Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

Season 3, Episode 6: Richard E. Rubenstein, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages

• Jeffrey Sachs • Season 3 • Episode 6

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Join Professors Jeffrey Sachs and an expert on religious conflict, Richard E. Rubenstein as they discuss Rubenstein’s book, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages. Rubenstein skillfully guides us through the vivid controversies of the Middle Ages, making the philosophical debates of yesteryear both lively and accessible

Together, they discuss the riveting events that unfolded - sparking riots, initiating heresy trials, and causing seismic shifts within the Catholic Church.Throughout their discussion, you’ll uncover the origins of the age-old tension between reason and religion, a divide that continues to shape contemporary discourse. Listen in to gain insights into the foundational ideas that underpin modern thought, as we traverse the historical landscape where the clash of ancient wisdom and medieval upheaval set the stage for intellectual revolutions yet to come.

The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Im Jeffrey Sachs. Welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world leading authors who
have written, scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and
the challenges of building a decent world.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Readings everybody. Welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs. I am absolutely thrilled to have a
wonderful scholar, a dear friend, a, a great thinker in how to make peace on the planet. Talk about one
of my favorite books, not only of his but of all books. Uh, I think it's an absolutely splendid, uh,
spectacular book and a, a great read. And that is Aristotle's Children. The subtitle is How Christians,
Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated The Dark Ages. Richard, thank you so
much for joining. Richard Rubenstein is Professor Emeritus, uh, at George Mason University and has led
wonderful programs on conflict resolution and peacemaking at the George Mason and globally for
many, many years. So it's just an absolute delight to be together with you.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh, thanks so much, Jeff. I I'm very happy to be here. And as you know, I think you're one of my role
models and I'm very, I'm delighted to be here, to be able to talk with you about this book.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
It's so much fun, and thank you so much. You know, I consider myself an Aristotelian. I love and adore
Aristotle. I think he gave us so much of Western culture and ideas. I came to Aristotle relatively late in
my career because I thought as a young person when I was starting out in school, I just wanted to learn
some math and how to pull the levers, uh, on the economy. So I loved economics, and I had actually
walked across the hall at Harvard in my freshman year from a course on political philosophy to, uh, a
course on, uh, mathematical economics and how I got started. So it was only, uh, uh, many years later
that I came to, uh, absolutely, uh, love and appreciate Aristotle and ancient Greek wisdom and what it
means for all of us. So, I wanna start asking, what about you? Was Aristotle and early love, or how did
you come to a whole line of work? Because, uh, you have written beautifully, uh, wonderfully on early
Christianity on, uh, Aristotle, uh, on another wonderful book on, uh, the, uh, Hebrew prophets, uh, of
yours. So how did you come to this line of inquiry?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, I really came to it as you're suggesting, I came to it through being interested in religion, in
particularly in religious conflict. I was teaching, um, uh, and still am connected with, um, the Jimmy
Carter School of Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. And I'd become fascinated
by the problem of religious conflict in our own society, as well as in the world in general. Earlier on, I'd
written some books on terrorism, and, um, I got more and more into thinking about why religion, which
is supposed to be a, a cause of peace, you know? Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
<affirmative> the better side of
Speaker 2 (03:28):

Us. That's right. How had it become such a bone of contention for so many people around the world? So
I wrote a book called, when Jesus Became God, which was, uh, a book about the Aryan controversy. And
I wrote that book 'cause I wanted to know why, what looked like a hair splitting theological controversy
that should have been worked out by priests or monks, you know, in their talking with each other,
ended up being a conflict, which burned down cities was a conflict over the nature of Jesus' divinity. So,
I, that it made me wonder how, why do religious matters? How do they become linked with social
conflict, and how do they become so destructive and so violent? So after I'd wrote that book,
Speaker 1 (04:11):
By the way, how immediately relevant in these weeks and months? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I'm afraid. So,
Speaker 1 (04:16):
With the New War in, uh, Israel and Palestine, it's, uh, terrible, but so much religious underpinning to
this.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
We absolutely, we need to get back to that, because what happens in this book in Aristotle Children, is
that really what I expected to be another war story turns out in a way to be a kind of peace story. Mm-
Hmm. <affirmative>, when I started writing the book, I was interested in the fact that, as you know, the
works of Aristotle, which had been lost to Western Europe, most of them had been lost to Western
Europe for a long, long time. After the collapse of the, um, Roman civilization and the so-called Dark
Ages, Aristotle's work were rediscovered in Spain when the Christian Knights and Christian rulers went
into Spain to take Spain back from the Arabs, from the Muslims who had controlled it for 400 years, they
discovered, you know, not a backward civilization, but a, a civilization in many ways more advanced than
their own, in which, among other things, the Muslims had translated the works of Aristotle into Arabic.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And not only the works of Aristotle, but of other Greek geniuses like Galen, the founder of medicine,
and Archimedes, you know, the founder of engineering and all of that. Well, Aristotle was one, but for
Christians or for people interested in good and evil and how to live, and, and also people who were
becoming interested again in nature during the, the hard years in Europe, uh, the years of foreign
invasions and great, and poverty and all of that, there was not a great deal of interest in nature, but
interest in nature revived in connection with developments that have, were transforming Europe,
increasing agricultural production, increasing population, creating cities, creating universities, uh, kind of
revival of culture in Europe in the 11th and 12th and 13th centuries, which some people call the
Medieval Renaissance. Well, what happened was when the Christians went into Spain and they found all
of this stuff, Aristotle's writings on nature, Aristotle's philosophies are Aristotle's ethics, Aristotle's
writings on the soul and the rest. It's been called the most revolutionary intellectual discovery in
Western history, and it probably was.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's an amazing moment. And let's take a pause here just for one moment to give listeners a, a sense of
the chronology of all of this. Uh, just so that they have the background. If, if I could be very, uh, quick in

