The Courage to Think: term paper for History 308, Renaissance and Reformation

In 1599 an Italian heretic by the name of Domenico Scandella, otherwise known as Menocchio, was burned at the stake by the Roman Inquisition for holding heretical views. Menocchio was a peasant miller in the Friuli, a region in the northeastern part of Italy. He was a father, a husband, a sometime mayor and, in spite of his imprudent tendencies, an upstanding member of his community. And he was also a humanist.

Menocchio was a unique person for his time and place. He was literate, a relatively rare trait among peasants at that time. While Menocchio was tolerably well-off for a peasant, he was no great and wealthy figure of the likes of Petrarch, Erasmus, or Sir Thomas More.¹ But something about Menocchio connected him to such figures. There was a thread of humanistic thought that linked Menocchio to the great humanists of the Renaissance. And it is this which makes Menocchio's story so powerful. His lot in life was that of a mere peasant with no great influence, at least in an immediate sense. In his pre-democratic society without modern ease of communication, he had even less of a voice than the typical private citizen does today. But through a combination of his access to literature and his own ingenuity and independence of mind, it can safely be said that Menocchio was not fundamentally different from the greatest humanists of the Renaissance. His approach to truth, to reality, and to life was characterized by the same traits as that of Pico or Petrarch.

There are several distinct and defining traits of humanism, this new intellectual movement which Menocchio was a part of. The first of these, and the foundational element of humanism, is intellectual independence. This independence was a kind of individualism that defied both authority and tradition—the individual, alone and unfettered, was free to discover the truth for himself. The thinker could trust his own mind and rely on its conclusions regardless of external accusations of heresy.

The second defining trait of humanism is an outgrowth of the first. Not only did the humanists believe that the individual could find truth for himself, but they also maintained that truth should be loved for its own sake, and should be sought fearlessly. They believed that the truth could stand on its own and need not fear any assault of reason.

The third and final defining element of humanism is the one that earns the intellectual movement its name. Although the humanists of the Renaissance remained devoutly religious, they placed great value on this life and on human experience, as opposed to an esoteric and distant afterlife. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man was an embodiment of this element—man was not a thing contemptible, but a thing of nobility. This life was not to be despised, but celebrated. Menocchio embodied all three of these humanistic traits. In this, he was an heir of the Renaissance in the same sense as the greatest intellectuals of the era.

Menocchio's intellectual independence is truly remarkable given his time and place in society. His main biographer, Carlo Ginzburg, maintains that he brought to his reading a distinct set of ideas that he had formulated on his own.² Menocchio faced two inquisitorial trials during his lifetime for his heretical views. Although at first he attempted to say that the devil had been tempting him, in the end he asserted that his “opinions came out of [his] head.”³ Certainly his reading must have influenced him, but in the end Menocchio was an independent thinker of the first order.

He shared this independence with the greatest humanists of the Renaissance. In 1486, a century before Menocchio's heresy trials, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wrote his Oration on the Dignity of Man to accompany 900 philosophical theses that he had written. It is a spectacular defense of the nobility of the human mind and of its ability to discern truth. Pico argues that knowledge elevates man to the level of the angels, and that God created man for this end.⁴ He wrote, “philosophy has taught me to rely on my own convictions rather than on the judgments of others and to concern myself less with whether I am well thought of than whether what I do or say is evil.”⁵ This was a departure from the Catholic church's emphasis on the infallibility of the pope and the church fathers. While still a devout Catholic, Pico was making a revolutionary argument in favor of intellectual independence, praising it as a virtue rather than denigrating it as insubordinate and dangerous.

Another hundred and fifty years back in time from Pico, Petrarch wrote The Ascent of Mount Ventoux of 1336 as an early embodiment of humanistic independence. Petrarch describes his experience as he climbed a mountain in the southeast of France. He recounts how he tried to find his own way up the mountain, taking supposed shortcuts that only took him further away from his goal.⁶ Petrarch's boldness in daring to climb the mountain—something that no one had done since ancient times—and, further, in trying to seek out his own way, is indicative of the independent and exploratory character of his pursuit. Having reached the top of the mountain, Petrarch sits in quiet meditation and reads from Augustine's Confessions.⁷ This introspection and individual pursuit of paths both physical and spiritual was an apotheosis of the humanist raison d'être. Truth was not an esoteric commodity available only to a privileged few; it was the province of the individual.

Menocchio, over two and a half centuries after Petrarch climbed Ventoux, was essentially a humanist in this respect. To the humanists, among the most sacred of all rights was the right to know. Menocchio insisted that this was his right, and that the Catholic church and its clergy did not want him to know what they knew. He viewed the church as an intellectual oppressor, on one occasion exclaiming to a fellow villager, “Can't you understand, the inquisitors don't want us to know what they know!”⁸ He criticized the priests and the rich for their exclusivism and tyranny of knowledge. He regarded the use of Latin in legal and ecclesiastical settings as exploitative and dishonest.⁹ He rejected the church and its ceremonies as an intermediary between himself and God, saying that one might as well confess to a tree as to a priest.¹⁰ Menocchio claimed for himself the right to explore reality for himself and on his own terms, a right which the great humanists of the Renaissance had championed before him.

In addition to being an independent thinker, Menocchio valued the pursuit of truth for its own sake. He had an inquisitive and creative mind, and contentment with the status quo did not satisfy him. In this aspect as well, he was like the humanists who had lived before him.

Petrarch, again, was the personification of humanism in this respect. His ascent of Mount Ventoux was hardly an ordinary undertaking in the fourteenth century. According to his own description, he ascended the mountain purely to see what he could see atop the mountain.¹¹ There was no practical reason why Petrarch would choose to do such a thing; indeed, as he was beginning his ascent, an old shepherd warned him against attempting the climb. Petrarch disregarded the warning, however, and carried on in his endeavor.¹² He was determined to make his own way up the mountain, and no amount of cautionary advice would stop him.

