00:00:00.240 - 00:00:15.600

Unknown: I'd like to anyway to speak to you briefly on the venture round zones, and the challenges he has presented to himself First of all, and to others. Brown first came to the attention of a national public with his book life against

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death, the psychoanalytic meaning of history. One critic Frederick crews wrote to come under the spell of life against death is to be lifted suddenly about the plane of academic cliche, and they can see the new intensity of self investigation.

00:00:34.170 - 00:00:49.320

In the preface provides against death brown road. In 1953, I turned to a deep study of Freud feeling a need to reappraise the nature and destiny of man inheriting from the products and traditions the contents that insisted that

00:00:49.320 - 00:01:05.190

intellectual work should be directed towards the relief of man's state. I like so many of my generation live through the superannuation of political categories, which informed liberal thought and action in the 1930s those of us who are

00:01:05.190 - 00:01:18.390

temperamentally, he said incapable of embracing the politics of sin, cynicism and despair, have been compelled to re examine the classic assumptions about the nature of politics, and about the political character of human

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nature. Brown instrumental text for this re examination with the work of Freud, and I think in line with the title for this series of lectures, we might say that brown found a way to include Freud to work within the prophetic tradition. What Freud

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prophesied what the psychoanalysis of history reveal was history as a neurosis, pressing restlessly and unconsciously, towards the abolition of history, that abolition could be a way out was not found a devastating

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Apocalypse, that destructive Return of the repressed. Humanity had and browns reading of Freud repressed its own death, unable to accept it each moment, it's a native biological dying, diffusion of arrows and death of a vital light. Humanity

00:02:07.230 - 00:02:23.520

has fled from death, but the repressed return, death appears everywhere cities are tombs, cultural monuments, or Mozza, Liam's and life has turned into a living death, ground for this living, death and culture in our economic organization and in the

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organization of the body, the very structure of our sexuality, its rigidity, and been determined by our flight from death, the free play of the instincts had been sacrificed to this futile and unending flight. Here browntown himself speaking

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with figures from the prophetic traditions, most particularly perhaps Martin Luther, who saw this world as having been given over to the devil, given over to death, the situation in brown view would reach the crisis required a reorganization of

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society, and a fundamental rethinking, as Brown said, of our most basic categories, like against dead ends with the foreshadowing foreshadowing of a way out of the crisis, of a resurrection of the body. But that foreshadowing was given a

00:03:10.860 - 00:03:29.310

surprising embodiment in Brown's next venture, loves body, loves body speaks both of and within the prophetic tradition of this book, Martin, Martin green rose, Professor brown affiliation self to a major line of 19th and 20th century prophets, Nietzsche

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Carlisle, dh Lawrence Emerson, Brown has a very similar apocalyptic message. That message as I understand it, was that the kingdom is already at hand, that the true apocalypse is inward. The way out that life against death sought for is the

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profound change of consciousness, the shattering of the categories of waking rationality, the categories that support the notion of separate individuality, we need a crossing of mental boundaries. Brown found that new

00:04:00.090 - 00:04:16.080

consciousness already present among us in poetry, the pre play of the instincts of life against death only hope for is if only we had eyes to see the constant activity of poets. And if one for clearly and deeply enough the activity of poets was

00:04:16.080 - 00:04:32.760

already our activity. Now, all our work if we understood Freud, is already the work of symbol formation of poetry making love body concludes everything is only metaphor there is only poetry. to reclaim to recognize our power of creative making

00:04:32.760 - 00:04:49.350

would be to take back into ourselves, the creative the the powers of the God. Browns next venture called closing time is an imagined conversation between brown the 18th century Italian philosopher Vico and James Joyce. The book's title is at

00:04:49.350 - 00:05:05.640

once a description that this is the end of a cycle, a dark time, a closing time, and the prophecy and path to start a new cycle or renewal. And it is again The prophecy of a new language, one of continuous creation, the difficult speaking in tongues of

00:05:05.640 - 00:05:19.290

Finnegans Wake. This is the language, the stammering of the humanities, the mythmakers, those who spoke of the gods. For closing, I look in aligning HDS, to Greek, the return of the gods.

