The time of the ignoramus

Why the descendants will not call our era with a new Middle Ages

How will the descendants call our time? What label will triumph in fifty years? New Time of Troubles? But in the turmoil there is fog, a haze. And we have a pure haze - the time of ignorant. Neanderthals get up from the knees.

None of the enlightened people was ready to turn the events that occurred in 2014. Of course, all sorts of rubbish from the very beginning of the 19th century were foreseen. But in order for this rubbish to accept historical significance and flooded all his life - the most avid pessimists did not believe in this pessimism. Whatever you say, but we live in a new historical era.

But I would not look for a new Middle Ages in it. The historical Middle Ages in old Europe was not as obscurable as it seemed to us since school years, it was clearly not limited by obscurantism.

Illustration from the book of Jacques Le Goff "Intellectuals in the Middle Ages"

Some of our intellectuals talk about the absurd cruelty of our days, about ridiculous laws. But you need to free words from incorrect meanings. Ignorance does not recognize absurdity and does not feel its own absurdity. Ignorance always feels his rightness, and in the country of ignoramuses, where the winding of ignoramuses, everything is always good. Everything is beneficial - good and evil, friends and enemies, inflation, a neighboring junta, a drop in oil prices. When they say that everything is in order with freedom in all conceivable and inconceivable spheres - it means shout "guard!"

A year ago, a wonderful historian Jacques Le Goff died in France, whom the whole country loved and who introduced modern Frenchmen to their history. He wrote books that turned banal stereotypical ideas about the Middle Ages. To make sure of this, it is enough to read (I advise you!) His small work “Intellectuals in the Middle Ages”.

* * * Jacques Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen âge, Ed. Du Seuil, 1957. In Russian, it was published in 1997 (translation by A. Tutkevich, Allegro-Press, Dolgoprudny). Jacques Le Goff showed that already in the XII century heated disputes about the essence of Christianity and the meaning of life, based on the experience of ancient philosophy and, above all the works of Aristotle, became the basis for the emergence of the first universities. The author re -interprets the concept of scholasticism as a reasonable method for intellectual research of metaphysics (and not only). In those seemingly dark times, there were debates about the body and faith, the Cathedral of the Parisian Mother of God was erected, the philosopher Pierre Abular rebelled and argued so that he could become the hero of the today's Hollywood film about the moral victory of the lonely over the host of enemies. And then - growing. Among the others, Thomas Aquinas appeared with his “sum of theology”, “Roman about the Rose” by Jean de Men with a risky sermon of sexual pluralism, Mayister Eckhart and, finally, Dante.

After Dante - the fireworks of great talents: Petrarka, Bokkaccio, Choser, Viion, Rotterdam's erazm - we excitedly enter the humanism of the European Renaissance.

Where were our universities in the eighteenth century? Our universities were the ability to compromise with enslavers from the Golden Horde. True, now historical compromises are customary to despise. In the era of ignoramuses, we have good not only with freedoms, but also with history. We have the best story - as beautiful as our healthcare and education. After many centuries, we, having adopted the European experience, made up a lot in terms of literature - even how we got a lot! But ignoramuses want us to be always ahead, from the very beginning until the very end of the time. But Europe must be put in a corner, find vices, dirt, lack of sewage and backward civilization - the civilization of the Middle Ages, which was glorified by Jacques Le Goff.

Carefully! You can be very mistaken. We were always lucky to party propagandists. Gorky called, for example, the best time of the Silver Age "shameful decade." I am sure that in fifty years there will be those who justify the time of ignorant.

Invalids know neither doubt nor mercy for the fallen. They are considered cynics, but this is too high title. They are brutal, bloodthirsty, indifferent to someone else's death, because Dicky. According to the laws of cave people, they do not tolerate even close neighbors, strive for expansion and believe that they can do everything: they are best.

Jacques Le Goff lived a long life and died surrounded by countless students. In the occult books about life after death, it is said that there, behind the coffin, they love those who had a talent for love and sought - imagine! - To knowledge. I think that agnostic Le Goff, not succumbing to medieval theology, but also not rejected it, found his shelter beyond the scope of civilizations.