[4] Christianity was not understood by the Apostles or since. It was carried along by the Christological element. Only exceptionally did we get Christian heresies such as communism? The Apostles met Jesus alive after the crucifixion and then preached that he was the son of God and this story spread. There is nothing of the meaning of Christianity in the Crusades which was long sustained movement.
* Klages and History
* Beyond the ''Great Transformation''
Amon the Jews there was an intolerant eradication of their idolatrous sects to the extent where no trace of them remains although they are referred to in the Old Testament. This seemed to go with a strong religious sense.
* Industrialism
* Modern Politics
The Essenes didn't with to continue. They didn't marry nor have children. There is a strong feeling in Christianity that the end of the world was imminent. The Acts was the only contemporary recounting of events.
* Background of Polanyi's Work
* The Russians and Chinese
Polanyi has spent several years in all of the world religions. Then Well's Outline of History came out. Each religion talked about the 'Path', the 'Way', 'the 'Road'. This leads to the question of whether there was a common problem for the world at this time.
* Art
* Psychology
Confucius had no notion of theism or God. He was in the great Chinese liberal tradition - not to label. The English also have this aversion to labelling - it is limiting. This Chinese idea of [5] allowing and wanting all opinions is an expression of the reality of society.
* Remarks
** Canada
The teachings of Christ were not understood - were called the interim ethics.
** Hesiod
** Greece
P. Thinks my last draft (July 12/56)<ref>A. Rotstein is probably mentioning his [[Letter from Abraham Rotstein (10 July 1956)|July 10 letter]]. -- Santiago Pinault, 18 June 2017 (BST)</ref> reveals that my grasp of the revelations is complete - I have it all internalized. What I wrote in my letter reveals that I see things the same was as P. does - things are in the same sequence and context in which they belong and everything else is incidental.
** The Quiet American
** Nuclear Discoveries
P. Personally tends to keep to a minimum of assumptions and starts on the inner insights. He does not tend to link them, nor give than an etiology - a causal background. This is probably because any causational background brings in definite assumptions of a historical or literary kind.
** Personal
For exemple, if you link something to the Old Testament, then the truth of what you say hinges on the criticism of the Old Testament, e.g. do Fundamentalism and the Synoptic agree, or what about John's view?
Old Testament criticism was created by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Wellhausen Wellhausen] and the Jews didn't take note of it, when less than had the Christians didn't taken note of the New Testament critics. German Fundamentalist, preferred obscurantism to New Testament criticism, but the English took up the New Testament criticism. The Jews decided for obscurantism all the way and took no note of Wellhausen, nor of Weber and Meyer's books on the history of Judaism. The Jews said that this was antisemitic and therefore anti-progressive and anti-liberal. The Deuteronomy story wasn't taken note of.
[6] Its discovery in the temple in 621 was slurred over. The post-exilic and pre-exilic part of the O.T. was not noted. After the Codex Hammurabi's discovery - 1902, a fashion spread generally that Judaism was Babylonian. There is a Babylonian origin of the story of Eden. Jewish scholarship stopped and retired into obscurantism.
The post-exilic period - 445, corresponds in time to Periclean Athens. Egyptian literature takes us back 1000 years and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic Ugaritic] literature echoes another 1000 years (It is a lovely literature in which much is entirely enchanting.)
The point is, that if the structure of human consciousness is analyzed, the changes and sequence of revelations, in a sense, the historicity in terms of race is irrelevant, because it may be the individual who goes through them. The phylogenetic hold - every child has the fear of death experience and it would be irrelevant whether the race went through it in the Paleolithic or Neolithic or when in history. We are much more sure that these elements exist than when and how they originated.
The certainty, validity and dignity of this knowledge is of a different order than the kind of knowledge about the origins or causes and this inner knowledge is the only evidence we have for religion. It is called revelation because we can't deduce it from anything. Revelation implies that it wasn't there before, or that it doesn't exist in other cultures. It is knowledge which comes about, but when it's there it's certain. In religion it os natural, because these are the concepts that apply to the subject. There is nothing more certain than the knowledge of inner experiences, since outer experiences are only mediated. It is knowledge, not faith or belief. It doesn't differ from knowledge as faith differs. It is not that we only believe it - this is a misconception about religious knowledge. It is external knowledge that is mediated. It is just that the subject is different, not the certainty of the knowledge.
[…] [7] Some religions would be shattered if miracles proved true and others would be affirmed. Jesus refused to do miracles, although he could do them in the then-accepted sense. It meant rare powers of influence and these powers were not infrequent in the East - psychologically and physiologically rare phenomena. They couldn't understand then what e.g. the physiologist means by miracle, since nature's laws were not formulated. […]
There are no adequate theories of mind and consciousness. The mind is an English word and other words exist in other languages, [8] e.g. "Geist" and spirit or mind don't mean the same thing. Their real importance lies in their use and the situation in which they are used. This is an Instrumentalist idea which is near the Pragmatist or Dewey position. In the theory of knowledge there are many sound elements in the Nominalist rather than the Realist position. P. is not a Pragmatist nor an Instrumentalist, although there is some truth in both positions. P. only says this to excuse himself. The distinction of the basic terms consciousness and mind and the term "awareness" are important (what most people mean by consciousness).
