Pantagruelism is a Humanism...

to paraphrase Sartre. When Sartre delivered the lecture that became "Existentialism is a Humanism," he was attempting to clarify what he understood by the term "existentialism" as well as defend this philosophy from its detractors.

Would that Pantagruelism were lucky enough to have detractors! Jean-Paul! You had no idea how good you had it.

This is the trouble we Pantagruelists must face. No one cares enough about our non-(I would even go so far as to say "anti-") sectarian sect to bother to challenge us, insult us, attack us. The best response we can arouse from anyone is a knitted brow and a hesitant, "You're joking, right?" And, yes, of course, we ARE joking--there's no denying that. But with a serious purpose.

In some quarters, donning the mantle of Humanist does invite shoulder-shrugs and sets eyes to rolling. Humanism is popularly equated by some with atheism. Such an equation would confuse the religious humanists of early modern Europe and their Muslim predecessors--wait! That's it! Muslims!

Now, there's a sure bet to draw fire. Let's talk about Muslims. And not just any Muslims; let's talk about Islamic humanism. Oh, ho, ho! Finally, a phrase that rings! It has the same wicked sonority as a phrase like "Godless Communism" only better, because Communists these days are, at best, quaint relics of demonizations past. Islam is the enemy du jour and we need to strike while the iron is hot.

So what about Islamic humanism? Is it not (exquisitely) the worst of both worlds? Yes! Of course! It must be! And yet...I can already sense the yawning, the watery eyes, heads pitching forward towards desk-tops. Careful! Your computer's keyboard will leave unsightly marks upon your forehead. Sit up straight, pinch yourself, do whatever you must do to keep from losing interest...

Oh, but it's a lost cause. Even the scholar-class with its libido for sharp pencils and endless droning textual explication has not been able to keep awake long enough to draw a simple line "between the Islamic studia adabiya and the studia humanitatis of the Italian Renaissance...Highly worthy of mention, however, is the reference of Charles James Lyall, in his Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry (London, 1885, 1930), to the early Islamic philologists as 'the great Humanists' (1930 edition, p. xxxix ff.), a name which Reynold A. Nicholson applauds in his A Literary History of the Arabs (London, 1907; Cambridge, 1930, p. 32), though neither eminent Arabist makes an explicit connection between the humanism of Islam and that of the Christian West"--so complains George Makdisi in his magisterial The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990, p. xxi).

Oh, please! Do stop it with the string citations... Erudition will get us nowhere and Bloomian influence anxiety is the order of the day. Modern Europe owes nothing (do you hear?), NOTHING to Islamic intellectual traditions. Look up "sui generis" in the dictionary and there you will find modern Europe and its North American progeny proudly displayed, colors flying. We sprang full-blown from the head of Zeus--who was a Christian, by the way. And don't be fooled by Gargantua's recommendation of Arabic study to his beloved son Pantagruel (Book II, Chapter VIII of the Complete Works): Rabelais never meant a word he wrote.

He was, after all, a Pantagruelist.

Tolstoy and Pantagruelism

It is unlikely that Leo Tolstoy would look kindly upon the association that I am suggesting in the title of today's dispatch. But no Pantagruelist worth her salt ever heeded the advice of Dale Carnegie. Leo Tolstoy deserves mention alongside (if not entirely within) the ranks of Pantagruelists, because his personal attempt to re-invent Christianity on the basis of his own reading of the Sermon on the Mount shares a significant family resemblance with the "Philosophy of Christ" advocated by Erasmus and approved by Rabelais. Moreover, Erasmus and Rabelais agreed, in the main, with Tolstoy's pacifism: to follow Christ is to forsake violence as an option for settling conflict. Finally, Tolstoy was not the stern and humorless figure he is popularly remembered to be. Even in the late novel Hadji Murad, written after his religious awakening, Tolstoy includes a chapter in which, with withering satire, he savages the old, corrupt Czar Nicholas. As every devout Pantagruelist understands, satire does not exhaust the possibilities for comic engagement with the world, but it occupies an indispensable position in the repertoire.

Tolstoy may well have taken himself a bit too seriously when the end drew near. There is no record that, while he lay dying at the rail station of Astapovo, he had enough of his wits about him to deliver a bon mot like that attributed to Rabelais: "Draw the curtains; the farce is over!" Instead, he lay on a cot lost in delirium; in a pocket of his great coat, hung upon a peg in the wall of the station-master's office, was a copy of Allama Sir Abdullah al-Mamun al-Suhrawardy's collection of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. In that collection, one finds a fair summation of the Pantagruelist's creed:

"What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the wrongs of the injured."

This hadith, as Tolstoy might say, encompasses the "gospel in brief."