View Full Version : Arguments against Georges Dumézil's Trifunctional hypothesis
These are excerpts from my long OD thread against "Nouvelle Droite":
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20621&page=3
Here's some stuff on Georges Dumézil, one of the most respected scholars of "New Right" and Indo-Europeanist ideology.
Arnaldo Momigliano noted how Dumézil tried in his famous Trifunctionality hypothesis to belittle the importance of Christianity (or the impact of religions of non-Aryan peoples like Etruscans) and project his own ideals to Ur-Aryan institutions instead - in other words, to behave like a typical "New Right" ideologue:
(from On Jews, Pagans and Christians by A. Momigliano (Wesleyan University Press, 1989))
pg. 295, 303, 312-13, 324:
"By 1941 it was clear to Dumézil that the Indo-European spirit survives where societies keep alive this original Indo-European discovery: the functional tripartition of priests, warriors, and producers. ... By this criteria the Greeks seem to have been rather poor Indo-Europeans: not much of the original tripartition survived among them.
...
"The successive history of triads in Rome confirms their lack of specialization, in the Dumézilian sense. We have already seen that even Dumézil does not claim that the Capitoline triad was trifunctional. We have good reason to suspect that the Capitoline triad was not only introduced by an Etruscan king, but reflected some Etruscan doctrine. We are told by Servius in his commentary to Virgil (ad Aen. I. 422) that the specialists in Etruscan doctrine did not consider a city properly founded unless Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva each had a temple, a gate, and a street in it. This is not the same as having a tripartite temple, as the Capitoline temple was. But it shows that the triad Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva was considered Etruscan. A few years after the foundation of of the triple temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the plebeians of Rome found it necessary to have their own trinitarian sanctuary, and built one to the triad Ceres, Liber, and Libera in 493 B.C. It is interesting to note that the plebeians accepted the principle of having a trinity with two goddesses and one god, but gave pride of place to the goddess Ceres, who best suited their preoccupations. Again, the three Indo-European functions are not involved. Outside the triads trifunctionality is of course even less likely to appear. Trifunctionality is altogether alien to Roman pantheon.
...
"If there are other Indo-European societies in which the emphasis on the so-called trifunctional structure is greater than in Rome, then the first question to ask is whether the reason is not to be found inside that society rather than in the Indo-European original society. (4) Feudal society fulfills Dumézil's requirements more obviously than the Roman society. But it fulfills them because of the combination of Christianity with feudalism. I am not surprised that Professor G. Duby has found the High Middle Ages a haven of trifunctionalism. Nor am I surprised that Dumézil should sympathize with what was after all the organization of pre-revolutionary France, a tripartite state if there ever was one. The Middle Ages are trifunctional because they are Christian. The Romans were not trifunctional in any serious sense.
(4) The absence of priestly class in Germany noted by Caesar is a notorious example. A short poem of the Edda, the Rigsthula, which is often quoted as evidence for consistent trifunctional thinking among Scandinavians, is interesting evidence for the division into slaves, freemen and noblemen, not for three functions. The king is chosen from among the warriors, but to be king he must have a modicum of magic, of runes. One god creates three classes: the poem does not presuppose functional gods for each class.
Dumézil was insistent of seeing the draconian caste-society of Hinduism as somehow common, essentially "Indo-European" institution.
It is typical for New Rightists to deny the Christian roots of Europe and seek them from India instead. They seem to admire theocracy, when practised by Brahmins that is. For example, how many neo-pagans who like to scorn Christianity as "misogynistic Semitic religion" have you seen citing this part in the "Laws of Manu":
(Chapter IX)
17. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct.
18. For women no (sacramental) rite (is performed) with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women (who are) destitute of strength and destitute of (the knowledge of) Vedic texts, (are as impure as) falsehood (itself), that is a fixed rule.
19. And to this effect many sacred texts are sung also in the Vedas, in order to (make) fully known the true disposition (of women); hear (now those texts which refer to) the expiation of their (sins).
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/manu-full.html
Not surprising from a culture that invented widow-burning...
Petr
By 1941 it was clear to Dumézil that the Indo-European spirit survives where societies keep alive this original Indo-European discovery: the functional tripartition of priests, warriors, and producers.
So it would seem that the recipe of Dumézilian New Rightists to the malady of the West would be a strict caste separation between these three functions.
