by Parker Cotton
This think-piece is motivated by an early modern thought experiment found in philosopher Pierre Bayle’s (1647–1706) Pensées diverses sur la comète. In it, Bayle asks how visitors from another world would hypothetically interpret Christian behavior. He writes:
I admit that if one had people from another world guess the morality of Christians –people to whom one would simply say that Christians are creatures endowed with reason and good sense, eager for happiness, convinced that there is a paradise for those who obey the law of God and a hell for those who do not obey it — these people from another world would be certain that Christians vie with one another in their observance of the precepts of the Gospel; that they try to be the more noted in works of mercy, in prayer, and in the forgetting of insults, if its is possible for someone among them to be capable of offending his neighbour. But whence comes it that they would make so favorable a judgment as this? It is because they would consider Christians only as an abstract idea; for if they were to consider them in detail and with respect to all the factors determining their action, they would indeed lessen their good opinion of them, and they would not have lived for two weeks among us before announcing that in this world we do not guide ourselves by the lights of the conscience (§134).
In other words, Bayle suggests that listening to outside observers would enlighten us to the realization that Christians, in fact, do not behave like their teaching or proclamations say they should. Importantly, the speculative element is tied up in theological reflections on ethical behavior during this wider historical moment. The use of extraterrestrial visitors as a teaching exercise became well established in the early modern period (Christie; Connes). Newer understandings of the cosmos in the seventeenth century coupled with a vastly bigger world being ‘discovered’ opened vibrant avenues of speculation. In an account such as Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634), extraterrestrials functioned as a loose narrative to teach astronomy from another perspective, what observers from space would see. In Voltaire’s Micromégas (1752) the giant alien visitors conclude their critique of the limits of Enlightenment knowledge in a Jobean manner – ‘it all looks so different from up here’.
These early science fictions can be compared with the popular utopian fictions of the early modern period. In this think-piece, I explore the intercultural dialogue taking place, whether gained (or lost), by a process of situating the ‘other’ outside of the inhabited world that these authors so often did (also, see Levinas; Certeau). In particular, I discuss how placing an interlocutor outside of established religions and cultures have changed certain discourses of toleration. This ‘toleration angle’ in utopian literature has been discussed before (Kessler, Brzóstowicz-Klajn), on whether or not a homogeneous population that has moved past toleration through assent to universal religious principles or a peaceable plurality. But, as I propose, what about when the ‘other’ is specifically non-terrestrial? What do these ‘alien’ encounters have to say to religious disputes—and about their theology? By positing extraterrestrial visitors, these authors of the early modern era creatively shook up assumptions made about humanity as the pinnacle of divine creation and continued to expand the utopia genre as it imagines other, better, worlds.
One useful etymology to frame these discussions stems from Thomas More’s play on the word utopia (no/good place), and the concepts that More’s coinage has consequently sprung. The utopias of the early modern period, in the wake of the ‘new world’ discovery and Reformation tensions, offered critiques of the rapidly fragmenting European world. The homogeneity that utopias proposed could mend harmful divisions in contemporary society, but remained practically, if not possibly, all but unachievable.
More’s Utopia (1516), Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602), and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626) are each, in their own way, representative of this utopic genre. Notably all take place on islands. These island utopias are removed from other nations but remain part of this world. They offer a glimpse of what a fundamentally different society could be like, often engaging proto-socialist principles of ordering. If we look at the dates of publication we can surmise that “other world” utopic literature takes the place of “this world” utopias when exploration has removed the rhetorical potential of unexplored places. By the late-eighteenth century European maps were sufficiently complete to cast doubt on unexplored continents separate from the known world (though the interior of Africa and North America remained open to some degree of European fantasizing).
How do utopic ‘this worldly’ encounters differ from ‘other worldly’ accounts? Nina Chodras has demonstrated how the utopian genre contains a creative malleability which allows the utopia to sit within the real world while also presenting a fiction. Looking at a few examples of the off-world subset of these utopian narratives we can see the pressure they exert upon established conceptions of humanity by stretching the bounds of our real world with those fictional challenges. Take, for instance, Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone (~1628). In it, Godwin describes a race of Lunar people that are Christian, writing that “Being surprized at the Appearance of these People so suddenly and is such Accoutrements, I crossed myself, and cried out, Jesu Maria: No Sooner was the Word Jesu pronounced, but Young and Old fell all on their knees . . .” Godwin relates the myth the Lunar people hold to that the king’s ancestors come from Earth. He finds this tradition ‘false and romantick’ but admits their ethical standards which in principle reject lying and falsehood lend some support. This serves as a useful device to keep us questioning the origins of these people. Their great size indicates they are something ‘different’ but their Christianity, which stands in contrast to ‘exotic’ nations on Earth, indicates they are beloved of God.
Another text of this same era gives similar clues. Cyrano de Bergerac’s L’Autre Monde (1657) opens with Cyrano relating to his companions “I believe, that the Moon is a World like ours, to which this of ours serves likewise for a Moon.” He is met with laughter. This creates an interesting starting place for the ‘investigation’ that the novel carries out. Cyrano’s adventuring is a vindication of speculative belief, and likewise the reader is encouraged to think boldly and discover anew. Most compelling is the redacted placement of the garden of Eden on the moon. Cyrano encounters this displaced Eden, hearing a narration of biblical history from the prophet Elijah. Of course, this placement of Eden raises more questions than answers and Cyrano is, like Adam, expelled before he can get the ‘right’ answers. Lest the reader wants to avoid questions of divine creation, this positioning forces a challenge to the accepted limits of creation and the created order.
