New World Meets Old World: Conquistadors, Charitas, and Neo-Classical Humanism

In these non-fiction letters and essays examining the meeting of two civilizations, I believe Columbus, Cortez, Diaz, De Las Casas and Montaigne outline and represent the three principle ways of viewing the world that have dominated Western Civilization for over 2,000 years. 

1) The Epic:  Conquistadors
In their own words, Columbus, Cortez and Bernal Diaz Del Castillo return us to the world of Gilgamesh and Odysseus, of the Hebrews and the Crusaders.  This is a world view justifying utter brutality, where an entirely partisan God denies the Other all humanity:  Columbus’s first description of Native Americans, the very first mention of Native Americans to ever reach a European audience, describes them as potential slaves and as an easily vanquished enemy.  In the name of God and king and queen, Cortez unapologetically destroys an entire civilization to steal their gold and land and enslave their people.

This world view is utterly and entirely un-self-critical.  It views self and Other as two antithetical categories:  one’s own culture is divinely protected and guided, and the laws governing the treatment of each other do not extend to those of another culture. 

This is perhaps the most ancient view of Others, and it will probably always be with us: it justified slavery throughout the world and in our own country until a little over 100 years ago, it led modern Germans to execute 6,000,000 Jews a little more than two generations ago, and no doubt it will always be with us.

We are left to question just what the heroism of Gilgamesh, Odysseus and Beowulf really was.

1519

2) Christian Pietas and Charitas
Operating in tandem with this ancient, divinely predicated religious view of humanity, De Las Casas returns us to Christ’s Sermon On The Mount (Matthew), to Achilles and Priam tearfully embracing,  and perhaps to Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, and perhaps even back into Mesopotamia and the Code of Hammurabi.  This is a world governed by divine law protecting one’s enemies as closely as it protects one’s self. 

In De Las Casas we are reminded that this world would be governed by love and by a belief, mainly, that we are all brothers and sisters;  that there is no Other.

One is left to wonder how De Las Casas and Cortez believed in the same God.  Theodor de Bry's illustrations of De Las Casas work, from 1542.

3) Classical Rationality and Humanism
And Montaigne returns us to the revolution of the skeptical, objective-rationality begun by the Greek philosophers, willing to question his own and his own culture's deepest assumptions.