Before looking at some of the issues that will need attention, I would first like to record a few of the authors and books of the past that have sparked my interest further in this subject. Augustine, in his City of God, attributes the putative deeds of pagan gods to demons. A couple of other ancient Christian authors I have read (the apologists perhaps?) have done the same, but I do not recall who. He even assigns to those demons the same names as the pagans gave their gods. Although the influence of the spirit world upon historical events may be completely outside the domain of historical writing, it is not outside the field of the philosopher of history. Augustine also spills copious ink maligning individual deities and daemons, including Fate and Fortune.
In the opening chapter of Leviathan, Hobbes presents his view of the constitution of man and prepares the way for his epistemology to follow. Although this source will probably not be very fruitful in further study, it did open my eyes to some ways that epistemology and anthropology bear on my subject.
Boethius provides an excellent bridge between the pagan and the Christian way of thinking. The pagan worldview was being displaced in his day by the Christian worldview. His treatment of fate and fortune give him the guise of a pagan, but the work was conceived in the heart of a Christian.
I need to go back and read Book 2 of Aristotle's Politics. At the time I read it, I recognized something important to my subject, but I cannot remember what it was. I need a place to record ideas like this as they come to me. Likewise, there I have lost memory of pertinent passages in Descartes, Pascal, and even Hume.
An investigation of the relationship between cause and effect will inevitably lead along the trail begun by Aristotle and continued through Lucretius, Augustine, Aquinas (whom I have not yet read) and Berkely. Long ago I purposed the work through the index entries "Fate," "Cause," and "Chance" in Great Books of the Western World for other old authors whom I have missed.
Second, I will need to collect the issues that will need to be addressed in one place. Since this investigation could easily become the starting point for a rambling discourse into almost any field of study, there must be some kind of boundary to mark off its territory. Rather than using a definition as a boundary marker, perhaps I can just list similar fields which bear upon the subject, being careful as I feel my way through not to go too far afield. Such a method would not suit a dissertation prospectus, but here, I can set my own rules. A simple list will have to do. It is getting late.
Epistemology. There are several points of contact here.
Historiography. What is the historian's role in interpreting and recording history? What are his methods?
Ontology. This is at the heart of the relation between cause and effect.
Theology. The real starting point for this study.
Sociology. How does each worldview affect the way we live in this world? This is the field which I know least.
History of the philosophy of history. What others have thought and written through time. I need a less unwieldy name for this.
I will update this list as I think of more.
Next blog . . .
I would like to disclose my burden for Christian historians who will employ a historical method derived from a distinctively Christian philosophy of history to reinterpret history. We believers have been following conservative mainstream historians too long. I want to know what God was doing in the history of eighteenth century France, for example, without my having to strain my imagination to perceive it as a world in which the God I know was active.
Next next blog . . .
Imagine a world in which God is . . .
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