Chapter Three
The Great Age of Metaphysics
Introduction
Our readers will, at this point, no doubt be posing the following objection: “We grant that you have demonstrated that there was, in fact, an “axial era” and that it wasa period of religious rationalization and democratization, of a deepening recognition of injustice and of the disharmonies of existence generally and of a deepening commitment to address those injustices. But this doesn’t prove your point. After all, you have acknowledged that the innovators of the axial era were not systematic metaphysicians but rather prophets and sages. Isn’t the systematic metaphysics which developed in the epoch which followed –more often than not in conjunction with remythologizing salvation religions-- fundamentally an attempt to co-opt axial age traditions and use them to legitimate oppressive world empires?” This was, in effect, the position of the Enlightenment, which traced its own “light” back to the Greeks but which rejected the religious metaphysics of Neoplatonism and of Neo-Platonizing and Aristotelianizing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This was also the position of the later Heidegger. Heidegger’s early critique of metaphysics, we will remember (Heidegger 1927, 1928) focused on the failure of thinkers, beginning with Plato, to grasp the distinction between Being and beings. Instead, he argues, they theorize Being as the beingness of beings—they think Being in entitative terms. Later (Heidegger 1941) Heidegger modified both his historical analysis and his philosophical position. Increasingly identifying ancient Greek and German romantic thought, he claimed to hear in Plato and Aristotle echoes of the earlier Greek aletheia or unconcealment of Being and located the crystallization of metaphysics in the “translation” of Greek thought into Latin, “the language of road builders and empire makers”, a crystallization which is completed in the Middle Ages when Being is identified with the supreme maker, the Christian Creator God. This process culminates, of course, in Thomas, who is the philosopher of the “ontotheologic,” the universal causal-explanatory system in which Being is simply an instrument for explaining and ultimately manipulating entities (Caputo 1982).
This chapter will argue that the Enlightenment and late-Heideggerian theses are no more defensible that Heidegger’s earlier claims regarding Plato and Aristotle. On the contrary, we will show that while metaphysical systems with their roots in the axial era certainly were joined with (partially) remythologized salvation religions and that together these ideological systems certainly were used to legitimate world empires, that they also had the effect of restricting exploitation and redirecting surplus towards activities which promoted human development and civilizational progress. The resulting synthesis was also more rather than less open and democratic than the original dialectics of the Axial Age. And the elaboration of the insights of the prophets and sages of the axial era into metaphysical systems and the fusion of these systems with partially remythologized salvation religions to generate what the Christian tradition called “theology” represented real intellectual progress –specifically the completion of the journey of the dialectic begun during the axial era in credible doctrines of the first principle understood variously as Esse (Being) as such, the tathagatagarbha (Buddha nature) or Brahman, orthe T’ai Ch’i or Great Ultimate. These doctrines all, on the one hand, reflected the tremendous civilizational progress of the period, which made humanity more and more connatural with the creative principle which lies behind the universe, but also depended in significant measure on the contributions of prophetic religion (the idea of God as Esse, for example, derives ultimately from the revelation of the divine name in Exodus 3:13) or the spiritual practices of the Buddhists, Taoists, and Hindus.
Our argument will proceed as follows. We will consider each of the principal postaxial civilizations –the Hellenistic-Roman Civilization, Byzantium, Dar-al-Islam, Western Christendom, India, and China. We will begin in each case by demonstrating the presence of certain underlying political-economic patterns: integration into the developing Silk Road trade networks on the basis of specialized agricultural and craft technologies pioneered during the earlier axial era and the emergence of large imperial structures which, while they continued the earlier tributary pattern of taxing the peasantry, were in fact ordered to profit from taxation of this Silk Road trade. We will then show how axial and postaxial movements interacted with these structures at once lending their legitimacy and at least partially hegemonizing them, profoundly altering both the ways in which they extracted surplus and what they did with the surplus they extracted. We will show that the result was an internally differentiated but interrelated complex of civilizations sharing similar civilizational ideals: i.e. a common focus on participation in Being through the search for meaning and the cultivation of human creativity.
Hellenistic-Roman Civilization
It is, of course, with respect to the “West” that Heidegger elaborated his thesis, and it is with respect to the West that we must first show it to be wrong. We begin by analyzing the basic character of Hellenistic-Roman civilization and showing why neither dialectics nor the prophetic religions --Judaism and Christianity—were able to redeem it. We will then analyze the internal dynamics and interactions of Rome’s successor civilizations –Dar-al-Islam and Christendom—and show how each developed a specific synthesis between prophetic religion and dialectics, and how each variant shaped, and was shaped by, the civilization in question.
