4 ms·

> the "Dark Ages" weren't "dark." I don't know. With the cognitive relativism of our times, we want to make sure each civilisation, and each of its ages, are "

by gbog 11y ago

> the "Dark Ages" weren't "dark." I don't know. With the cognitive relativism of our times, we want to make sure each civilisation, and each of its ages, are "equal". They certainly can be equally interesting for studies, but if we take a simple way to measure its effect on the human race by checking out how many books that are still read today have been written during these periods, you'll see that ancient Greece and Rome (and ancient China, and French enligthment) have been periods of great fertility, while for the normally educated man it is hard to find more than 2 or 3 books from the Middle Age that are still read and having influence nowadays. So, at least following a few similar criteria, the Dark Ages were "dark". And it is not very surprising: when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results.

cmdkeen 11y ago
Really how many works from Greece and Rome are still widely read today? The Aeneid, Odyssey are as obscure as Beowulf or Canterbury Tales in terms of who actually reads them certainly if your standard is the "normally educated man". Plus writing off Augustine, Aquinas et al as having "obscure religious debates" is rather churlish. The morality developed during that period, combined with governmental changes formed the basis for the political / legal system which now governs most of the world. I'd much rather their debates happened rather than live under Greek, Roman or Chinese systems.
- titzer 11y ago
  If by obscure, you mean that tens if not hundreds of thousands of high school and college students read all or part of them every year, and that their themes and motifs permeate our culture and still underly our understanding of governance, mathematics, and even Science, then yeah...they're obscure.
  - hsitz 11y ago
    The writings of Plato and Aristotle, in particular, are still widely read among the "well-educated" and continue to exert enormous influence on the world. It is perhaps true that they are not now important of the "normally educated", but this is something that has happened only in last twenty or thirty years, as trend of college educations becomes more and more "vocational". I don't know what a previous poster meant by mentioning Augustine and Aqunas and then saying "the morality developed during that period" (Augustine 4th century BC, Aquinas 13th century). The truth is that Augustine was especially heavily influenced by Plato and Aquinas' entire philosophy was mostly an attempt to synthesize Aristotle with Christianity. There is a tendency by some Christians to think morality somehow can't exist without God, but the truth is otherwise. The Greeks certainly had well-developed modern morality, along with brilliant moral theory. And the reality is that most of the important advancements in morality have come from "liberal", often secular, thinkers, while Christianity (and other religions) get pulled upward from old barbarisms only while kicking and screaming.
    - cmdkeen 11y ago
      My point was that the whole period, starting with Augustine, was about Christianising the previous philosophy and government. The Greeks had well developed morality but universalism was not really a part, even the Romans firmly split between citizens and non-citizens, patricians and plebs. Greek philosophy is heavily responsible for the misogynistic aspects of Christianity for instance, but during this period women had more legal freedoms and ability to exist independently and their rights actually became worse later on. Everyone is influenced by what came before, but we very much live in a world in which their developments on previous philosophy are very welcome.
      - hsitz 11y ago
        "Greek philosophy is heavily responsible for the misogynistic aspects of Christianity for instance, but during this period women had more legal freedoms and ability to exist independently and their rights actually became worse later on." Any references for this? I find it highly doubtful. The Greek philosophy was universal in that it applied to anyone who was a "person". I don't think that's different from any morality that's followed, it's just that the "universe" has always been limited, e.g., in U.S. rights were created universally for "all men", but that didn't originally include women or slaves.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      Augustine was a Western Christian philosophist, and he lived AD, not BC. He died in 430 AD, 20 years after the sack of Rome by Visigoths. Pretty much what people call the beginning of medieval period.
      - hsitz 11y ago
        Thanks, was thinking AD but for some reason BC came out.
    - foldr 11y ago
      >The truth is that Augustine was especially heavily influenced by Plato and Aquinas' entire philosophy was mostly an attempt to synthesize Aristotle with Christianity. Pretty much every philosopher is influenced by the great philosophers who came before them. If you look at philosophical (or indeed scientific) work today, it is no less under the influence of previous work. Augustine and Aquinas were very original in many respects, but they quite rightly built on the best philosophical ideas that they knew of rather than starting from scratch just for the sake of it.