Pico's Oration is also brimming with arguments for the pursuit of truth as an end in itself. Pico claims that this pursuit is what separates man from beasts.¹³ The pursuit of truth ennobles man, bridling his baser nature and elevating him to the level of cherubim.¹⁴ Pico also censures those who pursue philosophy for material benefit; in describing his own pursuit of knowledge, he writes: “I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth.”¹⁵ Philosophy—the love of truth—was a noble pursuit in its own right.

Attendant to this idea of the value of truth for its own sake is the conviction that truth can stand on its own—that it need fear no challenge or questioning. For the humanists, there is no monopoly on truth. It can come from any source, and the greatest triumph of the intellectual lies in being proven wrong—or, in the words of Pico, “the real victory lies in being vanquished.”¹⁶ Pico argues that the true philosopher will read everything available to him in order to learn all that can be learned from each source. He draws on sources outside of the traditional, approved sphere of works, insisting that the truth has nothing to fear from inquiry.¹⁷

This was the approach to truth that Menocchio took. He was not satisfied with the version of reality with which he was presented. He brought all the information that he had at his disposal to the table when it came to formulating his ideas about the universe. He read an astonishing variety of works for a man in his situation, ranging from the Bible to Il Fioretto della Bibbia (a collection of apocryphal gospels) to Boccaccio's Decameron. He may even have read the Koran.¹⁸ He used any and all books that he came upon to find information and inspiration for the development of his ideas.¹⁹

According to those who knew him, Menocchio loved to argue. One witness at his first inquisitorial trial said that “he is always arguing with somebody about the faith just for the sake of arguing—even with the priest.”²⁰ Menocchio was unusually willing to say what he thought and challenge authority, even if that authority held his life in its hands. A friend warned him not to talk too much at his trial, but Menocchio did not heed this advice and ended by telling his inquisitors enough about his heretical beliefs that he was executed after his second trial.²¹ The humanists may have advocated the free flow of ideas, but even on the cusp of the Enlightenment, the world was not entirely ready for it.

Lastly, humanism is a philosophy which emphasizes the importance of human life and experience, as opposed to an afterlife or a divine scheme of which mortal existence is an insignificant part. It is this life that matters, along with the happiness and suffering therein. This theme is omnipresent throughout the writings of the great humanists, and it is a cardinal element of Menocchio's philosophy.

Pico begins his Oration by asserting that after creating the world and everything in it, “the Divine Artificer still longed for some creature which might comprehend the meaning of so vast an achievement, which might be moved with love at its beauty and smitten with awe at its grandeur.”²² In other words, God wanted creatures that could think. Pico describes God speaking to Adam, informing him: “I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you . . . in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer.”²³ Man is neither worthless nor insignificant. He is an intelligent and self-directed being, capable of discerning truth and making decisions for himself.

This sentiment can also be found in the work of another great humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. In his tongue-in-cheek work The Praise of Folly, Folly personified as a goddess defends herself on the basis that she brings good to humanity: she says, “this only is to be a god, to help men.”²⁴ As with Pico, this is a very human-centric view. Rather than advocating a stoic acceptance of one's lot in life in hope of a greater reward beyond the grave, Erasmus seems to be advocating the appreciation of this life, and he has created an imaginary deity who makes it her aim to improve human existence. Folly goes on to argue that it is she that facilitates the very inception of life, and brings the greatest joys of life to humanity.

Folly then goes on to censure the theologians and clergy for their fixation on inconsequential issues that have no direct connection to human happiness, such as “whether it was possible that Christ could have taken upon Him the likeness of a woman, or of the devil, or of an ass, or of a stone, or of a gourd; and then how that gourd should have preached, worked miracles, or been hung on the cross . . . .”²⁵ They fixate on these issues even as the world with all its real problems and difficulties calls to them. To Erasmus, such esoteric concerns are of little import. Human life, human experience, human suffering and happiness, are all vastly more important.

This is Menocchio's worldview in a nutshell. He believed that it was more important to love one's neighbor than to love God, and that to trespass against the former was a graver sin than to blaspheme against the latter.²⁶ This life and the people in it were more important to Menocchio than a god who seemed to him distant and impersonal. He argued that blasphemy was not a sin “because it only hurts oneself and not one's neighbor . . . if a father has several children, and one of them says 'damn my father,' the father may forgive him, but if this child breaks the head of someone else's child, he cannot pardon him so easily if he does not pay: therefore have I said that it is not sinful to blaspheme because it does not hurt anyone.”²⁷ Menocchio was still religious, but his religiosity was of a decidedly practical, immediate, and even humanistic nature. God was not the most important fixture of religion for Menocchio—people were.

The humanism of Menocchio's philosophy found its culmination in his cosmogony—his conception of the origin and nature of deity and the universe. He used a very unique and memorable analogy to describe this cosmogony. He believed that before the world was, “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together . . . .”²⁸ He did not believe that God had created the world, but that out of this chaos “a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and among that number of angels, there was also God, he too having been created out of that mass at that time.”²⁹ In this view, God was just as much a part of the world as humans were. He used his analogy of cheese forming from milk and worms forming from rotting cheese to describe the development of a self-contained universe from primordial chaos to its present state.

In essence, Menocchio was a materialist. While he remained a theist, his conception of God was a materialist one—rather than an external creator figure, God was a product of the universe. Further, Menocchio's search for truth from various sources led him to some startling conclusions. Upon reading Mandeville's account of various peoples and their traditions, Menocchio says that he “got [his] opinion that when the body dies, the soul dies too, since out of many different kinds of nations, some believe in one way some in another.”³⁰

In a true humanist spirit, Menocchio insisted on rational, real-world explanations for phenomena. He rejected the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ, believing instead that Christ was the natural son of Mary and St. Joseph, and the Christ had died on the cross.³¹ As previously discussed, he rejected supernatural explanations for the origins of the universe. His religiosity was of a curiously pragmatic nature, placing greater emphasis on humanity than on divinity. In short, Menocchio was an embodiment of Renaissance humanism, and of the kind of ideas that later led to the Enlightenment and to modern secularism.