this and please, uh, jump in at any moment. Just to say that Aristotle lived in the fourth century BC in
ancient Greece. Uh, he was of course the student of Plato, who was the student of Socrates and
Aristotle's, uh, great works were especially between three 50 BC and his death in, uh, 3 23 BC I, I believe
that is, or 3 24. But in any event, uh, this great, great genius, I would say, uh, you know, perhaps the
greatest of all geniuses of the Western world wrote towards the end of the fourth century dc and
together with the platonic influence and other Greek schools of thought stoics, uh, and, uh, the
Epicureans and others, uh, had a profound and lasting influence on Western civilization, including not
only the Greek era, but then the Hellenistic era that followed with Alexander the Great, and then the
Roman period, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Then very quickly, when, uh, as Christianity rose and the Western Roman empire fell, that was a kind of
a double whammy to Greek thought, because Christian theologians, uh, were skeptical or radically
antagonistic in many cases, to pagan philosophy and pagan knowledge. And the Roman era, which had
embodied the Greek intellectual thought, had disappeared in the West. And so, as you said, the
Aristotle's texts disappeared from the Western Mediterranean region, survived in the Eastern Roman
Empire, much of which was then conquered by the new Muslim rulers. And the Muslim rulers were
extremely interested in Greek knowledge. Uh, they wanted to suck up all the knowledge they could find
from ancient Greece and Rome, India and elsewhere. And so, some of the greatest learning was in the
golden Age of the Islamic philosophy and Islamic thought in, in Baghdad, in other centers of Arab
scholarship in ancient Cairo Fota in the medieval times, and in Spain under the, uh, citz, the Umay citz,
uh, of the Muslim conquerors. Then, as you said, a reconquest took place over several centuries in which
Spain was returned. One could say to the Christian rule, that had been the case of the Roman period
before the conquest by the Arab and Islamic rulers. And you pick up the story there, as you say, all of a
sudden, <laugh> this unbelievable wisdom in the form of Arabic translations of ancient Greece, ancient,
it's like discovering the world's greatest library suddenly, that they had no idea existed in Western
Europe. And that's, uh, where this incredible story of yours takes off.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah. Good. Thank you, Jeff. That's a perfect, perfectly wonderful summary of the history that leads up
to this. And you mentioned that early Christian thinkers would consider this kind of thing, pagan
philosophy, and they would be suspicious of it, and were suspicious of it for lots of reasons. So I knew
that before I started doing this research. And, and so really what I expected to find was a kind of old
time battle between fundamentalists and modernists, or the equivalent, you know, I was, I expected to
find the Christian dogmatists resisting Aristotle, and the Aristotelians being kind of like, uh, oh, I don't
know. I'm, I'm a intellectually, I guess I'm a child of the sixties, you know? So I, and I, in my book, I talk
about Peter Avalor, who is a great teacher at the University of Paris, who was a kind of rock star, who
was on really almost like a sixties character in some ways.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And really, I expected to find a great battle between the kind of Christian fundamentalists and the
Aristotelian modernists. And then I was very surprised to discover that that's not really what happened
at all. At the beginning. That's what happened. The Christians go into the great Muslim cities of onus of
Spain, which I have to say, in some ways, I'm really tempted to recommend another book to people who
are listening to this. There's a book by a woman, uh, who died recently, unfortunately named Maria
Rosa Menocal called The Ornament of the World. And it's about this Spanish civilization that was really,

