abortion, in addition to many great insights on the tactics of pro-abortionists for obfuscating the moral issues. He also replies to typical objections to his arguments with insight and clarity. There is much more besides this, including accounts of his many years debating abortion, and fascinating stories of how people have reacted to his arguments. I would recommend the book highly for all those who want a down to earth, and very clear, discussion of the arguments against abortion.



2. For Dennehy, "how to argue intelligently about abortion" means what can one realistically expect to accomplish before a live audience in the space of a lecture: give them the minimal number of ideas that are necessary and sufficient to show the immorality of abortion. So he wisely explains how to argue that the mere probability that the fetus is a human being means that abortion implies a willingness to kill innocent human beings. The temptation is to try for more than that, which in that context would be self-defeating. The author's decision to write the book as an autobiographical account of "war stories" - against enemies on both sides of the abortion debate - makes the book down-to-earth, practical and an enjoyable read, despite his substantial academic credentials. Who says philosophers have their heads in the clouds?



3. This book is an adventure into what motivates, sustains, and illuminates the serious defender of innocent human lives, especially those tiny persons before birth.

   Philosophical insight marks every page of Dr. Dennehy's story of the conflict over legal abortion in the United States. It amounts to a history of the defense of human dignity and personhood over the past four decades.

   As someone with a background and experiences similar to Dennehy's over the same period of years, I can attest, from a mid-Westerner's perspective, to the validity and depth of his claims about the escapism and false rhetoric of the opponents of the right to life movement and about many other aspects of the struggle.

   His treatment of the abortion issue is developed in accord with classical natural law theory and is not an appeal to any particular religious belief. The book remarkably sets a calm, deliberate tone for the sincere seeker of truth, who will have little to do with sophistic, slick, emotional appeals.

   Anyone who is active in the pro-life/anti-abortion movement would find this book an absorbing and inspiring work of love and reason in the service of the truth. Those who are opposed to the anti-abortion position in the present debate will find, in Dennehy's dogged determination to clarify and illuminate the issues, grounds for increased respect for their opposition.

   The presentation is clear and engages the reader in his endeavor of refining common sense in order to discover meanings for defending babies who are the most defenseless of our human community.

   The title might bother pro-lifers. But the author, while he does not reject being called pro-life, likes to say in public that he is not pro-life, but anti-abortion. He calls the appellation short, clear, and emphatic. It gets attention and lets people know that he is dead set against the special evil of killing that abortion really is.

   Anti-Abortionist at Large is virtually a manual for speakers and advocates for the pre-birth child and the post-birth bearers of severe handicaps. Professor Dennehy constantly refers to his experiences, both positive and negative, in speaking before large groups. He conceives his book as an autobiography, an anecdotal history, a debate manual, and as a personal testament, in which he hopes to give witness to the gadfly of Athens, Socrates, by being the gadfly of the San Francisco Bay area.

   The work has been a long and lonely challenge, for the most part. And he speaks for many advocates when he says the silence from the Sunday pulpits has been "thunder in our ears."
   
   The author is quite conversant with the work of some of the bigger theorists of the abortion movement, such as Judith Jarvis Thompson, Marianne Warren, and Michael Tooley. He chooses to dramatize his debate experiences with Dr. Marianne Warren. He also offers tips on how to relate to the usual speaker-types from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, ACLU, and other such organizations.
   
   Many other aspects of pro-life, anti-abortion work are revealed. Dennehy became astute regarding the typical tactics of politicians as they dealt with the abortion issue and with pro-lifers. He gives examples of his efforts to write elected officials on the subject and compares it to fighting smog with a crowbar. Particular commentaries are included on the intransigence of legislators like Cranston and Edwards of California, and on the "demoralizing betrayal of Jesse Jackson." There are also bright spots, such as the courageous Presidential candidacy of pro-life advocate Ellen McCormack from New York.

   Various highlights and "lowlights" from the abortion struggles of the 60's and 70's are mentioned. Quite notable was the "landmark" editorial in the California Journal of Medicine (1970). Now called the Journal of Western Medicine, the editor wrote about "A New Ethic for Medicine and Society," remarkably claiming that the Judeo-Christian ethic was decaying and needed replacement. And, as I recall, the article admitted quite frankly that everyone knows human life begins at conception and that it was necessary to use rhetorical subterfuge in order to let people gradually become accustomed to the new ethic.

