UPDATING ERASMUS

Jan Sperna Weiland

(Emeritus Professor Faculty of Philosophy)

The Vasco de Gama era began in 1492; and in that same year the 'reconquista'

put a violent end to one of the few high points of Middle Ages European culture:

in Spain, probably not in Andalusia, there was a warm understanding

between Christians, Jews and Moslims, a real inter-est in a difficult to

define 'inter'. They did not only talk about each other, they talked to each

other. In the multi-cultural society of the time the Christians saw an enrichment

of their own culture. There was mutual respect and trust .

Nothing can be found concerning this idyll, or about the 'reconquista', in the

work of Erasmus. This is not surprising, because his world was still small. In

1492 he was in his mid-twenties and a monk in the Steyn monastery near

Gouda in the Netherlands. He only left the monastery in 1493 to enter the

service of the Bishop of Kamerijk . Islam lay far beyond his horizon; the Jews,

if possible, still farther, although they were physically closer. His world was

the Catholic Europe of the Middle Ages.

Clash of civilizations Later, Erasmus became involved with Islam in a different way. It was not the

Arabs who threatened Christian Europe - they had largely been driven out -

but the Turks. They had captured Constantinople in 1453 and in 1529 they

were standing before the walls of Vienna. There was consternation in every

country in Europe. Perhaps for the first time since the fall of the Roman

Empire there was a true clash of civilizations.

By that time Erasmus had become the uncrowned king of the European humanists.

He had to determine his position. That he found this difficult can be

detected from his writings from that period. The situation was also complicated.

On the one hand Erasmus was irenic in nature and a convinced pacifist .

This can be seen, among other things, from his Dulce bellum inexpertis, written

in 1515. On the other hand he could not argue for non-violence, because

that would mean that the whole of Europe would be handed over to the Turks.

It was a classic dilemma. Erasmus sought his way cautiously, at one moment

inclining towards non-violence, at the next recoiling from the consequences.

Erasmus was of the opinion that we could not allow the treasures of

Christian culture to be lost . War is the work of the Devil, that is for certain,

but if you play with fire you will get burnt . But unlike Luther, who regarded

the Turks as a punishment from God which should not be resisted, in his

Consultatio de bello Turcico

Erasmus said that arms could be taken up

against (these are his exact words) "Turks, Mohammedans, Saracens,

Muscovites, Greeks and other half-Christian and schismatic nations."

With characteristic sarcasm Erasmus suggested dispatching his academic

opponents to combat the Turks: "For my own par t I conceive the Christians

would do much better if instead of those dull troops and companies of soldiers

with which they have managed their war with such doubtful success,

they would send the bawling Scotists, the most obstinate Occamists, the

invincible Albertists, to war against the Turks and Saracens; and they would

see, I guess, a most pleasant combat and such a victory as was never seen before."

Nonetheless, violence and Christian belief are at odds with each other. A

great deal can be recognized in sixteenth-century texts; but Erasmus is an

exception, most call for crusades against Evil, and it is the others who are

always evil, never us. When there is a justa causa and the auctoritas principis

demands it, then war is waged. However, this cannot be without a thorough

soul-searching: "If we wish to strike at the Turks to keep them from our

throats, then we must first drive from our hearts the terrible sort of Turks

lurking there, greed, aspiration, lust for power, and then, when we fight the

Turks and with Him as our leader, we will be the victors".

Erasmus wisely leaves to one side the question as to whether you can fight

such a Christian war; it is clear that one cannot. But Erasmus had no illusions

whatsoever about the motives of the 'Christians'. "These days they have

those who harass and plunder the Turks, who would rather take them dead

than alive. The real game being hunted are the riches of the Turks, not the

Turks themselves". Erasmus was a voice in the wilderness.

Intermediality Nonetheless, however topical Erasmus's reflections on war and peace appear

to be, at first sight he has little to say in a world of media politics, cd-roms,

mobile phones, internet , multiculturalism and geopolitical fundamentalism.

And although ar tist Dick Higgins, who coined the word 'intermedia' in the

1960’s, is ascribed an Erasmian quality because of his erudition and views, it

is out of the question that multimedia, interdisciplinarity, and interactivity

were subjects Erasmus discussed.

There are at least five reasons why Erasmus would be out of place in a discussion

on intermediality. He died in 1536 and therefore was not postmodern -

he was not even modern. But since Lyotard has discovered postmodernism in

Augustine, perhaps it can also be encountered in Erasmus. The visual ar ts lay

completely beyond his hor izon. During his iter italicum his destination was

not Florence, where the Italian 'avant-garde' worked, but Bologna, where the

oldest Italian university was established. There could be no question of

intermediality, because Erasmus only knew one medium - language. It was

only a question of the art of words and the 'aesthetics' that belongs to it is:

rhetoric, as a fixed element of the trivium at all universities. Erasmus was

not oriented towards the future. He regarded Antiquity, including Christian

Antiquity and the bonae litterae, as the basis of the entire culture. And

finally Erasmus was a humanist . Since it has been decided that the age of

anti-humanism, or perhaps even of transhumanism, has now dawned, it would

appear that Erasmus belongs definitively to the past .

