7 October, 2021
Dear Reader,
To my mind the greatest challenge of human education is the building and maintaining of historical awareness. How can we have even an inkling of where we stand and where we’re heading if our grasp of the past is feeble or non-existent? Human memory is so short, and deliberate bias is such a powerful weapon in the hands of anyone – on either side of a debate – who cares to use it. Right and left, it doesn’t matter: both will lie and distort to suit their purpose.
‘Live not by Lies.’ This splendid piece by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is inspirational. Most of us put up with liars because the personal cost of calling them out is too high a price to pay. Solzhenitsyn calls us to be brave.
In the Graeco-Roman world Stoics and Epicureans, unlike in so many ways, shared the same notion that history is cyclic: things recur and recur with remorseless tedium. In political terms the process can be illustrated like this: anarchy > democracy > oligarchy > monarchy > anarchy. Ungoverned human groups, so it goes, evolve methods of self-government which come to be dominated by powerful interest groups, and they in turn succumb to single-handed dictatorships (monarchy doesn’t just mean kings, of course, but includes the Hitlers and Stalins of this world), before they blow out or implode into anarchy again.
This is an ugly picture, and doubtless too tidy and simplistic, but there seems to be a degree of truth in it. We do see societies evolving or degrading. We know that our own has changed (in the great scheme of things universal suffrage, for example, is very, very new), and is still in flux. We cannot take our liberties for granted, for we know that they can be snatched from us if we drop our guard. Or we should know that, if ignorance of history has not dulled our sensitivity.
A cyclic view of history, however, is not Christian or Jewish. It is not the world view that drove the emergence of Western Civilisation. Christianity believes in progress – not the materialistic sort of progress that so excited our predecessors in that dynamic nineteenth century, but the progression from a couple of people in a garden to the countless numbers in the City of God.
Whether we are religious people who firmly trust in the grace of God, or whether we’ve lost our faith (or never had one, as is true of so many in this complex world), we need to break free from that fatalistic and cyclic mode of thinking. We have to try to be brave.
The history of Slavery demonstrates this kind of progression. For millennia it was common to virtually all human societies. Under the influence of Christianity it was somewhat ameliorated but never wholly eliminated. St Paul pleaded with Philemon to be merciful to his runaway slave Onesimus, a uniquely early (so far as I am aware) appeal for the application of what we would now call ‘human rights’ to a man who was legally a chattel. But early Christians could not have dreamed of a society in which slavery did not exist. And when Christianity grew to become a majority force in Europe it lingered and was even given new impetus by the opening up of Africa and America. The Church opposed it, and good Christians strove to improve the conditions of slaves, but as we all know the love of money and privilege usually prevails, even among many who profess themselves Christian. So it’s with us still, yet we are not the prisoners of a cyclic system, ever doomed to repeat itself, and we ought to fight against it with boldness and confidence.
This newsletter has had much to say about Covid and our response to it. In doing so we have incurred the wrath of some readers and the approbation of others. I think it important to stress that our focus is not medical but political: we are deeply concerned for the growth of authoritarian forms of governance, and for political, administrative or policing decisions that lead to human suffering. Two friends of mine have been grievously affected by Covid in the past week. One died of the disease, alone until almost the end, deprived of family contact for several days in ICU with only her telephone to cry into; the other was admitted to hospital with a psychiatric illness and is unable to have visitors, even her own husband. Her mental suffering is unimaginable. Such things should not be happening, under any circumstances.
With best wishes to all our readers,
David Daintree
IN DEFENCE OF REASON
‘Ultimately even relativists who deny the possibility of objective truth and insist that all claims are merely the narratives of a culture lack the courage of their convictions.’ Be Rational!, says Steven Pinker.
LIVING WITH AUTHORITARIANISM
According to James Bolt (Spiked 29 September), the Zero Covid dream is tearing Australia apart.
‘Calls to exclude the unjabbed from the vaccinated economy are rooted in spite. The scolds and sneers detest the deplorables but dress up their intolerance as virtue to feel good about it,’ writes Ramesh Thakur.
See also Covid: the New World Order by Alexandra Marshall.
CLERICAL CHILD ABUSE
Always terrible and never excusable. Michael Cook contextualises the latest damning report from France.
RAMSAY CENTRE SCHOLARSHIPS
are available to study in the United States for a Master of Arts in the Liberal Arts, focusing on the great books of the Western canon. For details join the October information webinar on the St John’s College, Annapolis, featuring current Ramsay Postgraduate Scholar, Ben Crocker:https://sjc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__1OvTZAoTH6SlL8fmtEIrA
SUMMER SCHOOLS 2022
10-14 January – Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin
Latin is arguably the mother tongue of Europe. Its literature is immensely rich. In a sense it never died; original work continued to be written in Latin up to modern times. This course will offer a general introduction to Latin with particular emphasis on medieval and ecclesiastical literature. We shall read original passages from Scripture, liturgy, history, theology and poetry, both secular and religious. There will also be an introduction to palaeography, including an opportunity to handle original medieval manuscripts. There will be a strong emphasis on the pronunciation of Latin in speech and music.
17-21 January – Western Civilisation – an Overview.
The Dawson Centre was founded to advance the notion that the Christian Faith and the Christian intellectual tradition that grew up with it are essential components of our civilisation: not optional add-ons, but core elements in the very fabric of the culture without which it cannot survive. Christopher Dawson maintained that a true human culture cannot exist at all without a religious component, and the Christian religion is inherent in and inseparable from our Western culture. We are offering this course for the first time as a sort of a ‘taster’, a broad and sweeping view of the terrain and some of its principal landmarks. It cannot claim to be any more than a sketch of the panorama, but we hope it will meet a need and inspire participants to delve further into our fascinating and rich heritage.
Write for further details about either of these short courses.