   He touches upon some of the critical legislative history of the year 1972, by which time the anti-abortion movement started to turn around the various legislatures. He mentions the overwhelming victories for the anti-abortion cause in the referenda that year held in North Dakota and Michigan. My recollection is that in 1972 not a single State fell for an abortion bill among the 33 States that entertained such legislation. Then the rug was pulled on the whole movement in January of 1973, when seven judges on the United States Supreme Court toppled the legal protection for pre-birth children throughout the nation.

   In the jaws of the holocaust that was unleashed, Dr. Dennehy patiently and persistently has continued to expose the deceptive messages that the abortion culture gives young people. In fact, he says that in his 36 years of debating abortion, he does not recall more than two who were willing, in any serious way, to address the fundamental question: Is the unborn baby a human being?

   The duplicity of the media is deftly dealt with, including observations such as how abortion proponents are being called "abortion rights" advocates in the same vein as one might refer to proponents of slavery as "slavery rights" advocates. He also duly notes the repressive behavior of the media in not showing photos and films of abortions, while indulging in many kinds of depiction of killing and mayhem in connection with warfare and street crime. And he cites various other ploys, conscious or unconscious, that serve to protect a "woman's right to choose" homicide for any one of her children at the peak of their vulnerability.

   In deeply regretting the violence of a small minority of so-called "pro-lifers" against abortionists and abortion centers, the author calmly notes that "respectable, law abiding" abortionists deliberately kill millions of innocent human beings, usually for profit. An abortionist today might be called a "good citizen," but, the author says, that it is not the same as being regarded as a "good human being," as Aristotle once observed and as the Nuremberg Court noted in 1946.

   In all of his speaking endeavors, Dennehy always tries to be sure that, after his presentation, the audience members never think the same way about abortion. He is determined to stay on message: Abortion is the direct killing of an innocent human being.

   Slowly but surely, this courageous speaker and author says, the trend in this country is going anti-abortion. But every day, week, month, and year thousands of babies die in the womb of a careless culture. People who care will want to read this book. It lays out a remarkably thoughtful path to peace with our most intimate neighbors-a path determined to end their silent screams.




4. This is unquestionably one of the most enlightening, unusual, thought-provoking and original books that I have read in years. With so much of the public abortion debate in the hands of our so called media experts and academic opinion-makers, Professor Dennehy's honest and moving account of his 30 year defense of innocent, unborn babies forces all of us to question the assumptions and lies we have so easily embraced concerning one of the central issues of our time. And Dennehy minces no words when he says that "abortion is the bone in the throat of contemporary American society that slavery was in the 19th century." What happens in the following 200 pages is a fascinating, sometimes humorous, disturbing, but ultimately inspiring account of one courageous man's efforts to defend not only the innocent, but the values at the core of any decent culture: compassion and humanity. Dennehy has the intellect of a Socrates, the wit of a Jay Leno, and the overhand right of a Rocky Marciano, but he speaks to us over coffee at the kitchen table. With all there is to learn in this book the one thing I came away with more than anything else is a realization of how thorough the pro-abortion movement has succeeded in portraying people like Professor Dennehy and the pro-life movement as a threat to society when in fact they are indeed among the most compassionate and humane of all. Indeed, we learn how sophisticated and clever those in the pro-abortion movement have been in deflecting a serious consideration of their pro-death and cold-hearted agenda. In fact, we learn that in 1963 Planned Parenthood's official pamphlet noted that "an abortion kills the life of the baby after it has begun - birth control merely postpones the beginning of life." What happened in the last 40 years to transform Planned Parenthood from lovers of life into purveyors of death? How have they so easily convinced young women that their unborn babies are as disposable as a diaper? Why do they ignore the psychological effects that haunt these young women for years afterward? Professor Dennehy's fascinating and heart-pounding account of his years debating pro-abortion opponents in front of skeptical, sometimes hostile pro-abortion crowds at university campuses represents a college classroom in how to debate this issue with reason and honor in the face of overwhelming odds. It also represents a character study in courage and commitment. Chapter 7 on partial-birth abortion is one of the most shocking and moving essays I have ever read and it will bring any concerned reader to tears. Hopefully Professor Dennehy's inspirational book will seep into the fabric of our nation and warm enough hearts as well as convince enough minds, one by one, that yes, an unborn child is a human being.