00:05:21.360 - 00:05:37.980

Each of Browns book, each of his ventures picks up the strands of the previous work, and we waste them in new ways. Constantly reassessing his former work, his prophecy, and the prophetic tradition itself. I am very happy indeed, that we can be

00:05:37.980 - 00:06:15.630

here together near the beginning of Professor brown next century. I think I can live up to that introduction, I am encouraged double, I keep changing my mind. I am also growing old.

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This is another experiment in the study of history. And I should be very make it very clear at the outset. This is not an experiment by a specialist. Either in history as a whole and certainly not Islam. I am strictly an amateur or a

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specialist, if you like an academic terms of specialists, perhaps in general education. And I would like to think of what I'm going to try to do in these lectures as an experiment in the study of history, and an experiment in general education,

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which I interpret to be essentially a matter of relating the present to the past, or the present to our past cultural tradition, so that we can see the current events in the light of universal history and become something like that informed

00:07:40.350 - 00:08:08.760

citizenry which the founding fathers deemed essential to the survival of this republic. An essential ingredient in the impetus that leads to my being here, offering to lecture on the challenge of Islam comes from the Ayatollah Khomeini. And, and

00:08:09.360 - 00:08:35.130

my discovery of my total inability to situate what was happening, as well, I may say, as others total inability, up to the President of the United States to relate what was happening to our understanding of what was going on in the

00:08:35.130 - 00:08:53.130

world and had been going on in the world for centuries. But if the impetus comes from that, and I want to share it with you, because I do believe that the function of general education and the function of education in the humanities is always under

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essentially, to relate past and present. Starting from that impulse in the present, I think it did end for me with some reconstruction of my sense of our of the past, my sense of the past in those broad terms that I associate with the gold gang

00:09:18.600 - 00:09:44.220

triptych down there in Boston that I must see again, if I got it, right, what are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? And, and it starts therefore, with just as it was doing my

00:09:44.220 - 00:10:07.320

homework on on Islam. And I think I can show you that. You can do your homework on Islam, you can get quite far. If you apply yourself and Even and keep your amateur status. And it ends at least as I see it.

00:10:08.790 - 00:10:26.460

My first proposition is that at least in my experience, the recognition of the reality of Islam, which did not really figure in my understanding of the past, of the past, which had produced me or which had produced us, the recognition of

00:10:26.460 - 00:10:55.290

the reality of Islam was for me a way to get out of the narrow historical framework of Western civilization, which as a classics professor, originally, now the frog, which, as a classics professor, I had assumed all through my teaching

00:10:55.290 - 00:11:19.680

career that I was teaching something that you could call Western civilization. I remember when I began at a college not far from here, lecturing in general courses, general education courses on the humanities. I can see my role to

00:11:19.680 - 00:11:39.480

be Athens versus Jerusalem. Or and the headings that Matthew Arnold used and his definition of the roots of our culture, he brought some and Hellenism. I

00:11:39.480 - 00:11:58.260

can see that my function to be Mr. Hellenism. And I spoke at Wesleyan University, which at that time was more he bred and it is now I spoke up for Hellenism as against or confronting Hebrew ism, and thought that was the function of

00:11:58.590 - 00:12:24.270

classics Professor doing general education. Start with that notion of Western civilization Matthew Arnold's as, as composed of two basic ingredients, he brought some Hellenism. You will remember he defined, he gave a definition in his book, culture

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and anarchy of how he can see the essence of on the one hand, the Greek on the other hand, the Hebrew, Hebrew, Christian, well, I don't know whether he would do that.

