Response to Papenheim, by Peter Paul Fuchs
In re: "Albert Pike's and Eugene Goblet d'Alviella's reforms of the Scottish Rite and the theory of religion in the late nineteenth century." by Martin Papenheim. Presented May, 27, 2011 at the Third International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, The George Washington National Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia.
As the author of a significant study of Albert Pike's thought, especially in light of the intellectual sources of this philosophy contained in his much-treasured personal library, I certainly took note of this paper by Martin Papenheim (University of Bielefeld). The journal Heredom, considered one of the very top sources of Masonic research, published by the Scottish Rite Research Society, has been had a number of very serious studies of Pike's works, both in terms of its relation to i realistic intellectual climate, generally, and Masonic ambits, particularly. What is common to all of the them has been the desire to set Pike in a context that was socially realistic for what he actually lived. This must be sharply distinguished from the regrettable myths that grew up later about the man, many of which were connected pure fabrication related to him, namely the infamous Taxil hoax. This is not the place to rehearse these matters, as they are available for study by simply reading the serious scholarship on Pike. One needs only to mention giants of Pike research like De Hoyos and Hutchens, and their many works on the subject, if read carefully, will give a forceful guide to a more serious consideration of the man.
But it seems that the academic world in Europe has suddenly seen in Pike some sort of tempting fertile ground to try out a few exercises in broad-brush social/cultural theory. And we had an strange person to be attempting such conceptual calisthenics. This is the only explanation I can discern for the very odd paper by Martin Papenheim of Germany for the Third International Conference on the History of Freemasonry. His paper was intoned with great seriousness, so that one can only assume it was meant so. But Papenheim seemed to not have any sense whatsoever of the cumulative insights of the now considerable scholarship on the man. Or perhaps it indicated only a glancing acquaintance. Whatever the case, the bedrock would seem to be, first of all, the very detailed biography by Brown of Albert Pike.
If one had read Brown's biography, it would be hard to make the assertions about the man that Papenheim made. So, my basic point is, one does not even need to get into more high-flown matters of philosophy to make the point. What is massively clear from Brown's work is that Pike's life was chock-a-block with diverse commitments, legal, familial, military, journalistic, entrepreneurial, and artistic (mostly poetry). Somehow in the midst of all this, the man had the amazing wherewithal to become one the central figures in American Freemasonry. But the important hermeneutical fact is that he did it while committed to many other things. Any account of his thought that fails to take this into account is imperiled from the start. As both Hutchens and De Hoyos have emphasized, which I echoed in my paper "Incense to the Intellect: The Albert Pike Library (Heredom, 2009), Pike's Masonic works were not aimed at a general audience at all, in any way. I develop this point by pointing out that this is consistent with the standard work of social science on Freemasonry in America, by Dumenil, clarifying that until the 1920's Masonic Lodges had more the character of insular "asylums" from the normal world. So the idea that Pike was writing his Masonic works to affect the larger culture, or as part of some larger cultural campaign as Papenheim stressed, simply is completely false. It is a simple category mistake. Pike's intentions must be distinguished from the later use that others made of his works, particular as a result of, or in reaction to the Taxil hoax. A great confirmation of this fact is the simple and instructive nineteenth century evidence of bibliographies of Pike from the period. I quote one of them in my research showing that Pike was listed as the author of poetry and legal studies, nothing else. His Masonic works were scarcely known at all, and seemed not to exist, even amazingly when it was known that he held a high Masonic position.
Martin Papeneheim's paper was so wrong -headed and poorly sourced that I could not make heads nor tails of it ultimately. After the Conference I looked over some other books and came up with the real source for his odd amalgam. There are a number of old Catholic books which significantly try to tar Pike with the very same brush. The idea was simply to portray Pike as someone engaged in some sort of culture war. One would have thought that this idea would have died out completely given the revelations of later scholarship. As I said above, at the very least, on the simple basis of Brown's complex biography. Further, the assertions in Papenheim's abstract about the nature of current Pike studies just seems quite detached from reality.
No one who seriously works on Pike thinks of him as a perfect character. He was a fascinatingly complex figure of sui generis profundity. His real nature has been obscured by a number of truly ideological caricatures. I am afraid the worst thing that can be said about Papenheim's approach was that it was that, simply a caricature.
