All the scholars involved in the redaction of the 'History of Private Life'
series are excellent in their respective areas of specialisation (Paul Veyne is
responsible for the tome on ancient Rome), and most follow Duby's style of
historical investigation. Besides, it hardly needs to be pointed out that no
respectable historian would get involved in a project that could compromise his
academic credibility - Duby might have specialised in the Middle-Ages, but his
collaboration to this series is a warrant of its quality and seriousness.
You say that the work is filled with exceptions that are 'jejunely' stressed,
which is no slight accusation to a major historical work like this one.
Therefore it is not too much to expect you to justify your claim. And seeing as
historical claims constitute the bulk of de Benoist's argument, it would not be
impertinent to elaborate on Roman attitudes on marriage and love, based on
serious historical sources and studies.
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "evola_as_he_is" <evola_as_he_is@...>
wrote:
>
> George Duby, we wrote, is a "French scholar whose knowledge of the Middle Ages
is still unparalleled in French academe." Should we have stressed : "Middle
Ages"?
>
> "Histories of Private Life" in ancient Rome and ancient Greece are filled with
exceptions such as those that are jejunely stressed in that one.
>
>
> --- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "nataraja86" <cavalcarelatigre@> wrote:
> >
> > Also, if the Romans could distinguish between Juno and Venus, they did,
however, like to see them reconciled or coinciding. Since evola_as_he_is has
mentioned George Duby, we send the interested reader to the section on marriage
from the first tome of a work which Duby co-edited, titled 'A History of Private
Life' (5. vols - tome 1: 'Pagan Rome and Byzantium'), which supports the view
that the pagan Roman world saw the coinciding between Venus and Juno as a stroke
of good fortune:
http://books.google.ca/books?id=BqXQUQ4nW4gC&lpg=PR1&dq=%22History%20of%20privat\
e%20life&pg=PA40#v=onepage&q=&f=false
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "evola_as_he_is" <evola_as_he_is@>
wrote:
> > >
> > > Evola's standpoint on sexuality and on marriage and on the connected
question of the relationship between marriage and sexuality, as expressed in
'Metaphysics of Sex' and in 'Men among the ruins', is well-known. "In The
Metaphysics of Sex (1958), Guido Stucco summarises, Evola took issue with three
views of human sexuality. The first is naturalism. According to naturalism the
erotic life is conceived as an extension of animal instincts, or merely as a
means to perpetuate the species. (...). The second view Evola called "bourgeois
love": it is characterized by respectability and sanctified by marriage. The
most important features of this type of sexuality are mutual commitment, love,
feelings. The third view of sex is hedonism. Following this view, people seek
pleasure as an end in itself. This type of sexuality is hopelessly closed to
transcendent possibilities intrinsic to sexual intercourse, and thus not worthy
of being pursued. Evola then went on to explain how sexual intercourse can
become a path leading to spiritual achievements."
> > >
> > > Now, let's wish that we are not the only one to have noted in 'Men Among
the Ruins' a statement that appears to be slightly in contradiction with the
correct view that "The most important features of this type of sexuality [the
bourgeois one] are mutual commitment, love, feelings." This contradiction is
found in the chapter called 'The Problem of Births', which, in all other
respects, remains, from a supra-Christian standpoint, one of the very best
writings on the topic. Let's quote it :
> > >
> > > "The Catholic religion has embraced the biblical principle concerning the
multiplication of the human species. This is one of the cases in which the
Church has bestowed an ethical value on things that have only a practical,
relative value that is quite outdated today. The Jewish precept was justified
only considering the patriarchal conditions of the ancient Jewish tribes,
composed of farmers and herdsmen, in which (as still happens today in those few
rural areas where analogous situations are found) a plentiful offspring was
regarded as desirable and providential because of the need for able bodies. All
this has nothing to do with religion or ethics. From a specific point of
view-that of asceticism-it is possible to condemn the pleasures of sex in
general, as was the case of the original ascetic Christian tradition. But in
ordinary life, and in general, wherever there are no ascetic vocations it is
extremely unreasonable to legitimize and sanctify sexual union and marriage only
when they are aimed at procreation, declaring them to be sinful in every other
instance. For practical purposes, what does this mean, other than that the
religious perspective here approves and even encourages the most primitive and
animalistic expression of an instinct? Conception essentially implies a state of
complete abandonment of man to the sexual passion, just as one of the most
natural means to avoid conception implies a certain renunciation, predominance
of will, and self-control vis-a-vis the most primitive impulse of instinct and
desire. In every other instance besides sex, the Church praises and formally
approves the latter disposition - that is, the predominance of the intellect and
will over the impulses of the senses. But when it comes to sexual union, because
it obtusely maintains the outdated precept of the Jewish law, either out of
hypocrisy or from a theological hatred of sex per se, Catholic morality has
endorsed the opposite attitude: the attitude of those who passively play into
the hands of Schopenhauer's "genius of the species," through couplings that are
really more ferarum [after the manner of beasts].