- gbog 11y ago
  The basis of political and legal system in Latin Europe is Roman jurisdiction, as far as I know.
ptaipale 11y ago
I don't think your claim that "all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates" is very realistic. For one thing, the concept of university is clearly a medieval invention. Lots and lots of innovation was done during Middle Ages, as was interesting philosophy. Ancient Rome and Greece get the attention because they are the oldest stuff that is somewhat preserved, not because they would not have been surpassed in the following centuries.
- gbog 11y ago
  Not sure I agree. In many domains of science, politic and arts, not only middle ages didn't surpass the ancient times, they were even a regression. Some domains that come to mind: sculpture, architecture, mathematics, theater, law, philosophy, poetry...
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    I don't know enough about sculpture, but regarding architecture, there were many innovations during Middle Ages. First of all, medieval builders constructed churches and palaces that were bigger and higher than ancient ones. That's what Gothic architecture is all about (even though the name "Gothic" is a later pejorative). This was possible because of new innovations in structure of arches etc. They were also able to construct these buildings with real windows, which was not actually the case in ancient times. (For instance, look at Pantheon: ancient, and quite big and impressive, but no windows, just the oculus at top). For construction tools, medieval times came up with e.g. the wheelbarrow (although this was independently developed in China much earlier) and various types of cranes. If we look at politics, law and economics, well, medieval politics was sophisticated in many ways and I cannot see why we should call it regression. As I wrote in another comment, during Middle Ages the development achieved, for instance, abolition of slavery and things like Magna Carta. As well as the start of merchant banking and foreign exchange contracts. And many of our well-known poetic legends are medieval: Roland's Song, Carmina Burana, The Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy, Beowulf, and if you go to religious arts, people like St. Francis. Edit: regarding sculpture, I'd imagine that the Greek had easy access to sculptable stone materials that medieval Central Europeans had less so. There's even less stone sculpture in northern Europe where the bedrock is granite and it takes absolutely modern tools to sculpt them.
foldr 11y ago
It's a bit of a myth that mediaeval philosophers spent all of their time discussing obscure points of religious doctrine.
- gbog 11y ago
  Well they did spend quite some time discussing the trinity and the virginity of Mary. Also there was this problem with stillborn babies: but baptised, they wouldn't go to the paradise, but how could they go to hell if they didn't have time to commit their first sin? Big debates... So they invented the limbo, just for this special corner case. (As a developer I see this as very smelly, the abstraction was leaking too much)
  - foldr 11y ago
    Yes, they often discussed theological issues, but that was far from the only thing they did. It's easy to be smug in retrospect. Most of what philosophers and scientists talk about now will no doubt seem rather silly in, say, 800 years' time. The theological discussion is also very rich, by the way. In particular, the attempts to clarify the ontology of the trinity were really quite interesting, and gave rise to some independently interesting philosophical discussion.
padobson 11y ago
when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results. What's great about this sentence is how it brings the whole narrative full circle, back to fascism and Germany. The Papacy in the middle ages was basically a fascist institution - ridiculing and condemning anyone that didn't agree with it. But it wasn't till the 16th century that a German named Martin Luther dealt that fascist regime a serious blow by nailing some thoughts to a Cathedral door. Luther wasn't the first to have those thoughts, though. He was simply the first credible mind to have those thoughts outside the sphere of influence of the Pope. The German politics Luther lived under enabled him to contradict the Papacy without fear of punishment.
mhurron 11y ago
> the Dark Ages were "dark". In Europe perhaps, but there's a whole world out there.
- gbog 11y ago
  Certainly, for example Tang dynasty was a golden age in China.
mcguire 11y ago
There is a bit of a selection bias at play. The selection of ancient Greece and Rome are in a large part due to those dark-age intelligentsia; they and their successors picked those books to be the basis of knowledge.
- roi 11y ago
  Most of these classics, especially the Greek ones, were forgotten in Western Europe of the middle ages. They were preserved in the Byzantine and Muslim cultures and were reintroduced to the West starting from the 12th Century, a process which culminated in the Renaissance.

