Scholarship

Ancient Philosophy as a Religious Way of Life

Eduard Zeller, a leading 19th century classics scholar who wrote an influential multi-volume history on Greek philosophy, provides the following description of the evolution of religious thinking in classical antiquity before the triumph of imperial Christianity in the 4th century CE: “amongst all the cultivated circles the popular faith had been gradually superseded by philosophy.” The classics scholar, Glenn W. Most, describes “ancient philosophy as a religious way of life.” Most and André Laks recently completed a nine-volume series, Early Greek Philosophy, published by Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library. Norman Bentwich, a prolific author and leading 20th century Zionist, writes about religion in classical antiquity: “the philosophical world in that age—and the philosophical world included all educated people—demanded of religion that it should be philosophical, and of philosophy that it should be religious.” Richard Jenkyns, an Emeritus Classics professor at Oxford University, describes the various branches of philosophy, along with Christianity and the worship of the Gods, Isis and Serapis, as being among several “elective religions” that would spread throughout the Roman Empire. Dirk Rohmann, the German classics scholar, notes that there was “essentially a market-place competition between Christian missionaries and these philosophical schools.”

John Bagnell Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought

One source of inspiration for my 2-part history is John Bagnell Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought (1913). The broad scope of The Transcendentalists and the Death and Rebirth of Western Philosophical Religion is comparable to Bury’s, and, like Bury, one of my key assumptions is that individual freedom of thought including religious thought is a good thing for humanity.

Pierre Hadot

Another source of inspiration is the work of Pierre Hadot. Hadot and those who he has influenced see the historical role of ancient philosophy as a way of life with spiritual dimensions and not just an academic discipline. In What is Ancient Philosophy (1995, English translation 2002), Hadot describes ancient philosophy as a communal and spiritual group undertaking focused on improving society and the individual. Philosophers in classical antiquity were frequently accorded with praise by the broader citizenry and philosophy constituted “a conversion, a transformation of one’s way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom.”

In Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancient and Modern (2013), a book written as a tribute to Hadot’s work, Gwenaëlle Aubry writes in her chapter, “Hadot’s … project takes its place precisely in the will to give back to philosophy the existential weight and spiritual tension claimed by religion.” In his chapter, Matthew Kapstein suggests that the contention that there is a “strict opposition” between philosophy and religion dates only from the Enlightenment and is not necessarily a “better way to think” about philosophy and religion.

The Closing of the Western Mind

Two other scholars who have profoundly influenced my thinking are Ramsay MacMullen and Charles Freeman who both have written extensively on the implications of the rise of Christianity in classical antiquity. The title of one of Freeman’s books, The Closing of the Western Mind, nicely captures a core theme in their work.

Recent Books that Have Helped to Shape My Thinking

Below is a list of twenty recent books that have helped to shape my thinking and address one or more of the key themes of The Transcendentalists and the Death and Rebirth of Western Philosophical Religion -but none of these books address all of my key themes. As I explain below, I strongly disagree with some of the conclusions in the books by Robert Louis Wilkens Graham Oppy and A. C. Grayling. Those books have nevertheless helped to bring my own thinking into sharper focus.

The Transcendentalists and Their World by Robert A. Gross, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
Fighting for the Higher Law: Black and White Transcendentalists Against Slavery by Peter Wirzbicki, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook, by Ward Farnsworth, Boston: David R. Godine, 2021.
Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation by Roosevelt Montás, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Reopening Muslim Minds; A Return to Reason, Freedom and Tolerance by Mustafa Akyol, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.
First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas E. Ricks, New York: Harper Collins Publishers,2020.
Socrates in Love: The Making of a Philosopher by Armand D’Angour, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019.
Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy by James Hankins, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019.
Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom by Robert Louis Wilken, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019.
Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, by Edith Hall, New York: Penguin Press, 2018.
Naturalism and Religion by Graham Oppy, London: Routledge, 2018.
A Documentary History of Unitarian Universalism, Vol One by Dan McKanan, Boston: Skinner House Books, 2017.
Sacred Violence in Early America by Susan Juster, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission by Dirk Rohmann, Germany: De Gruyter, 2016.
Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible by Russell E. Gmirkin, Devon, United Kingdom: Routledge, 2016.
Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of Nones by Elizabeth Drescher New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Ehrman, New York, NY: HarperOne, 2015.
The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism by A. C. Grayling, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza by Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Why Plato Wrote by Danielle S. Allen, Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Key Themes in These Books

Robert A. Gross’ book is a massive and remarkable history of Transcendentalism and he describes the works of Emerson and Thoreau as the second shot heard round the world from Concord, Massachusetts but he does not make the connection between the Transcendentalists’ finding the locus of religious authority within the individual and ancient philosophy as a religious way of life.