00:12:37.380 - 00:12:58.890

On the other hand, the Hebrew contributions to the structure of our present consciousness, he called the contribution of Hebrew, some he called it strictness of conscience. And that is a first definition of the prophetic impulse strictness

00:12:58.920 - 00:13:23.520

of conscience and on the other hand, he called Hellenism, spontaneity of consciousness a little more elusive as to what that means, what is it that we have inherited from the Greeks? What is it batiko refers to a spontaneity of consciousness, is

00:13:23.520 - 00:13:50.190

that the scientific impulse? Or is it the poetic impulse? Anyway, coming to recognize the reality of Islam, for me and I submitted to you is to recognize that Islam has just as much right to

00:13:50.190 - 00:14:17.070

claim to be the synthesis of Hebrew ism and Hellenism as Western civilization or whatever it is, we are has the right to do that is to say Islam is not another cultural tradition. It is not specifically Of course, another oriental cultural

00:14:17.070 - 00:14:41.610

tradition. With that term, implied, traditional distinction between west and east. It is not another oriental tradition. It is an alternate alternative arrival interpretation of our tradition. And if you're thinking about history, this

00:14:41.610 - 00:15:08.940

has, it seems to me more implications. History is not like or our history is not like the confluence, the flowing together of two rivers. two streams, he brings some Hellenism with that majestic inevitability that goes with

00:15:08.940 - 00:15:29.070

rivers and other things in the natural order. History is more human than that and more hazardous Islam, and I hope to develop this, Islam is a wager that Christianity has gone wrong.

00:15:31.050 - 00:15:56.100

The stakes are high. Islam is an alternative interpretation of our tradition. And an interpretation of a tradition is itself a wager a bet, a living adventure, on how we are to conduct our present

00:15:56.130 - 00:16:17.880

and our future. And more thinking of those streams and west and east. The plot thickens, I think, think of Islam. It's particular geographical matrix, where it

00:16:17.880 - 00:16:50.160

came into being its Arabian, trans Jordanian matrix and the second century AD. Beyond Jordan, Arabia, in the seventh century AD, at that time, Islam or Arabia was at the intersection, or the mob both

00:16:50.160 - 00:17:21.780

the margin and intersection of two superannuated empires. The Roman Empire in the rest, the Persian or parthian, or effect time sustain in Empire in the east, two world empires, both aspiring to be world empires, which had been stuck in the

00:17:21.780 - 00:17:48.960

endless repetition of that drama of East versus west for centuries. And who add a drama that drama of East versus West which has some obsessed Western civilization, including my Greeks. After all, we begin our, our history of classical Greece

00:17:49.230 - 00:18:16.710

with the person was where the Greeks confront the barbarians from the east. And we go on with their conquest of those barbarians by Alexander. And then the centuries then the then Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and the Battle of

00:18:16.740 - 00:18:45.510

actium. Were whether, when Caesar Octavian, turn back the orientalizing barbarism of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, on into the Roman Empire with that endless series of border warfare is between parthian Empire and Roman Empire. The theme there is

00:18:45.510 - 00:19:14.580

saving Western civilization from oriental barbarism. And the term went on and Islam perhaps by a fortunate birth. Islam's origin at that on the margin of those two empires. You must not think

00:19:14.580 - 00:19:47.400

of the locus matrix which gave birth to Islam as some kind of primitive nomadic know where the desert Mecca was then intersected by caravan routes linking east and west its marginal position in the Quran. Quran surah to 143. I have made

00:19:47.400 - 00:20:16.650

you a mid most people to be a witness against mankind. They are in between the two world empires and this is This location, I think, contributes something to their universalism. They are luckily born outside the prison house of east and

00:20:16.650 - 00:20:36.990

west, east versus West. That prison house which is even adherents to which is even indicated in the title Roman Catholic Church to make sure that is identified with the

00:20:36.990 - 00:20:57.030

West. They are, they are outside of that bag, that compulsive pattern of repetition. And at the end of his life, Mohammed the Prophet,

00:20:58.410 - 00:21:22.320

in a characteristic gesture of which reasserts the universalism of prophecy called upon the emperors of the whole world to submit. He called on the Roman Emperor to submit the Perth, Perth Seon or senior monarch in the east to submit and also the

00:21:22.320 - 00:21:48.210

emperor of Abyssinia, all of them to submit to Allah. The The, the location there gives them a an independence from and the

00:21:48.210 - 00:22:14.880

purchase on the entire world and ecumenical, no restores or at gives a geographical basis to their eq manacle to their reassertion of the ecumenical nature of prophecy. Not only that, but but I think that Islam teaches us to enlarge our

00:22:14.880 - 00:22:32.160

definition of the prophetic tradition. It is not, as Matthew Arnold taught me, just Hebrew. It is not just old prophecy is not just Old Testament prophecy.