5. A refreshing perspective on a complex and emotionally charged issue. The author walks the reader through the chronology of his career and life-long devotion to debating against abortion. Keeps the audience focused on the real issue of life and its unjust ending versus "choice" and emotion.

No comments about Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays.

3 comments about Correspondence 1926-1969.

1. I have found CORRESPONDENCE 1926 - 1969 of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers to be enormously entertaining, easy to read, and surprisingly foreboding about problems in the book trade caused by foreign indebtedness. Politically, each date brings chilling summaries. For Hannah Arendt in America, on June 3, 1949, "At the moment, the general political atmosphere is dismal here, particularly at the universities and colleges (with the exception of the very eminent ones)." (pp. 136-137). This letter 90 has several notes on pages 714-715 which give details that are sure to be humorous now for anyone who has ever heard of Aspen, where the leaves all turn at the same time because the roots are interconnected, as perjury suspect Libby Scooter informed New York Times reporter Judy Miller in a letter urging her to end her days in prison and testify in 2005 so an investigation of White House activities relating to the identity of CIA WMD analyst Plame could be resolved quickly. According to this book, Hutchins, the president of Chicago University, was the nominal organizer of a two-week conference and Goethe celebration in July 1949 in Aspen, Colorado, attended by José Ortega y Gasset, Albert Schweitzer, Ernst Simon, Stephen Spender, and Thornton Wilder. Letter 90 was a response to articles that had been written by the "Bonn Romanticist Ernst Robert Curtius, 1886-1956," (p. 714) who would also be at the conference:
   
   "The real power behind it is a German-American, a real-estate dealer, who recently bought up a ghost town and then had the commercially brilliant idea of tying Goethe into his business. His sole motive is to exploit Goethe to make this town world famous, so he can then make a bundle of money from tourists. The whole thing is really quite marvelous. The second backer, however, is a less amusing figure: Do you remember Bergstrasser from Heidelberg? After he had successfully accommodated himself to the regime, it was shown that he had a whole string of Jewish ancestors. He is the real moving force behind this program." (p. 136).
   
   Curtius had published a polemic in Germany on April 2, 1949 which accused Jaspers of making "our collective guilt so plain to us that we can continue to live only with a guilty conscience. A Wilhelm von Humboldt of our time, he laid out guidelines for German universities, until he turned his back on them. ... He is crowning these national pedagogical efforts with a `campaign in Switzerland' that is directed against Goethe. Habemus Papam!" (pp. 714-715). In response to the comments of some Heidelberg professors, Curtius replied on May 17, 1949, and finally on July 2, 1949, with a title, "Goethe, Jaspers, Curtius." (p. 715). `Die Zeit' might be to blame for that title, which reeks of arrogance.
   
   In any event, books in those days were considered significant enough that the move by Jaspers to Switzerland, as advised by Hannah Arendt on June 30, 1947, (when Jaspers was giving guest lectures in Basel), "we would do best not to settle down too permanently anywhere, not really to depend on any nation, for it can change overnight into a mob and a blind instrument of ruin" (p. 91), which made publication of books by Jaspers much easier, was resented by Germans who had already spent the money those books would earn. America was a great place for books by Jaspers to make money, and Hannah Arendt did her part to make sure that the translators selected by the publishers were able to express what Jaspers was saying in some form of English that readers could understand. Sounding like an American, Jaspers wrote on July 20, 1947:
   
   "We are living in paradise here. My wife is already cutting back at table for fear of putting on weight." (p. 93)



2. Jaspers and Arendt cover everything and everyone: Sartre, Heidegger, Marx, Goethe, Camus; post-WWII Germany, "the infinitely complex red-tape existence of stateless persons," the Cold War, the "senile" Eisenhower administration, Eichmann, totalitarianism, the atom bomb, local democracy--it's all there. So too is a life-long, extremely close friendship between people who weathered a war from different sides of the globe, who faced cold war terror in radically different ways, who loved their spouses intensely but felt somehow separated by differences in world-view tracable to ethnicity(Gertrude was ethnically Jewish and Heinrich was ethnically Christian). Her admiration of him, her intellectual debt to him, her love for him; his seeming amazement at her vivacity, his admiration of her intellect, his cold, German form of love--and the walls cracking, and his sentiment sometimes pouring through.

