Joona Salminen defended his doctoral thesis titled as Ascetism and Early Christian Lifestyle on March at the University of Helsinki.

As custos acted Prof. Risto Saarinen (left) and as opponent Doc. Eric Eliasson from Stockholm (right).

Lectio praecursoria

‘Monkeys do not laugh’
Ascetics in search for Aristotle

Regarding guidelines of Christian asceticism, Italian author Umberto Eco creates a particularly dimensional scene in his novel The Name of the Rose (originally Il nome della rosa, 1980). The novel is a detective story set in an Italian monastery, in the year 1327. In addition to many murder mysteries, the narrative also includes several intellectual mysteries and sophisticated discussions on various philosophical and political topics. In this lectio I will elaborate on one scene in particular, the one in which the protagonist discusses laughter with an old blind monk who is in charge of the library of the monastery. On the basis of my studies on early Christian asceticism, I find that discussion extremely intriguing and inspiring. (Btw, there’s also a film adaptation of the scene available via YouTube, in case you wish to see Sean Connery having that discussion.)

The protagonist of the novel, a Franciscan friar called William of Baskerville, arrives to a North Italian monastery to take part in a certain theological debate. Soon after his arrival, he and his young apprentice are introduced to the scriptorium of the monastery. There they spot a manuscript with rather bold illustrations and encounter the old blind monk with whom William debates several times whether Christ laughed or not. Hagiographies, Aristotle, and the Scripture play a significant role in these discussions between the two ascetics, one from the Benedictine order, which is a monastic tradition, and the other from a late medieval mendicant order, the order of St. Francis. These traditions have different attitudes towards laughter even though they have many things in common, as well.

The arguments of the debate can be simplified as follows:

• The old blind monk combines biblical arguments to an eschatological view and defends the Rule of St. Benedict that prohibits laughter from monks. He highlights that laughter is not good for one’s spirituality and that Christ never laughed.
• William, on the other hand, points out that hagiographies contain humour, funny stories and entertaining material. He makes a reference to Pseudo-Dionysius and Hugh of St. Victor who teach that God can be known through various images and even imaginary things.

In their first conversation, a third interlocutor steps in and reminds the old blind monk that only a few days ago they had had a very learned discussion about knowing God through unconventional and even ridiculous things. This brother happened to be a Greek translator and an expert on Aristotle. He was convinced that what he said was also in lines with Aristotle’s argumentation. The old blind monk is not pleased; and later, spoiler alert, the translator is found dead. The setting of the scene is research wise very intriguing.

In The Name of The Rose, the key to the mystery is that the old blind monk had poisoned the manuscript. This is why everyone who had touched Aristotle’s Second Book of Poetics on Comedy was found dead. The old monk did not only consider philosophy to be dangerous – he made it lethal. He was furious about the conversation on laughter and highlights that laughter makes humans look ridiculous, like monkeys. ‘Monkeys do not laugh,’ says William who thinks that laughter is a sign of rationality and shows good judgement in some occasions. In the movie version the discussion is shortened but in the novel, the old monk makes a reference to Clement of Alexandria’s treatise on laughter in the second book of Paedagogus in which Clement recommends avoiding excessive laughter. This remark calls for a comment, since I devote a whole chapter for Clement’s treatise on laughter in my dissertation.

In his treatise, Clement makes use of Aristotle’s view on laughter and combines it with certain biblical passages. In my studies on early Christian asceticism I was very much interested in the social setting in which Clement’s teaching takes place. For example, the context of laughter in Clement is Alexandrian high class social life with all the dinners and parties etc. The treatise on laughter is only one example of the city context that had a major influence on early Christian asceticism. Clement taught in Alexandria in the mid 190s and discussed almost every imaginable topic that later emerged in Christian asceticism. It is hard to say how later ascetics came across with his teachings but nevertheless there are striking similarities between Clement and ascetic (monastic) literature from the 4^th century on. In my studies I compared Clement’s teachings especially to Vita Antonii by Athanasius and Praktikos by Evagrius Ponticus. A central theme in my studies is to highlight the continuum of certain spiritual and physical exercises and popular philosophical teachings in Clement and later ascetic authors. I also find it important to see Clement’s teachings in relation to ancient schools of philosophy and teachers such as Epictetus.

I situated ascetic instructions in an urban setting and treated them as guidelines for an early Christian lifestyle. One of my key results was to point out how contextual a phenomenon asceticism is and how early Christian asceticism started to form in a Late Ancient city context. According to my studies, asceticism is not only about social withdrawal, fasting and celibacy – it is also about community, eating and marital life. Most studies on asceticism have focused on social withdrawal but in Clement we encounter a form of asceticism with a strong integrative function.

