Portrait Of A Humanist

The man who sat for this portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo (around 1520) is unknown. Some think it may be none other than Leo Africanus:

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages...

From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is them that I will one day soon return.

~ From Leo Africanus, Amin Maalouf, tr. Peter Sluglett (1986/1988).

The epigram to Maalouf's historical novel is from W. B. Yeats: "Yet do not doubt that I am also Leo Africanus the traveller."

Anatolia

The Heartland.

Jeremiah 12:1

Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?

~ KJV

More Dervish Politics

Human flourishing is the paramount concern of Dervish politics; but human flourishing emerges from a dialectic between liberty and social welfare.

The two elements of this dialectic are often incommensurable, and so practical politics is inevitably a process whereby one must make hard, if not tragic, choices.

Moreover, each element of this dialectic is subject to further dialectical struggle: rival freedoms as well as rival goods (and not-so-goods) are always in contention.

There is a certain existentialist bent to Dervish politics: we don't just lead lives, we wager them.

John Gray's argument that we should abandon the attempt to create an ideal regime and "adopt instead a conception in which the pursuit of modus vivendi among incommensurable and conflicting values is central" wins the day, for it alone is suited to life in this Tavern of Ruin. [See Gray, Two Faces, 70].



It is therefore tempting to see Dervish politics as a deviation from the Prophetic tradition's commitment to establishing God's Kingdom on earth, but that is not quite accurate. The "Kingdom of God" or of "Heaven" persists in Dervish political thought as a trope: for if we abandon utopian ideals, we lose the measuring stick against which we can attempt to chart our progress towards both individual and civic improvement. Without such ideals, politics quickly descends into unprincipled compromise and a cynical game of power.



The Prophetic Tradition urges us on towards the cultivation of our "best selves" (Bildung). It is our Don Quixote. The Dervish, however, recognizes in herself the humble squire. She rides with the Don, but hangs on to her earthbound sanity.

Sir Isaiah Berlin Revisited

Although Sir Isaiah considered his politics a form of Liberalism (which, in its time, it may well have been), his insistence upon "negative liberty" is a fundamental principle of Left Libertarianism.

Live The Beauty

Watchtower of Turkey.

Fitzgerald

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Wilde

Mencken

I may have passed beyond shame and entered positive loathing.

A Tale Of Two Histories

My introduction to the History of Religions originating in the Late Ancient Near East and Mediterranean began with this book: Roland Bainton's theologically-driven The Church Of Our Fathers. Bainton was a Congregationalist, married to a Quaker, and an accomplished church historian who wrote this particular book for young readers. I read it repeatedly while in Elementary and Middle schools--loving it as much for the illustrations as for the text. The book both fascinated and troubled me--as any good history of religion ought to do--although I am not certain that Bainton intended it to be troubling. If I recall correctly, it ends on a hopeful note despite the narrative it contains of internecine Christian conflict. I absorbed Bainton's optimism about the church and maintained it against all evidence to the contrary until my sophomore year in college when Elaine Pagels published The Gnostic Gospels.



I purchased a copy of Pagels's book hot off the press and devoured it. Unlike Bainton, Pagels did not adopt the view that, despite internal disagreements, the church has steadily progressed through time fulfilling its obligation to spread the Word of God. Instead, her book demonstrated to me that power politics were involved not only in the development of the church as an institution, but even in the crafting of its reigning ideologies, e.g., Christology. More recently, Philip Jenkins has spelled out the widespread nature of these conflicts in Jesus Wars.



Nevertheless, Bainton's book remains an important milestone in my own intellectual history. I first felt the thrill of studying religious history while thumbing through his pages. For that, I shall always be grateful.

Wilhelm Dilthey

I first began to read Dilthey when I was an undergraduate. I used to keep a framed photo of him on my writing desk and I've returned to his work repeatedly since the early 1980's. Even so, I've never had the patience to stick with him. Perhaps I am guilty of allowing the relatively low profile accorded him by academics to influence my perception of him. If so, I am guilty of Philistinism in the first degree. He was a child of Goethe and a precursor of Heidegger; a capacious thinker with few equals.

The Inimitable Dr. Johnson

"Much enquiry having been made concerning a gentleman, who had quitted a company where Johnson was, and no information being obtained; at last Johnson observed, that 'he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney.'"

~James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson.

Wisdom In Goethe

Wisdom in Goethe is an acknowledgment that what matters most is the open mystery, what can be suggested but not stated...Only irony for Goethe makes wisdom available to us. Such wisdom is hardly the biblical wisdom of Dr. Johnson or the regenerated skepticism of Montaigne. I am not at all certain that Goethe's wisdom is still available to us, whether we are European or American.

~ Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, pp. 180-181.

It would be best then to leave Europe and America behind.



Ex Oriente Lux.

Transgressive Transcendentalist Nobility

Religious affiliation is a fetish in the original sense of that term: i.e., it is an idol, a false god. Our interest is in a particular type of personality (khilqah): one that exhibits the character traits of magnanimity (karamah), imagination (khayal), and courage (iqdam). We associate such traits with a "spiritual" (for lack of a better word) aristocracy.

Only the ignorant (al-jahilun) would fetishize an accident of history. Look to an individual's character. The rest is just window-dressing.