The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
by Karen Armstrong
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Book Summary Information
Author: Karen ArmstrongEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-10
ISBN: 0385721242
Number of pages: 592
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
Book Review: The Great Bifurcation: Man vs the Mob
Summary: 1 Stars
"The position men have given to Jesus is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts. Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It always believes in itself." Emerson, 'the Oversoul'
"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." Plato, Republic
The Great Transformation is a great intro to the ancient world. Its argument, however, treats its subjects with facile interpretations and an affected taste for the grandiose in religion--if it is remotely masculine, it is primitive backwards and evil (i.e. natural, empirical, scientific, reasoned), and if it is pacifistic, nihilistic or paternalistic, it is good (i.e. sublime, sycophantic, pity evoking, 'civic' ect.) Of course, the author is not above contradicting herself to push her existentially schizophrenic views on the ancients in relation to these tastes.
The main problem with her treatment of the main concept of Ahimsa in her thesis is that it is not only appropriated from Karl Jaspers "Axial Philosophers", it is a blatant distortion and misrepresentation of it. I quote here from Jaspers' section on the Buddha:
"Accordingly, the Buddhist monks were ENJOINED TO TRUTHFULLNESS both in their deepsest thoughts and in the actions and words of everyday life. They were further enjoined to be chaste, to abstain from intoxicating drink, not to steal, NOT TO HARM AN LIVING CREATURE (AHIMSA), and to observe the four modes of inner conduct: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity toward the impure and the evil."
--All caps are my own.
In Armstrong's formula, ahimsa is not only the antipode of violence but also against aristocracy, nobility, passion, reason/logic, science ect.; these are not only bad, but moreover EVIL. What is more, by implication these are what the modern world is in excess of according to her, and the source of such horrors as genocide, racism, chauvinism, people watching television for too many hours, school shootings et al. The logic is impeccable, but gives no insight into the eras discussed, rather, to Armstrong, history is to be read as an exegesis of the present: an exercise in intellectual narcissism of the first order.
On the contrary, her distortion of ahimsa as total rejection of violence is an ultimately indefensible ethical position: pacifism requires one to look on as a neighbor is robbed, a spouse raped, one's self beaten. It precludes the duty of self-defense and mutual aid in the service thereof at the price of Liberty. Armstrong is demanding annihilation over Liberty, annihilation as liberty, the ancient nihilist formula. A simple examination between aristocratically or monarchically lead rebellions and mob incited ones in history demonstrates which side has less in the ways of ethical principles, respect for human life ect. Mass wave attacks, guillotines and clamor for privilege vs. careful planning, a desire for liberty and the will to protect it for one's self and one's neighbors. Plato was right, Armstrong needs to stop tracing shadows.
Synopsis:
The leaps in logic are Evil Kieneval worthy but not unexpected coming from a existential farce pusher, who fails to extirpate the dangers perceived, let alone pose them coherently, whereas she does succeeds to promote every Myth that constitute the problems of which she is so superficially aware of and incapable of articulating. For example, non-violence means to Armstrong, that the Greeks were violent egotists who wasted their time being agonal and engaging in stuffy rational discourse; their establishment of science and philosophy, art and culture were O.K. Therefore, Buddhists and Confucians were more ethical. Lao Tzu was very significant, but since he more or less presented a system of metaphysics, ethics and epistemology different from Confucious, so he really is inferior to Confucious since he had more 'social conscience' [class conscious you mean?]. From this, early Judea was not a rabble of tribes but an advanced civilization, who established the foundation of Western Civilization [everywhere else, an oxymoron to proletarian Armstrong] because the apologist for their violent excursions and war deity Yahweh was Jesus, and Jesus was great. Plato and Aristotle tried, but since they believed ocholcracy was dangerous and supported other forms of social organization, they were tyrants and tyrants [individuals, e.g. Socrates] are enemies of the people. There are no such things as Ancient Egypt or Babylon.
The book's coherence hangs not so much by a thread, than as by levitation. The ethical insights are banal and platitudinous. The purpose of the book is not history or even a period of ethical discovery; it's the pedantic sermonizing of a snob telling you what you ought to believe and think about such things.
The Great Transformation is not about the ancient world, it is an extended justification of Armstrong's snobbish and puddle-shallow bourgeois spirituality interspersed with monumental ethical pretensions. The narrative exists solely as the means an indictment against aspects of the world that affirm ethical world views other than her own, which are in the main an eclectic collection of guileless and shameless pacifistic, nihilistic and fatalistic platitudes; these profound mores establish her place in the world of letters as educator and shepherd. "Bravo" --Still, plenty of heads will nod.
A final joke which runs counter to everything in The Great Transformation:
Q: Who are the greatest figures in Western history?
A: Jesus and Socrates, of course.
Q: Who killed Jesus and Socrates?
A: Democracy killed Jesus and Socrates.
The Great transformation ignores the single most important ethical question of the era as lived and died for by Jesus and Socrates: man vs the mob, liberty vs security, freedom vs equality (slavery). Armstrong either choses not to see this great bifurcation that runs through the history of human civilization that sacrifices man for ideals and mobs, or she herself is a crypto-advocate of the latter--via pacifism (Lay down and die.)
"The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul." Emerson, "the Oversoul"
Armstrong asks us to rely on the authority of the so called Axials, when the future of mankind rests on the actions of morally autonomous agents ethically independent of ideology and dogma.
"Your silence gives consent."
--Plato
Summary of The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions
From Karen Armstrong, the bestselling author of A History of God and The Spiral Staircase, comes this extraordinary investigation of a critical moment in the evolution of religious thought.In the ninth century BCE, events in four regions of the civilized world led to the rise of religious traditions that have endured to the present day--the development of Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, monotheism in Israel, and philosophical rationalism in Greece. Armstrong, one of our most prominent religious scholars, examines how these traditions began in response to the violence of their time. Studying figures as diverse as the Buddha and Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah, Armstrong reveals how these still enduring philosophies can help address our contemporary problems.
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