What do we do when the cathedral’s burning?

Transcript

Transcribed by machine from the recording.

Scott Chris, it's been a couple weeks you've been traveling. Were you in New Zealand twice? I was in New Zealand twice, and yeah, I'm so sorry that we didn't manage to... How many people in the UK would that be a normal response for? Have you been in New Zealand twice in a month? I mean, I would think that that's an elite group. I would guess it's an elite group, or at least an exclusive group, meaning size-wise, in any place except New Zealand.

Chris I mean, there are other adjectives I would add to that list. It's a bit insane. It's painful on the body. It's definitely disruptive to all the good habits that one tries to maintain in one's life. But yeah, the last... I mean, we got too much to sort through. So I was in New Zealand. I was at this amazing conference on circular economy, giving a keynote there. And it was about bridging How do we create leaders and how do we create conversations in society about the implications of AI? That was super cool. I mean, it was totally going into the lion's den and not being an expert on AI, but having some pretty well thought out views about where we need to be going in terms of how we think about the technology. That was a lot of fun. And I just got back this morning from sitting down with my book publisher and just like downloading.

Scott Hello. Hello, sir. Happy Easter, by the way.

Chris The other, not to keep rambling, but the other interesting holiday, not really a holiday, but milestone coming up on the 2nd of May, 2019, is the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death. And so we're recording this before that date, but I'm expecting a torrent of sort of Da Vinci-related stuff to pop at the beginning of May. Most of it's probably going to be poor and uninsightful. We might have to have a conversation about Da Vinci's lasting impact on humanity, which was actually gigantic in ways that probably most people don't think about.

Scott I was listening to, I think maybe it was Daniel Robinson or somebody giving this lectures on Western intellectual history, and he came to Aristotle and he said, it's as if you could imagine a group of extraterrestrials looking down at the human race, kind of muddling along incrementally, and one step forward, two steps back, and said, let's just give them a being, and they dropped Aristotle on the planet. I mean, Da Vinci probably less so, but... In that vein, right? I mean, sometimes individuals are integrated polymaths.

Chris Well, that's very interesting. So, I mean, you know Aristotle and his impact on civilization so much better than I do. But I think of him as someone who sort of brought directed thought into our consciousness in a really powerful way. And prior to Aristotle and kind of his generation, our consciousness was kind of trapped in mythology. These kind of celestial stories about balance, about heaven and earth, earth and sky, night and day. Natural cycles and revolutions, and they were, you know, they swirled around us and shaped our reality. And Aristotle was one of these people who somehow had the genius to step outside of that and to say that, no, no, no, to this sort of swirl of surrounding myth, we can penetrate it with, you know, directed thought, me the subject upon an object, and we can know things. We can create knowledge through the conscious purposefulness of our own thinking. Knowledge is like, what? But in a world before that was possible, that was this... Extraordinary breakthroughs.

Scott Yeah, I think he is the climax of, or the high point of that, starting with the pre-Socratics, thinking like, alright, can we do better than Homeric myth to understand reality? And starting with pre-Socratics, going on, you have people like Thales and Heraclitus and democracy, all these people. And then, you know, Socrates, Plato. And then, I mean, in some ways it's said that, you know, all of Western history is a debate. Western intellectual history is a debate between Plato and Aristotle. And on lots of things that's not completely wrong, especially on politics. Like, I mean, if you're thinking political theory and social organization stuff, I think that's not overstated.

Chris So that's interesting. So here's then the relationship between Aristotle and da Vinci. If you think of Aristotle as kind of the culmination of this new power to understand reality, then da Vinci, he was the culmination of a new power to represent reality. Because what, you know, maybe his most important contribution to sort of the world that came after Da Vinci was his power to represent sort of the physical world on the two-dimensional page, sort of linear perspective. And I mean, it sounds like we all learn this in grade school now, so it doesn't seem particularly profound. But in a world before it was possible to accurately capture an idea in the physical world, let's say, you know, a drawing for a machine you want to build, if you couldn't capture it on paper, then you couldn't transmit that idea on paper. You needed to build a physical model and take the model around and show it to people.