   It's a warm book up until the very last entry, Arendt's address at Jaspers' funeral. That's enough to send a shiver up your spine--but only if you read it in the context of everything else.




3. In 1926 Hannah Arendt was a student of Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University. What began as the questions of a student to her teacher in 1926 blossomed into a friendly correspondence that ended with Arendt's forced emigration from Nazi Germany to the United States, with a stopover in France in the 30s, and then resumed in the Postwar years completely transformed into a rich, detailed dialogue between colleagues and friends, taking on a father-daughter feeling in many of the letters.

   It was during the years after 1945 that the two examined everything about their world and themselves. Of particular importance were the dual issues of German guilt for the war and, for Jaspers, what it meant to be a Jew, for not only was Arendt and her husband Jewish, but also Jaspers's wife. This issue becomes intertwined in their conversations about the future of West Germany, the Suez War of 1956, and Arendt's trip to Jerusalem to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann. When they shift the political into the personal, Martin Heidegger, a colleague of Jaspers and a teacher of Arendt, is there for taking. The passages concerning Heidegger are quite gossipy at times and lend the reader a voyeuristic look into the private worlds of Arendt and Jaspers. It's almost as if when things get dull and weighty, a little dirt about Heidegger adds just the spice to make the letter memorable.

   The other strong point of this book is the portrait Arendt paints of politics in 1950s America, succinctly analyzing the Eisenhower (and later Kennedy) Administrations, describing the collapse of the cities in the 60s, and the "pointless" war in Vietnam. It's almost as if a mirror were held up to history, as insights about those turbelent times pour forth from every letter dispatched.

   An invaluable book, not only for those interested in the scholarly events of the times, but for anyone interested in the history of the times.

1 comments about Private Diary of Dr. John Dee and the Catalogue of His Library of Alchemical Manuscripts.

1. This collection of Dee's entries into his diary details his myriad interests among them mathematics, astronomy, astrology, navigation and philosophy.

5 comments about A View from the Year 3000.

1. Dr. Hart presents a unique vision of the future. However, he expects nothing wonderous from artificial intelligence (it is legally banned) and rather little from computers in general. In his world of the future, virtual reality is also banned, but sex change operations flourish--with most people undergoing multiple operations in their lifetime.

   The system of education, too, is curious. First, it must be truly important, because all of his new entries in this book (I think there are fifty five in all) have attended university for a long time. Today, highly educated people attend universities for years after high school, but in the distant days of the future fantastic described by Dr. Hart, it often takes them decades to do so--obviously this arrangement may be more appealing to academics than the population in general. This protracted schooling takes place despite the fact that direct downloading of information from computers into the brain is possible in that world of the day after tomorrow. Explanation for this paradox: downloading of information provides only the knowledge of facts, but no "understanding." One wonders how perfect brainwashing (another idea that Hart describes as almost imminent) can be real when "downloading" can do no more than supply the human brain with facts. Also, people generally work between 20 and 60 years before they retire; in fact, his most influential people after the year 2000 go to school for almost as long as they work afterwards--then they either live in perpetual retirement, or perish in some accident (although there is at least one suicide). This vision of the future of long schooling, important intellectual work, and endless retirement is the academic's utopia.

   One striking feature of Hart's predicitions is that almost everybody who is among the most influential after the twnety-first century comes either from Asia or Africa. As far as I am able to tell, nobody among the most influential people born after the twenty-first century comes from Western Europe. Few of the influential people are people are born outside the earth--mostly in sun-orbiting colonies.

   I think in some sense Dr. Hart's view of the year 3000 is too conservative. By 3000, I expect contact with other civilizations in outer space. (While Dr. Hart states very explicitly his view that life is very rare or nonexistent outside the earth, at least in our galaxy.) I also expect cyborgs, genetically engineered creatures of all kinds, virtually real worlds, and very advanced artificial intelligence, whose knowledge and understanding will surpass by far anything a human being can attain.

   Having said all that, no one can rule out the possibility that mankind will destroy itself before the fantastic world of 3000 is reached--the world is precarious place to inhabit.




