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

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HANKEY: 9/11 AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHYinterested in it. This was the period in which the British Empire had finally reached itsgreatest extent by acquiring a whole new set of possessions and dependencies in theMiddle East. It occurred to none on the leading heights of Anglo-American Protestantpower that the modern world might not have definitively “moved on” and that the avatarsmight resurrect and even successfully attack the capitals of its empire.In any case the refusal of most of its history which Gilson found at Harvardseventy years ago still belongs to the definition of what Philosophy does there. TheDepartment is not large—it has less than thirty members even including visitors and“other Harvard Faculty offering instruction in Philosophy.” 8 There is at present no classoffered in the Department on the philosophical developments in the two millenniabetween Aristotle and Descartes apart from classes on medieval science given in thehistory of science programme. When I was a Visiting Scholar there in 2001 and sought tofind someone who worked on Neoplatonism I was referred to Robert Wisnovsky, not inPhilosophy but in Islamic studies, whose magisterial book entitled Avicenna’sMetaphysics in Context appeared in 2003. This extraordinarily learned andphilosophically acute study, dependent on a mastery of the Greek, Latin, and Arabicsources as well as on the multilingual modern scholarship, shows how Avicenna’smetaphysics takes its departure from unresolved problems in later Greek Neoplatonism.Despite the gaps in what Harvard knew which Wisnovsky filled, by the time I returned asa Visiting Scholar in 2005 Wisnovsky had moved to Québec where at McGill he hadbecome head of the distinguished Islamic Institute. His learning has not been replaced atHarvard. When recently the Department of the Classics attempted to appoint an expert inNeoplatonism, the Philosophy Department said that it would refuse to recognise herclasses. As Gilson discovered, ignorance of the history of philosophy at Harvard isprincipled and determined.Cambridge across the Atlantic sympathises with its younger protégée in the waythat it treats philosophy much as it once did in religion. The only person listed as amember of the Faculty of Philosophy who bridges the gap between Classical ancientphilosophy and the 17 th and 18 th century moderns is John Marenbon. 9 However, thislearned historian of medieval philosophy of an analytical cast of mind is not actually ateaching member of the Faculty at all but rather holds a research post at Trinity Collegewhere, as his official webpage tells us, “he runs an informal history of philosophyseminar,” in which I participated while a Visiting Fellow there. His predecessor, theimportant historian of medieval philosophy Peter Dronke, was kept out of the Faculty ofPhilosophy altogether, holding a post in the department of “Other Languages”! Neitherthe leading world expert on Avicenna’s logic, Tony Street, nor the student of WernerBeierwaltes, Douglas Hedley, an expert on Platonism in the modern world, are part of theFaculty of Philosophy. Both are located in the Faculty of Divinity. No one holds a post toteach Neoplatonism at Cambridge.8 See http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~phildept/9 See http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/8
HANKEY: 9/11 AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHYThe Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford describes itself as “one of the world’s greatcentres for philosophy” with “more than seventy professional philosophers.” 10 What itexcludes as philosophical reason will then be of the greatest importance. There Ancientphilosophy goes no later than Stoicism and Skepticism. Although the distinguishedhistorian of the ancient Peripatetic tradition, Richard Sorabji, is listed among the seventy,in fact he has retired from the University of London where he was replaced by theexcellent young historian of Arabic philosophy, Peter Adamson, and his position atOxford is as an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson. No one has taught Neoplatonism at Oxfordsince the great Eric Dodds retired forty years ago. His groundbreaking studies weremotivated by a genuine philosophical enthusiasm for what he investigated. However, notonly was Dodds in Classics not Philosophy—he was Regius Professor of Greek—buteven there he was pressured out of teaching about the school which dominatedphilosophy for more than a thousand years. 11 My arrival at Oxford in 1978 to do a D.Phil.on Aquinas’s Neoplatonism had been immediately preceded by the folding up of theReadership in Medieval Philosophy when L. Minio-Paluello retired after a life devoted topublishing painstaking editions of the medieval Latin translations of the Arabicphilosophers. I was required to travel to Paris and Rome to find help with my research.Within the last few years Minio-Paluello has finally been replaced by Cecilia Trifogli,another Italian philologist-historian who works mostly on the history of science in theMiddle Ages. Brian Leftow, who occupies the Nolloth Chair in the Philosophy of theChristian Religion located at Oriel, has a professional interest in Medieval philosophy.Richard Cross, also at Oriel, and Marilyn McCord Adams, a Canon Professor at ChristChurch, are certainly authentic experts on medieval philosophy, but they are placedoutside the professional seventy; their appointments are in the Faculty of Theology. FritzW. Zimmerman, a Fellow of one of my colleges in Oxford, St Cross, and the Lecturer inIslamic Philosophy in the Oriental Institute, is likewise an outsider. He has publishedboth translations of Islamic philosophical texts and articles on the connection of Islamicphilosophy with Neoplatonism, although nothing has appeared for almost a decade. Towhat does all this amount?As one might expect given the unsystematic modes of Oxford and of the Englishmind, and given the number of philosophers there, an enormous range of historicallearning and philosophical speculation is to be found. Philosophy at Oxford is a full andvaried jackdaw’s nest—not for it the Puritanical exclusions of Harvard or even ofCambridge. There is no endeavour, however, to provide access to all the essentialelements of the history of western philosophy, let alone an attempt to find theirconnection. In general the approach at Oxford is to separate the philosophical argumentsas logical questions from the contexts in which they occur. Thus, although Medievalphilosophy is not excluded in principle, because arguments deemed worth considering areto be found in its massive bulk, the Neoplatonism, which underlay its connecting anddistinguishing of philosophy and religion and which most completely considered the need10 See http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/11 See my “Re-evaluating E.R. Dodds’ Platonism,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 103 (2005), inpress.9
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