Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 16:08:11 -0500
Subject: Modernism, Reason and Myth (Was WHOSE MODERNISM? MODERNISM VS POST-MODERNISM)


One of the things which makes Ralph interesting to read is the ways in which
he wears his hermeneutic prejudices on his sleeve. This is _not_ a criticism:
I accept the hermeneutic principle that no one approaches a subject with an
entirely open mind, free of prejudices (frames which involve judgments prior
to the investigation). But some prejudices are enabling; some are blinding.
My prejudice against spending very much time talking to or reading religious
or political fundamentalists is a judgment I make prior to any conversation,
but it enables me to spend my time in meaningful conversation with other
agnostic type folks. Ralph gets a lot out of what he makes for himself into
enabling prejudices -- against the French, against literary theorists,
against "post-modernists" (whatever that species may be). {The relationship
between Ralph and Rahul is premised, IMO, upon sharing a lot of these
hermeneutical prejudices, and the fact that they both can engage in
intelligent conversation based on those prejudices.}

But I think I have a different set of hermeneutic prejudices -- more against
the Germans than the French, more against philosophical certainty founded on
some totality than literary relativism, more against cultural conservatives
than post-modernists. In the hands of thoughtful folks, all of these
hermeneutic prejudices are not absolute rules: pushed to the wall, I would
admit that there are Germans worth engaging, and if I got Ralph drunk, he
might even concede that there are a Frenchie or two worth reading (I suspect
there could be a weakness for Camus, and certainly an affinity with Voltaire
and Rousseau.) But they are still significant: my hermeneutic prejudices have
put me on a road which leads to a different view of modernism and
post-modernism -- not completely contrary to Ralph's formulation, but
certainly distinct from and different from it.

The Enlightenment may be a fruitful place to draw the contrast. Ralph
celebrates the Enlightenment, and not without some good reason. There is much
liberatory in the modernist project of the Enlightenment -- as Ralph puts it
in enthusiastic Hegelian terms, "The mind discovers what it is in and for
itself, distinct from its environment.  Conversely, the mind becomes
increasingly more conscious of the artificiality of the institutions it has
created and learns to distance itself from its own phenomenology -- myth,
religion, etc.  Modernism means the awakening of the human mind and the
discovery of self for self." I would agree that there is something positive
in that legacy, and we need to advance that positive moment. But to do that,
we must recognize that there is something else which is part of the
Enlightenment, a dark side which can not simply be ignored, but must be
addressed in a direct way for us to recover the positive legacy.

Rather than approach this issue at a meta-theoretical level, identifying at a
high level of abstraction the problem, let me address through a very concrete
research project in which I have been involved. For a long time, I have been
fascinated by why Hobbes should chose as a title for his major work of
political philosophy and as a symbol of the state the figure of the
Leviathan. As many commentators have noted, Hobbes is one of the first of the
political modernists, and a pre-cursor of the Enlightenment in many
significant ways. Yet his use of the Leviathan poses several vexing questions
which go straight to the heart not only of Hobbes, but of political
philosophy indebted to him, down to this very day -- contemporary rational
choice political theory, for example, is heavily influenced by Hobbes. To
wit: Why is a text which insists upon analytical logic and which explicitly
and unequivocally opposes the use of rhetorical figures in political
philosophy crowned with a metaphorical title? Why is a conception of the
state which claimed to be the sole embodiment of an exclusive and homogeneous
reason represented by a mythical figure? And why was the political figure of
the leviathan, a figure with negative connotations of evil and tyranny,
chosen?

To try to answer this question, I delved into the traditions of 'leviathan'
use which set the stage for Hobbes' adoption of the figure. The results were
fascinating, and raised a number of interesting questions. What follows is a
very brief synopsis of an essay in the making which is already about 50 page
long. Hobbes takes the term from the Book of Job (it also appears in the
Pslams and Isaiah and in other texts in the Latin Vulgate text prior to the
Council of Trent), but the origins of the term are pre-Biblical, in the
figure lotan in the Ugaritic Baal myths. Lotan is a multi-headed dragon and
sea serpent, the god of the seas and the representative of chaos, evil and
tyranny, who is slain by Baal at the beginning of time, in act which
establishes order in the cosmos. Echoes of this figure can be seen in the
biblical passages discussing leviathan.