But there's a reason that people today, and every now and then you see it in the news, it's the reason that we can pick up Da Vinci's drafting designs for machines and make them today. But you couldn't do it for anyone's drawings before Da Vinci.

Scott Yeah.

Chris Was that he captured so accurately the idea on paper. And in a time of the printing press, of course, the impact of that technology to capture, to represent reality on paper. It went as far as the printing press did. The industrial revolution, the machines that powered it, would not have been possible without this innovation in representing reality, in drafting accurately. He's going to talk about that impact on the 500th anniversary of his death. But, you know, as I look at history and the history of ideas, especially, I actually think that, you know, that was the one that really mattered, one that we still work with today.

Scott Yeah, it's interesting because as we reflect on Western intellectual history and thinking of the fire at Notre Dame, and it's just this interesting, tragic phenomena, but the way we Thanks for watching. Remaking Notre Dame in a more cosmopolitan, secular, multicultural, multi-faith friendly symbol in Paris. And he said, the idea of a Christian West is particularly forcefully rejected, but even more banal terms like Western civilization and Judeo-Christian, once intended to offer a more ecumenical narrative of Euro-American history, are now seen as dangerous, exclusivist, chauvinist, alt-right. And yet there is also a way in which liberal discourse in the West implicitly accepts Part of the terrorist premise, this sort of recent terrorist attack, by treating Christianity as a cultural possession of contemporary liberalism, a particularly Western religious inheritance that even those who no longer really believe have a special obligation to remake and reform. With one hand, elite liberalism seeks to keep Christianity at arm's length to reject any specifically Christian identity for the society it aims to rule. But with the other, it treats Christianity as something that really exists only in relationship to its own secularized humanitarianism. Either as a tamed and therefore useful chaplaincy or as an embarrassing in-need-of-correction uncle. And he talks about how you see this in the public discourse. I mean, Ben Shapiro, who's a cantankerous conservative American commentator, but he tweeted out that in the light of the day it was burning, this is tragic.

And unless we take more seriously the Judeo-Christian philosophy and intellectual history, it symbolizes, you know, we don't really fully appreciate the tragedy. And people just laid into, you know, it just became this huge sort of, you know, there was a kind of multicultural discourse around Notre Dame being a symbol of... White cultural dominance, all this stuff. And then people, of course, coming back on this, this is too woke, too PC. It's fascinating because this is something that's not going to go away anytime soon, right? This uneasiness with the West's intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, cultural roots, right? I mean, that's just... It's ambivalent.

Chris So if I can sort of jump in and interrupt you there, I mean, the question that's sort of screaming in my head around Notre Dame is, and this seems to be at the heart of all the debate you described, what is it a symbol of? And that's, I think, the base question. What is it a symbol of? And also, then, what does it symbolize to rebuild it and how we choose to do it? And, you know, on the one hand, you would think the first question, I mean, it should be a very simple question, the Catholic cathedral. And yet, it has also stood on that place for, is it, 1,200 years or so? And having stood there for so long, it has also become a symbol of the city.

Scott Apparently, it is also a symbol of the French nation. And so it is...

Chris It is many symbols. It is many agendas. And I think that's what, in a sense, has got society stuck then. That therefore, rebuilding it symbolizes many things. And I guess then the question becomes, do we have to answer these questions? Do we have to solve these problems before... So Macron says, we're going to get it rebuilt in five years. It could take more than that time just to answer the question, what does it mean if we do that? Let alone, and therefore, how should we do it? And I suppose the safest way is just to rebuild it as brick by brick exactly as you can. And in that way, not answer, but just return to the question. So having rebuilt it, what does it symbolize?