(Presumably to prevent the "third estate," or producers, getting too powerful. Fits perfectly their anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist worldview).
So, what about it?
First, I would like to cite Momigliano once more:
(On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, pg. 302-03:
"While it was difficult to make out a serious case for the Romulean tribes as castes, it was less difficult to argue that Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus were the gods of the three dominant social groups. Jupiter after all had always been the king of the gods, and Mars was the god of the war. Two of the three functions were there for the asking. Dumézil had only to prove that Quirinus was the god of production, and arguments were not lacking. ... What Dumézil forgot, however, was that it is easier to prove that Quirinus was a god of fertility than to disprove that Jupiter is also a god of war and Mars is also a god of fertility. The connection of Jupiter with war and victory needs no demonstration. The same must be said about Mars as a god of the fields: one need not go beyond the famous prayer to Mars in Cato's De re rustica 141. A good case can also be made for Quirinus as a god of the Quirites, of the Roman citizens in general: as such he was identified with Romulus at an uncertain date. In other words, Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus never show the exclusive functional specialization Dumézil requires. On reflection, that specialization could have hardly have existed in a city where the peasants were soldiers, and the soldiers filled the priesthoods."
Indeed, early Rome had no separate class of Brahmins either (pg. 123) :
"Celtic, Semitic, Pannonian, and African gods were either assimilated to Greco-Roman gods or accepted as respectable gods in their own right to an extent which is no less stupendous for being obvious. The lack of a priestly class in what Dumézil would have us to consider a trifunctional society gave a secular tone to the whole of private life; religious instruction was not a major item of Roman education for anyone."
No, ancient Rome was not a tripartite society - and thank God for that, for the more I have thought about his, the more obvious it is to me that the trifunctional system, drawn to its logical conclusion, would be a totalitarian nightmare, even worse than a bipartite society (of patricians and plebeians). I think that only the soothing influence of Christianity prevented the trifunctional medieval society getting really bad, since it prevented priestly and martial classes acting like total tyrants, as in Asia.
One of the truly great legacies of republican Rome to the West was its concept of peasant-soldier: unlike, say, the Spartans, the Romans were not too proud to cultivate the earth themselves, instead of letting helots or slaves do it for them. Plebeian farmers were the backbone of early Roman armies, and this meant that there was no separate military caste.
Now, the concept of gun control fits trifunctional scheme perfectly - why, the peasants and bourgeoisie have no business playing soldiers! Weapons should be reserved to the use of military caste of government agencies alone!
Ryan MacMaken argues here, is his essay on Westerns, that this sort of propaganda about the supposed incompatibility between bourgeois (or peasant) values and military prowess actually serves statist ends:
"The classic Western, it turns out, centers not on bourgeois values of commerce, hearth, and home, but on martial values of courage, honor, and power through violence. Perhaps there is nothing to dislike about values such as courage and honor, yet what we find in the Western is that these values, as personified in the gunfighter, are not complementary values to the bourgeois world, but are in fact mutually exclusive.
...
"In the typical Western, the bourgeois society must subject itself to the authority of the gunfighter or face annihilation. The gunfighter exists as a personification of the State on the frontier, and the choice that faces the townsfolk is to either accept the supremacy of the gunfighter or to accept oppression at the hands of Indians, outlaws, or worse. Self-defense is rarely an option, for the bourgeois settlers, consumed by their petty commercial and domestic pursuits are incapable of handling themselves in a dangerous and chaotic world.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcmaken/mcmaken109.html
In the likewise manner, in the tripartite scheme neither soldiers nor producers have any business criticizing the decisions of priestly Brahmin class - a perfect recipe for the dictatorship of intellectuals, an allmighty bureaucracy. Indian Brahmins had no qualms about declaring their superiority:
"The Abbe Dubois quotes the following Aryan Hindu verse :
"Devadhinam jagat sarvarm Mantradhinam ta devata Tam Mantram Brahmandhinam Brahmana nam devata"
Meaning:
The Universe is under the power of gods, The gods are under the power of the mantras, The mantras are under the power of the Brahmins, Therefore the Brahmins are our gods.
Abbe J.A. Dubois's "Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies",
Oxford, Third Edition 1906, Page 139. See also page 93.
http://www.dalitstan.org/books/awake/awake2.html
I actually believe now that 20th century totalitarian states follow pretty closely the "tripartite scheme", being class societies with vengeance.