> > >
> > > Let me repeat: I could understand the precept of celibacy and chastity and
the total condemnation of the pleasures of sex and the use of women from the
point of view of an ascetic morality with supernatural objectives. However, it
is incomprehensible to endorse the use of women and sexuality only in terms of
procreation, as this amounts to degrading every relation between the sexes to an
animal level. Even a libertine, who elevates pleasure to an art (not to mention
a certain "Dionysism" that in antiquity enjoyed a religious sanction), is
undoubtedly superior to those who follow the Catholic view to the letter."
> > >
> > > The "slight" contradiction we have just mentionned is found in the next
paragraph.:
> > >
> > > "However, it seems that the Church has recently been willing to make some
concessions. While the concern of Vatican II to keep up with the times has had
several deprecable consequences, we can still recognize as a positive thing the
council's explicit acknowledgment that not only procreation, but "love" as well,
may be the legitimate foundation of marriage."
> > >
> > > The quotation marks between "love" is the only reason why we have called
that statement of his in 'Men among the Ruin' a "slight" contradiction. In
reality, in antiquity and until the late twelfth century in Europe, love, with
or without quotation marks, was seen either as a 'merry sensuality' or as a
'tragic madness' and, as a result, was not considered as a "legitimate
foundation of marriage", far from it. Here, once again, we thus find that the
same views were hold both by the Church and by the pre-Christian power, yet for
different and, to some extent, even antithetic reasons, whose study it is not
our intention to undertake in this message ; let's just note that, as a rule,
any moral precept, when cut off from the higher plane on which it finds its
justification, is bound to backfire sooner or later, after it is assumed or
forced upon a whole people.
> > >
> > > Various authors, from their own perspective, have shown how love-based
and, more generally, feeling-based marital union originates directly in the
Church utilitarian views on marriage, as a seemingly paradoxical aftershock of
its "theological hatred of sex per se" and to its successful attempt to
restructure marriage according to it. Alain de Benoist, a rather well-known
French scholar who is considered as the leader of what may be left of the
'Nouvelle Droite', and who, incidentally, has written a worthy study on the work
of J. Evola, is one of them.
> > >
> > > "It is only relatively lately that Christianity has begun to exert a
massive influence on the European family. Just think that it took it almost a
millennium to establish its theology of marriage and to turn it into a
sacrament! When it had to reflect on marriage and on family, the Church was
first faced with a relative dogmatic vacuum. In the Gospels, Jesus did not stand
for procreation, nor did he tell us what the 'ideal family' should be. He merely
condemned repudiation, emphasised clearly the pre-eminence of the community of
faith on blood ties and suggested that virginity and celibacy are better than
marital union. After him, saint Paul reinforced the Christian contempt for the
flesh:: to him, marriage was only a stopgap. Sexual abstinence was particularly
praised in the early Church, either in the form of virginity and celibacy, or as
conjugal continence. One only needs to read Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian of
Carthage, Ambrose of Milan or Gregory of Nyssa, to realise that, in patristic
times, marriage was essentially conceived of as a remedy for fornication.
