Dr. Greenblatt

On Wednesday, November 13^th I went to see Dr. Stephen Greenblatt, a distinguished speaker in the humanities, speak in Emerson Suites at Ithaca College. I can honestly say after about an hour and a half of sitting there, I died of boredom and do not know what exactly this man was saying the whole time. The problem was he talked about history and religion, the two things in the world I do not know a single thing about and find no interest in. Although, I thought he was a very good speaker and I liked the way he laid out his talk.

To first give you a little background, Stephen Greenblatt is a Writer and editor of many books and is considered to be an expert in two fields which are Renaissance studies and Shakespeare. He wrote the book, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern that won both the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2011 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. This book was about a translated ancient book and how it was discovered during the renaissance. This led to new ideas and inspiration for people such as Botticelli, Galileo, Freud and Einstein.

 During his speech, I took some notes and I will do my best to explain what he was saying but it may be a little hard. The script in quotes are what I wrote down but I remember writing exactly what Dr. Stephen Greenblatt was saying at times so I am trying to give him proper credit.   He talked about the renaissance and many different people as well as what they did and believed. He started off talking about Locke, who said you “cannot be compelled into a religion and you cannot force faith. He could not be saved by religions he did not believe in. He also believed we could not tolerate those who did not believe in god because binds could have no holds on an atheist”.  I agree with some things that Locke was saying. He was saying that you can’t force something on someone. It’s like forcing someone to believe there’s a Santa Clause when they've never gotten a present from him before. In their mind, there is no presence of Santa because he did not do anything for him. If you threaten someone and make him believe there is one, he will “believe” for conformity but he will not truly have faith. Although he also believed that we cannot tolerate those who do not have a faith because they can’t hold binds which I think means they can’t hold faith or love or anything like that. I do not agree with this but I think this is the thoughts of that time, which I can understand.

Dr. Greenblatt also talked about Lucretius. He explained that Lucretius thought that there was no such thing as religion as he said “The universe is being constantly created as no one person did it and humans are not unique. He also thought the soul dies when a person dies and all religions are superstitious delusions. Religions are cruel because they promise love but underneath it is anxiety”. Basically, this is the opposite of what Locke is saying. I think he is looking from more of a biological stand point when he says things like the universe is being constantly created and the soul eventually dies.  The one part that hit me the most was “religions are cruel because they promise love but underneath it all is anxiety”.  Basically this is pointing out that we are told if we have a religion we will be loved by our gods but at the end of the day we have to be careful of everything we do in fear of betraying and being hurt by god because he holds our fate.

I think the views of Locke and Lucretius were very interesting to hear about. Although, I was tremendously bored from the whole entire speech because it could not hold my interest. I would not go to see him speak again but it was definitely an experience.