Rani asked:

Could you please explain the two main traditions: Jerusalem and Athens that prevailed until the
Enlightenment Era? I can't find anything on the Jerusalem tradition but it was based on faith and was
a response to questions such as "why are we here".

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That's a great question. Start reading the first chapter of Erich Auerbach's Book Mimesis(ISBN:
0691012695), "The Scar of Odysseus". The Greek ("Athens") are "eye-people", they are seeing the
world. Theo-ria means "seeing the gods of the township". One of the greatest inventions of the
Greeks has been geometry. They posted statues on every corner, they advised their youth to shine in
public, to present themselves, to be proud and ambitious. That all appeals to the eye. They were real
show-masters and practically invented tragedy and comedy as we know them. And so the cosmos
appeared as a wonderful order of moving parts in a necessary equilibrium like a wonderful great
machinery. That's why Plato wrote over the entry of his academy: "Maedeis a-geometraitos eis-ito" —
"No-one not loving geometry shall enter here!" The world was order to be looked at with the eyes of
the body and with the eyes of the spirit and in-sight (!) of reason likewise. For the Greek beauty and
truth and the good were but three aspects of reality and could not be inconsistent.

The jewish ("Jerusalem") understanding of the world is totally different. The fundamental experience
of the Jew had been the Pharaoh of Egypt and the God-King of Babylon. People had not to argue,
they had to obey. It didn't matter what they thought the world to be like if only they obeyed to the
God-King. In German the word "Gehorsam" (obedience) is derived from "hoeren" (to hear). The whole
Bible ist strewn on almost every page with "So says the Lord" and "Now hearken Israel!" and similar
sentences. So the Jews didn't study nature, they studied texts, they studied "The Law" (The Torah)
and they became great jurists, because jurists have to understand sentences and arguments and not
geometrical figures. And "sin" is not a deviance from a timeless order of a "cosmos", but it's a
deviance from a contract with God, it is a violation not of laws of nature or reason but it is a violation
of love and trust and mutual respect between two contracting parties — God and Man or God and the
Jewish People.

And then the Jew had, what the Greek had not: The concept of personal responsibility to a
responsive person — God. The latin word "respondere" means "to answer". The Greek knew of
nobody to answer to save their own reason and sense of beauty and what is proper and fitting.

Now combine these two strings starting from "Athens" and "Jerusalem" with the ability of the Romans
to govern an empire that spanned the world from the Indus to the border of Scotland (Hadrian's wall).
Then you see what the "History of the Occident" is all about. And you see why this singular
combination of the Greek sense for rational order (to be seen in nature and mathematics) and the
Jewish sense for interpersonal relations of love and trust and mutual respect surpassed the Orient
with his eternal traditions. Of course this doesn't mean that the people of the Orient have been or are
less bright than those of the Occident. But if you don't learn mathematics, you simply don't know
mathematics, and if you don't look into the mechanics of nature, you don't know the mechanics of
nature either, be as bright as you may. And if you know of no god you feel personally responsible to,
then you behave in another way than when you do know one. That has nothing to do with intelligence
or with personal superiority of any sort, and so any racists claim of western superiority is pure
nonsense. But the combined forces of "Athens", "Jerusalem" and "Rome" have created —
unintentionally of course — a singular form of culture that is now taken over by the rest of the world
for it's efficiency.

Don't be scared by the word "efficiency" here: As Toynbee said in a Darwinian mood "History is the
study of challenge and response of cultures to their environments". But then of course some people
are saying that mankind is about to founder altogether in the "Titanic of Western Culture" on the
iceberg of natural and human constraints. That you may think over for yourself.

Hubertus Fremerey

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