First there is the great mass of people, "producers" who clearly have no influence on public affairs. They are unarmed and policed by a separate martial caste ("watchdogs," like Plato - and Orwell - would call them). This martial caste would be itself brainwashed and controlled by an even thinner class of intellectual movers-and-shakers, "Brahmins," "rabbis" or "philosopher-kings" if you like.
AND, if some people rebel against this system, they will "lose their caste" (or "citizenship," as in USSR), and are turned into helots or chandalas, "untouchables," who are subjected to public scorn and shoved into Gulags to perform the lowest menial works available or are simply exterminated.
(All this, btw, is what the neocon movement is trying to turn America into. Leo Strauss did not admire Plato for nothing.)
There is no equality among these three functions - they are strictly hierarchical.
If the tripartite Platonic model had been victorious in the West, could its impact on the European culture have been dystopian?
Thomas Jefferson, a great admirer of Roman republicanism, seems to have thought so:
"It is fortunate for us that Platonic republicanism has not obtained the same favor as Platonic Christianity; or we should now have been all living, men, women and children, pell mell together, like beasts of the field or forest."
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20799&highlight=jefferson
Like Jefferson opined, if Plato and his trifunctional caste-system had actually been victorious in antiquity, the whole history of Europe might have been something more resembling micro-managed Oriental realms like China, where this sort of thinking did actually take over, as Igor Shafarevich explains:
"Shang Yang's teaching is reminiscent of a social utopia, a description of an "ideal state," in which "private interests are eliminated," love for kindred beings is replaced by love for state order, all aspirations are concentrated on the One Thing and the entire structure is maintained by a system of informers, guilt by association and harsh punishments. But in one respect Shang Yang occupies a special place among authors of such treatises. Many of them made attempts to implement their ideals. Plato, for instance, sought a ruler who would organize a state in the spirit of his teaching. Plato's attempts ended when the Syracuse tyrant Dionysius, upon whom he had set his hopes, sold him into slavery. Shang Yang, however, found his ruler and had the opportunity to realize his ideals. The prince of the state of Ch'in made him first minister and Shang Yang succeeded in carrying out a number of reforms. Here is what is known of Shang Yang's legislation:
1. Farmers ("those engaged in the essential thing") were freed from obligatory service.
2. Those discovered engaging in "nonessential" activities were turned into slaves.
3. Ranks of nobility were obtainable only through military service. High positions in the government could be given only to those who had already earned the rank of nobility. Those without rank were forbidden to display luxuries. (In this way, the ruling class was transformed from a hereditary aristocracy into officials dependent on the favor of their superiors and the monarch.)
4. The state was divided into provinces ruled by state officials.
5. Large families were split up, and grown sons were forbidden to live with their fathers. (This measure is seen as an attempt to destroy the village community.)
...
http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html#pagestart_168
I think I have been able to prove the ideological connection between the anti-Christian "New Right" (and their old master and forerunner Plato) to Oriental despotism and statism. They may pretend to be defending the West, but their contempt for Christianity, and admiration of collectivistic Asian cultures on the other hand, belie this claim.
Would anyone like to contest these notions of mine? I'd love to argue about this.
Petr
Many "New Rightist" scholars give the impression that when Plato suggested a trifunctional system for his model state, he was merely re-introducing a primordial Indo-European system.
It has actually been theorized by some that the ideas of Plato, who travelled a lot in the Orient in his youth, might have been somewhat influenced by the Indian caste system...
(In the same manner as Pyrrho, the founder of philosophical school of systematic skepticism, might have been influenced by Hindu/Buddhist notions that everything is just an illusion.)
In any case, Plato himself hardly claimed that he was bringing back some Ur-Aryan institutions, but rather sought inspiration from the despotic (and non-Indo-European) realm of Egypt. There too, the priestly and martial people were strictly castes of their own, separated from producer classes.
