Confusing the Material with the Divine By HAROON MOGHUL
It might have been Marx who first said he saw the clothes bereft of their emperor. Art, culture and religion did not determine the economic relations of the world, but rather it was the other way around. Critics soon contended that a direct correlation between an economic base and the cultural superstructure was too simplistic, but the pattern had been set. The root would be determined by its branches, the specific forms of the material dictating the formlessness of the immaterial. To this conclusion: Genealogies that presume earthly roots for the unearthly will only find the dependents, never the independent—and so, predictably, will deny that there is any thing beyond us.
Copyright 2007 Islamica Magazine.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium is prohibited.
It might have been Marx who first said he saw the clothes bereft of their emperor. Art, culture and religion did not determine the economic relations of the world, but rather it was the other way around. Critics soon contended that a direct correlation between an economic base and the cultural superstructure was too simplistic, but the pattern had been set. The root would be determined by its branches, the specific forms of the material dictating the formlessness of the immaterial. To this conclusion: Genealogies that presume earthly roots for the unearthly will only find the dependents, never the independent—and so, predictably, will deny that there is any thing beyond us.