[I used the following important
quotation in my entry Of Native And Foreign Wisdom in the Russian Section.
“…It is useful to know something of the manners of
different nations, that we may be able to form a more correct judgment
regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything that differs
from our customs is ridiculous and irrational, -- a conclusion usually come to
by those, whose experience has been limited to their own country. On the other
hand, when too much time is occupied in traveling, we become strangers to our
native country; and the over curious in the customs of the past are generally
ignorant of those of the present.” (From
Dèscartes’ Method, Book I.)]
***
It is unthinkable to go all the
way through the Dèscartes series without drawing our attention to this
brilliant summation of the necessity to keep a balance between patriotic
nationalism, on the one hand, and enlightened cosmopolitanism on the other.
Peter the Great of Russia is of course a perfect witness for the correctness of
the Dèscartes observation, and for a discerning Western mind this should also
represent the essence of Russia’s mindset in her attitude toward the outside
world. By the same token, here is a gold mine for the students of the modern American
phenomenon. The opening portion of this quotation shames the ignoramuses who
are convinced that reason, common sense, virtue, and all other goodies are the
sole property of one nation, their own. The second part provides a necessary
balance to this delicate skating across the thin ice of exaggerated and
inflated sensibilities. Hats off to Dèscartes!
He was, of course, helped by the
general spirit of gens una sumus, prevalent among the educated European
community of his day. Born in France, he lived most of his adult life in the
Dutch Republic benefiting from her liberal laws, and died in Sweden. His lingua
franca was Latin, and most of his works were written in the original Latin,
although some important works were first written in French and then translated
into Latin. It was in this spirit of elitist internationalism (the Catholic
Church was obviously internationalist too and these two types of Latin-based
internationalism, although non-identical, were going hand-in-hand, until gradually
undermined by the spread of the language-specific Protestantism) that Dèscartes
made the comment in the above quoted passage and I think that his reference to ‘different
nations’ is not limited to
Christian Europe, but actually embraces every known and hypothetical nation of
the world, Christian and non-Christian alike. (This should be a very rational
thing to assume!)
***
A Note. In the sequence of my Cartesian entries, this one is
followed by the entry In Defense of
Cartesian Rationalism. That entry, however, was posted on my blog out of
order on March 2nd, 2012. In order to maintain the proper continuity
of my Cartesian series, I refer my readers to that posting, before my “next”
Cartesian entry which will be posted tomorrow is read.
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