After his first inquisition, Menocchio was imprisoned for two years and then released.³² In 1599, however, he was summoned again for a second inquisition. It seems that he had been unable to keep his ideas to himself, and word of his blasphemies found its way to the powers that be. He was convicted of heresy a second time and was sentenced to death. ³³

Although Menocchio was sentenced to die for his humanism in the end, he and the other great humanists of the Renaissance left an enduring legacy that has profoundly influenced modern society. Religious freedom, the separation of church and state, democracy, and the scientific revolution were all direct outgrowths of the humanist epistemology—intellectual independence, belief in the autonomy of truth, and emphasis on the importance of humanity, life, and the world as we experience it in the present. Menocchio was living on the cusp of a new world. Recent technological advantages, most notably the printing press, were making dangerous ideas such as humanism available to the increasingly literate masses. Global exploration and colonial expansion were exposing Europeans to strange and diverse societies that challenged their most basic assumptions about reality and the universe. The world would never be the same again.

Menocchio was certainly a remarkable individual. He had unusual characteristics for a peasant miller in the sixteenth century. His ideas, while perhaps somewhat strange and undoubtedly heretical, were entirely his own. He read and was influenced by a variety of works, but ultimately his ideas were, as he described it, the product of his own “artful mind.”³⁴ He was too outspoken for his own good, and this characteristic led to his demise. However, it is because of Menocchio's courage that we are aware of his existence and his ideas at all. And ultimately, it is this courage which is the ultimate defining characteristic of humanism. The courage to think, the courage to know, and the courage to speak—this is what makes a humanist.

1Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980), 1-2.

2Ibid., 36.

3Ibid., 27.

4Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (Pigott Study Guide Spring 2011), 44.

5Ibid., 47.

6Petrarch, The Ascent of Mount Ventoux (Pigott Study Guide Spring 2011), 37.

7Ibid., 38-39.

8Ginzburg, 59.

9Ibid., 9.

10Ibid., 10.

11Petrarch, 36.

12Ibid., 37.

13Pico, 44.

14Ibid., 45.

15Ibid., 47.

16Ibid., 48.

17Ibid., 49-50.

18Ginzburg, 29-30.

19Ibid., 19.

20Ibid., 2.

21Ibid., 5.

22Pico, 43.

23Ibid.

24 Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (Pigott Study Guide Spring 2011), 57.

25Ibid., 59.

26Ginzburg, 39.

27Ibid.

28Ibid., 52.

29Ibid., 53.

30Ibid., 47.

31Ibid., 36.

32Ibid., 93-95.

33Ibid., 102-103, 128.

34Ibid., 28. 

Bibliography

Erasmus of Rotterdam (Erasmus Desiderius). The Praise of Folly, excerpts. In Pigott Study Guide, Spring 2011, 54-64.

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Translated by John and Anne Tedeschi. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Oration on the Dignity of Man. In Pigott Study Guide, Spring 2011, 42-51.

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. In Pigott Study Guide, Spring 2011, 36-40.

Chivalry

Person: "Chivalry is dead."

Me: "Good."

Over the last semester, I have gotten quite adept at pissing people off. Specifically, I've offended several people by expressing my distaste for the concept of chivalry. I suppose the fact that I think that way could be construed to mean that I'm rude or something like that. To be honest, I'm not going to treat anyone badly because they do things that are considered "chivalrous." I'm not going to glare at a guy for opening the door for me; I know as well as anyone that he's only trying to be nice. I don't go through life trying to pick fights. I take things in the spirit that they're meant.

But.

There's just something about the whole concept of chivalry that really makes me uncomfortable. And that seems difficult for a lot of the people that I've pissed off to understand. I can see why; on the surface, chivalry is guys being nice to girls. It's holding the door for her, carrying her stuff, standing when she walks in the room (*shudder*). I mean, who can complain about men treating women with respect, right? The fact that I find the concept annoying must mean that I'm some kind of horrible, man-hating witch, right? Not exactly. I like men. A lot, actually. I am not unreasonable or intentionally mean.

Here is why chivalry bothers me. I think that it puts men and women on unequal footing, and there are several dimensions to this. First, it puts women on pedestals. I have a serious problem with that. Gloria Steinem, the infamous feminist, said that "a pedestal is as much a prison as any other small, confined place." Putting women on pedestals and glorifying them as angels worthy of some kind of worship/veneration/special treatment puts them into little boxes. But we're not angels. We're human beings. The "women are so much better then us rude, uncultured men" rhetoric dehumanizes us, and ironically I think that it's condescending. It's a two-dimensional view of both men and women. People are so much more complex than that, and it is a disservice to both genders to behave as if one is pure and angelic while the other is base, clueless and crude. It's a disturbing mix of misogyny and misandry. Can we please just be people, warts and all?

Secondly, I think that chivalrous conventions draw unwarranted attention to gender. Gender is very relevant, it is very important, and there are a lot of differences between men and women. I'm not arguing that. But when you look at another human being, you should see more than just their race or age--or gender. Certainly those things are important and they are important parts of what make up a person, but the important thing is the person. When I walk into a room, I want people to go "Oh, it's Aubrie" not "Oh, it's a woman, better stand up/hold the door."

