“The Gnostic Religion” by Hans Jonas

Jonas was a Jewish philosopher and, perhaps, the second most famous student of Heidegger’s. This book was originally his German dissertation, which he later fleshed out, and then, again, briefly updated as more of the Nag-Hammadi discovery was translated. However, most of Jonas’ history of the Gnostic movement does not rely on the more recent discoveries. Nonetheless, this book is a thorough examination of Gnostic belief and its opposition to contemporary standard Christianity, neo-Platonism, paganism, and Jewish thought. Jonas begins, “The name “Gnosticism,” which has come to serve as a collective heading for a manifoldness of sectarian doctrines appearing within and around Christianity during its critical first centuries, is derived from gnosis, the Greek word for “knowledge.” The emphasis on knowledge as the means for attainment of salvation, or even as the form of salvation itself, and the claim to the possession of this knowledge in one’s own articulate doctrine, are common features of the numerous sects…. The Church Fathers considered Gnosticism as essentially a Christian heresy.”

For Gnosticism, knowledge does not quite have its secular meaning. Knowledge “refers to objects which we nowadays should call those of faith rather than of reason…. Gnosis meant pre-eminently knowledge of God, and from what we have said about the radical transcendence of the deity it follows that “knowledge of God” is knowledge of something naturally unknowable and therefore itself not a natural condition…. It is closely bound up with revelatory experience, so that reception of the truth either through sacred and secret lore or through inner illumination replaces rational argument and theory…. “Knowledge” is not just theoretical information about certain things but is itself, as a modification of the human condition, charged with performing a function in bringing about salvation. Thus gnostic “knowledge” has an eminently practical aspect. The ultimate “object” of knowledge is God.”

Jonas relates how man fits into gnostic metaphysics, “Reduced to ultimate principles, his origin is twofold: mundane and extra-mundane….Through his body and his soul man is a part of the world and subjected to the heimarmene. Enclosed in the soul is the spirit, or “pneuma” (called also the “spark”), a portion of the divine substance from beyond which has fallen into the world…. The radical nature of the dualism determines that of the doctrine of salvation. As alien as the transcendent God is to “this world” is the pneumatic self in the midst of it. The goal of gnostic striving is the release of the “inner man” from the bonds of the world and his return to his native realm of light… The transcendent God is unknown in the world and cannot be discovered from it; therefore revelation is needed…. The Greek meaning of psyche, with all its dignity, did not suffice to express the new conception of a principle transcending all natural and cosmic associations that adhered to the Greek concept. The term pneuma serves in Greek Gnosticism generally as the equivalent of the expression for the spiritual “self,” for which Greek, unlike some oriental languages, lacked an indigenous word…. The discovery of this transcendent inner principle in man and the supreme concern about its destiny is the very center of the gnostic religion.”

The Gnostics had two main schools, Iranian and Syrian. These two schools principally differed in their conception of dualism. “The Gnostics were the first speculative “theologians” in the new age of religion superseding classical antiquity…. [Gnosticism] comprised as main tenets the ideas of an antidivine universe, of man’s alienness within it, and of the acosmic nature of the godhead…. Two types of system, called here for short (and without undue commitment to a theory of actual genetics) the Iranian and the Syrian, were evolved to explain essentially the same facts of a dislocated metaphysical situation—both “dualistic”…. The Iranian type, in a gnostic adaptation of Zoroastrian doctrine starting from a dualism of two opposed principles, has mainly to explain how the original Darkness came to engulf elements of the Light: i.e., it describes the world-drama as a war of changing fortunes…. The Syrian speculation undertakes the more ambitious task of deriving dualism itself, and the ensuing predicament of the divine in the system of creation, from the one and undivided source of being…. This inner divine “devolution” ends in the decadence of complete self-alienation that is this world…. Both dramas start with a disturbance in the heights; in both, the existence of the world marks a discomfiture of the divine and a necessary, in itself undesirable, means of its eventual restoration; in both, the salvation of man is that of the deity itself.”

