135. Mastering Ceremonies: Sylvia Wynter

Four things:

1. That is an interesting idea she had about European culture always defining itself in terms of some other. Although two problems I have with it. One, it implies too much unity for my liking of the Medieval era. Like, how they conceptualised God was different across both time and space (I mean, just see the split between west and east Christendom). The other problem is that it seems to have huge Islamic and Jewish and Pagan shaped holes in it. There is no way, especially around the crusade era that Europeans did not define themselves against Islam, no way. And it is basically explicit in Christian theology that Christians define themselves as not (religious specifically) Jews, seeing themselves as inheritors of a new covenant succeeds/fulfils etc (maybe not phrased in the right way, I don't know the specifics of Medieval covenant theology but you know what I am talking about) the old one. And aren't pagans a pretty big other they defined themselves against to as well? 

Also, since we are covering the renaissance/reformation right now, what is your take on this paradox she talked about and specifically "degodding" during the renaissance? Would you say this lines up with your understanding?


2. I don't think she is giving Marxism a fair assessment. There have been many Marxists that argue against an economic determinist interpretation of Marx. I think all the Marxists we have covered in this series would also deny that interpretation of Marx. Maybe Marx himself didn't focus on culture as much as economic, but Engels notes in disclaimers in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that the economic aspects don't exhaust the totality of society, that was just the focus they were taking in a lot of their works. Does she get more into this anywhere, and how if so?


3. Related to Marx, I was reminded of Ludwig Feuerbach when she said that Medieval Europeans defined themselves against God. The main idea that Feuerbach is associated with, thanks to Marx, is that Imago Dei was essentially backwards. He thought that we made God in our image basically. In his Essence of Christianity he argued that when we think about God, we are thinking about the "human species-essence" (his terminology) in an alienated form. Take any attribute that is said of God. All loving, all powerful, all knowing etc. He says these attributes actually apply to the human species-essence, we have just abstracted them and applied them to an external object. Hence his famous claim that theology is anthropology. That is a quick and dirty sketch of the idea anyway. Does Sylvia ever comment on Feuerbach? It seems in a way a more fulling out on how Medieval Christians defined themselves against God as other (by othering themselves and them returning to themselves as an image of that other).


4. That claim about multiculturalism is very interesting. While not usually under the name of multiculturalism, a lot of book/other material that I have seen that try to add non western philosophy into a subject, unless the book is specifically about that non western tradition's treatment of the subject, has always seem like a side line to the main content (I mean structure wise, not necessarily depth of content). Added on, like she says. Isn't this podcast committing the same sin though? There is the main western series and non western traditions treated as a separate added on thing. Like for the main line, you have many different sections dedicated to the "European" tradition, but non western traditions are all a single series themselves (well so far anyway, I know you eventually want to do later india and later china but the point still stands - compare how it is all packaged, where classical india is a single series, while ancient greek and later antiquity are two separate series, and that unless you have other ideas I get the impression later india will be a single series compared to the equivalent in the western series that has Medieval, Byzantine, Renaissance/Reformation and the ones to be added later. This isn't me saying you have done anything wrong btw, I get how we got to this point from where you started. Still, it is an unfortunate accident that things have happened this way. If we were to start again with her critique of multiculturalism in mind, how would we restructure the history of philosophy would you say? Where we try to have everything integrated (well in as far as history would allow that anyway, I don't know how to handle traditions that are very far apart like ancient China and ancient Greece)?



Sorry for the lengthy comment, one idea lead to another with this haha.

Oh, almost forgot to mention the islamic world in my original comment! I didn't mention it in the 4th point, but I meant to bring it up later in my comment because I think it is a great example for how a non western centered reconstructed podcast would look, with how well it was integrated into the main series