Unlike the old blind monk in the Name of the Rose, Clement would never poison a work of Aristotle. Instead, he usually had quite a positive attitude towards pagan philosophy and made use of it in his ascetic teaching adapted for city life. So, though the old monk was aware on what Clement said about laughter, he misunderstood the role of Aristotle and other pagan philosophers regarding the matter. In later Christian asceticism this connection to philosophy became much more complicated than it is in Clement. Should the old blind monk have read Clement more carefully, he might have had a more positive attitude towards laughter and philosophy. So I remain critical of his use of Clement in the debate on laughter and ascetic life – a more nuanced understanding of Clement would have been a beneficial tool for these debates and in the ascetics’ search for Aristotle.

Joona Salminen, University of Helsinki

Lectio praecursoria, 25th March 2017

‘Monkeys do not laugh’
Ascetics in search for Aristotle

Regarding guidelines of Christian asceticism, Italian author Umberto Eco creates a particularly dimensional scene in his novel The Name of the Rose (originally Il nome della rosa, 1980). The novel is a detective story set in an Italian monastery, in the year 1327. In addition to many murder mysteries, the narrative also includes several intellectual mysteries and sophisticated discussions on various philosophical and political topics. In this lectio I will elaborate on one scene in particular, the one in which the protagonist discusses laughter with an old blind monk who is in charge of the library of the monastery. On the basis of my studies on early Christian asceticism, I find that discussion extremely intriguing and inspiring. (Btw, there’s also a film adaptation of the scene available via YouTube, in case you wish to see Sean Connery having that discussion.)

The protagonist of the novel, a Franciscan friar called William of Baskerville, arrives to a North Italian monastery to take part in a certain theological debate. Soon after his arrival, he and his young apprentice are introduced to the scriptorium of the monastery. There they spot a manuscript with rather bold illustrations and encounter the old blind monk with whom William debates several times whether Christ laughed or not. Hagiographies, Aristotle, and the Scripture play a significant role in these discussions between the two ascetics, one from the Benedictine order, which is a monastic tradition, and the other from a late medieval mendicant order, the order of St. Francis. These traditions have different attitudes towards laughter even though they have many things in common, too.

The arguments of the debate can be simplified as follows:

• The old blind monk combines biblical arguments to an eschatological view and defends the Rule of St. Benedict that prohibits laughter from monks. He highlights that laughter is not good for one’s spirituality and that Christ never laughed.
• William, on the other hand, points out that hagiographies contain humour, funny stories and entertaining material. He makes a reference to Pseudo-Dionysius and Hugh of St. Victor who teach that God can be known through various images and even imaginary things.

In their first conversation, a third interlocutor steps in and reminds the old blind monk that only a few days ago they had had a very learned discussion about knowing God through unconventional and even ridiculous things. This brother happened to be a Greek translator and an expert on Aristotle. He was convinced that what he said was also in lines with Aristotle’s argumentation. The old blind monk is not pleased; and later, spoiler alert, the translator is found dead. The setting of the scene is research wise very intriguing.

In The Name of The Rose, the key to the mystery is that the old blind monk had poisoned the manuscript. This is why everyone who had touched Aristotle’s Second Book of Poetics on Comedy was found dead. The old monk did not only consider philosophy to be dangerous – he made it lethal. He was furious about the conversation on laughter and highlights that laughter makes humans look ridiculous, like monkeys. ‘Monkeys do not laugh,’ says William who thinks that laughter is a sign of rationality and shows good judgement in some occasions. In the movie version the discussion is shortened but in the novel, the old monk makes a reference to Clement of Alexandria’s treatise on laughter in the second book of Paedagogus in which Clement recommends avoiding excessive laughter. This remark calls for a comment, since I devote a whole chapter for Clement’s treatise on laughter in my dissertation.

In his treatise, Clement makes use of Aristotle’s view on laughter and combines it with certain biblical passages. In my studies on early Christian asceticism I was very much interested in the social setting in which Clement’s teaching takes place. For example, the context of laughter in Clement is Alexandrian high class social life with all the dinners and parties etc. The treatise on laughter is only one example of the city context that had a major influence on early Christian asceticism. Clement taught in Alexandria in the mid 190s and discussed almost every imaginable topic that later emerged in Christian asceticism. It is hard to say how later ascetics came across with his teachings but nevertheless there are striking similarities between Clement and ascetic (monastic) literature from the 4^th century on. In my studies I compared Clement’s teachings especially to Vita Antonii by Athanasius and Praktikos by Evagrius Ponticus. A central theme in my studies is to highlight the continuum of certain spiritual and physical exercises and popular philosophical teachings in Clement and later ascetic authors. I also find it important to see Clement’s teachings in relation to ancient schools of philosophy and teachers such as Epictetus.