by gbog 11y ago

cmdkeen 11y ago

Really how many works from Greece and Rome are still widely read today? The Aeneid, Odyssey are as obscure as Beowulf or Canterbury Tales in terms of who actually reads them certainly if your standard is the "normally educated man". Plus writing off Augustine, Aquinas et al as having "obscure religious debates" is rather churlish. The morality developed during that period, combined with governmental changes formed the basis for the political / legal system which now governs most of the world. I'd much rather their debates happened rather than live under Greek, Roman or Chinese systems.

titzer 11y ago
If by obscure, you mean that tens if not hundreds of thousands of high school and college students read all or part of them every year, and that their themes and motifs permeate our culture and still underly our understanding of governance, mathematics, and even Science, then yeah...they're obscure.
- hsitz 11y ago
  The writings of Plato and Aristotle, in particular, are still widely read among the "well-educated" and continue to exert enormous influence on the world. It is perhaps true that they are not now important of the "normally educated", but this is something that has happened only in last twenty or thirty years, as trend of college educations becomes more and more "vocational". I don't know what a previous poster meant by mentioning Augustine and Aqunas and then saying "the morality developed during that period" (Augustine 4th century BC, Aquinas 13th century). The truth is that Augustine was especially heavily influenced by Plato and Aquinas' entire philosophy was mostly an attempt to synthesize Aristotle with Christianity. There is a tendency by some Christians to think morality somehow can't exist without God, but the truth is otherwise. The Greeks certainly had well-developed modern morality, along with brilliant moral theory. And the reality is that most of the important advancements in morality have come from "liberal", often secular, thinkers, while Christianity (and other religions) get pulled upward from old barbarisms only while kicking and screaming.
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    My point was that the whole period, starting with Augustine, was about Christianising the previous philosophy and government. The Greeks had well developed morality but universalism was not really a part, even the Romans firmly split between citizens and non-citizens, patricians and plebs. Greek philosophy is heavily responsible for the misogynistic aspects of Christianity for instance, but during this period women had more legal freedoms and ability to exist independently and their rights actually became worse later on. Everyone is influenced by what came before, but we very much live in a world in which their developments on previous philosophy are very welcome.
    - hsitz 11y ago
      "Greek philosophy is heavily responsible for the misogynistic aspects of Christianity for instance, but during this period women had more legal freedoms and ability to exist independently and their rights actually became worse later on." Any references for this? I find it highly doubtful. The Greek philosophy was universal in that it applied to anyone who was a "person". I don't think that's different from any morality that's followed, it's just that the "universe" has always been limited, e.g., in U.S. rights were created universally for "all men", but that didn't originally include women or slaves.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    Augustine was a Western Christian philosophist, and he lived AD, not BC. He died in 430 AD, 20 years after the sack of Rome by Visigoths. Pretty much what people call the beginning of medieval period.
    - hsitz 11y ago
      Thanks, was thinking AD but for some reason BC came out.
  - foldr 11y ago
    >The truth is that Augustine was especially heavily influenced by Plato and Aquinas' entire philosophy was mostly an attempt to synthesize Aristotle with Christianity. Pretty much every philosopher is influenced by the great philosophers who came before them. If you look at philosophical (or indeed scientific) work today, it is no less under the influence of previous work. Augustine and Aquinas were very original in many respects, but they quite rightly built on the best philosophical ideas that they knew of rather than starting from scratch just for the sake of it.
gbog 11y ago
The basis of political and legal system in Latin Europe is Roman jurisdiction, as far as I know.