Distinct Judaic and Christian interpretations of leviathan develop, although
there are periods of cross-fertilization. In the Judaic interpretation which
takes shape in the Babylonian Talmud, the leviathan is linked with the
creation myth of Genesis and with other dragons and sea monsters. It is
matched with the figure of behemoth (which also appears in the Book of Job,
and was the title given by a publisher to Hobbes' book on the English Civil
War, as well as the title of Franz Neumann's famous text on the Nazi state).
At creation, God slays the female leviathan and behemoth and castrates the
male in order to ensure that they will not reproduce and destroy man.
Following a passage from the Psalms, the end of time will be marked by a
battle between and the death of the two monsters, and a messianic feast in
which the their pickled flesh is eaten. In pseudepigraphal texts and targum,
the leviathan figure is connected, via the passages in Isaiah, to the
Pharoah, the kings of Assyria and the Roman empire -- to tyranny and evil.
The aggadah, the midrash rabbah and kabbalah of the early through late Middle
Ages, including commentaries of the great Rashi and Maimonides, elaborate on
these themes.

The classical Christian tradition of leviathan interpretation started with
the Christian premise that the Biblical texts Christian call the Old
Testament were fulfilled in the Christian texts of the New Testament.
Therefore, the leviathan figure was read through the apocalyptical texts of
the New Testament -- Revelation and the epistles of John -- and identified
with the beast/dragon of these texts. While themes from the Judaic
interpretation were employed, the classical Christian interpretation stressed
more the connotations of evil and tyranny, and less the role of leviathan in
the creation and messiah myths. Early Church Fathers such as Origen, Jerome
and Augustine identified the leviathan figure not only with evil in general,
but with the devil in particular. The defining moment of this tradition
occurs with the 6th century text of Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of
Job, which elaborates three themes on the base of this notion of leviathan as
symbol of evil and tyranny: (1) the leviathan is identified with a figure
central to Christian eschatology (to this very day), the anti-Christ; (2) the
leviathan is connected to a now archaic Christian concept of the addition (an
instiller of 'false pride' in man which leads to sin based on the notion that
man is equal to his maker); (3) the leviathan, as the devil which is the
prince of the world, is identified with specific oppressive temporal powers.
These themes are elaborated throughtout endless numbers of mediaeval texts
and authors, including the better known figures such as Isidore, Thomas
Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. The crowning moment of that classical Christian
tradition appears in Martin Luther, where the figure of the leviathan is
given new force with its connection to the triumvirate of forces threating
Reformed Christianity -- the Turks, the Jews, and most especially, the
Papacy. (It's a toss-up which among the three Luther detests the most.) 

A break appears in Christian tradition with the appearance of the thorough
going modernists of Reformed Christianity -- the Calvinists. The biblical
exegesis of the Calvinists broke with the metaphorical and figurative
readings which had dominated Christianity since its earliest days, and
insisted upon a rationalist and literal interpretation. Thus, the leviathan
became a whale or a crocodile, and the behemoth an elephant or hippomatus.
This is an interesting move, and one which occurs entirely from first
principles of interpretation which reject any hint of mythological figures --
it is very difficult to reconcile these interpretations with the actual
passages in the bible, where, for example, behemoth is described as having a
penis the size of a cedar tree. Nor does the fact that these figures are
identified with natural creatures remove the problem of figurative meanings,
despite the intentions of the Calvinists -- Thomas Aquinas was among the
first to allow that the leviathan may have been a whale, but he also
identified the whale with evil, a theme carried down to Herman Melville's
Moby Dick and the movie Jaws.

The Calvinist interpretation of the leviathan figure quickly becomes
hegemonic in the West, although it was by no means uncontested. It appears,
most often with mention of the old classical interpretations, in biblical
annotations, religious dictionaries and book length commentaries on the Book
of Job, as well as in emerging fields of secular discourse such as general
purpose dictionaries, studies of the animal world and some of the more
obscure writings of political philosophers (Grotius, Liebnitz, Bodin).
Interestingly, it suppresses/evades the distinctly classical Christian
interpretation of the leviathan, and so when it polemicizes against the
mythological view of the leviathan, it attributes that tradition of
interpretation entirely to the Jews. The Calvinist Cambridge Hebraist Johann
Buxtorf characteristically highlighted the mythological qualities of the
classical Jewish leviathan interpretation, in order to show that "the faith
of the Jews and their whole religion, is not grounded on Moses, but upon meer
lies, false and forged constitutions, fables of Rabbines, and intentions of
the seduced Pharisees."

In the century following the introduction of the Calvinist cum modernist
interpretation and leading up to Hobbes' use of the leviathan, there is an
explosion in its use in English discourse -- it appears numerous times in the
literature of  Dekker, Eden, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, as well is the
emerging beasteries/natural histories of Bochart and Thomas Browne. As
Christopher Hill's work has shown, there was a great deal back and forth
during the English Civil War, centered upon whom was the
anti-Christ/beast/red dragon/leviathan. There can be little doubt that when
Hobbes chose the title of leviathan for his great text of political theory,
he did so with a significant awareness (perhaps not complete, but certainly
with a broad grasp) of the rich history of connotations it carried.
Certainly, the responses of his critical contemporaries, which denounced the
book as monstrous in various ways, tell us that it was read, in part, in
light of those associations.