I situated ascetic instructions in an urban setting and treated them as guidelines for an early Christian lifestyle. One of my key results was to point out how contextual a phenomenon asceticism is and how early Christian asceticism started to form in a Late Ancient city context. According to my studies, asceticism is not only about social withdrawal, fasting and celibacy – it is also about community, eating and marital life. Most studies on asceticism have focused on social withdrawal but in Clement we encounter a form of asceticism with a strong integrative function.

Unlike the old blind monk in the Name of the Rose, Clement would never poison a work of Aristotle. Instead, he usually had quite a positive attitude towards pagan philosophy and made use of it in his ascetic teaching adapted for city life. So, though the old monk was aware on what Clement said about laughter, he misunderstood the role of Aristotle and other pagan philosophers regarding the matter. In later Christian asceticism this connection to philosophy became much more complicated than it is in Clement. Should the old blind monk have read Clement more carefully, he might have had a more positive attitude towards laughter and philosophy. So I remain critical of his use of Clement in the debate on laughter and ascetic life – a more nuanced understanding of Clement would have been a beneficial tool for these debates and in the ascetics’ search for Aristotle.

Mr. opponent, I now call upon you, to present your critical comments on my dissertation.

Heikki Haara defended his doctoral thesis titled as Sociability in Samuel Pufendorf’s Natural Law Theory on March at the University of Helsinki.

As an opponent acted prof. Sabine Zurbuchen (Lausanne) and custos was prof. Pauli Kettunen.

Lectio precursoria 

Most of you have visited in the beautiful building behind you, the National Library of Finland. In the library’s special reading room you can find an impressive number of seventeeth and eighteenth-century editions of various books written by Samuel Pufendorf. I once counted that there are 83 copies of Pufendorf’s works that were published during these two centuries, some of them are in original Latin, some in various vernacular translations. This is hardly suprising since professors consulted Pufendorf’s writings when preparing lectures and students studied them in law and philosophy syllabus in the The Royal Academy of Turku, the first university in Finland. In 1823, after the Great Fire of Turku, the university and library was moved to Helsinki and was renamed the University of Helsinki in 1917.

Pufendorf himself had a personal relationship to the Swedish Empire, an emerging European superpower at the time. While holding a professorship at the University of Heidelberg, he made a career move by accepting a position as professor primarius of the law of nature and of nations and of ethics and politics at the newly established University of Lund in 1668 and served later on as a political adviser and a royal historian in Stockholm.

However, Pufendorf’s popularity was not merely a peculiarity of the intellectual life of early modern Swedish or Finnish universities. His reputation all-over Europe is most clearly exemplified in the number of editions and translations of the main source of my dissertation, his magnum opus on natural law, De jure naturae et gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations, published in 1672). More than forty-five editions appeared up to the end of the eighteenth century. The work was rapidly translated into French, English, German and Italian. Its short textbook version De officio hominis et civis (On the duties of man and citizens, published in 1673) enjoyed even more popularity and guaranteed Pufendorf a place in curricula in many European universities for a century and was, for instance, translated into Russian, comissioned by Tsar Peter the Great. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, Pufendorf was the most widely-read moral theorists in Europe. His writings formed a common language and more or less shared problematic for various intellectuals who confronted certain lines of his thought and came to accept others and in that way wowe these into the fabric modern moral and political thought.

Pufendorf’s natural law philosophy centres on the concept of sociability (socialitas), a fundamental moral principle imposed by God and recognized by reason. According to Pufendorf, “any man must, inasmuch as he can, to cultivate and maintain towards others a peaceable sociability”. To what extent is sociability and social life natural for human beings? Or is it merely an adventious artifice in order to protect political stability against man’s selfish and antisocial passions?

Although these have been a recurrent questions in the history of western thought since antiquity, late-seventeeth century marks a shift in the conceptualisation of human sociability. Reformation, numerous devasting wars, moral skepticism, the rise of mechanistic philosophy and the birth of the sovereign states increased anxiety to explain which parts of our nature render us fit for and inclined towards a society. Pufendorf, like his famous predecessor Thomas Hobbes, challenged the Aristotelian conception of man as a naturally social and political animal, denying that the psychological or physical features of humanity could be directly interpreted as teleological moral ends in human nature. For Pufendorf, sociability has to be imposed upon naturally unsociability and morally value-neutral human nature. Natural law requires that people develop attitudes and dispositions of sociability that render them useful citizens of civil society.