Thirdly, I believe that chivalry puts men and women on unequal footing. When a man opens the door for me, naturally I say thank you. But, depending on the situation, I sometimes feel manipulated. Not always. I open the door for people all the time, both men and women. And I can usually tell from people's body language whether someone's holding the door just to be polite or because I'm a woman. If I'm right behind them, or they get to the door first, then it's clearly common courtesy. But if I'm ten feet behind and some guy holds the door, it's annoying. If I'm walking with a guy and he has to reach around me specifically to hold the door instead of just letting me walk through and hold it open behind me like a normal person, it feels condescending to me--even though I know it's not meant that way. I feel a strange and uncomfortable sense of obligation.

I honestly think that chivalry can be used in a way that is really manipulative, by both men and women. I remember a Young Women activity where we had a discussion with the missionaries about dating conventions. The missionaries made us promise never to open doors for ourselves on dates, even if it meant sitting in the car for five minutes until the guy realized his grave error and came back to get us. I mean, seriously. How messed up is that? What kind of message is that supposed to send? "I can't open a doggone door, so you need to do it for me?" That's obviously not true. "You are a lesser human being and I am a divine angel, and so you need to grovel for me?" That's misandry, which I have just as much of a problem with as misogyny. And I do find it disturbing that a couple twenty-odd-year-old men would tell a group of girls not to open doors for themselves, to insist that men do it for them. I think that brings a power dynamic into a relationship that is highly distasteful.

Most of all, why? Why is chivalry something that we do? Is it just because it's a cultural convention? That doesn't make it worth preserving--segregation and the "women belong at home" paradigm were cultural conventions as well. I don't think anyone's going to argue that fully grown women actually need to be taken care of. So what's the point? I don't understand women who claim to want equality, and then complain if a guy doesn't open the door or give up his seat for her. That's what equality is, woman! It's not getting or giving special treatment on the basis of something as silly and undeserved as gender.

Being treated like a princess is nice, I'll admit. But it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I prefer to interact with men--with everyone, really--as equals. Obviously I want to be treated with respect, but "chivalry" as a counterfeit version of respect strikes me as incredibly phony. I don't want to be "respected" for being female. I want to be respected for me--for my intelligence, for my sense of humor, for my work ethic, and most of all for simply being another human being. There are so many other things that mean so much more to me than empty and archaic gestures meant to make up for gender inequalities that, for the most part, no longer exist. Look at my face when I'm talking to you. Take the things I say seriously. Get to know me for who I am, and not just as a two-dimensional version of womanhood that you picked up from our culture. Criticize my ideas when you don't like them. Argue with me. Respect my status as an adult with her own ideas, autonomy, faults, and mistakes.

A final word. My real problem with chivalry as "being nice" boils down to the fact that it's a one-way street in my view; men treating women nice. I just think that everybody should be nice to everybody else. When it comes to relationships, I don't want a man to "protect" me. I do want him to have my back, so to speak, and I will have his back as well. Allow me to give an example from one of my favorite movies, Ever After. The movie starts out with Prince Henry being chivalrous--"how dare you raise your voice to a lady?" (When Danielle obviously has no problem with being shouted at, or with shouting back--unbeknownst to Henry, she's already given him an earful and several bruises.) But by the end, Henry's figured out that Danielle doesn't need protecting. She's perfectly capable of slicing her would-be rapist from navel to nose, while her feet are shackled no less. He starts out assuming that she's like all the other women at court, expecting to be protected and sheltered. By the end they have a much healthier relationship because he has learned to see her not as a "lady," but simply as Danielle. He's got her back, you can bet on it. And she has his back too--she's the one who got him out of the mess with the gypsies. It's not about chivalry anymore, about the prince and his fair lady. It's Henry and Danielle. That's equality. That's a healthy relationship, without all this silly baggage about "you're a woman and so I have to treat you differently than I would treat other human beings."

I want to be valued for who I am, not for the fact that I have a uterus.

Troy in the Bronze Age

This was my final paper for my History 487: Senior Colloquium class last winter semester. I pretty much worked my brains out on it. :)

Perhaps one of the most well-known and controversial sites in the history of archeology is that of Troy. It is commonly accepted to have been located at a hill now called Hisarlik. The site is located in northwestern Turkey, about four miles from the base of the Hellespont. It was probably closer to the sea in the Bronze Age, but the area has since become silted up.¹

The site's first excavator, Heinrich Schliemann, was not motivated by scholarship, but romance. He claimed to have been inspired at a young age to find the historical location of Homer's Troy, but his recklessly eager excavations at the hill of Hisarlik considerably damaged the site. Several excavation campaigns have taken place since Schliemann's excavations in 1871-73 and 1878-9: Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1893-4), Carl Blegen (1832-8), and, most recently, Manfred Korfmann (1988-2003). The city is composed of nine layers, ranging in date from Troy I, starting around 2900 BC, to Troy IX, which ended around AD 550 during the time of the Romans. Schliemann's goal in excavating Hisarlik was to find the Troy of Homer, and he assumed that the city he was looking for would be at the bottom of the hill, near the bedrock. He dug an enormous trench through the center of the hill, essentially destroying much of the upper layers, until he found treasure in Troy II that he declared was the “Treasure of Priam.” Unfortunately for Schliemann, Troy II was over a thousand years too early to be Homer's Troy. The Troy of the Trojan War (if such a war did actually take place) is most likely to have been either Troy VI (c. 1700-1250 BC) or Troy VIIa. Troy VIIa could really be considered part of Troy VI, as there is no major cultural alteration between the end of Troy VI and Troy VIIa, although the quality of Troy VIIa is considerably less than that of Troy VI.²

The main question here is, what was the situation of Troy relative to other civilizations in Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age? Troy has traditionally been viewed through a Greek lens because of its association with Homer's Iliad. However, recent excavations and scholarship have shown that Troy may have had a stronger connection with the Anatolian world, particularly the Hittites, than it did with the Mycenaeans. Because of the historical preoccupation with Troy and its relationship with Homer's Iliad, no discussion of the site can avoid at least some mention of Homer, and scholarly views on Troy and its situation in the Bronze Age are inevitably shaped by Homer's description. The city that Homer describes is a great power, a “shining city,” and rich in treasure. Schliemann's excavations at Troy were driven by this idea of Troy as a great city. He was convinced that Homer's description was of reality, and this presupposition ultimately led him to plow straight through the layers of Hisarlik that actually dated to the Late Bronze Age and declare that Troy II was the great city of Priam. Although Schliemann's mistake has since been rectified, many scholars find themselves subject to a presupposition that the civilization at Hisarlik simply must have been a significant and powerful Bronze Age city. Until recently, this has been difficult to argue for because the site of Troy was simply too small to be any kind of great power. However, the most recent excavation campaign at the site of Hisarlik led by Manfred Korfmann has unearthed evidence that was Troy much larger than had been originally thought.

