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The Convergence of Cultural Traditions in the Mediterranean Area
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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The explorer who realizes that an island, a passage, an ocean for which he has been searching do not exist is compensated for his disappointment by an adjustment of the map to carry his name for all to appreciate; the ethnographer who pushed the platypodes and the triamatikoi over the brink into fable land had the satisfaction of a gain in the regularity and rationality of our world; but the historian who somewhere between analytical description and synthetic reconstruction discovers the non-existence, or better though less dramatically: the inappro-priateness and functional inoperativeness of his key concept, can do nothing to mask his discomfiture than to set forth his negative conclusion as stringently as he would have its opposite.
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- Copyright © 1970 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 In the terminology used by W. Metzger, Psychologie (4th ed.; Darmstadt, 1968), p. 124, to describe causality (not convergence) we are concerned with "getrennte Identitätsverläufe," that, "im Grenzfall" unite into one "Weltlinie."
2 Oral communication of Dr Miriam Lichtheim, UCLA, July 1, 1969.
3 On the relationship or the parallel development of those dramatic themes cf. G. Murray, The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927; New York, 1957), ch. viii: Hamlet and Orestes, pp. 180-210; and M. Delcourt, Oreste et Alcméon. Etude sur la projection légendaire du matricide en Grèce (Paris, 1959), esp. pp. 74-76. It seems to me that our assessment of the relationship between Orestes and Hamlet is closer to Delcourt's than to Murray's who, p. 206, assigns to the theme the common ground of the "world-wide ritual battle of Summer and Winter, of Life and Death" which had been effective as late as the medieval drama.
4 The passage is translated in full by this writer and M.G.S. Hodgson in Hodgson, Introduction to Islamic Civilization. Course Syllabus. Selected Read ings (Chicago, 1958-1959), I, 388.
5 A. Ahmad and G. E. von Grunebaum, Muslim Self-Statement in India and Pakistan. 1857-1963 (Wiesbaden, 1970), pp. 38-39.
6 Cf. F. Mauro, L'Expansion européenne. 1600-1890 (2nd ed.; Paris, 1967), pp. 220-221. For detail on the Jesuit missions to China cf. V. Pinot, La Chine et la formation de l'esprit philosophique en France (1640-1740) (Paris, 1932), esp. pp. 15-49.
7 Cf. Plato, Republic V, 477a: to men pantelōs on pantelōs gnōston ("the absolute being is absolutely knowable)." The Muctazila never questioned the universality (universal validity) of human thought. The first principles of mo rality and of reason are peculiar to, and uniform for every rational being; cf., e.g., A. N. Nader, Le Système philosophique des Muctazila (Beyrouth, 1956), esp. pp. 239-258.
The ‘Muctazilite' concept of the world's Erkennbarkeit and man's Erkenntnis fähigkeit was is seems first formulated by Heraclitus (ca. 500 B.C.) who, frg. 1, ascribes the same logos (law, rational principle) to the outer and the inner universe (although most men are incapable to reach a conscious realization of this complementarity). Cf. J. Stenzel, Kleine Schriften zur griechischen Philosophie (2nd ed.; Darmstadt, 1957), pp. 81-82.
8 To paraphrase Metzger's descriptive definition, op. cit., p. 48.
9 Philosophoumena VI, 54; translation adjusted from that of J. H. Macmahon, The Refutation of All Heresies (Edinburgh, London, Toronto, 1868), p. 263 (Ante-Nicene Christian Library. VI, i). For the hysterēma cf. VI, 52.
10 Cf. Metzger, op. cit., p. 52; also, ibid., pp. 311ff.
11 If with Umberto Eco, L'Oeuvre ouverte (Paris, 1965), p. 102, style is defined as a system of probabilities—a definition that bears transfer to Denkformen (and thinking habits as conditioned by a given logical equipment), to cultural aspirations and to expectations—convergence becomes an (independent) entry into the same "field" of probabilities on the part of two or more appropriate entities that penetrate it from and at different points. Eco himself, to conclude from his discussion on p. 138, would be inclined to view form rather as a "field of possibilities," a position that could be accepted provided it is realized that the possibilities of the inception will tend to turn into probabilities as with extended utilization the form confronts the potential former with increasing rigidity and, above all, ab extra. Incidentally, Eco's contrastive descriptions of classical and modern poetry, although developed on Western materials alone, are applicable to certain phases of Arabic poetry as well. Where "classical" poetry contravenes the conventional (the Arab critic might have preferred to say: the "traditional") à l'intérieur de limites bien définis, the modern poet, such as for example Ibn ar-Rūmī (d. ca. 896), inclines to poser continuellement un ordre extrêmement improbable par rapport à l'ordre initial (pp. 87-88).
12 This Erlebniskern has been well described lately by W. Foerster, Die Gnosis, I (Zürich & Stuttgart, 1969), Einleitung, pp. 17-20.
13 Cf. F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (2nd ed.; Paris, 1966), I, 126.
14 The abandonment of the rational calls for, among others, this consideration. Repetition, which implies the acceptance of limitations only a major effort will push back, entails a kind of collective listlessness, a sense of drabness of self and world which is unquestionably a contributory factor to the recurring inclination of man to relinquish or put to one side reason and its works. Leibniz already noted: "… C'est un malheur des hommes de se dégoûter enfin de la raison même, et de s'ennuyer de la lumière. Les chimères commencent a revenir et plaisent, parce qu'elles ont quelque chose de merveilleux. Il arrive dans le Pays philosophique ce qui est arrivé dans le Pays poétique. On s'est lassé des Romans raisonnables, tels que la Clélie française ou l'Armène allemande; et on est revenu depuis quelque temps aux Contes des Fées." (Cinquième écrit de M. Leibniz, en réponse à la quatrième réplique de M. Clark, § 114; quoted by P.-M. Schuhl, L'Imagination et le merveilleux. La pensée et l'action [Paris, 1969], p. 45).
15 Cf. F. Schachermayr, "The Genesis of the Greek Polis," Diogenes, No. 4, Autumn 1953, 17-30.
16 Cf. X. de Planhol, Les fondements géographiques de l'histoire de l'Islam (Paris, 1968), pp. 286-287.
17 Cf. the work of the Erlanger group around Eugen Wirth; e.g., E. Wirth, "Strukturwandlungen und Entwicklungstendenzen der orientalischen Stadt," Erdkunde, XXII/2 (1968), 101-128, and K. Dettmann, "Islamische und westliche Elemente im heutigen Damaskus," Geographische Rundschau, XXI (1969), 64-68 (both papers with reff. to the literature).
18 Cf. G. E. von Grunebaum, "Parallelism, Convergence, and Influence in the Relations of Arab and Byzantine Philosophy, Literature, and Piety," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XVIII (1964), 91-111, at pp. 104-105; German tr. in Studien zum Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islams (Zürich und Stuttgart 1969), p. 85.
19 For detail see the paper cited in the foregoing note, pp. 100-104 (Studien, pp. 80-85). A third instance of convergence, preceding the others by some three hundred years or more, is the iconoclastic movement—better described in Islam as a "misiconic" mood—of the eight and ninth centuries. An analysis of the movement resulting in the affirmation of the essential independence of the Byzantine development was attempted by the writer in his study "Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Influence of the Islamic Environment," History of Religions, II/1 (1962), 1-10.
20 Oral communication of A. Laroui, May, 1969.
21 Paris, 1969; the poems were written in 1964.
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