Two post-Hobbesian takes on this issue are interesting additions to this
story. The first is found in that classic and representative work of the
French Enlightenment, Diderot's Encyclopedie. There the mythological view of
the leviathan is presented, in the modernist cum Calvinist interpretation, as
the product of Jewish "fables", the myths of those intrinsically
superstitious people, the Jews. The second is found in the penetrating work
of the German legal scholar and political theorist Carl Schmitt, widely known
as a reactionary of the highest order and a Nazi collaborator. Schmitt's _Der
'Leviathan' in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes_ (published in the late
1930s) is the one text in modern theory to do an in-depth analysis of the
figurative aspects of the leviathan figure, but it does from an unambiguously
anti-Semitic perspective. In Schmitt's portrait, Jews fit that classic
anti-Semitic stereotype of the rootless and disloyal aliens out to destroy
the unity, integrity and homogeneity of the western nation-state, and so the
notions of leviathan as evil and tyrannical are imputed to them alone --
there is an anti-state interpretation of leviathan which belongs to the Jews;
the Christian traditions are reconstructed, with major gaps and logical
twists and turns, to create for Schmitt a pro-state Christian tradition.

So what do I conclude from all of this? First, I think that the oppositions
of myth and reason, of rhetoric and logic which are at the very heart of the
modernist/Enlightenment project, a project which in many ways Hobbes
prefigured, must be deconstructed (I chose the word deliberately; it has a
particular meaning which fits this situation precisely.) For all of the
insistence upon reason and logic, and all of the derogation of myth and
reason, Hobbes places a mythical, rhetorical figure at the pinnacle of his
vision of the state. And this is not accidental: if one studies the passages
in Hobbes where the leviathan is employed, it becomes clear that only the
classical Jewish/Christian traditions of interpretation would fit his use --
Hobbes uses the leviathan figure to capture a state which keeps its subjects
in awe, and of which they are in perpetual fear. For all of the formulas
about rational self-interest and the social contract which so delight
rational choice theorists who model themselves after him, Hobbes feels the
need for an extra-rational, extra-logical element to maintain his state of
Reason. Even in its most rigorous and exacting form, the
modernist/Enlightenment opposition between reason and myth, logic and
rhetoric can not sustain itself. Secondly, since Hobbes uses a mythical
figure which is not simply awe-inspiring, but also carries connotations of
evil and tyranny, I think that there may be a sub-text to his view of the
state -- it is a necessity for human survival, but it may very well be a
necessary evil. Neitzsche's aphorism that "The state is the coldest of cold
 monsters..." has an affinity with the Hobbesian leviathan. Thirdly, the
modernist/ Enlightenment manuver of opposing in dogmatically homogeneous and
polarized forms, reason and myth, logic and rhetoric, involves a movement of
imputing the mythical and the rhetorical to the demonized 'other' -- the
non-modern, non-enlightened, the non-European.

Is there another way to think about these questions of myth and reason? I
have been grappling with this issue, partly to help me interpret and make
sense of what takes place with the history of leviathan interpretation.
Certainly this an important issue in a certain type of anthropology
(Levi-Strauss comes immediately to mind -- any thoughts Lisa?). I have been
grappling with some important German (ugh) work in the field -- Horkheimer's
and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ and Hans Blumenberg's _Work on
Myth_. Both are of some help in conceptualizing myth in a way in which it is
an ever present moment of the human condition. Is there not, for example,
some essentially mythical element in that thoroughly modern ritual of taking
a potion (prozac) to solve all problems of dis-ease? Blumenberg has an
especially interesting formulation: he describes an _absolutism of reality_
in which "man comes closes to not having control of the conditions of his
existence and, what is more important, believes that he simply lacks control
of them." Myth reduces the absolutism of reality, supplying man with a means
of acquiring some 'control'. Thus, "the boundary line between myth and logos
is imaginary and does not obviate the need to inquire about the logos of the
myth in the process of working free of the absolutism of reality. Myth itself
is a piece of high-carat 'work of logos'."

My deconstruction of oppositions of myth and reason, rhetoric and logic
extend to the opposition of post-modernist and modernist. Is it not clear,
after all, that Ralph sees in the post-modernist the return of the mythical
and the rhetorical (which is why those French and those English professors
always comes in for scorn and ridicule -- they represent precisely those
forces) and sees in the modernist, the power of reason and logic? And
interestingly, much of what passes for post-modernist literary theory
actually accepts this polarity, and chooses simply to celebrate the other
side of the polarity -- the homogenously mythical and rhetorical. The point,
I would argue, is to deconstruct that opposition, as a way to reclaiming, but
without the demonization of the other, the liberatory impulse of modernism
and the Enlightenment. My post-modernism is that of Zygmunt Baumann, a
modernism aware of and critical of itself.
 


     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---