Peter Wirzbicki’s book includes a highly readable scholarly exposition of the remarkable and transformative influence of Transcendentalist thought but he also does not trace the roots of their finding the locus of religious authority within the individual back to ancient philosophy as a religious way of life.

Ward Farnsworth’s book describes the central role of virtue and happiness in Socrates’ reason-based thinking, the profound influence that Socrates had on ancient philosophy and the pressing relevance of Socrates’ reason-based thinking in the 21st century but Farnsworth doesn’t describe Socrates’ reason-based thinking or his finding of the locus of religious authority within his inner voice as being religious or spiritual in nature.

I applaud Roosevelt Montás’ book and his description of the continuing relevance of Columbia University’s Core Curriculum but his book is written from the perspective of a religious paradigm that I hope my 2-part history will help to transcend. By way of example, his celebration of the works of St. Augustine makes no reference to Augustine’s leading role in the sectarian hatred and violence of his times which I address and is described by Brent D. Shaw in Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (2011).

Mustafa Akyol reviews how ancient philosophy was incorporated into Islam in the early days of the faith resulting in an Islamic Enlightenment only to have reason-based religious thinking rooted out of Islam in subsequent centuries. He describes Islam as now in crisis and hopes that his book will help advance a new Islamic Enlightenment. It seems, however, that the new Enlightenment he envisions would preserve intact the sacredness of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad rather than returning the locus of religious authority to the individual as was the case with ancient philosophy as a religious way of life and is the case in contemporary philosophical religion – a core theme in my book.

Thomas E. Ricks’ book describes the profound influence that classical thought had on America’s founders, but he writes that classicism “ran out of steam” in the 1790s without discussing the profound influence that classical thought had on the Transcendentalists in the first half of the 19th century.

Armand D’ Angour’s description of the influence that Aspasia, a female philosopher, had on Socrates and Pericles is illustrative of an important theme in part 1 of my 2-part history, namely, that the roles available to women as religious leaders and philosophers in classical antiquity were virtually eliminated by the rise of Imperial Christianity.

James Hankins’ history describes how the literati in Renaissance Italy used the “soulcraft” or “moral self-cultivation” of classical philosophy to improve European “statecraft” in the 14th century. But Hankins does not address how the freedom of religious thought inherent in classical philosophy left Greco-Roman minds free to pursue soulcraft unencumbered by religious creeds and dogma. Could classical philosophers have developed their soulcraft in a world that rigorously enforced religious creeds and dogma? Hankins does describe how the 14th century literati would not challenge religious authority in pursuing their soulcraft.

I fundamentally disagree with the premise of Robert Louis Wilken’s book. Wilken agrees with me that religious freedom has been problematic in Western Civilization, but he sees Christianity as the source of the solution – rather than a primary source of the problem.

Edith Hall’s book is a remarkable testament to the wisdom of Aristotle’s philosophy as a religious way of life without labelling it “a religious way of life”. I very much appreciate her description of the parallels between Aristotle’s philosophy and the thinking of America’s founders in our “bright new dawn” as she describes it. She seems unaware, however, of how that bright new dawn played out in the religious thinking of the 19th century Transcendentalists and their progeny, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Humanist Association and the American Ethical Union which I characterize as beachheads for freedom of thought in 21st century religion.

My book fills in an important chapter in the history of Unitarian Universalism not addressed in Dan McKanan’s book. McKanan is the Emerson Unitarian Universalist Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Divinity School. The first two chapters of volume 1 of his 2-part history are devoted to two Christians from classical antiquity, Origen and Arius. McKanan reports that some scholars see Origen and Arius as part of the common heritage of Unitarian Universalism which to me is more than a little ironic. My understanding is that Origen played an important role in the Christian thinking that led to the adoption by the Church of the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and that Arius was on the frontlines of the battles over the meaning of the Trinity in the so-called “Arian controversy” that frequently degenerated into violence and bloodshed among competing Christian factions. In Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, Ramsay MacMullen concludes that in the 4th century “more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions” directed against Christians by pagans including the Great Persecution. He also reports that “non-Christians pointed with amazement at the murderous intolerance within the now dominant religion …”

Susan Juster’s book is a scholarly exploration of the discrimination, persecution and violence by Christians against fellow Christians and by Christians against non-Christians in British colonial America which I reference in the Introduction to part 1 of my 2-part history.