in some ways you don't wanna sentimentalize it and, and exaggerate things, but it, in some way it was a
magnificent civilization.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
In some ways we
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Were just in, uh, Cordoba in, uh, se severe, uh, in Toledo, unbelievable beauty.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It, it, it is, and it was a place where the Arab rulers had learned to tolerate even more than tolerate even
to encourage, uh, a kind of cultural diversity. It wasn't problem free, but especially comparing that with
what happened in Europe later on. It was a golden age where Christians and Jews and Muslims and all
kinds of ethnic groups as well could live together in peace and discuss things with each other. This kind
of collaboration made possible the translation of the works of, uh, Aristotle from Arabic. They had
already been translated into Arabic and other places in the, in the Arab Empire. But now how, the
question was how they were gonna get translated into Latin. So you had a situation in which you had
Jewish Arab and Christian scholars working together. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> to translate these works
from Arabic into Ilian and then from custodian into, into Latin. And anyway, it's a, it's a really wonderful
story.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
And one can actually see in Toledo, the place where this, uh, large translation that's
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Absolutely
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Was, was underway.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
And then you have kind of historical, uh, contingency, you have luck. As luck would have it, all of this
was happening when Europe had reached a point that new ideas like this were going to spread and
spread very rapidly. Of course, there was no printing press yet, and they had to be copied by monks, but
they copied thousands of them and spread them all over Europe. So, as you said before, the initial
reaction on the part of the European Christians was negative. And let's say why the initial reaction was
negative, not only because Aristotle was a Greek, was a pagan, but because of certain things that he
believed, but also even some ways even more because of his attitude. The things that he believed that
were controversial into Christians were things like the eternity of the universe. Aristotle thought every
effect is the result of a cause, he said, and therefore, if every effect is a result of a cause, you have an,
you can have an infinite chain of causes and effects. When I say that, every effect, um, has a cause. And
that, that's kind of, that's one of the fundamental doctrines of Aristotelian alien. Then I'm also pointing

at something else. Aristotle was such an interesting guy. He was in, in one way, one of the first empirical
scientists. He was particularly interested in biology and, um, living in Greece and stuff. He was in, he was
interested in, especially in the, in sea life, and he was interested in plant life
Speaker 1 (14:46):
With incredible powers of observation and also dissection of, uh, the, uh, the animals and plants and
embryology. <laugh> is stunning.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
That's right. So the first thing to think about just as being an Aristotelian characteristic is this kind of
concentration, this kind of focus on the natural world and really wanting to observe, really wanting to
see what was going on there. For example, is, is that if you're looking at something in the natural world,
is that just one thing or is it composed of parts? And if so, what are the parts and how do the parts
relate to each other? You know, that sort of thing. So, when I say that there is some resistance to this
sort of thing on the part of Christians, what, what I'm getting at is in Europe for centuries, where the
main, your main job is to survive. And where life is really very tough and you manage to survive, and you
seek consolation for, for, for this really short brutish life in thinking about, uh, the life to come.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
So, man, you know, the old saying, man is born, suffers and dies does show you what you're thinking
about is how can I live a, a somewhat decent life as long as I've got the life, but how can I then, how can
I die well and go to heaven? And that sort of otherworldly cast of thought, which really lasted for a long,
long time in Europe, is challenged by people who say, wait a minute, look at this fish. You know, how can
it breathe under water <laugh>? And I mean, for really a long time, I think the attitude in Europe was,
who cares? I mean, we're worried about how we're gonna make it to the till, till tomorrow with the
Vikings invading and, you know, and everything else that's going on. Um, so Aristotle's attitude is one of
intense interest in the natural world, coupled with a feeling that we belong here, that the natural world
is our home, and that we have some relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
We're natural too. We have some relationship to nature. And this is where Aristotle disagreed with his
great teacher, Plato. 'cause Plato was always talking about how what we see in the world isn't really
real. What's really real are the ideas that stand behind all of this. That the principals, so Aristotle had
had a complicated relationship with Plato, who was his teacher, but his emphasis was always on, no, this
is, we belong here. Uh, we need to figure out what our relationship with nature is. And there's also
another implication in this. We can be happy here. Not only is this our home, but it's a place where if we
handle ourselves reasonably and correctly with some sensitivity to other people's needs, we can be
happy.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And just to add, uh, for, uh, people to take a look at one of the most wondrous, uh, works of art, uh, the
Fresco by Rafael in, uh, the Vatican of the School of Athens, because at the center of that great picture,
which is actually the cover of your book. Yeah. <laugh>, I'm just realizing again, yes. It's is, uh, Plato
pointing upward and Aristotle, uh, with his hands forward. Plato saying It's the ideal world. And Aristotle
saying, no, we, we remain down, down on Earth. Yeah, true. Uh, and interestingly, uh, Plato carrying one
of his dialogues that TEUs and Aristotle carrying the ethics under his arm. Uh, so it's an absolutely