In re: "Albert Pike's and Eugene Goblet d'Alviella's reforms of the Scottish Rite and the theory of religion in the late nineteenth century." by Martin Papenheim. Presented May, 27, 2011 at the Third International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, The George Washington National Memorial, Alexandria, Virginia.
As the author of a significant study of Albert Pike's thought, especially in light of the intellectual sources of this philosophy contained in his much-treasured personal library, I certainly took note of this paper by Martin Papenheim (University of Bielefeld). The journal Heredom, considered one of the very top sources of Masonic research, published by the Scottish Rite Research Society, has been had a number of very serious studies of Pike's works, both in terms of its relation to i realistic intellectual climate, generally, and Masonic ambits, particularly. What is common to all of the them has been the desire to set Pike in a context that was socially realistic for what he actually lived. This must be sharply distinguished from the regrettable myths that grew up later about the man, many of which were connected pure fabrication related to him, namely the infamous Taxil hoax. This is not the place to rehearse these matters, as they are available for study by simply reading the serious scholarship on Pike. One needs only to mention giants of Pike research like De Hoyos and Hutchens, and their many works on the subject, if read carefully, will give a forceful guide to a more serious consideration of the man.
But it seems that the academic world in Europe has suddenly seen in Pike some sort of tempting fertile ground to try out a few exercises in broad-brush social/cultural theory. And we had an strange person to be attempting such conceptual calisthenics. This is the only explanation I can discern for the very odd paper by Martin Papenheim of Germany for the Third International Conference on the History of Freemasonry. His paper was intoned with great seriousness, so that one can only assume it was meant so. But Papenheim seemed to not have any sense whatsoever of the cumulative insights of the now considerable scholarship on the man. Or perhaps it indicated only a glancing acquaintance. Whatever the case, the bedrock would seem to be, first of all, the very detailed biography by Brown of Albert Pike.
If one had read Brown's biography, it would be hard to make the assertions about the man that Papenheim made. So, my basic point is, one does not even need to get into more high-flown matters of philosophy to make the point. What is massively clear from Brown's work is that Pike's life was chock-a-block with diverse commitments, legal, familial, military, journalistic, entrepreneurial, and artistic (mostly poetry). Somehow in the midst of all this, the man had the amazing wherewithal to become one the central figures in American Freemasonry. But the important hermeneutical fact is that he did it while committed to many other things. Any account of his thought that fails to take this into account is imperiled from the start. As both Hutchens and De Hoyos have emphasized, which I echoed in my paper "Incense to the Intellect: The Albert Pike Library (Heredom, 2009), Pike's Masonic works were not aimed at a general audience at all, in any way. I develop this point by pointing out that this is consistent with the standard work of social science on Freemasonry in America, by Dumenil, clarifying that until the 1920's Masonic Lodges had more the character of insular "asylums" from the normal world. So the idea that Pike was writing his Masonic works to affect the larger culture, or as part of some larger cultural campaign as Papenheim stressed, simply is completely false. It is a simple category mistake. Pike's intentions must be distinguished from the later use that others made of his works, particular as a result of, or in reaction to the Taxil hoax. A great confirmation of this fact is the simple and instructive nineteenth century evidence of bibliographies of Pike from the period. I quote one of them in my research showing that Pike was listed as the author of poetry and legal studies, nothing else. His Masonic works were scarcely known at all, and seemed not to exist, even amazingly when it was known that he held a high Masonic position.
Martin Papeneheim's paper was so wrong -headed and poorly sourced that I could not make heads nor tails of it ultimately. After the Conference I looked over some other books and came up with the real source for his odd amalgam. There are a number of old Catholic books which significantly try to tar Pike with the very same brush. The idea was simply to portray Pike as someone engaged in some sort of culture war. One would have thought that this idea would have died out completely given the revelations of later scholarship. As I said above, at the very least, on the simple basis of Brown's complex biography. Further, the assertions in Papenheim's abstract about the nature of current Pike studies just seems quite detached from reality.
No one who seriously works on Pike thinks of him as a perfect character. He was a fascinatingly complex figure of sui generis profundity. His real nature has been obscured by a number of truly ideological caricatures. I am afraid the worst thing that can be said about Papenheim's approach was that it was that, simply a caricature.
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