Dirk Rohmann’s book goes into detail on the widespread Christian violence against pagans once Christianity became the preferred and then the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century CE. His main focus is on why many of the works of Plato and Aristotle survived and why the prolific writings of Cynics and Epicureans did not. The works of Plato and Aristotle were favored by Christians while the works of Cynics and Epicureans were not. As I discuss in my Introduction, the Catholic Encyclopedia readily acknowledges the powerful influence that Plato and Aristotle had on Roman Catholicism.

Russell Gmirkin’s book explores the possible influence of Plato on the first Abrahamic faith, Judaism. In the Introduction to Part 1, I describe two types of philosophical religion, namely the religion philosophers envision for themselves and other critical thinkers and the religion that they envision for everyone else. As I review in detail in Chapters 4 and 5 of part 1, the works of Plato and Aristotle explore both types of philosophical religion. Socrates’ critical questioning and reliance on his inner voice is an example of the first type of philosophical religion. Plato’s religious proposals for his ideal city-states in the Republic and the Laws are examples of the second type. According to Gmirkin, the Septuagint is the earliest reliable external evidence for the composition of the first five books in the Bible --Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Septuagint is thought to have been written by Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, around 270 BCE and, according to Gmirkin, contains many provisions that appear to be modeled on earlier Greek texts including Plato’s Laws. Gmirkin notes that Deuteronomy in particular appears to be modeled on a speech in the Laws given to a group of settlors about to found a new colony. If the Jewish scholars who wrote the Septuagint were in fact influenced by Plato, it is interesting to think about what might have happened if they had modeled their work on the first type of Plato’s philosophical religion rather than the second. I was pleased to see that Gmirkin, like yours truly, is an independent researcher.

Elizabeth Drescher’s book is a fascinating exploration of the spiritual identities of “nones”, but she does not reference the parallels between the spiritual identities of “nones” and ancient philosophy as a religious way of life. As I describe in part 1 of my 2-part history, the reason-based religious thinking of ancient philosophers often led then to adopt a citizen-of-the-world identity. Interestingly, Drescher reports that “nones” who no longer identify with Abrahamic faiths – particularly Christianity -- are more “spiritually and socially cosmopolitan” than the Abrahamic faithful.

Bart D. Ehrman’s book, like Roosevelt Montás’ book, is written from the perspective of a religious paradigm that I hope my 2-part history will help to transcend. By way of example, his book references the persecution of Christians by pagans but provides no insights into just how violent the Christian attacks on pagans and Christian sectarian infighting became in the 4th century CE. As previously noted, Ramsay MacMullen reports that “non-Christians pointed with amazement at the murderous intolerance within the now dominant religion …”

Graham Oppy and A. C. Grayling see religion and philosophy as fundamentally different undertakings and believe that religion cannot embrace critical thinking and free inquiry. Unitarian Universalism as a modern philosophical religion seems particularly misunderstood by Oppy and Grayling. They are leading academic thinkers on religion and philosophy who are very much in the dark about the stature of Emerson and Thoreau as leaders of the Transcendentalist movement in Unitarianism as well as the role that Harvard and the Harvard Divinity School played in shaping Unitarianism -- a role explored by Daniel Walker Howe in The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805-1861, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1970. Oppy describes Unitarian Universalism as being one of several “new religions … apparently made up from whole cloth”. Grayling reports that Unitarian Universalism “for all practical purposes” is a form of humanism that continues to call itself a religion which “succeeds only in introducing confusion where there is no need for it.” From my vantage point, Oppy and Grayling -- not contemporary Unitarian Universalists and their Transcendentalist forbears --are the ones “introducing confusion” by insisting on an ahistorical boundary between religion and philosophy. As previously noted, Matthew Kapstein suggests that the contention that there is a “strict opposition” between philosophy and religion dates only from the Enlightenment and is not necessarily a “better way to think” about philosophy and religion.

Carlos Fraenkel uses the concept of philosophical religion to refer to what philosophers have to say about religion for non-philosophers. Fraenkel writes, “Proponents of a philosophical religion reply that, alas, not everyone is cut out for the philosophical life. Hence prophets must put a pedagogical-political program in place that can offer guidance to non-philosophers.” My book is primarily concerned with the second dimension of philosophical religion which Fraenkel does not address- namely the religion that philosophers envision for themselves and others who are capable of critical thinking.

Although Daniel S. Allen does not address Plato’s religious thought in her book, I cite and agree with her analysis of why Plato resorted to his “Noble Lies”. Allen suggests that Plato could envision general readers for his dialogues and was fully aware of the power of myths, metaphors and vivid language to change people’s behavior regardless of the truthfulness of what was being expressed. The Myth of Er in Book X of the Republic is one example and describes a soldier who returns as a messenger from the dead with an eyewitness account about what lies ahead in an eternal afterlife.