wonderful, fantastic picture. But, uh, but the wonderful cover of, of your, your book. So it is Aristotle
down to Earth. And so what happens when this reaches Paris, these, uh, new ideas of the practicalities,
the happiness, the groundedness of Aristotelian thought?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, what happens is so interesting because it's sort of, it's an illustration of the really, of the
impossibility, of legislating ideas, the impossibility of limiting ideas. I think, you know, sometimes these
days, especially we assume the efficiency of totalitarianism, or we are very aware that a few people
have a lot of power, and many people don't have very much power. And sometimes I think we can get
pessimistic about that, thinking, well, you know, the people with power are gonna tell us what to think
and how to think. But what happens in Paris is that the church initially, the bishop of Paris initially says,
you're not allowed to read this. A Aristotelian stuff is dangerous. And not only because of the attitude
questions that we just mentioned, but because he's teaching things that are so logical that if there are
things that we believe that aren't so logical or that don't seem that probable, in a naturalistic sense,
reading Aristotle and adopting his views on things can undermine some basic Christian beliefs, like a
belief in, um, the resurrection of, uh, dead people. For example, Aristotle's review is once you're dead,
you're dead. And so how, how can, how can anybody be resurrected that might become a question and,
and all sorts of other beliefs that the also, uh, might, might be, might be questionable. So the bishops
saying, you can't read this stuff, and, uh, everybody reads it anyway. I mean, that's what's, that's what
happens is people are so interested that the whole culture is kind of coming alive. And people want to
see, well, what, what does Aristotle say? And then they want to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And what's, uh, interesting, and you mentioned it, and just to underscore, this is the moment of the
birth of European universities. Uh, bologna has come first, uh, at the very end, uh, of, uh, the 11th
century, uh, uh, but University of Paris soon after, uh, and other universities. So there actually are
people reading. There are students, uh, there are student groups, uh, that, uh, are organized. Uh, in fact,
these early universities generally were kind of pickup institutions where groups of students would come
together and find someone to teach them. Uh, so this was like reading clubs in, in a way. Exactly. We
found some really interesting juicy stuff we wanna read, we're gonna talk about it.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Right. So that's exactly what happens. And there are students, the universities are, say the University of
Paris is in Paris. Oxford is is in Oxford, England. But the students of these universities are from all over
Europe too. They come from all, they come from all over the place, and they live in ethnic communities
that are known as nations. And, uh, just as you say, they favor some, some teachers get big crowds.
Other teachers don't get big crowds and have to, you know, find something else to do. Well, the
interesting thing that happens then is that since two things are happening, one is generally the students
want to read and talk about Aristotle. And they, they're not interested in talking about Aristotle. I'm
thinking about the sixties. Again, we were interested in reading Marx because, well, we wanted to
understand what was going on in Vietnam and other places, and we thought that would help, but also
we wanted to, um, make trouble. Right? <laugh>, <laugh>, it was a
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Good, good trouble.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Good trouble. It was, it was, it was kind of a rebellious act that really was not what was going on. When
the, when the, the aristotelians in some, let me say this, it's kind of complicated, but mostly students
were not interested in Aristotle because they were out of love with Christianity. You know, they weren't
interested even, even necessarily in reforming Christianity. They were interested in Aristotle. One,
because they had become interested in the nature and in life and in our potential to understand things.
You know, the Great Revolution was a revolution of confidence in our ability to understand, to make
sense of things. And so for a long time, that had been a very, a whole suspect activity.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
And that is indeed what's so wonderful about reading Aristotle 2,300 years later, how logical, how
systematic, how rational, how balanced, how judicious, uh, it's true. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing.
It's true. And, uh, one, one of the things about Aristotle also is that he always starts an analysis of any
subject with the best received opinion, a method, uh, of his, uh, that he called Enda, which is what, what
are the knowledgeable people say about this topic? And it's exactly the method till today that we use in
a scientific paper where the first section of the paper is what is said about this topic. And so Aristotle
started that it's compelling <laugh> because you're brought up to date on this range of issues. Yeah. And
then he goes into, well, here's, uh, how to think about this.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, I thought of that too. You know, uh, Jeff, when I was in law school and we were taught in law
school, if you're gonna write a brief, what you have got to do is not, you not only make your arguments,
you make the arguments for the other side. You anticipate what the other side is gonna say and answer
those arguments. And if you don't do that, you don't have a good breed. Well, Aristotle did that, and
that became under Catholic leadership in Europe, part of the Scholastic method.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Exactly. Uh, aquinas's methods. Exactly. What are the three objections to this? Exactly,
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Exactly. So what I was gonna say was that these, the students are not just being rebellious when they
read Aristotle, they want to understand, but also their faith tells them that God created everything. God
created the universe, and whatever the universe contains, we are discovering government. It, it's a way
of discovering God. And there can't really be any fundamental conflict between what science discovers
and what God did <laugh>, because the, the last thing that any of them wanted to do was to be involved
in a, a heresy called the double truth, where you would say, well, science says this, but religion says that.
And they're, and they're opposite, but they're both true. No, they said that's not. And St. Thomas',
Thomas Aquinas's primary article of, of his primary method and article of faith, in a way, was that there
there is no, there can't be any, any fundamental conflict between religion as he understood it, and
science.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Right. And, and, uh, we hear that, uh, actually from Pope Francis today. That's right. How faith, faith and
reason of, of course, how could there be any conflict? So the image that we have, uh, in, uh, much of,
uh, our discussion, that there's this pitch battle between, uh, science and religion, or between faith and
reason for these receivers of Aristotle, these students and these great scholars that you talk about, was