ptaipale 11y ago

I don't think your claim that "all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates" is very realistic. For one thing, the concept of university is clearly a medieval invention. Lots and lots of innovation was done during Middle Ages, as was interesting philosophy. Ancient Rome and Greece get the attention because they are the oldest stuff that is somewhat preserved, not because they would not have been surpassed in the following centuries.

gbog 11y ago
Not sure I agree. In many domains of science, politic and arts, not only middle ages didn't surpass the ancient times, they were even a regression. Some domains that come to mind: sculpture, architecture, mathematics, theater, law, philosophy, poetry...
- ptaipale 11y ago
  I don't know enough about sculpture, but regarding architecture, there were many innovations during Middle Ages. First of all, medieval builders constructed churches and palaces that were bigger and higher than ancient ones. That's what Gothic architecture is all about (even though the name "Gothic" is a later pejorative). This was possible because of new innovations in structure of arches etc. They were also able to construct these buildings with real windows, which was not actually the case in ancient times. (For instance, look at Pantheon: ancient, and quite big and impressive, but no windows, just the oculus at top). For construction tools, medieval times came up with e.g. the wheelbarrow (although this was independently developed in China much earlier) and various types of cranes. If we look at politics, law and economics, well, medieval politics was sophisticated in many ways and I cannot see why we should call it regression. As I wrote in another comment, during Middle Ages the development achieved, for instance, abolition of slavery and things like Magna Carta. As well as the start of merchant banking and foreign exchange contracts. And many of our well-known poetic legends are medieval: Roland's Song, Carmina Burana, The Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy, Beowulf, and if you go to religious arts, people like St. Francis. Edit: regarding sculpture, I'd imagine that the Greek had easy access to sculptable stone materials that medieval Central Europeans had less so. There's even less stone sculpture in northern Europe where the bedrock is granite and it takes absolutely modern tools to sculpt them.

foldr 11y ago

It's a bit of a myth that mediaeval philosophers spent all of their time discussing obscure points of religious doctrine.

gbog 11y ago
Well they did spend quite some time discussing the trinity and the virginity of Mary. Also there was this problem with stillborn babies: but baptised, they wouldn't go to the paradise, but how could they go to hell if they didn't have time to commit their first sin? Big debates... So they invented the limbo, just for this special corner case. (As a developer I see this as very smelly, the abstraction was leaking too much)
- foldr 11y ago
  Yes, they often discussed theological issues, but that was far from the only thing they did. It's easy to be smug in retrospect. Most of what philosophers and scientists talk about now will no doubt seem rather silly in, say, 800 years' time. The theological discussion is also very rich, by the way. In particular, the attempts to clarify the ontology of the trinity were really quite interesting, and gave rise to some independently interesting philosophical discussion.

padobson 11y ago

when all the intelligensia spend almost all its brain power in obscure religious debates, you get very few results. What's great about this sentence is how it brings the whole narrative full circle, back to fascism and Germany. The Papacy in the middle ages was basically a fascist institution - ridiculing and condemning anyone that didn't agree with it. But it wasn't till the 16th century that a German named Martin Luther dealt that fascist regime a serious blow by nailing some thoughts to a Cathedral door. Luther wasn't the first to have those thoughts, though. He was simply the first credible mind to have those thoughts outside the sphere of influence of the Pope. The German politics Luther lived under enabled him to contradict the Papacy without fear of punishment.

mhurron 11y ago

> the Dark Ages were "dark". In Europe perhaps, but there's a whole world out there.

gbog 11y ago
Certainly, for example Tang dynasty was a golden age in China.

mcguire 11y ago

There is a bit of a selection bias at play. The selection of ancient Greece and Rome are in a large part due to those dark-age intelligentsia; they and their successors picked those books to be the basis of knowledge.

roi 11y ago
Most of these classics, especially the Greek ones, were forgotten in Western Europe of the middle ages. They were preserved in the Byzantine and Muslim cultures and were reintroduced to the West starting from the 12th Century, a process which culminated in the Renaissance.