Civilizational Patterns
Political Economy
The roots of Hellenistic-Roman civilization lie in an attempt to save the ideal of Hellenic civilization from a profound structural crisis which afflicted the Mediterranean world from about the fourth century on. This ideal was, we will remember, centered on a radical democratization of the life of the city –which was, we will remember, first and foremost a religious life—to the entire body of citizens. The real work of Hellenic civilization, in other words, took place not in its olive groves and vineyards, its workshops or markets, but rather in the cultic centers of its mystery religions, in its drama festivals, and above all in the public forum in which, in principle at least, any male citizen could earn sufficient respect from his peers to rise to the office of basileus archon and sit for life on the Areopagus.
This ideal was, to be sure, never fully realized. Athens went much further than most cities in extending participation in the public arena to the full body of citizens, and even there this participation was, for the vast majority, a mere formal possibility. The peasants and artisans of the Athenian demos remained bound by ananke to the toil of vineyard and olive grove, workshop and market, held back by material constraints from ever really becoming citizens.
By the fourth century, however, even this modest realization of the Hellenic ideal was endangered. The economic strategy of the Hellenic poleis --the exploitation of new technologies (specialized agriculture, especially wine and oil, and specialized crafts, especially pottery) to develop a vigorous export trade—had been dramatically successful. The very success of this model lead, however, to imitation, much of it encouraged by the Greek cities themselves which spawned numerous colonies throughout the MediterraneanBasin and north into the Black Sea. The result of this was growing competition and a gradual decline in revenues in Old Greece as the comparative advantage which made the polis possible in the first place was lost to new entrants (de Ste. Croix 1982).
“Democratic” adaptations which combine low rates of exploitation and broad political participation with an open economy permitting at least some to accumulate significant quantities of wealth are almost always associated with a high end export economy. As revenues declined over the course of the fourth century, the result was an intensification in the class struggle as the ruling classes attempted to maintain their position and/or recover lost ground, something which required 1) intensified exploitation, either of their own working classes or a much expanded base of chattel slaves, or both, 2) successful development of imperial taxing structures which transformed colonies from competitors into a new source of revenue, and 3) insertion into –and a measure of control over-- the developing Silk Road trade networks, so that products which were now being produced for export throughout the Mediterranean could be traded globally and thus retain their comparative advantage.
Alexander’s conquests opened the door for all of these adaptations. On the one hand, wars of conquest increased the supply of chattel slaves and opened up new lands to exploitation, either by slaves or by dependent tenants for whom Macedonian rule meant simply a change in masters. At the same time, Macedonian hegemony lead to a gradual erosion of democratic institutions so that the working classes lost much of the political protection they had won during the struggles of the Archaic and Classical epochs and the ruling classes were able to once again begin accumulating land and pushing an ever larger fraction of the population towards servitude. Control over the entire Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia meant that cities which for Athens had been competitors now became a source of revenue for the Macedonians, while at the same time securing access to trade routes with India and China. The Carthaginians, themselves an old colony of the Phoenicians, did much the same for the Western Mediterranean. Indeed, by 200 BCE, most of civilized Eurasia, from China in the East and India in the South, to Britain, Iberia, and West Africa in the West had been linked together in one single “global” market in luxury goods.
It was, however, the Romans who completed this process and unified the entire MediterraneanBasin, together with most of Europe and parts of Western Asia into a single imperial structure. In order to understand the precise character of this structure it is necessary to say a few words about the history of Rome itself. Like most of the poleis of the Mediterranean basin it grew up on the basis of specialized agriculture and crafts production. Like them, it experienced sharp economic differentiation during the first two centuries after its founding, a period corresponding roughly to the Greek Archaic era. And as in Greek cities during this period economic differentiation led to sharp internal struggles. Most Greek poleis, however, resolved these contradictions by carrying out authentic land reform and establishing more or less democratic polities (the Athenian model), or else opted for outright oligarchies which reduced either their own citizens or those of the surrounding countryside to servitude (the Spartan model). Rome did neither. The Roman constitution was, to be sure, thoroughly oligarchical, paying only lip service to democracy. While laws could officially be made only by the Assembly, this Assembly was by tribes and under the effective control of the patrician families which made up the most prestigious lineages in the various tribes, or later by nouveau riches plebians. Real authority remained with the Senate which was gradually opened up to plebians who had held senior magistracies, but this simply transformed it from a hereditary oligarchy into an economic oligarchy –what amounted to a council of the city’s largest landowners. The consuls or senior magistrates held far more authority than their counterparts in even oligarchic cities in Greece, especially with respect to military matters.