no, science is revealing God's work and God's plan. It's, it's the same. It's another way to read the book,
the Divine book.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
That's exactly, so let me give two illustrations of this, kind of two sides of this. One is sometimes I think if
I could go to any school, you know, be in any classroom at any time, where, where would I might like to
be? I went to Harvard like Jeff did, and which is, which a wonderful place to study. But I think if I could
study any place, I'd like to be in Peter Avalara's class. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
<affirmative>. That was pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
That's, that's one
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Pretty interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
So I'll give you an illustration of what Avalard did. This was Christians using Aristotle to challenge certain
Christian doctrines, but not the fundamentals of faith. And when I say challenge, I mean challenge and
restate reform, if you like, intellectually reform Christian doctrines. So one of, um, Avalara's famous
lectures where he asks the question, he always starts with the question, and he asks the question, did
the Jews sin in killing Christ? He takes the gospel accounts of the crucifixion, which lay a lot of blame on
the Jews, not the Jews generally, by the way, but Jewish leadership. And he says, well, that was of
course, that that was deicide, that's sinful. And that, as you know, became one of the basises for
antisemitism in Europe for centuries and centuries, was the charge of dey that the Jews had killed Christ.
So Avalard says, it all depends what you think sin is.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
The question that he asked to, to make a long story short, is, if you don't think he's God, if you don't
think he's the son of God, can you be guilty of dey? And the answer is no, not if sin is a matter of
intention. If the primary factor in making a sin, sin is that you do something knowing it's wrong, which by
the way, was Saint Augustine's definition of sin. Augustine does a chapter in his confessions where he
talks about eating the pears on a pear tree, knowing he wasn't supposed to take those pears from the
tree. And then it's not, you know, it starts out kind of a joke, and then it becomes not a joke at all,
because he says, I want to do what I know I shouldn't. And that's the problem. And Avalard takes the
same definition. And he says, if the Jews sincerely believed that Jesus was just a guy and not, you know,
not divine, they can't be guilty of deicide.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Well, that to some people may seem today like common sense. It was semi revolutionary in Paris. He
didn't get intermediately into trouble over that. He got into trouble over trying to explain the Trinity in
rationalistic terms. But it was a spectacular class. And when the class was over, all of the commentators
say the students went out in the streets and continued the discussion. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>.