(From Platonic dialogue Timaeus; "Solon" is talking to Egyptian priests who claim that Greeks themselves once had institutions similar to present-day Egyptians - Plato was in this way a true forerunner of Nouvelle Droite in making up non-existent nostalgia:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
Solon marvelled at his words, and earnestly requested the priests to inform him exactly and in order about these former citizens. You are welcome to hear about them, Solon, said the priest, both for your own sake and for that of your city, and above all, for the sake of the goddess who is the common patron and parent and educator of both our cities. She founded your city a thousand years before ours, receiving from the Earth and Hephaestus the seed of your race, and afterwards she founded ours, of which the constitution is recorded in our sacred registers to be eight thousand years old. As touching your citizens of nine thousand years ago, I will briefly inform you of their laws and of their most famous action; the exact particulars of the whole we will hereafter go through at our leisure in the sacred registers themselves. If you compare these very laws with ours you will find that many of ours are the counterpart of yours as they were in the olden time. In the first place, there is the caste of priests, which is separated from all the others; next, there are the artificers, who ply their several crafts by themselves and do not intermix; and also there is the class of shepherds and of hunters, as well as that of husbandmen; and you will observe, too, that the warriors in Egypt are distinct from all the other classes, and are commanded by the law to devote themselves solely to military pursuits; moreover, the weapons which they carry are shields and spears, a style of equipment which the goddess taught of Asiatics first to us, as in your part of the world first to you. Then as to wisdom, do you observe how our law from the very first made a study of the whole order of things, extending even to prophecy and medicine which gives health, out of these divine elements deriving what was needful for human life, and adding every sort of knowledge which was akin to them. All this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city; and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men likest herself. And there you dwelt, having such laws as these and still better ones, and excelled all mankind in all virtue, as became the children and disciples of the gods.
In his last dialogue, Laws, Plato went all the way with his hyper-reactionary theorizing, and specifically cited Egypt as his inspiration:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.2.ii.html
Ath. Then in a city which has good laws, or in future ages is to have them, bearing in mind the instruction and amusement which are given by music, can we suppose that the poets are to be allowed to teach in the dance anything which they themselves like, in the way of rhythm, or melody, or words, to the young children of any well-conditioned parents? Is the poet to train his choruses as he pleases, without reference to virtue or vice?
Cle. That is surely quite unreasonable, and is not to be thought of.
Ath. And yet he may do this in almost any state with the exception of Egypt.
Cle. And what are the laws about music and dancing in Egypt?
Ath. You will wonder when I tell you: Long ago they appear to have recognized the very principle of which we are now speaking-that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited the patterns of them in their temples; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms and invent new ones. To this day, no alteration is allowed either in these arts, or in music at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms which they had ten thousand years ago; - this is literally true and no exaggeration - their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.
Cle. How extraordinary!
Ath. I should rather say, How statesmanlike, how worthy of a legislator! I know that other things in Egypt are not so well. But what I am telling you about music is true and deserving of consideration, because showing that a lawgiver may institute melodies which have a natural truth and correctness without any fear of failure. To do this, however, must be the work of God, or of a divine person; in Egypt they have a tradition that their ancient chants which have been preserved for so many ages are the composition of the Goddess Isis. And therefore, as I was saying, if a person can only find in any way the natural melodies, he may confidently embody them in a fixed and legal form. For the love of novelty which arises out of pleasure in the new and weariness of the old, has not strength enough to corrupt the consecrated song and dance, under the plea that they have become antiquated. At any rate, they are far from being corrupted in Egypt.
(Keeping this in mind, I wonder whether it was just an accident that the founder of neo-Platonic school of thought, Ammonius Saccas, originated from Egypt, as did his most important follower, Plotinus?)
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
So, to put it succinctly, it would look like Plato wanted to introduce Egyptian totalitarianism to Hellas in order to counter the effects of Sophistic hyper-individualism, much like Nazis later wanted to introduce to Europe anti-Christian and Asiatic concepts of an allmighty state and divine, infallible rulers - all in the name of defending Western civilization.
As I argue in here,
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19177&highlight=rushdoony
only Christianity can provide us with a truly balancing factor between ultra-collectivism and ultra-individualism, between tyranny and anarchy, providing us with a straight and narrow golden middle road.
Petr
Oh, let's throw in few personal details about Dumézil while we're at it: :p
From Bryn Mawr Classical Review:
"The chapter on Dumézil is chilling. L. uses a merciless scholarly tour de force to prove that the French Dumézil, though attracted to fascism, was alarmed -- along with his countrymen -- by "Hitler's rearmament of the Rhineland" (133), and manipulated evidence in his scholarship to direct a racist attack -- not towards Jews, but towards Nazi Germany."