00:22:33.120 - 00:22:52.770

The prophetic tradition more generously understood, has to include the shadowy figure of zoroaster needs Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the prophet and religious teacher of ancient Persia, the

00:22:52.770 - 00:23:20.310

dictionary no the encyclopedia tells me 628 to 551 BC. prophecy is not just Hebrew, some it is and Iran, no Semitic, Iranian and Semitic and era no Semitic tradition. And Islam gets some of its distinctive character to its ability to draw on Iranian

00:23:20.490 - 00:23:39.990

as well as submitted prophetic traditions. So, this is those actors starting with concerned with the relation of present events to pass traditions.

00:23:41.520 - 00:24:03.180

The study of Islam is is is moving my mind into a more ampler and more general generous notion of the space in which history takes place, and liberating me from the prison house, the mental prison house

00:24:03.390 - 00:24:22.620

of Western civilization. Not only though getting out of the spatial framework of Western civilization, I think another thing that has happened or is happening to me or I want to see what you think of it. The study

00:24:22.650 - 00:24:40.560

of Islam is getting me out of the traditional chronological framework on which every good classics Professor hangs his world history. I mean, the well known conventional framework,

00:24:40.620 - 00:25:11.280

ancient medieval, modern, that particular chronological backbone, or linear line is the conventional baggage of any class. Six professor teaching general education courses on Western Civ. And that's what I want to re examine or undermine,

00:25:12.150 - 00:25:32.400

in my mind and yours. Now, the unit of our history is not Western civilization but a civilization. World History with cosmopolitan intent,

00:25:34.140 - 00:25:50.280

the the some of you that that bizarre notation on the posters advertising this occasion. Some of you may not know that that that is simply a citation of one of the major works of the great

00:25:50.280 - 00:26:14.730

philosopher Emmanuel Kant. Also, I mean, you can be a prophetic philosopher see a manual can't. World History with cosmopolitan intent is not the history of Western civilization but the history of civilization. And it begins in the ancient Near East.

00:26:16.290 - 00:26:42.180

Again, geography does matter, the Fertile Crescent, the Nile to access, access, yes, oxus. Look it up heartland and, and Western civilization including the Greek is, I think

00:26:42.180 - 00:27:03.810

can better be seen as a spinoff of derivative, Western expansion, Western expansion, first to the Mediterranean, Greco Roman civilization, then to Western Europe, and then to America and Medford Western

00:27:03.810 - 00:27:26.220

expansion should be seen as a spin off of derivative civilization, modifications mutations in a pattern, whose fundamental outline was laid down in the ancient oriental herbal empires, and we do not understand the ground can have

00:27:26.220 - 00:27:52.680

our civilization on less we understand that those ancient oriental urban empires. Civilization begins in the ancient Near East around 3000 BC. The decisive event, I think, still, the world's not an event, the decisive turning point in

00:27:52.680 - 00:28:17.130

Universal history with cosmopolitan intent is what I have been taught by archaeologists to call the urban revolution. The Urban revolution, that momentous shift in the archaeological record that shift from Neolithic

00:28:17.130 - 00:28:45.150

village to temples, towers and city the pyramids of Egypt, the mega Mesopotamian ziggurat, ziggurat ziggurat, an ancient Babylonian temple tower, consisting of last the pyramidal structure, built in successive stages, with a shrine at the

00:28:45.180 - 00:29:05.670

top. The Tower of Babel Come let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven. The conventional chronological schema ancient