And the point was, let's just, let's talk about it. There's nothing we can't talk about. But I think actually, if
I could go back to Paris and be around in those centuries, I think I would wanna be in the 1240s or 1250s
at the University of Paris when St. Thomas was debating with St. Bonaventure. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
<affirmative>. Tell us about that. Uh, briefly.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Well, that's where Thomas believed that human reason was divinely given to us.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Just let me, uh, pause for one moment to, uh, explain Thomas Aquinas, who was, uh, one of the great
saints of, uh, the Catholic church till today was a brilliant young Dominican scholar who, uh, became a
student of Albert Magnus, who was one of the giants in the reception of, uh, Aristotle Albert, the great
Albert Magnus. And his student was Thomas Aquinas, who arguably is the most important Christian
philosopher, perhaps in history, I would say, and certainly in the church today, the, uh, foundation of the
Catholic church's modern social teachings. And I wanted just to read one phrase from your book where
the students mock the appearance of Thomas Aquinas. Said they, he's a big dumb lumbering guy, and
they call him like a dumb ox. And, uh, <laugh> Albert Magnus is said to have turned firmly on the
students to have rounded on them saying, you call him a dumb ox. I tell you, this dumb ox shall bellow
so loud that his bellowing will fill the world <laugh>. And it's incredible because he did fill the world. So
back to, uh, your classroom with Thomas Aquinas.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, he's, he's, so, anyway, I, it would've been something to hear him lecture. Thomas believed deeply
that reason was God's greatest gift to us, a belief, by the way, which at the end of his life, he, he also
questioned in the classroom and in debates with his fellow monks and with the students, Thomas was
passionately, uh, involved in trying to reconcile what we would now call science and religion,
remembering that, you know, Aristotle didn't make that distinction at all. That when Aristotle talked
about the world, his philosophy included much of what we would, we would call now biology and, and
psychology. But also it included ethics and included philosophy. He was not a specialist. Right. He didn't,
this is before the kind of separation of these disciplines, which has proved in to us. So in some ways very
advantageous, and in other ways a curse.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
But of course, Aristotle had to invent these disciplines first, which is amazing to me, because almost
everything you wrote was the first great text on the particular subject,
Speaker 2 (32:18):
<laugh>. That's true. That's true. So, so Thomas was an Aristotelian. And what that meant for him was
that if you could, you would look at nature and you would try to understand nature. There was no
problem as far as he was concerned with believing that nature operated according to certain chains of
cause and effect that were totally natural. But that you could trace the origins of all of this back to God,
that God had put into effect a system in which causes produced effects in an explicable way, in a rational
way, and rational to Thomas didn't just mean something that was going on in our minds. It meant

something that was going on in the universe. So when he was affirming that there was a divine source
for all of this, he was also affirming that the universe was, in some ways intelligent and intelligible.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Right. So this produced a few problems. One problem was, how could you explain Christ? How could you
be, how could you explain God becoming man and dying for the sins of humankind? How could you
explain that things were created out of nothing, creation, x nilo, a couple of items like that, like, like this.
And his answer was, there are a few things you can't explain rationally. There, there are some things
which have to be accepted on faith, Thomas said, but very few mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, the
existence of God himself, Thomas thought could be proved rationally
Speaker 1 (33:57):
According to a kind of Aristotelian idea, that there had to be a first mover, a prime mover.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Exactly. And then when it came to other things, like, was the universe eternal or was the universe was
there a big bang? You know, was the universe created somehow out of nothing? Thomas got himself
into some trouble with people. I mean, he was considered a radically became the thinker of the church,
the Saint Thomas. But before that, he was considered dangerous.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
And one of the things that made him dangerous was he said, well, you can't really prove logically
whether the universe is eternal or not, is something that you can't really prove one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
One of the things, Richard, that as I was reading it first, the debates and then, uh, the fights over,
whether you could teach Aquinas or not, whether he would lecture, what writings were allowed. And
then most importantly, who would be hired next, A Dominican or a Franciscan. What overwhelmed me
in reading your text was that this is like peering in on, uh,
Speaker 2 (35:01):
A faculty meeting,
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Pure faculty meeting from the, from the year 1280. And it's exactly the same as the faculty meetings
that, that we have until today,
Speaker 2 (35:12):
<laugh>. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1 (35:15):

