medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Timothy,
You make a number of interesting points. Firstly I
don't think you need a 'Death of God' to have a crisis
of identity. That aside, I don't think anyone on this
list would argue with you about the contrast between
medieval and modern conceptual frameworks. Indeed, it
could well be argued that the kind of 'death of God'
existentialism to which you refer not only did not
occur in the Middle Ages but could not occur in this
period. It was a movement that depended fundamentally
upon post-Enlightenment concepts of the self, and the
failure of at least one Elightenment project: to
provide rational foundations for religious belief.
Moreover, there is no doubt that the development of
science as an ideology was a major reason for the
failure of that project. Also, as you rightly point
out, we tend to work and to live alone to an extent
unprecedented in history - something that can only be
explained in terms of modern socio-economic and
ideological change.
The conceptual frameworks within which conflicts over
identity are mapped out, within which we understand
ourselves and create our living space, have changed
fundamentally since the Middle Ages. However, this
is not to say that conflicts over identity and real
crises of identity did not/could not occur in the
Middle Ages or that such conflicts were not related to
socio-economic and technical change. Take the figure
of St Francis of Assisi, for example. His whole
conception of the religious life was deeply bound up
with his experience of the growing commercialism of
the period. Nor was he alone (arguably he represents
the key example of something that was widely felt
during his period). It is difficult to understand the
dramatic appeal of the apostolic life to urban
dwellers, and the rise of popular religious movmements
from the eleventh-century without taking into
consideration socio-economic change. The concern with
the apostolic life was very much a concern about
authentic existence -- both about gaining it, and of
losing it. The obsession with the apostolic life was
not the only site for conflicts/disputes about issues
of identity in the period, however. The development
of chivalry and the rise of guilds are two other very
different examples of areas in which issues of
identity were being worked out in response to
socio-economic and technical change.
Compared to the kind of crises experienced by the
likes of Marjory Kempe these identity issues are all
fairly mainstream and, for much of the time, would not
merit being called 'crises'. However, might it be
suggested that the Nietzschean move 'from personal god
to absurd abyss' as you put it, is as much the luxury
of a certain form of intellectual culture in the
twentieth century as arguments for God's existence
were in the thirteenth? There is a great deal of
atheism around these days, but its hardly considered a
crisis.
Best wishes,
Scott Matthews
--- Timothy Ladd <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval
> religion and culture
>
> I don't think you can have a crisis of identity
> without the Death of God.
> This Nietzschean move from the Personal God to an
> absurd abyss, where human
> purpose is completely created, is the crisis of
> identity I mean to speak of.
> I don't think that this state of affairs could come
> about without widespread
> economic and technological advances.
>
> There were pessimists in the past, to be sure (the
> epic of Gilgamesh and
> Ovid's Metamorphoses are rather dark tales). But was
> the issue of the assumed
> meaninglessness of existence ever more deeply felt
> than it is now? Science,
> a thing I respect and like a great deal and affirm
> as a very useful tool, has
> left many people feeling hollow. Certainly the
> alienation of people in
> industrial and (hyper-? post-?) industrial cities,
> the isolated world of the
> nuclear or single-parent family, human interaction
> mediated by devices or
> machines, production and disposal occuring off-stage
> -- all of this makes us
> feel alienated from an "authentic" existence. Would
> the medievals ever think
> wholesale to ask, What is an authentic life? We
> search for a pidgeon-hole,
> label or tag to an obsessive degree. And we do it
> self-consciously,
> individually. In earlier times this was done
> automatically and by the group.
> We work alone whereas the medievals worked in
> communities. There is as in all
> things a continuum along which these things move,
> but I think it is very safe
> to say that these generalizations hold true.
>
> I await any responses some may have.
>
>
>
> Timothy Ladd
> Owosso, Michigan
>
> Graeci habeant sibi sapientiae nomen obscurum
> sed agamus igitur pingui ut aiunt Minerva in
> sermone.
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