Later, Jonas goes back to refining a conception of gnostic knowledge, “We have found “gnosis” to mean one of these things: knowledge of the secrets of existence as related in the gnostic myth, and these comprise the divine history from which the world originated, man’s condition in it, and the nature of salvation; then, more intellectually, the elaboration of these tenets into coherent speculative systems; then, more practically, knowledge of the “way” of the soul’s future ascent and of the right life preparing for this event; and, most technically or magically, knowledge of the sacraments, effective formulas, and other instrumental means by which the passage and liberation can be assured…. The mystical gnosis theou—direct beholding of the divine reality—is itself an earnest of the consummation to come. It is transcendence become immanent…. The ecstatic experience exhibits the double-edged character of the true eschaton of eschatological transcendental religion, which it draws—illegitimately, as we think—into the range of temporal life and the possibilities open to it…. It is this transposition of eschatology into the inwardness which yields the surpassing concept of gnosis.”

Jonas touches again on the nature of man in the cosmos, “This elevation—whether going that far or not—of ‘Man’ to a transmundane deity, prior and superior the creator of the universe, or, the assigning of that name to such a deity, is one of the most significant traits of gnostic theology…. That terrestrial man can identify his innermost being (“spirit,” “light,” etc.) with this supracosmic power, can therefore despise his cosmic oppressors and count on his ultimate triumph over them—and it becomes visible that the doctrine of the god Man, and in the creation story specifically: the humiliation of the demiurge in his name, mark the distinctly revolutionary aspect of gnosticism on the cosmic plane.”

Finally, Jonas circles back to gnostic dualism, “It is on this primary human foundation of a passionately felt experience of self and world, that the formulated dualistic doctrines rest. The dualism is between man and the world, and concurrently between the world and God…. Primarily would then be the feeling of an absolute rift between man and that in which he finds himself lodged—the world…. The divine is alien to the world and has neither part nor concern in the physical universe…. The true god, strictly transmundane, is not revealed or even indicated by the world, and is therefore the Unknown, the totally Other, unknowable in terms of any worldly analogies…. In its cosmological aspect it states that the world as the creation not of God but of some inferior principle whose law it executes; and, in its anthropological aspect, that man’s inner self, the pneuma (“spirit” in contrast to “soul”=psyche) is not part of the world, of nature’s creation and domain, but is, within that world, as totally transcendent and as unknown by all worldly categories as its transmundane counterpart, the unknown God without…. But whoever has created the world, man does not owe him allegiance, nor respect for his work…. The world, then, is the product, and even the embodiment, of the negative of knowledge. What it reveals is unenlightened and therefore malignant force, proceeding from the spirit of self-assertive power, from the will to rule and coerce. The mindlessness of this will is the spirit of the world, which bears no relation to understanding and love. The laws of the universe are the laws of this rule, and not of divine wisdom.” Jonas ends by quoting a famous Valentinian school saying, “What makes us free is the knowledge of who we were, what we have become; where we were, wherein we have been thrown; whereto we speed, where-from we are redeemed; what is birth and what rebirth.”

“Babel: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution or The Necessity of Violence” by R.F. Kuang

Could this novel be called ahistorical fiction? It is a history of pre-Victorian England, the prelude to the Opium Wars, and a sci-fi thriller all wrapped into one. Despite its share of anti-colonial moralizing, it weaves a fast-paced tale centered around language, subjectivity, and translation. Not an easy task. This alternative history centers around the Translation Institute at Oxford. “I think the Literature Department are an indulgent lot…. See, the sad thing is, they could be the most dangerous scholars of them all, because they’re the ones who really understand languages—know how they live and breathe and how they can make our blood pump, or our skin prickle, with just a turn of phrase. But they’re too obsessed fiddling with their lovely images to bother with how all that living energy might be channeled into something far more powerful. I mean, of course, silver.”

In Kuang’s novel, the magic of translated pair words etched onto silver bars makes the British empire run. “Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.” But for the empire to rule, it has to constantly expropriate all the wealth and knowledge from her dominions. “The newest, most powerful bars in use rely on Chinese, Sanskrit, and Arabic to work, but you’ll count less than a thousand bars in the countries where those languages are spoken, and then only in the homes of the wealthy and powerful…. This is no accident; this is a deliberate exploitation of foreign culture and foreign resources. The professors like to pretend that the tower is a refuge for pure knowledge, that it sits above the mundane concerns of business and commerce, but it does not. It’s intricately tied to the business of colonialism. It is the business of colonialism.”