00:29:05.670 - 00:29:28.200

medic evil modern is I think, a snare and a delusion, confusing our search for where we are and what is to be done. It is an invention. I think this is literally true. It is an invention of 19th century historian 19th century of

00:29:28.200 - 00:29:41.850

course, Western historians, and reflects 19th century Western optimism and complacency 19th century confidence in the evidence in the inevitability and the

00:29:41.850 - 00:29:59.490

righteousness of the triumph of Western civilization. Ancient medieval and modern is the schema of world history is under the sign of

00:30:01.140 - 00:30:19.680

In under the sign of progress, or history as the march of progress, inevitable progress, material progress that's also implied in the 19th century view

00:30:19.680 - 00:30:35.310

which is, which is, I think, accepted without question by all our advocates in public life in

00:30:35.310 - 00:30:57.930

America of, of economic development, inevitable progress, which is material progress, especially technological progress. It is a view of history as growth from development. And it's a view of history with modernization, as a

00:30:57.930 - 00:31:16.290

solution to the problem, and modern modernization, as of course, the gift of the West. This view of history is to be a little more philosophically precise, a

00:31:16.290 - 00:31:33.000

teleological structure. It is a view of history as a teleological structure, the inevitability of the progression from ancient to medieval to modern, is teleological That is to say, determined by the end,

00:31:33.630 - 00:31:47.520

to be arrived that man is by nature made for civilization. And the true form of civilization is modern civilization. That's the teleology.

00:31:50.910 - 00:32:11.040

Man's true nature then, is revealed in modern man. Man's true lecture is in this room, it seems unlikely. It seems unlikely to me, that man's true nature is modern man.

00:32:11.760 - 00:32:41.130

And I read all of modern literature and all of modern art as a protest against any such assumption. I read modern literature saying this is not it. And modernism begins when they begin

00:32:41.130 - 00:33:00.600

to say, this is not it. The answer to Gauguin's questions. What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Are we do still remain dark,

00:33:01.530 - 00:33:30.060

or remain are even darker? If you begin to discard the confident complacency in the inevitability and righteousness of material progress? That's a negative, that's a negative judgment and does not does not by itself. It repudiates a

00:33:30.060 - 00:33:49.650

certain kind of darkness without itself shedding the light. I think the act there is great darkness in our minds and mind to miners who are think we understand the driving forces. Underlying

00:33:52.020 - 00:34:15.600

that historical event, the urban revolution of 3000 BC. As Lipper was we understand the driving forces under line, the headlong career of events today. And by that, I mean the whole thing, or the crisis and OPEC and Khamenei, and revolution in

00:34:15.600 - 00:34:36.210

Iran. The same underlying forces, the same underlying problems, I believe, are there and to understand the past, again, would be to understand the present at this moment of our history,

00:34:36.240 - 00:35:00.570

all the resources of our tradition, both the break and Hellenic need to be focused on the problem of the city. For civilization, what is this? What is the meaning of this process, which we have been suffering the human race has been Suffering

00:35:00.570 - 00:35:39.390

from low these 5000 years. Some reflections on the nature of the city and civilization, which are the fruits of my rereading of the prophetic tradition in the light of Islam. Aristotle says that man is by nature political. The word

00:35:39.390 - 00:35:55.170

policy is the word city. Man is by nature civilized, or made to be for city life. I think the prophetic tradition, and I think that's right,

00:35:56.730 - 00:36:18.030

rejects that notion that the city that man is by nature, a political or a civilized animal. The city is not natural, it is not by nature. Its silhouette,

00:36:18.060 - 00:36:41.280

the silhouette of the city, whether on the Nile or the Euphrates, or the Charles River, is a visible contradiction of nature, a visible declaration of its supernatural pretentions. More specifically, the sickie does

00:36:41.280 - 00:37:06.210

not arise out of natural human needs. Here, Plato is a better guide than Aristotle, here and always, Plato is a better guide than Aristotle. Plato is certainly touched with the breath of prophecy.