Scott And there have been reconstructions in the past. It's not as if it was... 8th century is sort of pristine. I mean, it's been like any tradition evolving architecturally, you know, as things... There was this pew poll in America, and there was this... The response was basically a majority of Christians in America feel persecuted, which... It's really interesting to me in that, you know, I wear a Christian label. I get paid to be a Christian. I mean, I'm glad I don't get paid by my piety or how good a Christian I am because that would be bad sliding scale. It's a sliding scale. Yeah, exactly. You get less money the more pious you are. Exactly, exactly. But Ross Douthat, in this essay, he's kind of dealing with this. Like, on the one hand, the sort of left-of-center discourse, like Christians, white privilege, you're the most privileged. Even though, it's funny, because Christianity Today, the place it's growing... It's majority a non-Western, non-white faith. It's quickly become, you know, places like Africa, Asia, Latin America. But, you know, what's interesting is Douthat points to this tension where at the same time one can be sort of out of step with the cultural elite, right, and feel intellectually or culturally marginalized at the same time being, Part of a group, at least in North America, where you're pretty materially and culturally well-off. And it's just an interesting tension that gets at the tensions of questions of identity, right? How you negotiate all these. And usually, especially with all these forces and factors that are in tension, usually there's a quick emotional response. Which is oversimplifying.

Because, yeah, I mean, I think it is a complex... Because I think that some of the conservative commentators are right in that this is this sort of part, this sort of, you know, we talk about the medieval synthesis or whatever, where you had this kind of philosophical, theological, scientific, artistic kind of synthesis that created a lot, you know, and... Refined in the Renaissance and is the seedbed for much of Enlightenment liberalism and that sort of stuff. And yet you can't go back and we don't live in yesteryear and we are in a different place. And how do you live realistically with integrity in the midst of all of those realities? It's not easy.

Chris I don't have any answers to these questions. This experience of being persecuted, I suppose it must relate somehow to our sense of I don't have a well-thought-out answer to this, but the first thing that comes to my mind is our sense of righteousness. In the sense that, I mean, in order for me to feel persecuted, I also need to have, I guess, a strong sense of righteousness about my religious faith.

Scott And it's interesting, too, when people, like, in America say we're persecuted, which it's almost always... The only people I hear from are white Christians, right? It's generally not... And there really are Christians in the world who are persecuted. I mean, recently we saw some killed. And people, I mean, you know very well in China, I mean, which is one of the places where Christianity is thriving, and since it's growing exponentially, and it's persecuted. That's real persecution.

Chris And that's really helpful because you've helped me clarify what I think is worth teasing out and reflecting on. So what is the nature of persecution? And if we're not in a state where it's a quite blatant nature, you suffer physical consequences of attempting to practice the symbols and rituals of your religion. About the status of my faith and my beliefs, and that that is an aspect of the society I live in, I take as offense or violence against my right to... And then how do I finish that sentence? My right to be applauded for my particular faith, or my right to be free from... Because this is sort of the, you know, I guess a lot of the modernization project of the last 50 years has been to question everything, right? So is it sort of the persecution, the fact that

religion has now come under question and this I don't want to be questioned? I don't know if I'm really adding a lot of value to this conversation, but I think that you've stuck your finger right on this. And if we could just keep sort of prodding a bit deeper.

Scott Yeah, and I think emotionally for people, and this is, let me just lay my cards to you, but I generally, I have friends that articulate these sentiments, and I generally don't, I have a tough time identifying with them because I don't experience that. Like, I don't experience persecution. I don't experience, you know, I don't ever feel like being a religious person that identifies as a Christian in any circles is really, I don't feel at all marginalized. But I don't want to minimize the sense that, but I do think what's going on is people seeing all these people mourn this destruction of this great piece of beauty and saying, well, Things like Aristotle, Da Vinci, Notre Dame, our tradition and how we have an expanding, inclusive tradition. What does Chesterton say? That tradition is the democracy of the

dead. Or he says tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. To the sense in which, how do we have an inclusivity for the future and the past? I don't know.

