The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason - Charles Freeman

Pagan humanity and Christian austerity

Charles Freeman's book is erudite, entertaining and it makes a point overlooked by other historians: the western mind did close. This is a fascinating story and one to which Freeman brings much intriguing detail whilst keeping the narrative alive. The pagan imagination in its humanity could not support large communities; Christianity suppressed pagan thought in inventing ways of holding empires together that were hardly humane. This is the balance sheet and it makes a good read which is more than you can say for most balance sheets.

Complementary readings to Freeman's interesting book

There are already many good reviews to this book, so I will only suggest reading the following books on religion in addition to Freeman's: a) "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach," by Moojan Momen (astonishingly encyclopedic); b) "Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion" by Brian Hayden (great overview of religion origins and development); c) "Life after Death. A History of the afterlife in Western Religion" by Alan F. Segal; d) "Alternative Tradition: A Study of Unbelief in the Ancient World (Religion and Society)" by James A. Thrower; e) "How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now" by James L. Kugel; and f) "Augustine of Hippo: A Biography" by Peter Brown.

Thorough and Convincing

To understand the post-Enlightenment world we inhabit, it is necessary to perceive the Dark which it relieved. No Dark is perceived as such by those who draw the blinds, of course, who generally believe that we could use some shade. So it is in this highly readable but very thorough treatment of the transition from the conceptual world of late Antiquity to that of the Christian millennium. While it has been clear since Gibbon that the closing of the Western mind did not merely coincide with but was intimately bound up in the Christianisation of the Roman Empire, it is not trivially clear why this should be. With precision and erudition, Freeman investigates this question.

Clearly there was not only one current flowing through the Roman world during the last centuries of the Empire, as Paul's talk of "empty philosophy" contrasts with Jesuit reverence for "the philosopher" Aristotle. Understanding how the Church could revere convenient aspects of Greek thought while repudiating its spirit is as much a political as a religious or philosophical conundrum, and Freeman does much to chart this ebb and flow and the eventual inundation.

Some background in the history of Western thought will help to get the best out of this book, but is probably not required, since Freeman addresses the ideas and their originators as well as the political and religious considerations that motivated their eclipse.

positive and fast

I had read most of this book from the library, but wanted to add it to my own library. It arrived in pristine condition and quickly. My mistake, I did not pay attention to the cover enough. I virtually never order paperback, but it was my mistake. I just will have to buy another one, hopefully in as fine a condition.

In Defense of this Great Book

By and large, this book seems to have been met with ovation by reviewers at Amazon. There are, however, a small handful of negative reviews of this book. After reading all of them, I noticed there is one major problem with the negative reviews. Most of the negative reviewers are clearly responding to a different book. These reviewers seem to think that Freeman is blaming Christians for the complete demise of "Greek Philosophy," which is a strange idea indeed, since that is not Freeman's argument at all.

Freeman acknowledges right off the back that Christians largely embraced Platonic philosophy. And, why shouldn't they? Plato himself, with his concept of "forms," was directly in competition with both the concepts of empirical evidence and logical deduction. I sincerely doubt whether these negative reviewers read Freeman's book at all. If so, they wouldn't have made the silly and incorrect assumption that Freeman was arguing Christianity caused the demise of Greek philosophy in general. Freeman never makes such a claim. Instead, Freeman argues that Christianity (as a movement, on the whole) embraced Platonic philosophy as a means to marry faith and reason. The problem, of course, being that Platonic philosophy was then and still is inferior to the principles of empirical knowledge and logic. Again, these reviewers are setting up a straw-man argument against Freeman. First, they put words in his mouth by claiming he argued something he didn't. Then, they attempt to disprove an argument, which Freeman never made in the first place. What this all has to do with Freeman's actual argument I can't say. Reviewers who engage in such devices could themselves be cited as evidence of the lingering effects on contemporary society of the Christian destruction of reasonable thought.