Thanks for Jonathan Rossing’s piece “Trust me, not God” (March 23). It set my brain working a little, trying to apply what I thought I’d learned once, to unravel for my personal use a good translation of that Latin phrase “E pluribus unum.”
There’s a problem in (world) philosophy called “the problem of the many and the one.” A search of the Web for the string “the many and the one philosophy” will point one (you) toward this (perhaps merely traditional) entanglement. Tout de suite one sees mentioned the origin of Western philosophy, the question of God’s existence and the role of physical science in the purifying of religion (i.e., in the critique of superstitions that remain in the many religions). Atheism would wash away superstitions, and that is praiseworthy work – the praise can come from believers, too, I hope.
I’m sure that it can, I really am.
One other thing besides my thanks – or one other bit of thanks. It was good to be reminded of what I knew a long time ago and had forgotten. The “pluribus,” I suppose, once referred to the multiplicity of states in the Union, especially as our states were regarded previous to our U.S. Civil War (I hail from up North here – does anyone down South still refer to the war between the states?). In the Ken Burns documentary about that conflict, Shelby Foote remarked how the grammar of nationhood underwent a change: “These United States are ...” before the war became the phrase “the United States is ...” after the war. “E pluribus unum,” looked at in this light, is not a simple argument. It was ... etc., etc. ... bloody work. Civic unity, national unity, citizenship will always require heartfelt toil, I guess.
Greg Glendening
Senior