2. Michael Hart's brilliant imagination takes the reader on a tour de force of history from the great religious, political and scientific leaders of the past to the imagined ones of the future. See how Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed compare with Hitler, Stalin and those yet to come in influence (whether good or bad, history is the judge). Or Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, with the biotechnologists of the 21st century. Fantastic entertainment and erudition. I enjoyed every moment.



3. Educational, thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining. This is a book for all tastes. The non-fiction entries give us interesting and informative profiles of the men and women who have or are shaping our world. The other entries, speculating on the major events of the 21st century and character types behind those events, are as entertaining as they are intellectually facinating and plausible. This is a carefully thought out and well written work whose chapters can be reread and enjoyed in any order. It's a keeper that you don't want to miss.



4. An interesting read. I wouldn't agree with some of the predicted technological developements (an easy sex change? - a little too PC) but I still enjoyed the exercise. The 'real' entries were a good review of history. I actually learned a little Chinese history too - enough to make me want to learn more.



5. Michael H. Hart gives his unique view of what the world might be like in the year 3000. This book is well written and quite imaginative. You will enjoy reading this title.

4 comments about Erasmus and the Age of Reformation.

1. Johan Huizinga writes great history. I do not think many contemporary historians can match his prose. He does an excellent job of providing the reader a unique perspective of certain events, and the people involved with them as they unfold.
   
   In this book, Huizinga writes about Erasmus, a man who is arguably one of the great thinkers of the 16th century. I did not know a lot about Erasmus before I read this book, but now feel like I have a much greater understanding about the man, his ideas, and the era in which he lived.
   
   A word of warning about this book - it helps if you have a pretty good understanding of 16th century European history. If you are a novice, like me, you may struggle through some sections. It is well worth the effort though, in the end.
   
   The best thing about Huizinga's book is that you get more than just the history of Erasmus. The author includes a lot of analysis and his perspective into Erasmus' life, which are fascinating.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with 16th century European history, and wants to learn more about Erasmus. If you are new to this era of history, or do not know much about Erasmus, I would consider reading a more general history before making your way through this book.



2. Of all volumes of study which concern the learned scholar Desiderius Erasmus, it must be said, quite simply, that Johan Huizinga's work stands out among the greatest. Huizinga skillfully and colorfully weaves the many aspects of Erasmus' life together into one intimate portrait which places the man respectfully within the setting of his time. In this work, the reader will find that Huizinga always seems to surface the inmost sentiments of Erasmus, even amidst all the triumph, turmoil, and controversy which marked the age he lived in. From Erasmus' early years as an Augustinian canon, to his final days as an accomplished and conscientious scholar, the same underlining genius will be discovered by anyone who comes to grips with this classic work. Huizinga's, Erasmus and the Age of the Reformation, is a work worthy of praise, even eighty years after its first publication. Also, found here are several valuable letters of Erasmus', which display his dutiful correspondence with individuals like St Thomas More and Martin Luther. Any study of Desiderius Erasmus is not complete without Huizinga's timeless masterpiece at hand.



3. Of particular value to the reader is the preface of this work, penned in 1952 by the then Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, G.N. Clark. The brief preface introduces not only the work but the author, Johan Huizinga, perhaps as a halting effort at rehabilitation. Clark reminds the readers that Huizinga had suffered through two world wars and was imprisoned by the Nazis, and died in February, 1945, literally days before his beloved Holland was liberated: an apologia of sorts for a most controversial scholar.

   Huizinga had shaken the European and American historical and religious establishments with the publication of his most famous work, "The Waning of the Middle Ages," in 1919. In that work Huizinga introduced a novel gestalt for interpreting the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, upsetting historians of his day who still clung to the traditional strictures of epochs, and Churchmen, notably Catholic, for his candor in debunking ecclesiastical mythology of that era. ["The Waning" was actually placed on the Index of Forbidden Books for a time.] Clark argues that the Erasmus text is a companion piece to "The Waning," a useful point to remember in assessing this biography.