P. thinks… […]
For Macmurray, the movement of the mind as pure dialectic was shown in the dream - moving according to its own inner law - that is dialectic.
[9] The theological content or revelation doesn't mean anything and there is no point in it. If God was revealed to you, you think of God. Revelation is a personal event. It happens to you (?). God is the meaningful entity in the world, or the world is a meaningful entity. Otherwise we could never have found meaning in it. Yet that is what we do. The one thing that is certain is that we can't originate meaning. "Logos” in John signifies means meaning. Any other belief is either illogical or nonsensical.
The philosopher says that this is nonsense. In terms of his discipline he has excluded the assumption on which P. rests - the mind satisfied with the certainty that he participates in the meaning of the world. That we couldn't have invented meaning is obvious to P. It is obvious that the sphere of existence with "You" being "I" to yourself is different from a mechanical or organic event. Nor is there this meaning in growth e.g. the apple tree is the seed of last year. In the world of the organic, different things are the same, and in the mechanical world, measuring of effect is meaningful. Gravitation is statement of causation in the mechanical world. There is also a statement of identity in the organic world e.g. my friend at the age 3, is now 68.
Personal meaning is the third type of statement. What is more certain its the meaning? Otherwise you get into the crazy behaviouristic circles of George S. Mead - two people communicating like two dogs illogically conceived as machines. Meaning doesn't bear explanation i.e. reducing it to something more familiar. One can't reduce meaning further. It is the basic element in the theory of knowledge.
P.'s scientific training and inner life coincide. There is no contradiction here. That comes from formulating religious knowledge not as [10] making society all that it can be we are free to resign ourselves to what it is and live the light of our freedom. This is a different existence.
The growing… (…) We can't resign ourselves to the reality of society limiting Christian freedom, in the sense in which the responsibility to our conscience requires it, unless we do what we can to ensure the right, the just and the demands of love. (…)
Owen says we have to resign ourselves to these dangers. P. agree… […]
Owen suggested that we put machines in a village to alleviate conditions. He only tried to answer the question that reform are no good [11] anyway since you can't remove the curse of labor. […]
[12] Perhaps other things are like law - if something is objectified for a third person is a law. The Objectification is Hegelian term. He said that spiritual realities like law are the objectification of spirit or 'geist'. P. doesn't share this form of the idea but it comes into the argument as the reality of society and you can't contract out of it. […]
[13] P. has these things on record 30 years ago. It is not possible to contract out of society. (Cf. Tolstoy and "nicht tun" - not doing, i.e. doesn't need machine, power and police - doesn't work).
The Christian idea that every individual is unique may now be grounded on the permutations and combinations of genes. […]
P.'s friends were then on the non-resistance line of Ghandi. His doctrine was directed against the Gandhist utopia, which was the same as Tolstoy's.
[…]
[15] institution meaning privileges - auto nemos, you own land to yourself (?). Luther's "Christian menschen freiheit" is a theological concept.
[…]
…meetings (Jews had similar idea in spring?)
Paul activates the life of the spirit.
[16] (My letter July 10/56):
The first industrial revolution was tillage. […]
Jesus said man may be washed out forever right away and this is a terrible message. He said to resign yourself but if you do it you are in state of the life of the spirit, and this gives you abundance of life.
P. points to each of the terrible revelations because it is the beginning of life, and this is the real meaning of Christianity. It reveals something man is not conscious of and the very resignation is the fount of the life of the spirit.
Buddha is very similar to Jesus but Buddhism has nothing much else to say either. […]
[25] It was the corporatists who reversed the position and said go back to the biological basis.
Christianity never accepted that and the Communists couldn't accept Socialism as a Christian derivation.
[26] As far the Fromm position is concerned we must mobilize the essential Christian position as being a limited one. The Christians don't realize it and don't like it. They say that Jesus didn't mean it in the social sense. One centers here on nuclear phenomena like power or economic value. The inevitable alternative is that whether you do something or don't, you are affecting other peoples' lives. […]
[3] Every major thinker has two opposite ideas e.g. Marx, Hegel, Rousseau, and also Jesus and Paul state opposites in an indissoluble unity of temperament. That's why innumerable interpretations are possible on one line or the other: life and logos. There are always some who embody the life force. There is the creation of a baby, but the imagination is also conceptual. Conception is both biological and logical - body and mind.
[…]
The whole mystery of saints is that there are saints e.g. Joan is an obvious situation discovers the obvious - the French nation. But the Roman church can't have nations and so sh's burned. She was [4]supposed to work miracles but didn't. She was beginning to do what every Frenchman had to do. We describe these as miracles by pretending not to understand. […]
[5] Man exists on three levels:
The body. If you kick or pinch it hurts.
Psychological mechanism. You may hit him in hi vanity in a psychological or emotional sense
Life is nourished from internal sources of faith and conscience which he can't contradict without destroying himself.