It's just a wonderful gossip also. And they're fighting with each other and fighting over tenure positions
and who's gonna come next? And, uh, it's exactly what you expect and want of a university.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So anyway, what happens is you have a period of time in which science and religion have kind of learned
to live together. For one thing, it it doesn't last forever. Thomas himself, at the end of his life, decides
not to write anymore because he has a religious experience. There are some accounts of that
experience. Some are fairly strange. I mean, they're interesting accounts of people were claimed to have
seen, uh, St. Thomas kind of floating in the air and so on. But at any rate, he said he had discovered
things that he couldn't talk about, and that he eventually retired to Sicily. He'd come from Sicily at the
time when that was the cultural center of the world, Sicily Kingdom of the two Sicily's. He came from
around Naples, but it was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicily's. He retired there, and he, um,
eventually died.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Just to mention, by the way, for the listeners, this is the 750th anniversary. Exactly. In 2024, on March
7th, he died on his way actually to, uh, what was going to be an attempt to bridge the schism that had
developed in the church between the Western Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. And he
died in a monastery fas nova on, uh, March 7th, 1274. So we're at the 750th anniversary. Exactly. Now,
uh, just a very poignant moment in a poignant time. Wow. But, uh, please, uh, back to you.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
No, that's, that's interesting. Thank you for that. You reminded me of that. Thank you. So the other thing
that happens is that the Aristotelian movement has produced various great characters like Peter Avalard
and then Thomas, but it doesn't stop there. It then produces people, you might call left Thomas <laugh>,
or, or an maybe anti Thomas, postmodern Thomas, in which in particular two figures who I write about
in the book, and I won't bother, you know, we won't talk in detail about them now, but Dun Scotus and
William Ivanka are brilliant Aristotelians who kind of start to turn, in some ways Aristotle's own methods
against him. So I have to, I have to say that two things are happening at the end of the 13th century,
around the time Thomas dies. You have Christian philosophers, like the ones I just mentioned, especially
Hamm, who start saying things like, look, you can't say that God is causing all of the, the things that
happen on earth, all that this natural law, which Thomas has believed so deeply in both in terms of
human law and justice, and also in terms of scientific law.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
He believed in the law was natural, and law was from God and William of Ackman and others are saying,
but wait a minute, God can do anything he likes. And the absolute power of God and the sovereignty of
God means that all, all of this could change any time, and that everything is provisional then Yes, the
natural laws are natural laws, but if there are laws of God, then they're always gonna be the same. And
also, you know them in a very absolute kind of way. But we are here to tell you, ham says, well, I'm here
to tell you that all of these things are provisional. They change before they can change again. And he
started, when you read Ham, you, you know, you feel like you're reading someone more modern in
some ways than Thomas Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And this is kind of opening the door to scientific
relativism
Speaker 1 (39:01):

And and doubt everywhere, and that That's right. Skepticism. And, uh, David Hume centuries later
saying, just because the sun rises, uh, in the east every day, can you be sure that it will the next day?
Speaker 2 (39:13):
That's right. Exactly. Exactly. So, but the other thing, which is a mindblower is that while all of this
philosophical and religious talk is going on in the University of Paris, you know what's happening to the
University of Paris, the faculty is inventing physics. And people like John Boan, uh, arrest me and others,
they are doing experiments and theorizing about things like motion in which they're questioning
Aristotle, and they're doing it in a way which Aristotle themself would've approved of. They're saying,
wait a minute, Aristotle says, if you toss something in the air, it continues to move through the air for at
least for a while because the air behind it is displaced. And you look for a natural for something in the
air, an ether or something, which is pushing the object, which allows the object to continue going. So
you, you have these theologians, they're all theologians at the University of Paris saying, no, but wait a
minute.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
We've done various experiments and we're not finding any evidence that air is being displaced behind
objects that are moved. In fact, you can spin a top and you can see there's, there's no displacement of
air there. So let's be scientific like Aristotle was. And let's realize once you throw a thing into the air, it's
gonna continue to move for a while because you threw it. And we're gonna call that impetus. Not only
can we say that's what's happening, but we can measure it. We can multiply the volume of what's being
thrown by the speed of which it's being thrown. And this is happening 300 years before Galileo. So
before Galileo gets into his big fight with the church over whether the sun is at the center of the
universe or the, the earth is at the center of the universe, you have guys at the University of Paris saying,
you know, the earth might be at the center of the universe because there's no way you can prove,
because whatever you think about motion depends on where you are. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> where
you're doing the observation. That insight then gets proved, if you like, by Galileo. But the reason I'm
mentioning this is because we're so often we think about science versus religion or science versus the
church. Galileo fights this heroic fight, and actually he's forced to recant after a while. And you, and so
we kind of think of reason and faith as always being an opposition. But these principles of physics were
discovered at the University of Paris when it was under Catholic control.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
And where everybody was in the church.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
And we could, by the way, jump forward and remember that modern genetics was invented by a monk,
by, uh, Gregor Mendel <laugh>. And there are countless examples of exactly that the interplay of
religion and scientific advancement is very complex and often deeply synergistic. Yeah. I would love to
continue for hours with you, but we're coming close to the end of the time. I wanted to jump several
centuries to the present on two points. One, this advancement, as you say, turning Aristotle on its head,
introducing skepticism led to a kind of antagonism to Aristotle as an enemy of science for some
centuries, which is one of the weirdest and most unfair judgments, because Aristotle would've been the