00:37:09.660 - 00:37:24.570

Your cities do not begin at the level of the division of labor based on natural need natural human needs. On the contrary, you

00:37:24.570 - 00:37:38.400

remember in the construction of the city and Plato's Republic, cities in the true sense of the word begin only at the level of luxury, that is to say, the city is a free creation in the realm of

00:37:38.400 - 00:37:56.280

the superfluous I mean economically superfluous. It is a free creation of the human spirit, and not doing something that comes naturally. And it is made in economic

00:37:56.280 - 00:38:24.180

terms, I think, it is made in the city is a free creation in the realm of the superfluous and it is made out of economic surplus, superfluous surplus, a city only becomes possible, when when more is produced, then is necessary for the strictest

00:38:24.180 - 00:38:58.590

demands of natural human nature and survival. That is to say, the city cities and civilization are our are wholly bound up with what Karl Marx called surplus value. Karl Marx was greatly wrong, but also greatly right. That surplus value that realm of

00:38:58.590 - 00:39:23.040

surplus economic surplus, which makes cities possible, is based on exploitation. Karl Marx was right about that, in my view, and Karl Marx, if he, if Jay Cantor wants to say that I see Freud as one of the

00:39:23.040 - 00:39:49.140

Hebrew prophets. So to do I seek Karl Marx. The structure of the city or civilization is based on what Karl Marx specifically calls the antagonistic creation of surplus value. All cities and civilization is an exploitative class structure riddled with

00:39:49.140 - 00:40:16.170

contradictions, like town country. production and consumption and, above all, what a country sends me most here, the contradiction between mental and manual labor. And here is a quotation from Karl

00:40:16.170 - 00:40:34.500

Marx, intellectual and material activity. intellectual and material activity, work with the head work with things, and enjoyment and labor, production and consumption devolve on different individuals,

00:40:34.650 - 00:40:55.290

thus forming classes. As I say, the thing to watch, particularly when thinking of the, of the fundamental nature of the city, I think is the divorce of mentor from men, men, new labor, that urban revolution

00:40:55.290 - 00:41:13.800

of 3000 years BC was a managerial revolution. I mean, those who do not use their hands on management, and management is a problem. I think

00:41:15.270 - 00:41:35.790

that is still with us. It is a problem even under socialism. I'm prone to prophecy. And I mean, I think that events in Poland have a world historical importance.

00:41:37.470 - 00:41:56.340

Free thinks I'm a prophet new inspired. I mean, I'm talking about the Congress of going on right now, where the manual labor is trying to find its way towards a demand to participate in management.

00:41:58.800 - 00:42:18.990

socialism may not be a solution. That obviously isn't, but it enables Polish society to begin to see and tackle problems which American society can't even see. I mean, the hierarchical organization of society, based

00:42:18.990 - 00:42:50.100

on the division of labor, into manual and managerial functions, we accept that So, part of the, I don't know whatever it is, except, but, but, but it may be, it may be that the more brutal and totalitarian totalitarian reorganization of the managerial

00:42:50.100 - 00:43:10.800

principle, which we can see in Eastern Europe, is necessary, before people will be willing to, to accept as in to accept as intolerable. The division between mental and

00:43:10.800 - 00:43:28.620

manual labor, and, and, and, and, and start in a prophetic manner, to reorganize human society as it will have to be done from the bottom to the top. The hierarchical

00:43:28.650 - 00:44:02.970

organization of society, based on the division of labor into mental advantage or functions. The word hierarchy a Greek word means that sacred order, the social order of civilization is sacred. The city or civilization is some kind of religion. Come,

00:44:03.090 - 00:44:23.700

let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven. Civilization from start to finish has been a theocratic structure. theocratic structure

00:44:25.590 - 00:44:49.530

the theocratic structure of the first cities is evident in the architecture dominated by temple palace pyramid and the pretensions of Pharaoh the divine or priestly King. Tensions of Pharaoh which made all state activities, including

00:44:49.530 - 00:45:10.230

the ghastly slaughters to be for the greater greater glory of God, and justified the hierarchical organization of society as net Sorry for the service of the God. And today in Soviet communism,

