Wayne Hankey, 9/11 and the History of Philosophy - Memorial ...

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HANKEY: 9/11 AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHYWhat is reported and opined in these articles raises many questions including, forexample, why the Islamic mystical sphere is alien and our own is not? and why wecannot begin to fathom the eschatological time frame and the supernatural longings of theIranian power elite when some of those in the most powerful places in the Anglo-American world also operate out of an eschatological time frame and supernaturallongings? In this paper I shall neither ask nor attempt to answer these or many other suchquestions. I want rather to consider three matters.1) The first is how some important constructions of the history of philosophy inthe Christian West—religious or secular—exclude Islamic philosophy notonly in fact but in principle—thus, we may surmise, contributing to our notionthat Muslims are moved irrationally and that their world is incomprehensibleto us.2) The second is how, especially in France, treatments of Islamic philosophyhave been constructed which make it actual for the West.3) The third is how the books on Arabic and Islamic philosophy published since9/11 would require reshaping the histories of philosophy dominating our partof Western philosophical academe if we were to grant that the traditions theydescribe are real continuations of Hellenic philosophical rationality.Significantly, including Islamic philosophy would equally require includingmuch of the Greek and Latin philosophy now neglected or excluded inprinciple by our university Philosophy departments.I begin with a partial survey of how the history of philosophy is treated.A. Harvard and OxbridgeTreatments Of The History Of PhilosophyBecause Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge have a pre-eminent academic prestigefor the Anglo-American Protestant world, itself claiming a power unequalled in humanhistory which gives America and Britain acting together the means and the responsibilityto reshape the Islamic Middle East, the treatment of the history of philosophy thereespecially requires our attention. The degree to which Oxbridge and the Protestant IvyLeague define the centre is exhibited by the fact that what they refuse to accept within theboundaries of philosophical reason is investigated outside their walls. Thus, while theexclusions of Harvard Philosophy are more or less reiterated within the rest of the IvyLeague of secularised Calvinism, some of what is refused there is taught at the margins:Neoplatonism and medieval philosophy have a place in the Roman Catholic universities,in Canada, and within Canada especially in Québec. In consequence there is as muchwork done on Neoplatonism in Canada as there is in the USA or in Britain! In the Britishworld, students can learn something about Neoplatonism at the Universities of Liverpooland London. Ireland plays a role like that of Québec in North America. Let us start withHarvard, which many regard as the greatest of universities, because none exceed it in thepurity which exclusion gives.6
HANKEY: 9/11 AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHYNorth Americans found the 20 th century’s greatest historian of MedievalPhilosophy, Étienne Gilson irresistible. The range and depth of his learning, the beauty ofhis imagination, and his capacity for moving rhetorical simplicity brought him repeatedinvitations to the summits of American academe. Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Berkeley, onlyto name some, welcomed him warmly. Nonetheless, after he got to know the leadingphilosophers on these exalted heights of WASP academe Gilson discovered that he wasnot really having any positive effect on how philosophy was done there. At Harvard hediscerned not only that philosophy and its history were to be strictly separated in thatworld but that the first was thought to depend upon ignorance of the second. ProfessorGilson reported after a visit:As for the history of philosophy, they don’t see any use for it. Perry isquite upset. He thinks that too much studying of the systems of othersprevents young people from finding one of their own. 6A 1938 review of Gilson’s The Unity of Philosophical Experience in The Yale Reviewgives us a reason for neglecting the philosophy of the premodern world in particular. Theauthor agreed with Gilson that modern philosophy has been self-destructively skeptical,but continued: “for all its inadequacy the modern world has at least moved on, and in theprocess it has tremendously increased its positive knowledge and its technical skill.” Asa result, “the possibility is again open of reason developing the logical consequences ofthe positive knowledge of empirical science without destroying itself in the process.”Richard McKeon in the same journal, when reviewing The Spirit of MedievalPhilosophy, put the same kind of reasoning in another way, one which it is important forus to note. McKeon concluded:…the exposition of a Christian philosophy, based on a religiousfoundation, which Professor Gilson himself recognizes…will not again, inthe absence of that religious spirit, serve for unification formankind…Most modern readers…will find little in the doctrines of theMiddle Ages…which can be recognized as directly relevant to modernproblems. For the justification of philosophy is by the reason it employs,not the faith which it may seek to understand. 7Philosophy in WASP America would serve positive science which it supposed unitedmankind, not religion which divided it. For it Gilson’s position belonged to the samedead world where they would also have located Islamic philosophy had they been6 See Gilson in L.K. Shook, Étienne Gilson, The Étienne Gilson Series 6 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute ofMediaeval Studies, 1984), 150.7 C.A. Hart, New Scholasticism, 25 (1951), 42. The review of The Unity of Philosophical Experience is inThe Yale Review, 28 (1938): 203-205; Richard McKeon’s review is in The Yale Review, 26 (1936-37):396-397.7
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