In 1996 Korfmann discovered a lower city outside the main citadel of Troy VI. According to Korfmann's estimate, this lower city was around 200,000 square meters—ten times larger than previously thought.³ This discovery, if real, eliminated the difficulty that the small size of Hisarlik had previously posed, making it more plausible that Troy was a significant city in the Late Bronze Age. Korfmann believed that Troy was an important Bronze Age trading center. Its strategic location allowed it to control trade up and down the Hellespont, and it had sea trade connections in the Aegean and Black Sea regions.⁴ Korfmann even went so far as to say that troy was a “pivotal city” in northwestern Anatolia.⁵ He asserted that Troy lay at the center of a vast trading network solidified by intermarriage, and that the members of this trading might easily have come together to form the coalition of allies that Homer describes in the Iliad.⁶

Korfmann's view of Troy as a trading hub, however, has come under criticism for being overly optimistic, even fantastic, because of lack of evidence. Among the sharpest of these critics are Dieter Hertel and Frank Kolb.⁷ Hertel and Kolb accuse Korfmann of altering maps of Late Bronze Age trade routes in spite of any evidence for doing so, and of stretching the limits of the existing evidence in order to support his thesis.⁸ They point out that no Mycenaean pottery has ever been found in the Black Sea region of Anatolia, which it certainly would have been if Troy had really been a trading hub between the Aegean and the Black Sea.⁹ Further, Hertel and Kolb argue that Korfmann's estimate of a population of 10,000 for Troy is extravagant. If Troy was really that big, then it would have been larger even than the Hittite capital Hattuşa, which was only 3000-6000 large. By comparison, the geographical size of Hattuşa was 180 hectares, and the size of Korfmann's Troy is only 11 hectares.¹⁰

In addition, Hertel and Kolb point out that the citadel at Troy does not have the same structure as Mycenaean palatial estates; that is, it does not have a central building surrounded by subordinate buildings, nor does it have the ordered and elaborate structure that is common to important centers of civilization.¹¹ This lack of palatial organization implies that Troy was not a great center of trade, as Korfmann suggested, but a much smaller and less significant settlement. ¹²

As the case stands, archaeological evidence is never as conclusive as one might like it to be. Korfmann certainly was overeager in his assessment of Troy's importance in the Late Bronze Age; he, like many other scholars and archaeologists, appears to have fallen into the trap of seeing what one wants to see at Troy, simply because of its traditional importance as the site of fabled Ilion and as a major Anatolian archaeological site. While the civilization that existed at Hisarlik did likely have connections with other civilizations, the characterization of Troy as a “trading hub” is likely an exaggeration. There is simply not enough evidence to warrant such an assertion, and the city of Troy itself is not structured like a palatial trading center.

One of the main questions about Troy concerns its cultural relationship with the other peoples in Anatolia and the Aegean. In the Iliad, Homer portrays the Trojans as essentially Greek—speaking the same language, worshiping the same gods, and observing the same cultural mores. But how accurate is this? Troy, after all, is not situated in Greece, but in Anatolia at the base of the Hellespont. Was Troy really a Greek city, or was it Anatolian?

One important point of comparison between cultures is fortification styles. The fortifications of Troy VI are in a completely different style from that of the previous layers, which suggests the beginning of an entirely new cultural era at Troy.¹³ The Trojan fortifications in this era are much stouter and more advanced than those of the previous inhabitants. The fortification walls of Troy are also distinctly different from typical Mycenaean walls. The gently sloping walls of Troy are made of huge blocks of stone that later peoples were convinced could only have been moved by the supernatural Cyclopes prompted the use of the name the name “Cyclopean” to describe the walls. However, the Cyclopean masonry of Troy differs from that at Mycenaean sites. Mycenaean Cyclopean masonry typically had two layers of stone which were then filled with smaller stones and rubble, and this type of construction is noticeably absent from Troy. The walls of Troy are curtain walls, which are solid, single-layer stone constructions. Mycenaean walls were also typically built on bedrock or virgin soil, but the builders of Troy left a layer of soil between the walls' foundations and the bedrock. This may have been a precaution to protect the city from earthquake, but ultimately failed because Troy VIh was destroyed by earthquake.¹⁴ The main construction material at Troy was mud-brick.¹⁵ The Hittites also used mud-brick in their constructions, including in their fortifications.¹⁶

However, the walls of Troy do bear some similarity to those at Mycenaean sites in some aspects. One of these is a defensive feature which can be described as a “killing box”: a gateway constructed by building two overlapping sections of wall, creating a small space in between. Since gateways are always a weak point in any fortification system, this “killing box” would put any invaders under fire from both sides as they attempted to storm the city.¹⁷ This type of feature is also found at the Mycenaean site of Tiryns.¹⁸

As mentioned previously, one important difference between the construction of Troy and that of Mycenaean sites is the lack of any kind of palatial structure. Mycenaean sites have a very distinct palace structure, centered around the megaron or throne room. This throne room had a circular fireplace at its center with four pillars around it, a throne on the right-hand side of the room, and elaborately painted walls and floors. There is no evidence of any such structure at Troy. To be fair, much of Troy was destroyed when Heinrich Schliemann conducted his demolition of the upper cities of Hisarlik. This means that evidence that may once have existed is now gone; however, it is pointless to speculate upon what might have existed at Troy when one has absolutely no evidence upon which to base that speculation.

