Mind blowing challenge to all I "know" & have been taught. The best my small mind can manage is letting it all "wash over me" rather than trying to retain details. Somehow this leads me to having more confidence in AI than organic intellect. If not for final management career years of hiding out in night shifts I'd not have found time to peek into the rabbit holes that you explore. Thank you for inciting and inspiring curiosity.
Thanks Peter for your work in bringing this work back to life. It’s such an all encompassing thesis of history that must have taken a huge amount of research to compile.
As you say the question is why no academic or other discourse seems to have been taken after the event. Is it because the Schiller institute was seen as a “wacky outfit “ back then? Cancel culture?
What might be interesting would be if you could manage to have a conversation with the contributors who would be prepared to talk (that are still alive) to find out more about how the project came about, sources etc… Why do they think that it never got traction?
The question that occurs to me is why choose Venice as the starting point? It doesn’t seem to be enough to say that the Doge were all Aristotelian, therefore they were oligarchs. How did that come about?
Maybe we need to look back further to the Hellenisation of the West and the split with Orthodoxy which occurred because of it. Going back in time what seems to have happened is that when the orthodox Christian faith passed down by the apostles is attacked, some of the defenders who were schooled in Greek philosophy begin to employ it as a defence against gnostic beliefs. The dialectical method of defining ideas in terms of their opposites or using reverse dialectics to get from the “many” to the “one” becomes apparent. Faith has to be proved by logic. This leads to theology which uses dialectics to further abstraction and the idea that understanding of faith can be reinterpreted any which way a new influencer argues.
My thesis is that the Sermon on the Mount and Gospels are a way (Jesus) to teach Natural Law, in direct opposition to the "divine right of kings." One of the keys is the translation of the word logos (λόγος) into "word" in Latin, and then other languages. It doesn't mean "word." Christianity per se is a reaction to Oligarchism.
Thanks for that link. For sure the concept of “Logos” has caused much confusion and is interpreted in many different ways. At what point it becomes simply the “word” I’m not sure. Probably when Latin supplanted Greek in the western church and the bible was translated.
The early church fathers regarded “Logos” as in section 10 i.e. as associated with Christ. In fact for them Christ is the Logos. The Logos is an integral eternal part of God. At times it is seen as a creative force or emanating from the deity. The early theologians differ in various interpretations of it but it is never simply the “word”.
I very much agree about Jesus and natural law. It was the antithesis of the Levite laws. The early church though was built on similar hierarchical practices to the Levite system of High Priests, Priests and Levites. Bishops, Priests and Deacons, which isn’t surprising given the Apostles were brought up in the Judaic system.
An interesting fact about Venice was that their Bishopric was Orthodox until the great schism of 1054 when for geopolitical reasons they aligned with Rome. They became the transport and logistical hub of the crusades doing deals with the Norman knights. That’s probably where the links between England and Venice begin. On the fourth crusade the crusaders couldn’t pay the Venetian’s so they were directed to sack Constantinople in return. Expanding their empire and securing trade routes. A familiar story!
Mind blowing challenge to all I "know" & have been taught. The best my small mind can manage is letting it all "wash over me" rather than trying to retain details. Somehow this leads me to having more confidence in AI than organic intellect. If not for final management career years of hiding out in night shifts I'd not have found time to peek into the rabbit holes that you explore. Thank you for inciting and inspiring curiosity.
Thanks Peter for your work in bringing this work back to life. It’s such an all encompassing thesis of history that must have taken a huge amount of research to compile.
As you say the question is why no academic or other discourse seems to have been taken after the event. Is it because the Schiller institute was seen as a “wacky outfit “ back then? Cancel culture?
What might be interesting would be if you could manage to have a conversation with the contributors who would be prepared to talk (that are still alive) to find out more about how the project came about, sources etc… Why do they think that it never got traction?
The question that occurs to me is why choose Venice as the starting point? It doesn’t seem to be enough to say that the Doge were all Aristotelian, therefore they were oligarchs. How did that come about?
Maybe we need to look back further to the Hellenisation of the West and the split with Orthodoxy which occurred because of it. Going back in time what seems to have happened is that when the orthodox Christian faith passed down by the apostles is attacked, some of the defenders who were schooled in Greek philosophy begin to employ it as a defence against gnostic beliefs. The dialectical method of defining ideas in terms of their opposites or using reverse dialectics to get from the “many” to the “one” becomes apparent. Faith has to be proved by logic. This leads to theology which uses dialectics to further abstraction and the idea that understanding of faith can be reinterpreted any which way a new influencer argues.
λόγος https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry%3Dlo/gos
My thesis is that the Sermon on the Mount and Gospels are a way (Jesus) to teach Natural Law, in direct opposition to the "divine right of kings." One of the keys is the translation of the word logos (λόγος) into "word" in Latin, and then other languages. It doesn't mean "word." Christianity per se is a reaction to Oligarchism.
Thanks for that link. For sure the concept of “Logos” has caused much confusion and is interpreted in many different ways. At what point it becomes simply the “word” I’m not sure. Probably when Latin supplanted Greek in the western church and the bible was translated.
The early church fathers regarded “Logos” as in section 10 i.e. as associated with Christ. In fact for them Christ is the Logos. The Logos is an integral eternal part of God. At times it is seen as a creative force or emanating from the deity. The early theologians differ in various interpretations of it but it is never simply the “word”.
I very much agree about Jesus and natural law. It was the antithesis of the Levite laws. The early church though was built on similar hierarchical practices to the Levite system of High Priests, Priests and Levites. Bishops, Priests and Deacons, which isn’t surprising given the Apostles were brought up in the Judaic system.
An interesting fact about Venice was that their Bishopric was Orthodox until the great schism of 1054 when for geopolitical reasons they aligned with Rome. They became the transport and logistical hub of the crusades doing deals with the Norman knights. That’s probably where the links between England and Venice begin. On the fourth crusade the crusaders couldn’t pay the Venetian’s so they were directed to sack Constantinople in return. Expanding their empire and securing trade routes. A familiar story!