   For all the energy generated by their respective forces, neither the Renaissance nor the Reformation was particularly rich in seminal philosophical inquiry. In fact, the sixteenth century was in many respects quite conservative, with its veneration of Classical thought, Aristotelian scientific method, and religious interest in primary sources. Erasmus's lifespan, 1466-1536, was an age of application, where orthopraxis was making a run at orthodoxy. Erasmus has always enjoyed reputation as the consummate "Renaissance Man," literary giant, man of letters, humane reformer, diplomat. In this work he is still the preeminent Renaissance man, but in the Renaissance of Huizinga's making, when being a "Renaissance Man" was a dicier proposition than popularly held. He was after all, a friend of both Thomas More and Henry VIII. Huizinga's Erasmus is brilliant, though not particularly original, and he was often broke, sick, insecure, unemployed, displaced-at the height of his reputation, no less.

   The original literary works of Erasmus demonstrate scholarship, mastery of the pen, satire, wit, and synthesis. As Huizinga observed, Erasmus wrote less from piety than from humanistic reasoning. Despite the fact that his "Praise of Folly" is his best remembered original work, Erasmus had little patience for folly, which he would have defined in real life as extremism, violence, or pretension. His satire could be pointed, but he was never mad at the world per se, only those who would deface it needlessly. Theologically, he espoused "low church Catholicism" stripped of both spiritual and practical indulgences. His satire poked fun at Church excess, but this was hardly earthshaking at a time when many intellectuals laughed down their sleeves at ecclesiastical pomp.

   His major gift to the Renaissance and subsequent ages, in my view, is his application of philology to the Sacred Scriptures, an effort that would also cause his greatest friction with Catholicism. With the reverence of antiquity so common to his age, Erasmus mastered Latin and Greek to the point where he was able to discover major linguistic flaws in the official Catholic translation of Scripture, St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate edition. Erasmus, an eminently reasonable man, assumed that his Church would tolerate-in fact, welcome-a cleaner, more accurate rendering of the Bible, and he proceeded to edit the Vulgate with available Greek manuscripts. Pascal was yet to be born, so perhaps Erasmus can be excused his shock that the loyal faithful remained devoted to the Vulgate "for reasons of the heart." The Vulgate translation in 1500 enjoyed an almost sacramental reverence; it was the official text for the sacraments and, in fact, for all of the great body of scholastic medieval theology that synthesized orthodox Catholicism and the cosmos.

   As every contemporary Scripture scholar is painfully aware, every translation is in fact an interpretation, a point not lost upon the Roman Curia. Given his known temperament, one would have to concede that Erasmus, who routinely fled from confrontation, was rather innocent of the charge that he was undermining things sacred. But worse, Erasmus had opened the door to doubts regarding the credibility of a sacred work which was in its own right a part of antiquity, having been composed around 400 A.D. He had given fuel to Protestant reformers and added Jerome's masterpiece to the growing list of accretions that needed purging. Luther, a scripture scholar himself, recognized the value of Erasmus's work and courted him for years, mostly by mail. The winning of Erasmus's hand by Protestant suitors would have been a major symbolic victory.

   But Luther came to discover that even the most rational "Renaissance Men" have reasons of the heart. The reasonable Erasmus was traumatized by the irrationality of division. Perhaps the executions of his friends Thomas More and John Fisher or the general polemic and bloodshed that accompanied religious revolution led him to do the unthinkable for a humanist: make a decision. He threw his lot with Roman Catholicism. The reaction of both sides tells the stakes: Luther excoriated Erasmus in the choicest terms of his rich vocabulary. The Curia forgave Erasmus his translations and offered him a red hat shortly before his death. Both gestures indicate that we may never capture, at this distance, the reasons of the hearts of those who admired Erasmus as a man, a writer, and a symbol. But Huizenga makes a noble effort.




4. In the preface, G. N. Clark tells us of Johan Huizinga that his "great success and reputation came suddenly when he was over forty. Until that time his powers were ripening, not so much slowly as secretly."

   Huizinga starts his history of Erasmus with his childhood. He was born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1466. His years in the monastery are covered in the second chapter. We're told he was well read in Jerome. Furthermore he was consumed with the works of St. Augustine. In the summer of 1495 his studies carried him to the University of Paris. It was on this campus that a struggle of ideas was occurring. The story continues as Erasmus goes to England.

   Erasmus was a true wandering scholar at times with no home of his own. In describing his travels, his studies, his love of God, his calling, the modern Christian scholar can sense the continuity of the personalities who went ahead to pave the way for our contritutions.