When, however, we look at communication, in particular faulty communication,

and that mysterious and intriguing inter, then perhaps Erasmus does

still have something to say to us. It is indeed true that in Erasmus the

aestheticizing of Western culture - if indeed it is present at all - remains

limited to language. But in that the inter is inexhaustible: irony, satire, sarcasm,

self-mockery, concealment, gravity, admonition and many other modalities,

the inter can take on many forms in the virtuoso hands of Erasmus.

Furthermore, there are certain motifs in Erasmus's work which, taken out of

the context of the Middle Ages, are so audacious that they transcend time.

This raises the question as to whether Erasmus was, perhaps, postmodern,

because notwithstanding the fact that in the class-ridden society of the

Middle Ages everyone had his or her fixed station and had to adhere to it ,

Erasmus's immense scholarship and unbridled ambition meant that he - the

son of a priest , illegitimate, penniless - rose above his station.

Therefore there was a revolutionary slant to his thinking which was far

ahead of his time. This is what he said about kings in his Laus Stultitiae(The

Praise of Folly): "And now suppose someone, such as they sometimes are, a

man ignorant of laws, little less than an enemy of the public good, and minding

nothing but his own, given up to pleasure, a hater of learning, liberty

and justice, studying nothing less than the public safety, but measuring everything

by his own will and profit ..." O f course this is not said by Erasmus but

by Stultitia behind whom, chameleon-like, Erasmus conceals himself. Or take

the Pope, the highest authority in the church: "...to be poor, base; to be vanquished,

dishonourable and little becoming him that scarce admits even

kings to kiss his slipper; and lastly, to die, uncouth; and to be stretched on a

cross, infamous." It is no wonder that the church put Laus Stultitiae, together

with all its translations, on the Index.

I think that all this has to do with the story of the first congregation, that of

Jerusalem, and early-Christian 'communism' that barely existed, but which

through the centuries has fascinated and alarmed Christianity. "Omnia habebant

communia"; they owned everything in common. So it should be, and so it

is not . Therefore, in Erasmus's opinion, the riches of the rich should be

taken, by force if necessary, so that the poor could be given the chance that

until then had been denied them. It goes without saying that he did not follow

the word with the deed. He was much to careful to do that , and too deeply

engrossed in his humanistic reverie.

Negative theology His work on the New Testament is more explosive. At first sight this is purely

philological monk's work and nothing to get excited about. In reality it is

much more. Suddenly, the monolithic, indisputable Truth vanishes. The text is

'deconstructed'. This is not just any text , but the holy text of the New

Testament. Erasmus, always cautious, did what he could to keep as close as

possible to the text of the Vulgata. He made concessions he could barely

justify, and sometimes could no longer justify. He even remarked: "Non est

alius Deus, sed oculi sunt diversi" - God is not another, but the eyes are different.

But the question, of course, is whether God is actually the same when

we look at Him with different eyes - for how could we ever know that when we

lack an intellectus archetypus? How could we ever put our finger on a reality

outside the Scriptures?

Long before Derrida invented the word Erasmus was busy deconstructing

texts. In any case his opponents were cer tain that "different eyes" must also

result in "another God". Erasmus was a sceptic, he doubted everything. His

doubt was not the methodical doubt of Descartes; there is no hope of finding

certainty. For example, all, literally all, expressions which can indicate God,

are fundamentally inadequate. It was for this reasaon that Erasmus praised

the Jews, who denoted God by the unutterable tetragrammaton JHVH.

Nonetheless, scepticism has its limits. We just have to believe that the

nature of God is "ineffabilis, incogitabilis, imperscrutabilis."

That brings us to a problematic aspect of the postmodern and into the

neighbourhood of Derrida - negative theology. The other-ness of the Other

reaches so far - the difference is so all-penetrating - that we can say something

about God 'via negationis'. Erasmus was of the opinion that it was still

better to be silent: even if God is pure presence, we cannot say that God "is".

We end up with "l'aporie de ce qui est sans être." Mystical therefore? No

mystique, because the aporia of the mystical is for ever obstructed by the

fact that God communicates with people in only one way - through the written

document of the Word.

Who is Erasmus? We can only guess at who Erasmus was and what Erasmus said. Did he write

Laus Stultitiae? ‘Stultitiae loquitur ’, Stultita speaks, are the first words of

the book. Erasmus is silent , Erasmus is not there. There is at the most an

inter in which Erasmus is just as much present as absent. He applied this

device not only in Laus Stultitiae, but also elsewhere, in the Querela Pacis:

because Querela Pacis was written by Pax, Peace, not by Erasmus. Does this

not remind us of Foucault's remark at the beginning of his inaugural before

the Collège de France: "j'aurais aimé m'apercevoir qu'au moment de parler

une voix sans nom me précédait depuis longtemps"? Erasmus, said Chomarat ,

is "un demon aux cent visages", and we cannot say which face is the true one.

Perhaps there is no true face. Erasmus conceals himself behind, or more

accurately, in, his masks. He is unfathomable and so, in his unfathomability,

he watches us, mockingly.