The legend of the Trojan Horse may shed some light on Troy's relationship with the Anatolian world in a military sense. It is possible that the legend of the Trojan Horse may have originated with some sort of siege engine. The siege engines of the Assyrians usually had long shafts or drills and were operated by three men, who used the shaft to stab at the defenders and knock them off the walls. The men were protected by a kind of movable hut, and these siege engines were often named after animals. Consequently, it is conceivable that the Trojan Horse was originally a siege engine, and when this military technology became obsolete, the Greek poets improvised a story that would make sense to their audience.¹⁹ If this is the case, then the culture at Troy was significantly influenced by Anatolian culture. It is important to remember that for centuries, everything known about Troy had been filtered through a Greek lens. The evidence, however, strongly indicates that the greatest cultural influences on Troy were Anatolian, not Greek.

Trojan religion shows a strong connection to Anatolian culture. Korfmann finds several important relationships between the two cultures in the cultic and religious sphere. First, the Trojans adopted the Anatolian practice of cremating and burying their dead in large urns, called pithoi. Second, there are stelai at Troy that indicate similarity between Anatolian and Trojan religious practices. Stone and pillar cults were common in Anatolia at the time, and the presence of the stelai at Troy indicates a cultural connection.²⁰ A third possible religious connection exists between the Greek god Apollo, who is a guardian of Troy in the Iliad, and the Anatolian god Apalunas or Apaliunas, who was worshiped among the Luwians and a god of Wilusa.²¹

Arguably the most important aspect of archeology, and the most ubiquitous indicator of civilization, is pottery. Where there are pots, there are people. Where there is Mycenaean pottery, there is Mycenaean civilization, or at least contact with Mycenaean civilization, and there is some Mycenaean pottery at Troy both in the citadel and the lower city.²² However, the quantity of Mycenaean pottery found at Troy VI is vastly overshadowed by the amount of Grey Minyan Ware, or Anatolian Grey Ware, found at the site.²³ This and other evidence strongly suggests that while Troy has traditionally been identified with Greek culture because of Homer's treatment of it as such, its strongest ties were with the Anatolian culture. One of the most important finds at Troy was Korfmann's discovery at Hisarlik of a two-sided seal with writing on it. The language has shown to be Luwian, a language related to that of the Hittites. The seal is of a type found in many Hittite-influenced cities, which implies that Troy had contact with the Hittites, and, further, that there was at least some level of literacy in Late Bronze Age Troy.²⁴

There is evidence in Hittite documents of a relationship between Troy and the Hittite Empire. An archaic name for Troy is “Ilios,” or “Wilios.” (It is from this name that the Homeric Iliad derives its title.) In a Hittite document from the 13th century BC now called the Millawanda Letter, King Tudhaliya IV mentions a place called “Wilusa” as a previously contested territory. Several scholars, including Machteld Mellink and Frank Starke, drew a connection between the Hittite “Wilusa” and “Wilios.”²⁵ The content of the Millawanda Letter indicates that Wilusa/Ilios had diplomatic relations with the Hittite empire. In the letter, Tudhaliya tells an ally in Millawanda that he will install a man called Walmu as the king of of Wilusa.²⁶ Wilusa is mentioned in several other Hittite documents, as well: for example, the Tawagalawa Letter, addressed from King Hattušili to the king of Ahhiyawa—a name accepted by most scholars to be a Hittite version of “Achaea,” Homer's name for the Greeks. In the Tawagalawa Letter, Hattušili complains about the exploits of the rogue Piyamaradu in raiding Hittite lands. Hattušili mentions that he had been “at enmity” over Wilusa with the King of Hatti, and that this dispute has been resolved.²⁷ From this, we can infer that Wilusa—or, if we accept the linguistic connection, Troy—was actually an Anatolian city and a part of the Hittite empire. Just how important Troy was in the Hittite picture is, of course, still a point of controversy.There is evidence in Hittite documents of contact between Troy and the Hittite Empire. An archaic name for Troy is “Ilios,” or “Wilios.” (It is from this name that the Homeric Iliad derives its title.) In a Hittite document from the 13th century BC now called the Millawanda Letter, King Tudhaliya IV mentions a place called “Wilusa” as a previously contested territory. Several scholars, including Machteld Mellink and Frank Starke, drew a connection between the Hittite “Wilusa” and “Wilios.”²⁸ The content of the Millawanda Letter indicates that Wilusa/Ilios had diplomatic relations with the Hittite empire. In the letter, Tudhaliya tells an ally in Millawanda that he will install a man called Walmu as the king of of Wilusa.²⁹ Wilusa is mentioned in several other Hittite documents, as well: for example, the Tawagalawa Letter, addressed from King Hattušili to the king of Ahhiyawa—a name accepted by most scholars to be a Hittite version of “Achaea,” Homer's name for the Greeks. In the Tawagalawa Letter, Hattušili complains about the exploits of the rogue Piyamaradu in raiding Hittite lands. Hattušili mentions that he had been “at enmity” over Wilusa with the King of Hatti, and that this dispute has been resolved.³⁰ From this, we can infer that Wilusa—or, if we accept the linguistic connection, Troy—was actually an Anatolian city and a part of the Hittite empire.

