Preface - ''That we are at the end of an era is not something that can be proved scientifically. One senses it or one does not.''
Berman expressed this in 1983. Maybe the 'scientific proof' is now here!
''One knows by intuition that the old images, as Archibald MacLeish says in ''The Metaphor'', have lost their meaning . . .
''A world ends when its metaphor has died.
An age becomes an age, all else beside,
When sensuous poets in their pride invent
Emblems for the soul's consent
That speak the meanings men will never know
But man-imagined images can show:
It perishes when those images, though seen,
No longer mean.''
''Because the age is ending, we are now able to discern its beginnings.''
Berman goes back to 'beginnings'.
''It is impossible not to sense the social disintegration, the breakdown of communities, that has taken place in Europe, North America, and other parts of Western civilization in the twentieth century. Bonds of race, religion, soil, family, class, neighborhood, and work community have increasingly dissolved into abstract and superficial nationalisms. This is closely connected with the decline of unity and common purpose in Western civilization as a whole.''
Any kind of bonds (connections) are so weak, so abstract, as to seem invisible.
''What has this to do with law? A great deal. The traditional symbols of community in the West, the traditional images and metaphors, have been above all religious and legal. In the twentieth century, however, for the first time, religion has become largely a private affair, while law has become largely a matter of practical expediency. The connection between the religious metaphor and the legal metaphor has been broken. Neither expresses any longer the community's vision of its future and its past; neither commands any longer its passionate loyalty.''
Law and History
Law and Revolution
The Crisis of the Western Legal Tradition
Toward a Social Theory of Law
PART I: THE PAPAL REVOLUTION AND THE CANON LAW
The Background of the Western Legal Tradition
The Origin of the Western Legal Tradition in the Papal Revolution
Revolution The Rise of the Modern State
3. The Origin of Western Legal Science in the European Universities
The Law School at Bologna
The Scholastic Method of Analysis and Synthesis
The Relation of Scholasticism to Greek Philosophy and Roman Law
The Application of the Scholastic Dialectic to Legal Science
Law as a Prototype of Western Science
7. Becket versus Henry II: The Competition of Concurrent Jurisdictions
Benefit of Clergy and Double Jeopardy
Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in England
PART II: THE FORMATION OF SECULAR LEGAL
The Concept of Secular Law
The Emergence of New Theories of Secular Government and Secular Law
John of Salisbury, Founder of Western Political Science
The Rule of Law
11. Mercantile Law Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
12. Urban Law Causes of the Rise of the Modern City
The City as a Historical Community
13. Royal Law: Sicily, England, Normandy, France
French Royal Civil and Criminal Law
French and English Royal Law Compared
Conclusion - Beyond Marx, Beyond Weber
The concept 'Revolution' is foundational in this work . . .
''The Western legal tradition has been transformed in the course of its history by six great revolutions.''
''Three of them —the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, and the American Revolution—were called revolutions by those who participated in them, although the meaning of the word "revolution" was different in each case.''
''A fourth, the English Revolution, was first called a revolution (the Glorious Revolution) only when it was coming to an end in 1688-89; in its initial stage (1640-1660) it was called the Great Rebellion by its enemies and a "restoration of freedom" by its friends, the second stage (1660-1685) was called the Restoration at the time, although some contemporary writers also called it a revolution. (That was the first modern use of the word revolution to identify a major political upheaval; it meant, however, a turn of the wheel back to an earlier system of government.) Thus what most historians now call the English Revolution consisted of three successive 'restorations.' ''
''The fifth great revolution —still going backward in time —was the Protestant Reformation, which in Germany had the character of a national revolution, starting with Luther's attack upon the papacy in 1517 and ending in 1555 with the frustration of the Emperor by the Protestant League and the establishment of religious peace among the German principalities.''
''The sixth, the Papal Revolution of 1075-1122, which is the subject of this study, was also called a reformation at the time, the Reformatio of Pope Gregory VII, generally translated into modern languages as the Gregorian Reform, thereby concealing still further its revolutionary character.'' (18)
This last one the - 'Papal Revolution' - is the focus of this work.
Why so much analysis of the past? Even a thousand years ago???
''This certainly does not mean that the study of the past will save society. Society moves inevitably into the future. But it does so by walking backwards, so to speak, with its eyes on the past. Oliver Cromwell said . . .
'Man never reaches so high an estate [success] as when he knows not whither he is going.' He understood the revolutionary significance of respect for tradition in a time of crisis.'' (40)
Berman states that western culture, especially the freedoms that the rest of the world did not develop, comes from the two competing institutions, the King vs the Pope. Due to the constant struggle to power by each, neither was able to become totalitarian.
Lord Acton makes the same point in many of his speeches. The Christian precept, "Caesar's things to Caesar and God's things to God", was the seed that grew into secular freedom in the west. Toynbee also commented that Islam does not have this idea. Therefore the restraint on power is lacking.
Rose Wilder Lane makes a similar point in "Discovery of Freedom."
Friedrich Meinecke in "The German Catastrophe," "Hitler's deepest hatred of Christianity, however, was directed, it seems to us, toward something else: the idea inherent in Christianity of an independent conscience and answerable only to God; The command to obey God rather than man and to recognize a Kingdom that is not of this world and to obey laws other than those proclaimed by national Socialism."
Instead of disparaging Christian principles, we should be grateful. Ideas matter. Christian ideas, even imperfectly applied, have great value.
Berman provides great detail how this tension worked out in European history. Original thinker. Persuasive.
Includes 73 pages of notes (linked); 21 page index (not linked).
Also, three maps and two charts.
I purchased the paperback edition first. Good quality paper and excellent binding. Recently got the kindle version (I have the large iPad and perfer reading with it). Excellent!
(See - ''The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies'', by Ryszard Legutko. Polish scholar - who explains modernity somewhat like Berman. Fascinating!; also ''Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man'', by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy)
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