A Brill Calendar: May 23

Nationalism Refuted

Few of mankind’s social & political traditions have been as fallacious and as fatal as nationalism.

This is especially true of its stance of worshiping inbred values and attainments, supposed to be unique in a vaguely congenital sense. The ancestry and pedigree of the Western intellectual tradition refutes this fantasy. And the academic promotion at Leyden University in the Faculty of Medicine, on May 23 1727, may corroborate the proposition.

The young ‘Promovendus’ is Albrecht von Haller (October 16 1708 – December 12 1777; both in Bern, Switzerland); the ‘Promotor’ Herman Boerhaave I(1668 – 1738). More than two centuries later, the phenomenon of a scholarly ‘uomo universale’ has dissolved into legend; but it is still alive & kicking in Von Haller, who saw in the old Hollander – ‘senex venerabilis’ – the embodiment of all learning and wisdom. Von Haller lived in Holland from April 1725 until July 1727. His ‘Journal’, written for personal use five years later, gives a trustworthy and elegant description of Leyden during the dawn of European Enlightenment.

After cementing this Leyden corner-stone in his infinitely industrious, and versatile mind, Von Haller – a poet in his own right - became Professor in Medicine and Botany at Göttingen University in 1736 - founded the same year by His British Majesty George II, in His capacity of Elector of Hanover – relinquishing his Chair in 1753, after Herculean and often tragic labours, both privately and professionally.

It is seldom – if ever – that claiming remarkable individuals for one ‘nation’ – like in this case Albrecht von Haller exclusively for Holland, Hanover, or the Canton of Bern – adds to the only knowledge which ultimately matters, following Michel d’Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne: insight into what we are ourselves and into the art how to die well and to live well; in Montaigne’s order en sequence.