Chris It's an interesting question. I suppose if recent history, especially our political history, has retaught any lesson, it is how powerful and particular our notions of identity can be. I think that where sort of the – I don't know if it's right to think of it as liberal because it's been such a different word in the American context than in kind of pretty much the rest of the English-speaking world. But anyway, there is sort of the extreme push of rationalism is to sort of deny the reality of these – There's semantic and ontological parts of ourselves, things that are real even if we can't scientifically measure them and how big a part of our reality that actually is. It's interesting that you mention sort of indigenous worldviews as maybe one way of getting inside the mind of someone who's, you know, of, say, a white Christian who feels persecuted. Like, I wonder if it's, what if it has to do with a sense that there should be some things that aren't Thank you very much.

Scott It's open to intellectual criticism because it needs to be the intellectual grist for lots of things, right? I mean, part of the persecution of Galileo wasn't really about the Bible. It's about Galileo overturning what they thought were scientific norms, which was part of a long-evolving scientific tradition that the church safeguarded. I mean, it was one of those things that... All of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality. How did it happen that from all this there could come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God and His Trinity, the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard's Sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caban and Sinwolf, How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons or a carpenter and his apprentice can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities? When I went to France in 1925, returning to the land of my birth, I was also returning to the fountain of the intellectual and spiritual life of the world to which I belonged. I was returning to the spring of natural waters, if you will, but waters purified and cleaned by grace with such powerful effect that even the corruption and decadence of the French society of our day has never been able to poison them entirely or reduce them once again to their original and barbarian corruption.

It's very moving to me because he looks at this sort of, you know, when you looked at Europe in antiquity, it did look like the backwater, you know, and this place where the dregs of the world were. And then through people like St. Patrick and there's, you know, there's these, there's this incredible civilization that develops. is brought to the surface by seeing those flames. I do think we feel like we're in a liminal space. It's just hard to navigate and negotiate.

Chris It is an extraordinary, I suppose, challenge to the modern mind to watch one of the best and most venerable symbols of Christianity burn and then be confronted with all of the aftermath. The varieties of behavior that ensue and the questioning of the motivations of it. But yeah, ultimately this question of, given the complexity of, given both the foundational and complex role of Christianity within France, but also Western civilization, how do we rebuild? And how much of present-day conflict and exploration of just the place of religion, the place of faith within modern society do we represent?

Scott You know, that one symbol is burning, shed light on violence and destruction that needed redressing, you know, and it's a beautiful thing. And I hope that somehow the sorting out of things creates more stories like that.

Chris I mean, it'll be very interesting to be alive through the rebuilding of Notre Dame. Because you know that it's going to be an ongoing symbol of these questions. And one wonders if there's going to be, you know, what the cultural implications, sort of what the conversations in France and, you know, and more broadly are going to be as the rebuilding takes place. You know, and will it I suppose the hopeful possibility is that it brings into sort of a little less confrontational and a more positive dialogue between those who feel persecuted by the practice of, let's say, Christian faith. And between those who think that religion is the root of all the problems in society. And I just wonder if maybe both sides are guilty of kind of... Overplaying their hands in that debate. Because it seems that it has become, in the U.S. as well, an

aspect of political and cultural division. And the reality of religion is much more its role in society that way. Thank you very much. But also, I'm gay and so I'm speaking to you, Mike Pence, and I'm complicating your political ownership.

Scott Right, right. In many ways, he's saying that the inclusivity people are, that part of the country is looking for, that he's saying Christianity is the ally of it, not the enemy. And that's an interesting kind of, where will the legacy sort out? Hey, I have to run because I have to pick up somebody from the airport, but whatever happens with the rebuilding, we should be the first people to live podcast from the new Notre Dame.

Chris Oh, I love it. Okay, we'll set it up. I'll work some of my relationships here in Europe. I mean, I'm sure we'll be the first ones to think about it. Absolutely. All right, my friend.