The secret of Shaw…
[6] P. once wrote on Shaw, just about fifty years ago in 1906, ”The Drama of the Economic Interpretation of History”[1]. He read all that Shaw had then written.
The Great Transformation and America
Technology and Utopia
P[olanyi] doesn’t take Owen as Utopian. He was full of realism but in one of his sentences he said that there are limitations and these would have to be accepted. [23]
The 1957 Book and Beyond
Rationality
[35] What are ends of the rationality movement? (my question)
The nearest to a philosophy of rationalism ever built was the Enlightenment. It was only a counterphilosophy to a theologically interpreted world.
The Encyclopedists via the Enlightenment represented rationalism. They claimed that the universe and existence can be understood and is in harmony with reason. It probably means the unaided mind does not seek support in revelation.
It may organize itself as humanism - man is the ultimate explanation and value. This got terrific secret
The Revelations
[37] (From P.'s discussion of the dangers of science, my comment of Eve's apple to Adam).
P. is not really thinking of the symbolic expression of reminiscences. Man awakened out of his vegetative soul to the consciousness of death which created what we call man. The knowledge is here a reminiscence of man as we know him, being born and reshaping his consciousness. But to P. these revelations have always had meaning. Revelation does not come in a special or specific way or we wouldn't know it. The importance is its truth and we must know our life is limited. There is no use denying that and therefore the emphasize is its consequences.
Everybody knows he can extinguish the meaning of his life by denying his inner nature and it wouldn't be in the same sense as physical death. Revelation only means the consequences which are irreversible and that is true of the reality of society.
We can't say who told you or how do you know? That's why we speak of revelation, because once there, its irrevocable.
That's why the Old Testament or Babylonian story meant something different, such as whether sex is a danger and contradicts man's nature by his being ashamed. P. is not keen on this side of the matter. Other people might be concerned with the structure of human consciousness and the way it is linked here.
Both sex and hunger have this awkward character about them [38] and every human society deals with them.
[…]
[38] The one sentence of Owen’s says that we cannot appeal to the reality of society for disregarding the Christian commitment until the we try to see if the reality of society is a limitation for equality and justice. The reality of society is the third horror we are confronted [39] with – being a number of society and not doing anything about it.
Freedom
Archaeology
Christianity and the Social Revolution
Modern Politics
Marx
World Trade
Joan Robinson - The Accumulation of Capital
Anthropology Fieldbook
The Mind
Art
Remarks
Borkenau
C.S. Louis
Gardening
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
The Great Transformation and America [II]
Freedom and Technology
Human Society
The Mind
Money
"Trade and Market"
The Great Transformation
Notes
Interdisciplinary Project
Pearl Harbour
Suez
Dubarle
Homans
Jews and Christianity
[28+57] The reason for anti-semitism is that Jews are rightly charged with having brought Christianity into the world and then evading the consequence. (P. thinks it is true). The Jew thinks that the Gentil is pretty silly to be saddled with the religion. It is an unbearable burden.
P. always thought so. The Nazis said that Bolshevism was Christianity all over again and the Jews ought to be destroyed because they are responsible for Christianity.
X
XI
"Freedom and Technology" - General Comments
[…]
[4] One of the things that P. might do is not to speak of Christianity but of religion. There is not a religion which doesn't deal with man's inner freedom. If he has religion, he has inner life and that is what the rest of life turns on. Religion is like metaphysics.
The Christians don't accept a deeper meaning to their position and you immediately get them against you. You are attacked when you say that something deeper exists aside from its content.
[…]
[14] In a way, it is not the individual who is fighting the condition - but the conditions which are fighting the individual with a delusion - until it bursts like an inflated ballon. P. wrote this 49 years ago and [15] called it the "Passive Drama"[2]. The individual tries to maintain his delusion but proves unable to do so. […]
Shaw argues that the indestructible character of society (the reality of society) allows the individual much more freedom than he thinks he has e.g. marriage, estate, God. Society is not based on his good behavior in following conventional rules of the day. He will still follow conventional rules but not of the day. Shaw shows ironically how conventionally he behaves when he imagines he behaves unconventionally. […]
[18] Owen said that human environment determines character. […]
[20] From Owen we jump to urbanization, central power, lighting, information and communication, telephone, telegraph, police, newspaper and railways. Then you get public utilities and public service and the danger to society that lies in that.
[28] The modern complaints occur with Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Marx was more of a liberal Christian.
Shaw's vitalism (the life force)…
[30] P. think that Jaspers is boring and confused stuff. It does contain important insights but, for example, Jaspers thinks that Russia is the end of everything. This is unphilosophical measuring, of using one red for one thing and another red for another. Why doesn't he say something clear, simple and sensible?
In Jasper's book he puts everything on the masses. So does Tocqueville and Maine (i.e. under liberty you never have progress because the masses -and this was Spencer's influence on him). […]
P. discovered his philosopher. Robert Owen was the only person we can point to. He expressed the thought that he didn't realize. It was his actions which proved that he realized it - what he did in the factory.