Originally, the Christian ideal does thus seem to have been that of the final
renouncement of any sexual activity. However, the assumption of this ideal would
have obviously meant the end of Christendom. Besides, the Church soon had to
react against various currents which were rejected as heretic or as encratic,
and which laid it on thick, going so far as to condemn any sexual relation
within marriage and to preach castration. To answer the objections of heretics
as well as the faithful's questioning, the Church eventually had to decide on
its policy. The Christian doctrine of marriage was gradually established, from
the IXth to the XIIth century. They are known in broad outlines. Virginity was
still regarded as a higher state than marital union, but, theoretically at
least, it was only forced upon priests and monastic communities. At the same
time marriage was made "virtuous" by the encounter of the three goods enumerated
by Saint Augustine: procreation of children, marital fidelity and sacramentality
of the union.
> > >
> > > This Christian marriage had great trouble imposing itself, since it was in
stark contrast on several essential points with the pagan pattern of married and
family life. Whereas Roman law, Celtic law and Germanic law accepted in certain
cases separation, repudiation or divorce, in particular if the wife was sterile,
Christian marriage was essentially meant to be indissoluble: The logic of the
couple prevailed on that of the line. This feature was still accentuated by the
emphasis laid by the Church on the freedom of the personal consent of the
couple. In the context of those times, this attitude amounted, by instituting a
new form of autonomy of the subject, to considering the interests of families
and clans, that is to say, the transmission of heritage, of secondary
importance. By institutionalising an autonomous conjugality to the detriment of
broader forms of adherence and of solidarity (community, lineage, and extended
family), Christian marriage initiated a long process of individualisation, whose
final result was love-based modern marriage (today, the main cause of divorce).
On the other hand, throughout the Middle Ages, the Church was obsessed by the
fight against 'incest': Until 1215, all 7th cousins were not allowed to
intermarry! However, since unmemorable times, the Indo-European system of
relationship rested on an endogamic system of diagonal alliances between
cousins. The proscription of marriage between relatives, even remote ones, not
only eliminated a considerable number of possible wives, but ran counter to a
traditional logic, characteristic of aristocratic marriage, according to which
the requirement for the maintenance and the reorganisation of inheritances or of
private kingdoms went hand in hand with the need for a lasting alliance between
lines. Lastly, the Church prescribed that any sexual activity should occur only
within marriage, this activity being at the same time subject to limitations of
all kinds. Thus, the practice of cohabitation, which was common in Antiquity,
was prohibited and considered as adultery, bigamy or polygamy. Marital union
became the only legitimate place for erotic involvement, which amounts to not
being able to distinguish between Venus and Juno anymore. There's a world of
difference between these views and Demosthenes', who said: the following : "This
is what it means to be married: to have sons one can introduce to the family and
the neighbours, and to have daughters of one's own to give to husbands. For we
have courtesans for pleasure, concubines to attend to our daily bodily needs,
and wives to bear children legitimately and to be faithful wards of our homes."
(Against Neaera, 122). On all these points, the Christian doctrine was in stark
contrast with the pagan conception of marriage and family. This is what George
Duby [a French scholar whose knowledge of the Middle Ages is still unparalleled
in French academe] called the conflict between the "morals of the warriors" and
the "morals of the
priests"."http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:1NRgNX8FHwYJ:www.alaindebenoist.c\
om/pdf/entretien_sur_le_paganisme.pdf+endogamie+indo-europeens&cd=24&hl=fr&ct=cl\
nk&gl=fr
> > >
> > >
> > > Each sentence of this in-depth analysis could expand into a few books. In
the meantime, the reader is invited to ponder over one of the most disturbing
aspect of Christian marriage, as pointed out by A. de Benoist : " Marital union
became the only legitimate place for erotic involvement, which amounts to not
being able to distinguish between Venus and Juno anymore.", a distinction of
which the ancient Roman was well aware, and that was even consubstantial to him,
in most cases : "The beginnings of married love are honourable, but its excesses
make it perverse. After all, it makes no difference how a disease is actually
caught. For this reason, Sextius has written in his Opinions: "The man who makes
love too ardently to his wife is an adulterer." And indeed it is a disgraceful
thing to feel any love for another man's wife, but also to feel too much for
your own. The wise man ought to love his wife reasonably, not passionately. He
controls the onset of erotic excitement an is not rushed headlong into sex :
there is nothing more disgusting than making love to your wife as if she were
your mistress." (Seneca, De Matrimonio, 84-85)
> > >
> >
>