Margaret Jacob

Margaret Candee Jacob (born June 9, 1943) is an American historian of science and Distinguished Professor of Research at UCLA. She specializes in the history of science, knowledge, the Enlightenment and Freemasonry. The Radical Enlightenment Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment. Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, Second Revised Edition, Cornerstone Book Publishers. ISBN 9781887560740 This so-called 'dark side' of Renaissance humanism, that is the search of an immediate comprehensive understanding of nature, encouraged magical and animistic speculations, in conjunction with the extreme individualism so characteristic of the magician. This agressive self-confidence found expression in the formulation of bold and ingenious theories about the historical origins of true wisdom, locating it in pre-Christian times. The paganizing and anti-Christian tendencies within this magical Neo-Platonism were all too clear, and its devotees went on, in some cases, to embrace Cabalistic learning or to search the supposedly ancient writings of the Egyptian priest, Hermes Trismegistus, for the key to this ancient wisdom, for gnosis, an immediate and direct comprehension that would unlock the secrets of nature. This Hermetic tradition, that takes its name from Hermes, came to rest during the Renaissance upon two texts, the Corpus Hermeticum, and he Asclepius. They were revived in the West when the Florentine humanist, Ficino, translated the Pimander (that is the Corpus Hermeticum) into Latin and published it in 1471. The Corpus Hermeticum, although a collection of philosophic aphorisms dating from the second century AD; was believed until the mid-seventeenth century to be the sayings and magical wisdom of the ancient Egyptian priest, Hermes. In the Corpus magic, astrology, alchemy, mystical and number symbolism mix easil with philosophy, with a distinct understanding of the physical world. That mixture, as we shall see, could dissolve and very gradually the magical elements of this pagan naturalism fall by the wayside, leaving a pantheistic and materialistic philospphy of nature, with strongly magical overtones, as well as the crucially important belief that there is a pure wisdom, a prisca, that is, pagan in its roots, universal in meaning, and anti-Christian in its religious and political implications. (pp. 5-6) The repudiation of magic on the part of Enlinghtenment radicals occured simultaneously with their adherence to a pantheistic naturalism that had once been the prevailing philosophy of Renaissance adepts and magi. This extraordinary blending of science and mysticism makes historical sense only if we realize that seventeenth-century science at its very origins possessed certain magical associations. (p. 6) Bruno lionized the pagan deities, asembled them at banquets, applauded their open sensuality and used them as mouthpieces for his reforming philosophy. Within the Hermetic tradition, the pagan deity, Mercury, was in fact believed to be a Roman representation of Hermes, and Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, assisted Mercury and Jupiter in the work of remorming the heavens. Both deities figure prominently in Bruno's pagan imagery, and early in the eighteenth century they return as standard bearers for the Knight of Jubilation, the secret society of republicans and pantheists who will figure so prominently in the first generation of Radical Enlightenment. Then, as with Bruno, this championing of the pagans was part of a larger attempt to fashion an anti-Christian stance that sought to repudiate ethics as well as to undermine the orthodox concept of the trascendent deity. (p. 7) Bruno's new religion of nature rested upon a pantheistic understanding of the universe. His infinite universe contained innumerable worlds, and its matter is eternally in motion. Bruno was the first philosopher to speculate seriously aboutthe possibility of life on other planets, and he believed nature to be one vast continuum wherein all life is constantly created and transformed. The mystical and magical aspects of Bruno's thought did not obscure his anti-Christian bias, nor did they undermine the coherency of his natural philosophy. Likewise his flirtation with court circles did not render mute his outspoken republicanism. He praised the Roman Republic not because it had been favored by fortune but because its citizens had been truly virtuous. In Bruno's thought we find the three thmes that will be consistently presented in the writings of eighteenth-century radcals: pantheistic materialism, the search for a religion of nature, and republicanism. External links Jacob, Margaret C. Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:Historians from the United States Category:Historians of science Category:Women academics from the United States Category:Women born in the 1940s Category:Cornell University alumni Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:People from New York City