00:45:12.180 - 00:45:36.630

that new civilization, the web's called it the future. And it works. I think the fundamental structure just as a poem that the fundamental structure is so absurd of modern civilization is more clearly to be seen in Soviet communism than it is in

00:45:36.660 - 00:45:57.510

our fortunate. Our blessing, exceptional interlude in America. Here's a description of, of the,

00:45:58.590 - 00:46:20.070

of the Soviet Union, and its and its structure of civilization as a theocratic structure, the dictatorship of the theocratic state never since the collapse of the theocracies of antiquity, have the secular and

00:46:20.070 - 00:46:37.920

spiritual authorities been concentrated in this way, in a single hand? These words are not mine. They're not from a theologian. They're from Rudolph Barrow, one time functionary in the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic, East

00:46:37.920 - 00:46:59.550

Germany. And his is the most profound I know, attempt to understand the reality of the new social structure in Eastern Europe. And the fundamental concept which he uses to understand what's the structure of the Soviet Union is

00:46:59.580 - 00:47:25.620

theocracy. The city is intrinsically a theocratic or co political, co kradic co political structure to come to understand that our right

00:47:27.330 - 00:47:58.890

is to come to understand the true nature of God. Or if you prefer the function of the idea of God in human affairs, in the human psyche and in society. The prophetic tradition is such an attempt. prophecy is a critical response to the urban

00:47:58.920 - 00:48:25.830

revolution. That irreversible commitment of the human race to the city and civilization, which spread outward from the Nile to access heartland around 3000 BC. prophecy is the perception both for good and for evil inherent in the new social structure. The

00:48:25.860 - 00:48:47.940

Urban complex makes a process of world unification in one sense, commercial, technological empiric Imperial inevitable and makes world unification in another sense. The peaceable Kingdom

00:48:49.440 - 00:49:12.210

ever more problematical. The whole prophetic tradition is an attempt to rectify the social structure precipitated by the urban revolution, to resolve its inherent contradictions, to put an end to the injustice,

00:49:12.270 - 00:49:32.580

inequality and disorder, a disorder that state of war between cities within the city, between city and uncivilized, that state of war that has been its history, from start to finish.

00:49:40.320 - 00:49:55.680

City is a kind of a religion. Perhaps a substitute for religion, or what we used to call the German word and ersatz

00:49:57.270 - 00:50:22.830

religion The prophetic tradition has a word for it. idolatry. idolatry can lead us build a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven. The city is what in another metaphor can be called a

00:50:22.830 - 00:50:41.490

Faustian bargain. Se you remember, a German musician, a German magician, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly experience and power.

00:50:45.330 - 00:51:11.430

The rationale of the structure I suggest is the apple theosis. The becoming divine, the apple theosis of the ruler or the ruling class, or that fictitious entity, the state in democratic mass societies, perhaps the

00:51:11.430 - 00:51:40.200

apotheosis of everybody. And in atheistic communism, the promethium deification of the human race, the expansion of the power of technology, in the spirit of permit us to we can

00:51:40.200 - 00:52:17.970

think of the human race in in Supra human form. In the prophetic tradition, the city as a theocratic structure is idolatrous. the worship of false gods. And the prophetic call is to institute a true theocracy. To find another God

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who is the true God. And in that spirit, the Islamic Shahada, the fundamental declaration of faith, says, There is no god

00:52:35.340 - 00:52:59.400

but God. And on that basis, the prophetic tradition generates social criticism and social programs but social criticism, not based on godless atheism, but on a transcendent God.

00:53:05.190 - 00:53:30.120

And so I end with a a vision of two two kinds of social criticism alive in the world today, Marxism and Islam to still revolutionary forces, to tired

00:53:30.300 - 00:53:47.550

old revolutionary horses. Neither of them doing very well. But it would be a mistake to take any comfort from their failure. The human race is at stake.

00:53:48.660 - 00:54:00.900

And they both Marxism and Islam would agree on one proposition. There will be one world or there will be none