After Huizinga’s Autumn of the Middle Ages, maybe it’s worth returning to The Lord of the Rings and spending a bit more time with it. Again, these books are not directly comparable…but perhaps, in the world of ideas, their paths briefly cross, and by way of Huizinga we may be able to look differently at Tolkien. Continue reading →

preface to the first edition of Autumn (18)

(Conclusion. Continued from part 2.)

But now, we leave behind the silly troubles of our age, the clouds gathered over our nonexistent future, the self-parodic incompleteness and defectiveness of our lives. We follow Huizinga into the stern, majestic world of medieval Europe. Continue reading →

(Continued from part 1.)

Huizinga was famous in European academic circles long before Homo Ludens. He became a chair professor, at the University of Groningen, at the age of 32; his inaugural lecture was titled, “The aesthetic component of historical perception,” which in retrospect sounds like a statement of intent for his entire body of work. From the 1910s onward, and especially after The Autumn of the Middle Ages, he went from one success to another, finally becoming rector of Leiden University (where Descartes had once studied) in 1933. Around that same time, his work began to take on a more polemical aspect, as a reaction to the rise of fascism. Continue reading →

Plato, “Laws”

In a way, Homo Ludens is nothing more than a book-length reiteration of Plato’s offhand remark. But then, the latter is the most stirring and profound thought in the entirety of the “Laws.” The scientific and historical foundation for this philosophy only emerged centuries after it was first expressed. Continue reading →

After spending as much time with Plato as we have, it is hard not to lose oneself in the world of ancient Greece. To develop a better understanding of that world, it helps to see a wide view of its entire history. The simplest way to do that is to read a good old-fashioned textbook, but hopefully one with a minimum of ideology — a straightforward factual account that clearly identifies the most important points, rather than a thinly-veiled tract on contemporary political issues retroactively inserted into ancient times.

Finding such a book is not an easy task, because many of the most world-famous treatments are actually just that, thinly-veiled political tracts. For example, Edward Gibbon’s grandly titled The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is basically a long, poorly-written pamphlet attacking Christianity from the viewpoint of 18th-century masonic “rationalism.” The actual Roman Empire has very little to do with the book’s real subject and purpose; he may as well have set it in an allegorical fantasy land with elves instead of Romans. And that’s not even the worst example — Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome, one of the most acclaimed historical treatises of the 19th century, contains just as much virulent German nationalism as it does genuine Roman scholarship. Continue reading →

Site of Plato’s Academy in the present day.

(Conclusion. Continued from part 3.)

In Book IV of the “Laws,” Plato’s Athenian asks, “Tell us, lawgiver…what kind of state, and in what condition, should we give to you, so that, having received it, you might organize it yourself in all respects?” He then answers his own question: “Give me a state with a tyrannical ruler. Let the tyrant be young, of sound memory, capable of learning, courageous and generous by nature; in addition, let the soul of this tyrant have those qualities that…accompany each part of virtue.” This odd aside is actually autobiographical, and Plato did his best to put it into practice. Continue reading →

This time, Plato’s gaze is directed outwardly,
expressing the firm resolve to refashion the world.

(Continued from part 2.)

Plato is a spiritual writer. Perhaps that, more than his philosophy, explains his lasting role in history. He had a profound influence on world religion, and in a certain sense could be called the father of religious thought. At the very least, one could call him the first religious thinker — the priests of Leviticus don’t quite fit that description. Continue reading →