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-07-29.html
"Here is where the focus on D.'s political views has been harshest: during this time D., under the name Georges Marcenay, wrote editorials for two pro-fascist newspapers (27-8). G. goes to great lengths in this biographical chapter, as well as later on, to prove that these political views did not affect D.'s scholarship. He points to D.'s friendships with Jews, Marxists and other opponents of fascism, as well as his membership in the French Loge maçonnique, a secret society which the Vichy (Nazi-controlled) government considered subversive (34)."
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2002/2002-07-25.html
(from On Jews, Pagans and Christians by Arnaldo Momigliano, pg. 290:
"Dumézil's extraordinary career and success are understandable only if they placed where they belong: with the contrasting and not always coherent trends of French sociological and political thought from the end of the First World War to the present day. In more than sixty years Dumézil has had time to support successively the ideology of Indo-European supremacy, the school of Durkheim - or rather of Durkheim's nephew Marcel Mauss - the linguistics of Benveniste, and the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss - and occasionally he has been supported by them. The latest paradox is that Dumézil, while remaining the darling of the extreme right, to which he may have originally belonged, has persuaded left-wing sociologists and anthropologists, such as J.-P. Vernant, and was received among the Immortals of the Académie Francaise by the very leader of the structuralist revolution, Lévi-Strauss himself."
Indeed:
"Two of Dumézil’ s most noted accomplishments in the years leading up to his death include his acceptance into the Académie Française, sponsored by his long-time friend, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and his efforts in helping start the academic career of Michel Foucault, who later, on a number of occasions, thanked Dumézil for his assistance. C. Scott Littleton recalls Dumézil telling him once that he and Foucault were very close friends for a long time following the start of his career and he was heartbroken to hear of his death. "
http://departments.oxy.edu/anthropology/field/wall.html
Claude Lévi-Strauss was an aggressive Jewish structuralist and an inspiration to Michel Foucault.
"Foucault's intellectual family tree is hard to trace. Throughout his career, he was hostile to attempts to link him to any philosophical movement. He did suggest several important influences on Madness and Civilization. The first is the historian of religion Georges Dumezil, who got Foucault a job at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Dumezil was an expert on Indo-European religion, and emphasized sets of relations between various traditions and structures. He is often seen as a forerunner of the structuralist movement. Foucault claimed that Dumezil's notion of the importance of structure influenced him greatly. Dumezil was also important in introducing him to the medical and scientific libraries of Uppsala, which provided much of the raw material for Madness and Civilization."
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/madnessandciv/context.html
Petr
Vindex
11-15-2005, 12:00 AM
The priest caste came about later on, from spilts in the warriors caste in the pre-jeboo days. Maybe one could still see, some of this in the fact that the in the start Holy Roman Emperor and Pope where the same office.
I actually believe now that 20th century totalitarian states follow pretty closely the "tripartite scheme", being class societies with vengeance.
First there is the great mass of people, "producers" who clearly have no influence on public affairs. They are unarmed and policed by a separate martial caste ("watchdogs," like Plato - and Orwell - would call them). This martial caste would be itself brainwashed and controlled by an even thinner class of intellectual movers-and-shakers, "Brahmins," "rabbis" or "philosopher-kings" if you like.
And so it happens that the "trifunctional" system was essential in the worldview of Leo Strauss as well. He shared even the contempt of no-droes towards the "third estate" bourgeoisie:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5010.htm
Danny Postel: In the Straussian scheme of things, there are the wise few and the vulgar many. But there is also a third group – the gentlemen. Would you explain how they figure?
Shadia Drury: There are indeed three types of men: the wise, the gentlemen, and the vulgar. The wise are the lovers of the harsh, unadulterated truth. They are capable of looking into the abyss without fear and trembling. They recognise neither God nor moral imperatives. They are devoted above all else to their own pursuit of the “higher” pleasures, which amount to consorting with their “puppies” or young initiates.
The second type, the gentlemen, are lovers of honour and glory. They are the most ingratiating towards the conventions of their society – that is, the illusions of the cave. They are true believers in God, honour, and moral imperatives. They are ready and willing to embark on acts of great courage and self-sacrifice at a moment’s notice.
The third type, the vulgar many, are lovers of wealth and pleasure. They are selfish, slothful, and indolent. They can be inspired to rise above their brutish existence only by fear of impending death or catastrophe.
Petr
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