By JUDE DOUGHERTY
In the “Review” section of a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal (February 10) Alexandra Wolfe provides a short biographical sketch that provides insight into the ambitions of the multibillionaire Nicholas Berggruen, a financier and philanthropist.
Seven years ago he launched the Berggruen Institute, an unusual think tank with an endowment of $1 billion. His initiative, according to Wolfe, aims to develop ideas in economics, politics, and social organization. The institute has two divisions, one focused on governance, the other on philosophy and culture. Berggruen is starting work on a physical place for what he calls his “secular monastery.” Located near Los Angeles, it will house about 50 scholars on 400 acres of land.
One can only wish him well. Benedict started with little, and created a monastery whose mission soon became the translation and preservation of ancient manuscripts. His Rule was to guide the formation of approximately 700 monasteries strewn across the continent of Europe, some becoming the foundation of schools and major universities we know today. Francis, Dominic, and Ignatius also started modestly, unaware that their foundation would lead to great orders of scholars and teachers who would spread the Catholic faith worldwide.
The Berggruen Institute recently conferred its first $1 million prize on Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of McGill University in Montreal, a worthy choice, to be sure. Sad to say, Taylor has few peers in the field of philosophy. To fill those chairs with 50 worthy scholars may be more difficult than Berggruen imagines. His attempt is reminiscent of Charles the Great’s attempt to draw 20 scholars to his Court at Aachen in an effort to improve the educational level of his people. He found only Alcuin.
Berggruen is quoted as attributing today’s political upheaval to the rise of technology, globalization, and multiculturalism. Few thoughtful people are likely to disagree. The challenge facing Berggruen is not to let his institute fall into the hands of those who would reinforce the status quo. The institute’s focus on governance and the fragility of democracy may well bear fruit, but its focus on philosophy may prove difficult. The dominant philosophy in today’s academic world is an atheistic materialism bent on the destruction of Western civilization as we know it.
True, as Berggruen points out, the West can learn something from Confucianism and Buddhism, perhaps a sense of piety and respect for tradition as fostered by Confucius and the asceticism characteristic of Buddhism. Neither contains the richness of Christianity and of biblical morality. Neither developed what we know as modern science, whose roots are to be found in Greek antiquity. Santayana stands to remind us, in his words: “Science has flourished only twice in recorded times, once for three hundred years in ancient Greece and again for the same period in modern Christendom.” Those who doubt the superiority of Western culture should visit Remi Brague’s Eccentric Culture (St. Augustine’s Press, 2002).
The anti-Christian mindset which prevails in the academic world today is destructive not only of the morality which historically shaped the West but of the historical record itself. The deconstructive movement, initiated by the Algerian born Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, sought to challenge not only the literary record but the accepted meaning and assumptions of Western philosophy, painting, and architecture.
Berggruen’s institute, insofar as it focuses on philosophy, could do well to begin with the history of Western philosophy itself. The history of philosophy is an integral part of philosophy itself, whereas history does not play a significant role in the natural sciences. The history of Western philosophy necessarily includes reference to the thought of Arabic philosophers such as Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, whose works were known and engaged by Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
In philosophy sophistry is not hard to find. Someone is always ready to find a conceptual puzzle, heretofore unknown, or to create a thought-experiment that has little to do with reality. The pursuit of wisdom is of a different order. The Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis is often presented as perennial philosophy, and no other is thought of in the same way, although it is likely there will always be followers of Fichte, Kant, and Hegel, as well as of Hume and the British empiricists. In the sciences advancement is almost a daily affair. Who, until the last half of the 20th century, could speak of nanotechnology and genetic splicing? By contrast, the works of Plato and Aristotle have been read and commented upon through the centuries.
Truths once demonstrated are perennial and universal. The real task confronting the Berggruen Institute may be the recovery and dissemination of those truths.
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