To summarize, the position of Troy in the Late Bronze Age was likely that of an Anatolian or Anatolian-influenced settlement. Although its importance as a center of trade has likely been exaggerated by Manfred Korfmann and others, it was an important enough territory to be the subject of several conflicts in Anatolia. Culturally, the Late Bronze Age Trojans shared much with their Anatolian neighbors. The traditional view of Troy has been shaped and filtered through the lens of the Greeks, and consequently the Greek connection to Troy has been overestimated. Because of the importance of the Homeric epics, including the Iliad, in Western culture, the significance of Troy as a center of civilization has likely also been exaggerated. Troy itself was likely a relatively minor and peripheral city in Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age, as evidenced by the small size of the site. Troy's location at the base of the Hellespont is theoretically advantageous, but it seems doubtful that Troy utilized this advantage in the Late Bronze Age; as mentioned above, there is no Mycenaean pottery north of the Hellespont in the Black Sea region, as there would be if there had been significant trade between that area and the Aegean and Anatolia.

With respect to Troy and the historicity of Homer, one must be careful to avoid falling into the trap of black-and-white thinking. While it is somewhat romantic to imagine that the Ilion of Homeric legend was a real “shining city” of great importance, that is simply not borne out by the evidence, and there is no merit in creating yet another layer of legend and attempting to pass it off as historical fact. [2923]

1 James C. Wright, “The Place of Troy among the Civilizations of the Bronze Age,” The Classical World 91, no. 5 (May – Jun. 1998): 357.

2 Nic Fields, Troy c. 1700-1250 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2004), 25.

3 Manfred Korfmann, “Troia, an Ancient Anatolian Palatial and Trading Center: Archaeological Evidence for the Period of Troia VI/VII,” The Classical World 91, no. 5 (May – Jun. 1998): 371.

4 Ibid., 380.

5 Ibid., 382.

6 Ibid., 382, 383.

7 Hertel and Kolb's article, “Troy in Clearer Perspective”, is one of several in a back-and-forth between supporters and critics of Korfmann's work. The authors give an extensive argument against Troy's status as a palatial estate or center of trade, arguing against four of Korfmann's main arguments—pottery sherds lower down the hill of Hisarlik, a settlement wall outside the citadel wall, a defensive ditch, and the existence of houses outside the main citadel.

8 Dieter Hertel and Frank Kolb, “Troy in Clearer Perspective,” Anatolian Studies 53 (2003): 73.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., 74.

11 Ibid., 76.

12 A rebuttal to Hertel and Kolb's criticism has been published by Peter Jablonka and C. Brian Rose, who were both involved with Hisarlik at the time Korfmann was excavating there: Peter Jablonka and C. Brian Rose, “Late Bronze Age Troy: A Response to Frank Kolb,” American Journal of Archaeology 108 no. 4 (Oct. 2004): 615-630.

13 Fields, Troy, 23.

14 Ibid., 36.

15 Ibid., 29.

16 Konstantin S. Nossov, Hittite Fortifications c. 1650-700 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2008), 17.

17 Ibid., 38, 44.

18 Nic Fields, Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350-1200 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2004), 33-36.

19 Fields, Troy, 52-53.

20 Korfmann, 373-374.

21 Ibid., 376.

22 D.F. Easton et al., “Troy in Recent Perspective,” Anatolian Studies 52 (2002): 87.

23 Korfmann, 373.

24 Ibid., 379.

25 Ibid., 373.

26 The Millawanda Letter, in Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, The Trojan War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 142-143.

27 The Tawagalawa Letter, in Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, The Trojan War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 140-141.

28 Korfmann., 373.

29 The Millawanda Letter, in Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, The Trojan War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 142-143.

30 The Tawagalawa Letter, in Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, The Trojan War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 140-141.

Hume on Causation

On Causation
Modern Philosophy, Winter 2011

According to David Hume, we can draw no firm conclusions about the nature of causation. Instead, we infer that one event causes another because the two events are constantly conjoined in our experience. However, to assume that one event causes another because the two are constantly conjoined in our experience is to commit a fallacy; correlation does not constitute causation. We have absolutely no basis for making claims about how events will affect one another in the future. One could say that our assumptions about the future have always worked in the past, but that is still not a statement about the future—it is a statement about the past. The future is unknowable, and it is impossible to posit causation for any event in our experience.

Suppose that I drop a rock into water and it sinks. Because of my past experience and my knowledge of science, I will assume that the rock sinks because of its weight, volume, and density. But this is not the only explanation. Perhaps the rock is sentient, and upon contact with water it wants to sink, and therefore makes the choice to do so. Perhaps the water itself is pulling and pushing on the rock, forcing it to sink. Or perhaps it sinks because God is controlling everything in the world and is causing the rock to sink [this is the Occasionalist philosophy of cosmology].

Furthermore, the mere fact that the rock I threw into the water a moment ago sank is no reason to assume that the next rock I throw into the water will, in fact, sink. Certainly every rock I have thrown into the water in the past has sunk, but this does not mean that the next one will. Perhaps it will float instead, or perhaps it will bounce off the water and float towards the heavens. In short, I have absolutely no knowledge of what the rock will do in the future until it has actually done it, in which case my knowledge is still not of the future, but of the past.
According to Hume, all of our assumptions about the world are not based on fact, but on habit and custom. Having observed events happening in a certain way, we assume that they always happen that way. For example, many years ago it was thought that all swans were white. Later black swans were discovered to exist in Australia. Obviously, our perceptions of the nature of reality can be flawed and mistaken, and are therefore not to be trusted. And the events inside our minds are no exception. My fingers move on my keyboard because I will them to—or do they? Is it not possible that my fingers are being moved by some other force, and that I only think that it is my will that moves them? Simply because my willing my fingers to move has, in the past, always resulted in them doing so is no reason to assume that the willing is what causes the motion. Our perceptions of causation are the result of what Hume calls “matters of fact”—synthetic a posteriori, or empirical, knowledge. Our knowledge of the past comes only after the past has happened. But this does not entitle us to infer synthetic a priori statements from a posteriori statements. We can only know things about what has passed. We cannot know anything about what is to come.