Robin, a Chinese orphan rescued by a British professor from his shack in Canton in the midst of a plague, lives squarely with a foot in both worlds. “He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once. That he was an Englishman and not. That Professor Lovell was his father and not. That the Chinese were a stupid, backwards people, and that he was also one of them. That he hated Babel, and wanted to live forever in its embrace. He had danced for years on the razor’s edge of these truths, had remained there as a means of survival, a way to cope, unable to accept either side fully because an unflinching examination of the truth was so frightening that the contradiction threatened to break him.” His half-brother, Griffin, forewarned, “You’re lost, brother. You’re a ship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone.”

“Lysis” by Plato (translated by Stanley Lombardo)

In this dialogue, with an unnamed companion, Socrates recounts a discussion he has had with two noble youths, Lysis and Menexenus, at a wrestling school. The theme of their discussion was the meaning and nature of friendship. As often for Socrates, the discussion ends with no resolution, even to the definition of friendship. Instead, Socrates takes the group around in circles, poking at this and that aspect of friendship. At first, the definition seems so simple, as Socrates addresses the two boys, “And friends have everything in common, as the saying goes; so in this respect the two of you won’t differ, that is, if what you said about being friends is true.”

At the outset, Socrates discloses, “You know how it is, everybody is different: one person wants to own horses, another dogs, another wants money, and another fame. Well, I’m pretty lukewarm about those things, but when it comes to having friends I’m absolutely passionate, and I would rather have a good friend than the best quail or gamecock known to man, and, I swear by Zeus above, more than any horse or dog. There’s no doubt in my mind, by the Dog, that I would rather possess a friend than all Darius’ gold, or even than Darius himself. That’s how much I value friends and companions.”

After leading the boys around for a bit, Socrates proposes, “Those who are already wise no longer love wisdom, whether they are gods or men. Nor do those love it who are so ignorant that they are bad, for no bad and stupid man loves wisdom. There remain only those who have this bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been made ignorant and stupid by it. They are conscious of not knowing what they don’t know. The upshot is that those who are bad do not, and neither do those who are good…. We have discovered for sure what is a friend and what it is a friend to. For we maintain that in the soul and in the body and everywhere, that which is neither good nor bad itself is, by the presence of evil, a friend to the good.”

Not so fast. Later Socrates asks, “Can it really be, as we were just saying, that desire is the cause of friendship, and that what desires is a friend to that which it desires, and is so whenever it does so? And that what we were saying earlier about being a friend was all just chatter…. A thing desires what it is deficient in…. And the deficient is a friend to that in which it is deficient…. And it becomes deficient where something is taken away from it…. Then it is what belongs to oneself, it seems, that passionate love and friendship and desire are directed towards…. And if you two are friends with each other, then in some way you naturally belong to each other…. And if one person desires another, my boys, or loves him passionately, he would not desire him or love him passionately or as a friend unless he somehow belonged to his beloved either in his soul or in some characteristic, habit, or aspect of his soul…. What belongs to us by nature has shown itself to us as something we must love.” In the end, Socrates admits, “These people here will go away saying that we are friends of one another—for I count myself in with you—but what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out.”

“Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen

Austen’s first novel is certainly a romantic page-turner. The love triangles, furtive glances, hinted-at engagements, and reversals of affairs of the heart abound. Of the three eligible Dashwood daughters, Elinor is considered the most sensible. ““I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,” said Elinor, “in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why, or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.””

Austen is at her best with her sly asides on the character of her characters, especially when they are found wanting. The three Miss Dashwoods’ half-brother and sole heir to the family estate, John, was admittedly somewhat henpecked by his insatiable wife, Fanny, into being less than scrupulous with the financial care of his siblings. At times, he almost felt bad about it, “He had just compunction enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from Colonel Brandon, or a legacy from Mrs. Jennings, was the easiest means of atoning for his own neglect.”

However, it is through the character of Elenor that the most biting and insightful comments judging moral rectitude shine forth, “Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain—Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought.”