John Gray: preference

Transcript context

…I bet 30 years ago, I said to Jim Buchanan something like, “One of these days John Gray is going to end up a Catholic.” I think nowadays I would cite Eastern Orthodox instead, but why don’t you just take the plunge? What do you have to lose? [laughs] You are right. I am attracted more to Eastern Orthodoxy than I am to Catholicism, partly because its rituals and art are so beautiful, and for me, many of my judgments are aesthetic. Also, because it gives a much smaller scope to human reason than does Western Christianity, and Catholicism in particular. After all, Catholicism claims to unify the thought of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers with Christianity. In other words, you might say that what Catholicism did was try to reconcile Athens and Jerusalem. I don’t think Athens and Jerusalem can be reconciled in that way. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is closer, I would think — if there was anything that could be called original Christianity, it’s closer to it. I am interested in it, but I couldn’t find myself subscribing to it because like all forms of monotheism — or most forms — it’s very anthropocentric. It assumes that the human story, as it were, has something in it of the divine, whereas the stories of other living species, even those with minds . . . I’ve written a book on cats, [laughs] for example. They certainly have minds quite different from human minds, but they have minds all right. The theistic tradition assumes that there is a kind of linkage between the human mind and the divine mind. In that sense, the human mind is superior to the minds of other animals. I think all forms of Western monotheism think that. I don’t, so I couldn’t. Even though I do find Eastern Orthodoxy attractive, I can’t imagine myself subscribing to it. Do you think that being pessimistic gives you pleasure? Or what’s the return in it from a purely pragmatic point of view?…

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