January 2022
This month’s report summarises four pieces of writing that indirectly relate to the impact of universities and their role as stewards of Western civilisation. The first and second are online only essays published by the distinguished lecturer of the history of Western thought Micheal Sugrue (2022a; 2022b), where he outlines how our recent archaeological and scientific advancements reshaped out understanding of the origins of civilisation. The second, represents a lecture by the philosopher Bruno Latour on the epistemological shift caused by the Covid pandemic and what opportunities this has for Christian theology (2021). Last, is an investigation into the substance ab/use of Nietzsche, and how that related to his ideas around morality and reason (Sjöstedt, 2015).
[1]) In part one of the essay, Sugrue discusses the implications of the discovery of the site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, and how this archaeological discovery shifted our understanding of prehistory. “This ritual complex predated by millennia agriculture, the domestication of animals, metallurgy, writing, the wheel and the other cultural achievements of the river valley civilizations that come much later. Religious rituals, the product of human consciousness, were the origin of large-scale human cooperation, not environment or economic necessity. Religion is the seedbed of civilization, out of which all the rest of culture grows” (emphasis in original).
[2]) In part two he further develops these previous ideas into what he loosely terms “neurohistory”, were we now think that religious practices over tens of thousands of years shaped the neuroplasticity of modern anatomically humans. In the sense, that the biological “hardware” maybe only marginally different to us today, but a slowly evolving cultural “software”, then subsequently shapes the human brain’s neuroplasticity in such a fashion as to prime us for large scale social cooperation. Furthermore, the shared myth then does not become obsolete for later generations, but rather representing the ‘glue’ of how culture remains functional and transmits its software down to the future generations, shifting and adapting with the new human environment of culture and nature.
[3]) The lecture was given to the International Congress of the European Society for Catholic Theology (Osnabrück, August 2021). He makes the claim that the previous grand narrative of materialism and its subsequent scientism have been destabilised by the onset of the Covid pandemic, changing scientific certainty from that of a pendulum into something that is alive, ever changing and evolving. He further ponders if such a contingency, would provide an opportunity to re-establish the eternal message of the Gospels. Now the question is no longer between tradition and progress, but (ecological) survival in general. Within such a new framing, the living and moral actions of human beings are not a binary choice between nature or culture (viz-a-viz descriptions or ethics), but part of an ecological whole necessary for our own survival in the first place. Furthermore, he his hopeful that maybe now people are more willing to listen to the importance of the humanitarian message encapsulated in the Gospels which seems to elude institutionalisation but is so important for our shared survival.
[4]) Nietzsche was chronically ill his entire life, and self-medicated in order to get respite from his aliments and insomnia. The side effects of the different substances he took, caused him hallucinations which amongst others inspired his philosophy. Arguably, it needed a megalomaniac personality type like Nietzsche, blessed with his literally gifts AND copious amounts of drugs to question and articulate the normalised assumption of Christendom around morality and reason encoded into the very brain structure and language of the Western psyche. For example, in a letter to Lou Salome and Paul Rée he wrote: “Consider me, the two of you, as a semilunatic with a sore head who has been totally bewildered by long solitude. To this, I think, sensible insight into the state of things I have come after taking a huge dose of opium – in desperation. But instead of losing my reason as a result, I seem at last to have come to reason” (emphasis in original).
[1] Sugure, M. (2022a) Because someone ask, Part 1
[2] Sugure, M. (2022b) Because someone ask, Part 2
[3] Latour, B. (2021). Ecological Mutation and Christian Cosmology (a Lecture). Given at the International Congress of the European Society for Catholic Theology, Osnabrück, August 2021
[4] Sjöstedt-H, P. (2015). Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche and Psychedelics. In Noumenautics: metaphysics – meta-ethics – psychedelics, psychedelicspress.co.uk.