Where Rome differed most from the Greek oligarchies was in the fact that it cushioned its own population from the most brutal forms of exploitation and opted instead for empire. The Roman ruling classes effectively bought off their own people with the promise of “bread and circuses,” and above all with the opportunity to secure a plot of land through service in the imperial army. This created extraordinary economic pressures for imperial expansion. Both the modest “welfare state” enjoyed by the Roman people and the continued wealth and power of the ruling classes depended on empire.
In this sense the transition from the Republic to the Principate was inevitable. The drive for empire increased the political weight of the military to the point that it outweighed the historic institutions of the Republic which were not so much abolished as they were simply overshadowed. As in the case of the Hellenistic Empires the Roman state was never the principal means by which the ruling classes extracted surplus from the population. Rather, it created opportunities for private individuals to engage in exploitation. The (very substantial) surplus extracted from the conquered peoples was used first and foremost to buy into the Silk Road trade. Wine, oil, and gold flowed East; silk and spices flowed West.
The resulting structure amounted to this: a military dictatorship which extended throughout the Mediterranean oikumene and made it possible for the Roman and provincial ruling classes to establish vast latifundia worked by slaves (in the West) and dependent peasants (in the East). The extent of latifundialization, as well as of effective taxation, varied considerably from one region to the other. In the West, for example Sicily, Libya, Mauritania, and Numidia in North Africa, and much of Gaul and Iberia were all transformed into “bread baskets” with vast estates worked primarily by slave labor. Towards the periphery of Europe, on the other hand, in Britain for example, there is some evidence that pre-Roman patterns persisted. The same is true in the East, where latifundia were more often worked by tenants or wage laborers than by slaves. Galilee was latifundialized long before the Roman conquest; Judea on the other hand remained home to large numbers of independent peasants well into the Roman period (Freyne 1980: 156-170).
Rates and forms of taxation also varied, and recent research has made the picture even more complex, as scholars debate just how early the capitum or head tax was imposed. Generally speaking, however, all areas under Roman rule were subject to the tributum in the amount of 1/4 of the harvest (Freyne 1980: 174). Those regions directly under Roman administration were subject as well to the annona or yearly produce to support the Roman population, and the annona militaris, paid in kind or forced labor to support the Roman garrisons (Belo 1981: 63) and to various tolls, excises and duties, known collectively as the publicum, whence the name “publican.” The tax burden would haven further compounded by the exactions of the indigenous ruling classes, at least some of which had historically derived their revenues from taxes and tithes rather than from the exploitation of latifundia.
The multiple forms of exploitation to which the people were subject meant that the class structure of, and the pattern of social contradictions in the Roman Empire was complex indeed.
- Within the ruling bloc we must distinguish
- the Roman metropolitan ruling classes, which included
- the Senatorial Order – eventually defined as those who had a census of HS 1,000,000, and who controlled all of the most senior posts in the imperial administration, of whom there were never more than 600 in the Empire as a whole,
- the Equestrian Order, whose members had a census of HS 400,000 or more, and who provided the cadre core of the Roman imperial administration, and depended on imperial exactions for its revenues and advancement; and
- the provincial ruling class, which included
- the curiales, or members of the city councils, who were generally required to have a census of over HS100,000. [1]
- Outside the ruling bloc we should identify:
2.1.Two types of middle strata:
2.1.1.Privileged freedmen and slaves who were entrusted with important administrative responsibilities, who were often able to accumulate significant wealth, but who lacked the personal liberty characteristic of ruling class status, and
2.1.2.A relatively large middle stratum of merchants, artisans, intellectuals and others who had effective control over their time and labor, but who did have to sell the goods and services they produced in order to survive.
2.2.The vast majority of the population consisted of various types of agricultural produces, subject to systematic exploitation of various kinds:
2.2.1.Independent and community peasants subject only to taxes, tithes, and occasional forced labor,
2.2.2.Tenants, subject to rents and to varying degrees of constraint on their liberty of movement, which generally increased during the later years of the Empire, and
2.2.3.Chattel slaves, who were generally men taken as prisoners of war and often worked to death in the fields or in the mines.