Pufendorf’s treatment of sociability is mainly normative rather than descriptive. Moral agency consists largely in being subject to law of sociability and carrying out moral and political duties imposed by such law. The bulk of De jure naturae et gentium deals with identifying and demonstrating what norms and institutions are needed to maintain and cultivate sociability, such as property, money, family and the state. Pufendorf aims to show that these norms can be find in empirically observable structures of human nature and the experience of history. However, it is one thing to demonstrate the content of moral norms but a different task to explain how people in practise become aware of their content and motivate themselves to act accordingly. How ordinary people in practise adopt sociability as their norms? How the norms of sociability become effective in social life?

These are the main research question of my dissertation which focuses on Pufendorf’s psychological and social explanations of sociability. In it, I explore the moral psychological assumptions underlying his theory of sociability by identitifying and piecing together the central parts of his remarks and observations on human psychology.

My study demonstrates that Pufendorf’s anthropology is based on the multivalent view of human nature and the acknowledgement that individuals differ widely from each other. Each individual responds to the things in his or her specific ways. Different individuals may motivate their actions simultaneuously by through varying and conflicting motives, such as the internal obligation to moral norms, self-love, fear of God, fear of civil punishment, the inclination to self-preservation or the desire for esteem. Moreover, dispositions of passions and intellectual capacities may vary among different ethnic groups as well. For instance, in his historical works, Pufendorf argues that Germans are “not over-hot in their passions, so they are very constant and have souls very capable of Discipline and instruction.” In turn, the Finns are rural, stiff, and prejudiced people, and yet exceptionally hard workers, which makes them ‘‘more proper for Fatigue and downright Labour than for such Work as requires Ingenuity and Dexterity.’’

Pufendorf does not give a clear-cut explanation of one ultimate source of motivation that moves people to to perform the duties of sociability. The central argument advanced by me is that sociability is largely a socialized product of particural society that we happen to live in. Pufendorf’s natural law theory includes the mechanism by which social interaction habituates people to internalize moral norms and govern their passions and actions so as to cultivate sociability. Many scholars have understandably highlighted how fallen man’s corrupted passions constantly undermine the functionality of society. In my dissertation, I shall argue that, if properly guided by political qovernance, human passions and inclinations, may play a positive motivational role in social and political life, and serve as the most effective means to get people to internalize the norms of sociability.

What I seek to establish in this study is that Pufendorf’s moral psychology intersects with and complements his political philosophy. The most obvious novelty of this approach is an attempt to exemplify that moral psychological formulations are important for Pufendorf’s theorizing of social and political order. For instance, the belief that people have the capacity to control their passions and actions as a precondition of moral accountability is a theme that runs through Pufendorf’s works. Moral obligations differ fundamentally coercion. This contributed to his view of the role of political governance. Pufendorf argues against Hobbes, that fear is not the ultimate passion that civilizes men. Instead, People should be habituated to accept social life with ease. Thus, the sovereign should ensure that citizens conform themselves to civil laws not so much from fear of punishment as from habit.

Michel Foucault, among other has argued that sociability become a new matter to “police” from the seventeeth century onwards. In my study, I argue that Pufendorf conceives the sovereign state as an necessary institution to combat antisocial passions and to develop passions required for maintaing social tranquility. The internal life of citicen’s becomes a concern of the state. In this sense, his writings provide a conceptual bluebrint for eighteenth-century integration of govermental sciences such as cameralism and Polizeywissenchaft into the discipline of natural law. It was Pufendorf’s insights into stabilizing powers of habits that led him to acknowledge the role of political governance in the process of turning individuals into social and political animals through habitual socialisation.

Moreover, Pufendorf’s theory of sociability can be seen as one of the first steps away from the scholastic and teleological idea of the perfectability of human nature towards a more “sociological” (to use an anachronistic term) understanding of morality and politics. It is no wonder that some of his eighteenth-century followers describe Pufendorf as “socialist”. It is often noted that Pufendorfian language of sociability offered a conceptual platform for the discussion of morality for numerous authors of the Scottish Enlightenment. While eighteenth century responses to Pufendorf are beyond the scope of my dissertation, I hope that my study illuminates that Pufendorf’s observations on habits and passions as a source of motivation for the promotion of sociability resonate interestingly with the eighteenth-century discussion on social and psychological processes as the foundation of morality.