How does this affect how we are to operate in our daily lives? Obviously, we do not register surprise when objects behave as they always have in the past, because we expect them to behave as they always have as a result of our custom and habit. Hume's view is simply that if we are to be honest with ourselves, we must recognize that we cannot, in fact, make certain predictions about the future, but can only make statements about our past experience.

Cartesian Dialogue - Descartes' Ontological Argument

PHIL 202 Paper 1: Cartesian Dialogue January 25, 2011

Jack: Hey, Russell. What’s your position on the existence of God?

Russell: I don’t see any reason to believe in one. If God exists, why isn’t there any evidence of His existence?

Jack: The evidence isn’t physical, though. It’s inside you.

Russell: You’ve been reading Descartes, haven’t you?

Jack: Yes, and I think that he has a perfectly brilliant proof for the existence of God.

Russell: What’s that?

Jack: There are certain ideas that you just know are true, because they are so clear and distinct in your mind that you can’t doubt them. For example, you know you exist and can’t doubt that—right?

Russell: Yes, but what does that have to do with God?

Jack: Well, if there is a God, he would be perfect, right?

Russell: Yes, of course.

Jack: And can you imagine something that is perfect, and infinitely so?

Russell: Yes, I can imagine it.

Jack: That idea has to have come from somewhere, hasn’t it?

Russell: Yes—ex nihilo nihil fit

Jack: So the thing that caused this idea has to be as real as the idea itself. And you are not perfect; no one is. So you can’t be the source of this concept of infinite perfection. But the idea has to have come from somewhere—a source outside yourself. And the only thing that is infinitely perfect is God, and so God has to be the source of that idea.

Russell: Hmm… I think your reasoning is flawed.

Jack: How so?

Russell: Well, first of all, I think your terms are vague. I mean, “perfection” is just a hypothetical construct that isn’t defined very well. How would you define that?

Jack: I’d say that perfection is something that is complete and without any defects.

Russell: I can imagine those concepts quite well without needing God to explain them—I’ve seen things that are complete and free of defects before. And even if I hadn’t, I’d be able to extrapolate that concept from what I have experienced.

Jack: But I’m talking about an infinitely perfect substance.

Russell: Yeah, I don’t think that’s too hard to imagine. Just because I can imagine that something exists, doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to exist as I imagine it. I can composite ideas together or extrapolate from reality to imagine things that aren’t real.

Jack: But you can’t extrapolate a concept of a substance that is infinitely perfect from what you’ve experienced. You’ve never experienced infinite perfection.

Russell: But I can extrapolate those concepts. I’ve seen a line that’s finite, so it’s not hard to imagine one that just goes on forever. I’ve even experienced things that seem infinite—haven’t you ever been traveling across a large plain, and you can’t see the end of the road and it seems to go on forever? Even though the road isn’t actually infinite, it seems that way, and that’s what I think of when I imagine the concept of infinity.

Jack: Well, that doesn’t mean that God isn’t real.

Russell: You’re right—the mere fact that I’ve disproved one argument for God’s existence doesn’t in itself prove that God doesn’t exist. But you’ve got to admit that Descartes’ ontological proof for God doesn’t work.

Adventures in Linux and Other Miscellany

Well. It's been quite awhile since I last updated here; in the unlikely event that anyone reads this blog besides my mother (hi mom!) I shall give a rundown of what's happened in the last little while.

• I'm officially going to school year round. It was one of the best decisions I've made, I think. Last semester I took two philosophy classes, which I absolutely loved. If they had a philosophy major here and I wasn't so far along in my history major, I might just switch majors. As it is, I'm thinking I might get a MA in philosophy once I've got my BA, and then possibly a PhD as well. And then I'll be a dusty old philosophy professor, and it will be great!
• Towards the middle of last semester I deleted my Facebook account. First I just deactivated it, and then I deleted it for good. I'm so glad I did. I don't miss it at all--not one little bit. I highly doubt I'll ever touch Facebook again. Take that, Zuckerberg!
• I now have a 10-hour-a-week job working as a TA for one of the professors in the history department. It's a nice job; I can pretty much set my own hours, it'll look good on a resumé, and I'm very happy to have work. I'm going to be very busy this semester with the job and the 17 credits I'm taking, but I don't really mind. I like to keep busy.
• A couple weeks ago I switched my operating system from Windows XP to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx (a Linux distribution). I absolutely love it. My computer runs faster, and there are tons of little things that totally spoil me. I have a program called GNOME Do that allows me to open programs from the keyboard--I just press Ctrl+Space and start typing the name of the program I want, and it usually only takes one letter to bring it up. A good friend of mine who's a computer programmer helped me switch it over, and I was afraid that it would take me a long time to figure out how to use it, but I was able to use it functionally right away, and I'm starting to get pretty good at customizing it. I have had a couple of mishaps. The first week I accidentally deleted the wifi widget and replaced it with the wrong one, and my friend (he's a saint, I swear) spent several hours helping me get that sorted out. During finals week I also discovered the hard way that Linux doesn't get along very well with Adobe Flash--it froze up my screen, I tried to reboot to fix it, and ended up with a black screen with (to me) incomprehensible white script. Fortunately that turned out to be relatively easy to fix (again with my friend's help). I now play Pandora using a program called Pithos (which I find amusing, since pithoi [singular pithos] were Greek funerary urns), and have adjusted my settings in YouTube so it won't cause that problem again. With the exception of those two mishaps, using Linux has been just lovely. I can do everything with it that I could with Windows and more. Additionally, Linux gives the user much more control over how the computer works. At this point that doesn't really mean a whole lot to me since I'm not terribly familiar with the inner workings of computers, but I'm teaching myself how to use the terminal so that I at least know enough to fix problems instead of causing them. ;)

So, for anyone who was wondering, there are a few highlights from the last few months. I might upload a few of my philosophy essays from last semester if I deem them fit to put on the Internet. Cheers!