Ioan P. Couliano (1950–1991)

> Mircéa Eliade nous gratifie, comme à son habitude, d'un chef d'oeuvre de recherche, de comparaisons, d'analyses qui permettent d'entrer dans l'intimité de nombreuses religions méconnues, ainsi que d'avoir le regard on ne peut plus objectif d'un expert en toutes religions sur les grandes religions du livre, avec lesquelles il est bien plus difficile de prendre du recul.
Si certaines analyses sont parfois un peu courtes, ce dictionnaire est pour moi une mine d'informations et un chef d'oeuvre de précision.
—Danieljean (Babelio)… (altro)

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance offers a compelling historical theory of modern Western culture, its institutions and their origins. Couliano suggests that modern Western culture was predominantly conceived and developed during the piques of the European Reformation – presented less as a progressive movement than a conservative one – against the idiosyncratic and imaginative excesses of Renaissance ideals. The Renaissance, then, is framed as a period of imaginative and creative acculturation culminating in the institutional reform of the European Reformation. A reform which ultimately sought to establish a ubiquitous social dogma under the pretense of shared communal values.

However, Couliano does not accuse any particular order or individual of the Reformation's apparent reactionary agenda, but, instead, explicates the broad stabilizing forces and attributes them to cultural trends emanating from the most influential intellectual circles of the time. The philosophical underpinnings of Western antiquity are mentioned regarding their distinction between reproduction and love and the importance of identifying the universal aspects of the eros and the human soul. By the time we arrive to sixteenth century Europe, this distinction – of reproduction and love – and its importance are found to be conflated not just with one another, but with many other arts, philosophies and theologies.

It is no surprise, then, that we find only a few intellects at the time were actually observant enough to see the confusion and also willing to speak out against the popular and appealing theories of the age. Seeing as these efforts were more akin to cultural critiques, Couliano leads us through the relevant works of Ficino and Bruno, among others, in an attempt to establish a potential origin of the modern social institutions.

The bulk of Couliano's theory concerns the sixteenth century notion of the Phantasm (roughly today's psychosomatic symptom) and the contested ideas of these terrifying emotional instabilities and their contraction. The leading idea of Phantasmic contraction at the time claimed that Women, in their possession of [fetishized] beauty, were primary vectors of infection. Of course, as this was sixteenth century Europe, the only potential victim here was the Man. The contraction of a Phantasm and its unfolding maladies were deemed quite serious, many even endowing the Phantasm with a deadly objective, and, so its cure was never a guarantee. The potential remedy of the time was one of indulgence. Indulgence in the images of Phantasy and their subsequent representation in the physical and creative work of the infected.

The baselessness and arbitrariness of such a simplistic theory was the primary incitation for Bruno's earliest work. He goes so far as to label Patrarch (a well respected Italian Renaissance poet) a "repressed sensualist" and that people like him were "lacking the intelligence to apply himself to better things … thereby yielding to the tyranny of base, idiotic and filthy bestiality." It is with these critiques that Bruno states with clarity that "the realm of physical love must be separated from the realm of divine contemplation," and from here, the germ of his further development of the Phantasm and their subsequent use in particular forms of "social magic".

Drawing further support from the culture of the same period, Couliano says that "Machiavelli's Prince is the forebear of the political adventurer, a type that is disappearing." So, it is with Bruno's De Viniculis, that he describes as "the prototype of the impersonal systems of mass media, indirect censorship, [and] global manipulation…" and so Bruno, as suggested by Couliano, appears to be among the first contributors of psychoanalytical theory. It is no wonder, then, that there was no better term for the informing of public opinion, its control and its ability to incite mass action, than the existing term "interpersonal magic."

In fact, Couliano makes clear that the Inquisition itself was, at least in part, a final attempt by the decaying institutions and officials of the Church to prevent the spread and further development of what they saw as a contentious and aberrant worldview. This interpretation becomes all the more apparent in considering how rampant the use of these "magicks" were and the Church's confusion in discerning and understanding them. Couliano reveals other cases of "magic" that, while still psychologically directed at particular individuals, were used to curry favors and heighten the prestige of anyone who was willing to determine and convincingly fulfill the desires of a needy patron or audience.

Ultimately, it is the cultural dialectic which drives and directs social trends in the immediate term and forms particular historical trends in the long term. Given the Reformation was enabled by the arrival of the printing press and the potential mass distribution of ideas, it certainly seems plausible, as Couliano suggests, that the modern theory of scientific philosophy and its social aims has a far more contentious and dubious history than is typically assumed.

Couliano includes so much information in this work that I'm hardly contented by my summary above, as it suggests far more linearity than I think is due. However, much of it was thought provoking and interesting and I'd recommend it to anyone with at least some knowledge of Western philosophy and some ideas of the Renaissance notion of magic and phantasy (insofar as they were treated in absolute sincerity), especially if you are interested in the history and/or philosophy of modern science.… (altro)

Despite the subtitle, which seems to imply a narrative "from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism," The Tree of Gnosis offers detail on the synchronic forms of dualist doctrine, rather than the all-too-common suppositions about diachronic connection between instances of heresy. In this major work -- one of the last in a career cut short by murder -- Couliano claimed to be pioneering a new theoretical method, with wider ambitions to go beyond the history of religions to embrace the sciences and other "mental objects" of historical consequence.

The "tree" of the title is not a genealogical tree, but rather a logical one tout court, as Couliano takes Gnosticism (or more generally, dualist theology) to be an "ideal object" existing "in a logical dimension." Its variegation orients to three principal axes: ecosystemic intelligence (i.e. "the god of this world"), the anthropic principle, and the "superiority of humankind to the world and its creators." Couliano disagrees vigorously with those who rate the antique Gnostics as pessimists, insisting very adroitly that their metaphysics provides for extreme optimism in the context of a negative valuation of the existing cosmos.

The bulky middle of the text, treating the specifics of different dualist thinkers and sects in late antiquity, is good coverage. But the juicy parts are the methodological introduction and the chapters at the end that include the comparison of traditional "metaphysical" gnoses to their modern "anti-metaphysical" counterparts, and a ludic paradigm of doctrinal development.

It's a shame that Couliano was too early to comment on the millennial glut of Gnostic cinema (The Matrix, Dark City, The Truman Show, etc.). He also dismisses the Gnostic character of Philip K. Dick's work on the basis of a reading of The Divine Invasion, when he would have been better off looking at VALIS, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, or even Dick's self-analytical Exegesis.

This 1990 book (in the French original) is a relatively recent one in its field, distinctly following and often criticizing the first wave of scholarship driven by the epochal Nag Hammadi finds of the mid-20th century. While it was not as revelatory for me as Couliano's earlier Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, it is still an outstanding study that deserves the attention of anyone interested in its subject matter.… (altro)