To conclude, Pufendorf’s theory of sociability intriguingly combines two conflicting approaches to morality. On the one hand, he is a natural law theorist who bases the obligation to cultivate sociability on the commands of God, which are recognized by reason. On the other hand, sociability is not merely a normative rule discovered by reason. It is through the set of social practices that humans internalize sociability as their moral standard. Though Pufendorf’s main aim is to demonstrate what the divinely imposed universal natural law norms are, his numerous perceptive remarks and observations on moral conduct as an internalized product of society points towards to the moral-psychological emphasis on habits and passions as a mechanism of sociability. Perhaps, it was these conflicting commitments what maked his writings appear so profound and stimulating to his contemporaries.

In the evening, we celebrated Heikki’s defence in warm and social atmosphere.

On Monday February 13, Reason and Religious Recognition CoE organized a one day workshop focusing on early modern political philosophy. The workshop took place at the Faculty room (tiedekuntasali) of the Faculty of Theology. It brought together numerous scholars working in the field of early modern moral and political philosophy. Our main quest speaker was Professor Kinch Hoekstra (University of California, Berkeley) who has been a long-time collaborator of the CoE.

Risto Saarinen started a day by presenting the main ideas of his latest book Recognition and Religion: A Historical and Systematic Study (Oxford University Press, 2016). This was the official book launch of Saarinen’s major study that investigates the rich history of the pre-hegelian concepts and conceptions of recognition and offers a systematic understanding of the development idea of mutual recognition in theological texts.

After Saarinen’s talk, Mikko Tolonen introduced latest methods in the area of digital humanities. Tolonen has develop together with his research group a novel data analysis software that can be employed by intellectual historians and philosophers in exploring a large data sets.

Second session focused on natural equality, a theme that Saarinen examines in relation to the concept of recognition in his book. The concept of natural equality received attention in the papers by Martina Reuter and Kari Saastamoinen. Reuter drew attention to the relation between natural equality and gender equality in the philosophy of Poulain de la Barre. Saastamoinen offered a new interpretation of the role of natural equality in John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government.

The day ended with Kinch Hoekstra’s talk, entitled Thucydides in the Reformation. Hoekstra scrutinized Lutheran (moral and political) interpretations of Thucydides in the 16th century. Particurarly, his talk centred on Philip Melancthon and his followers. Pekka Kärkkänen, a member of the CoE, gave a commentary talk on Hoekstra’s paper.

On Friday, December 9th we gathered together, enjoyed of some mulled wine and ginger biscuits (as it is tradition during Christmas time) and looked back on some past events in the first three-year period of the CoE.

Risto Saarinen presented his book Recognition and Religion: A Historical and Systematic Study which has just been published by the Oxford University Press. Although a personal monograph, the study has also been a collective work, since the manuscript has been circulated and commented by many CoE members and several other collaborators.

[In photo: Prof. Saarinen; Dr. Ulla Tervahauta and Dr. Ivan Miroshnikov]

CoE members has published a lot during the past three years, but Saarinen especially mentioned two conference proceedings which explore new frontiers and offer novel scholarly results. These are the special issue of “Religious Recognition” in the Open Theology journal (de Gruyter) edited by Heikki J. Koskinen and Ritva Palmén as well as forthcoming volume of Reflections on Recognition edited by Maijastina Kahlos, Heikki J. Koskinen and Ritva Palmén.

In photo from left tp right: post-doctoral researchers Heikki Haara and Ilse Paakkinen together with professor (Church History) Aila Lauha.

Regarding doctoral dissertations, three diss. has already been successfully defended: Timothy Riggs (Canadian) 2014, Ilse Paakkinen (Finnish) 2016 and Ivan Miroshnikov (Russian) 2016. Ilmari Karimies, Joona Salminen, and Heikki Haara are going to defend their diss. in the spring term 2017. The CoE has sponsored their work in various financial and supervisory ways.

For the second three-year period 2017–2019 we had an international open call. We received totally 78 applications, mostly very good, for 7–9 research positions. Many of our earlier Finnish scholars got a prolongation between 1 to 3 years. New international post-doctoral researchers are Dr. Siiri Toiviainen from Durham (second from the right side of the picture), Dr. Nicholas Faucher from Paris-Sorbonne and Dr. Sara Gehlin from Lund. Congratulations for our new members. We are looking for cooperating with you!

All photos: Heikki J. Koskinen

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2017!