first to love these new observations. I am absolutely sure. Yeah. So I just wanted your quick take on that.
And, and then second, I wanna come back to Thomas Aquinas and our current world. But first, uh, just
on this quick turn against Aristotle by early modern science, which I always found a little sad, a little
peculiar, maybe you can understand from a polemics point of view. But it never seemed fair to me to
Aristotle himself.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
They, and it wasn't, I mean, in the first place where it was fair was that some people who called
themselves Aristotelians had become dogmatists, and they were so interested in protecting Aristotle or
preserving some of the things that some of his principles that they were willing to do that even though
all the evidence was that the principles were wrong, Aristotle had said that the heavenly bodies were all
perfect spheres, and they even had consciousness. And Galileo turned his telescope, his brand new
telescope on the moon, and saw pock marks on the moon and, uh, and saw, you know, other things, and
said, well, this is not the, this is not the kind of heavenly body that Aristale was talking about, but there
it is. It's on the, in the telescope. So a, some aristotelians, people calling themselves, Aristotelians said,
there must be something wrong with your telescope.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Right. Because Aristotle can't lie. So they had become anti, in a way, anti aristotelians. I mean, they had
done what we, you know, we so often see in philosophy and political philosophy, and especially people
becoming dogmatic proponents of some, uh, doctrine, which has just been proved to be wrong. And
that gave Aristotle a bad name. But there was something more important than that going on. And that is
that Aristotle's association with the church, but also his association with an attempt to harmonize
science and ethics, had fallen out of favor with a new generation of Renaissance thinkers who call
themselves realists. Well, they either call themselves realists, or they call or Protestants. Mm-Hmm.
<affirmative>. And the the realists said, there's nothing but power. Politics is power. Don't bother us
with ethics.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Thomas Hobbes.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
So Thomas Hobbs says, Thomas Hobbes says, if you're talking about moral law, Thomas Hobbes says,
that's a metaphor. There's only one law. That's the law of the state <laugh>. And if you're talking about
moral law or any other kind of law, all you're doing is you're doing poetry, but has nothing to do with
the real world. So that vicious doctrine, we're still laboring under that, that vicious doctrine. I mean,
some of my best friends are realists. I mean, I know, I know a couple of really good realists. Yeah. But
goodness, that's really, that was a disaster. That that hobbesian separation of ethics and politics was a
disaster. So that was one. And then we, then you have Martin Luther, it's a whole other story. Then you
have Martin Luther saying, I hate Aristale because you're saved by faith alone. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
<affirmative>.
Speaker 2 (45:38):

And let the people who wanna do reason stuff go off in their corner and do it. But we, you know, we are
into his particular brand of Protestantism, which by the way, many Protestants have grown away from.
But <laugh> that, well, that's a whole other story. So, so Aristotle had a bad reputation both on the part
of the realist and on the part of the Lutherans.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Let us, uh, come quickly to the present. Thank you for the generosity of your time and all of these
wonderful insights. Aquinas, uh, after falling out for some time, and, uh, Aristotle, after having fallen out
for some time, was brought back to the very center of the church in the end of the 19th century by Pope
Leo the 13th, who started what is now 135 years of Encyclicals, uh, called Modern Catholic Social
Teachings, starting with the Rum Navarro in 1891, and based very much on Aquinas, uh, and with a lot
of Aristotle mixed in. And I wanna say that what I find extremely exciting and gratifying about that body
of knowledge and philosophy is that it brings ethics back into the core of our discussion. And the idea
that human reason actually can find a way to peace as well. That reason can be, uh, something to, uh,
help better lives on earth.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And I wanna say we've come to the end of the time, but you have played a magnificent role and play a
magnificent role in that idea. So not only are you a wonderful historian, Richard, but uh, you're a great
moralist in the best sense of saying we can do better and we can resolve conflicts, we can deal with each
other. We can have good academic battles, no doubt. But, uh, they don't have to turn violent. They can
be creative battles. So I want to end by paying tribute to all of your work and leadership and conflict
resolution. Let's look for another chance to talk about some of that. 'cause, uh, many, many things to
discuss in, many things to learn. But we've had, uh, more than our normal hour on the book club. I'm
sure everybody is listening with rap attention and gratitude to you. We've been discussing, uh,
Aristotle's uh, children by Professor Richard, uh, Rubenstein. It's a fabulous book, but you could feel
from this discussion, it's like swimming in the 2,300 years of, uh, Western thought. And it's an absolute
joy. So let me thank you so much, Richard, for being with us today, and I'm sure that people all over the
world are going to be grabbing their copies of this book and many others of yours with absolute delight
and a huge benefit.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Thank you so much, Jeff. I really enjoyed being here and talking with you. Always enjoyed talking with
you. Thanks, Amelia.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
We'll be together again soon. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Thank
Speaker 1 (48:39):
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