> On Jun 19, 2018, at 2:38 PM, Stephen Jarosek <[email protected]> wrote: > > Christianity was particularly important to the European renaissance. Why?
Not quite sure what you’re asking. Could there have been a different movement less tied to Christianity? Probably. If there was a tie I suspect it was primarily due to the place of Rome in Italy where the Renaissance started. But say, to pose a hypothetical counterfactual, refugees from Constantinople primarily went to the Germaic area which had for different reasons a stronger economy than Italy. We’d have expected a very different sort of “renaissance.” So while the form the renaissance took was very Christian, I tend to see that as tied to historic accident. For that matter had Islam not arisen and Constantinople fallen, would we talk about a Renaissance? Probably not although likely many similar developments in the technique of art or thought may well have happened. Or perhaps they wouldn’t have happened at all and Europe would have been stuck in a situation more akin to the prior thousand years. If we talk evolution I think we have to recognize the place of chance in all of this. There may well be potential forms that are very useful that would be incentivized to arise. Yet the broader issues seem much more arbitrary. > But Christianity introduces another dimension that is alien to the secular > Left or the atheist Right (and the vast majority of religions)... commitment > to a higher purpose, regardless of the earthly benefits that may or may not > accrue. Is there something in that, at least as a fundamental cultural > principle? I’m nervous at attributing “higher purposes” just to Christianity. After all they’re common to many religions and even non-religions like Marxism. Now you could argue that Marxism can arise only because Christianity already sets the stage. However I think this is biasing things too much to a Eurocentric view of civilization. > Burkean conservatism and its attendant social practices has its place, but > the "higher purpose" is absent. Clinical. Behaviorist. A utilitarian morality > that maximizes happiness for the greatest number of people. Darwinism speaks > the same language, and it looks like its shelf-life will be limited. Their > fates are determined by the entropy of self-interest. I’m not sure that’s true. I think Burkeanism can be reduced to “don’t change too fast and too radically because of unintended consequences.” Higher purposes seem orthogonal to that concern.
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