I
have already presented an overview of one of Saint-Martin's works, so
I need not be overtly thorough with describing his philosophical
theories – to put it shortly, his philosophy is a form of religious
mysticism, in which human beings reside in a fallen state, in which
their original unity with divinity has been broken.
What
is new in Tableau
naturel des rapports qui unissent Dieu, l'Homme et l'Univers is
the idea of mythologies in general as an expression of important
metaphysical truths. This
is in itself not that much of a novelty, since the idea has been part
of philosopher's tool kit at least since the time of Neo-Platonists
and first Christian thinkers.
Yet,
what one might find interesting is the range of mythologies
Saint-Martin considers – he mentions details at least from Greek,
Egyptian, Native American and Chinese mythologies. In his
thoroughness, Sain-Martin precedes similar considerations in German
idealism. What Saint-Martin is mostly after is commonalities. These
range from such description
of physical events as the flood to such central ingredients of
Saint-Martin's own philosophy as the fall of human beings.
But
Saint-Martin shows himself to lie in the great tradition of Western
thinkers by emphasising one mythology over the others – that is,
the Jewish mythology embodies in the old testament. With painstaking
thoroughness, he goes through almost all of the Old Testament, and
this study forms then the major part of his book. He even follows the
quaint tradition that Hebrew was the oldest language in the world and
tries to e.g. interpret names from Chinese mythology through similar
sounding words in Hebrew. Of course, here Saint-Martin is again quite
close to German idealists, who often thought that Christianity was
still the highest religion of them all.
So
much for Saint-Martin's turn towards mythologies. Next time, we shall
be introduced to work of another Frenchman.