Voltaire’s Micromégas strikes a balance between the drive for inquiry and this recognition of ongoing ignorance in an age of discovery. Hailing from Sirius, the eponymous traveler Micromégas is a 40 km tall being who travels through space to satisfy his curiosity and improve his own, living self (a star-crossing Grand Tour). Micromégas encounters a ‘dwarf,’ only 6000 ft tall, philosopher on Saturn who joins him on this journey. The Sirian tells his Saturnian companion that the Creator has made a universe of both great variety and yet surprising uniformity. After all, philosophically, a certain uniformity is presupposed in order to be able to learn. However, the two visitors find themselves checking their assumptions when they encounter humanity itself. How could something so small and insignificant have a soul? How could humans have comparable intellects? The interstellar travelers quickly see that they have reached certain conclusions too fast. In the text, an engaging conversation emerges as the humans muse on the big questions of life according to their representative philosophers. Yet, the final word from the humans comes from a Thomist who still, after this encounter, maintains the dogmatic assertion that God made the universe only for humanity.
Staring at ‘godlike’ giants who have undoubtedly shaken the worldview of this group of human philosophers, one still has the nerve to insist that his prior assumptions were correct and not in need of revision. Their response is met with uproarious laughter! Among the humans, the Lockean recognizes that there is always more than we think: “I affirm nothing, and content myself with believing that many more things are possible than one would think.” This is not, necessarily, a negative flight to ignorance. The journey of the extraterrestrials encourages the seeking of new knowledge and joy of discovery.
Though debates on ‘degrees of humanity’ persisted with regards to terrestrial humans (Sebastiani, Vartija), fictional or not, placing your account off-world appears to elevate the problem. These beings are not, at least obviously, ‘humans.’ While the impetus for moving utopias off-world may be due to the lack of believable locations for an undiscovered population, the extraterrestrial scenarios continue to grow the utopia genre by removing earthbound limitations.
Returning to Godwin’s account, the Lunar people already possess a Christian faith. What more can the wayward Spaniard offer them? This is not an encounter of a ‘superior’ European engaging a ‘primitive’ race. Primitivity was commonplace in travel accounts, though often, paradoxically perhaps, juxtaposed with Edenic innocence. So that even while remaining within a colonial narrative, the goodness of encountered peoples critiques the European would-be civilizer. While we affirm how problematic the ‘noble savage’ trope very much was and is, these narratives offered a challenge to established Euro-Christian orthodoxies.
Race(ist) science could strip personhood and humanity from various groups while musing about the barbaric and uncivilized. Yet it becomes increasingly impossible to maintain that different races are not the same sort of being as the white European as greater exposure to varying cultures occurred. This is not to dismiss the horrors perpetrated by colonizers but to acknowledge that, in this particular moment of fictional writing, that the language used to justify horrific actions was ultimately undergoing constant shifts. Speculation was no longer about whether unencountered indigenous groups are humans but how they are ‘in need of civilization’ and other such, frankly, ‘dehumanizing’ understandings. The fantastical non-human, and sometimes sentient, creatures sometimes encountered in travel literature are increasingly regarded as pure fiction. The extraterrestrial encounters described earlier seem to skirt around these questions but the very setting of the encounter forces deeper reflection.
These questions help to interrogate emergent theological anthropologies. What, exactly, is the image of God and do/would extraterrestrials possess that? What would this entail of people’s behavior toward the world and each other? Of course, as the utopian discourses of the past allude to, the question of tolerance and thus how we should treat each other is always lurking in the background of these speculative fictions. Encounter narratives must revolve around interaction with an ‘other.’ Repeated historical failures of Christians, as observed by their own contemporaries and social critics, to respect difference sparked continued meditation on personhood. Ironically, failure to respect differences also fueled ideas of sameness.
These early modern extraterrestrial narratives contain an implicit challenge to straightforward interpretations of the Creation myth. At the very least these encounters seem to require an expansive understanding of divine creation, placing Edenic innocence (or in Bergerac’s case a literal Eden) beyond the terrestrial bounds. In Bergerac’s case: yes, placing Eden on the moon may be heterodox. But, this Edenic transfer also carries a very positive vision of encounter. Even here, in a mysterious lunar landscape, God’s original vision is maintained. This is not a mistake or a surprise, but a part of the created order. The implied answer is “yes, extraterrestrial beings are part of God’s design and order.”
Ultimately, these texts of the early modern period offer a fascinating thought experiment that goes beyond ‘utopia’ fictions which inhabit ‘this earth.’ The extraterrestrial encounter expands the ongoing challenges of what thinkers see as constituting humanity and personhood beyond the terrestrial. These questions, however distant in the past, get to the core of those theological impulses about the treatment and salvation of others, and discourses of tolerance that have emerged across time up to the present.
Parker Cotton (parker.cotton@mail.utoronto.ca) is a PhD candidate in the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto; and serves as Academic Registrar for the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto).
Edited by Jacob Saliba
Cover Image: Title page & illustration from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s first edition of Francis Godwin’s Man in the Moone, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
